Bruce Willis stars as the local sheriff, Edward Norton is a Khaki clad Scout troop leader and as we’ve come to expect in Andersons films Bill Murray & Jason Schwartzman also make appearances.

Released via Focus Features on May 25th, you can view the trailer below and find out more at IMDB.

‘Shut Up And Play The Hits’ is both a narrative film documenting this once in a life time performance – an intimate portrait of James Murphy as he navigates the lead-up to the show; the day after and the ramifications of his decision.

Directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, you can check out the trailer below and find out more at Pulsefilms.com

I had a quick chat with Lee this afternoon to find out more about his work and influences.

How’d you end up in the world of stop motion?
It was a bit of an accident, I’ve always had a general interest in it for most of my life but didn’t really indulge in the art until after film school when I was getting desperate to get into making films Independently. When you’ve got no funding, it’s hard to rely on friends and so I became more involved with stop motion as a means to get a video made.

The production values are relatively high in your pieces, you got a big budget?
About 75% of my projects don’t have any budgets, the other 25% you can argue whether it’s actually a budget or not. Most of the time my films are made completely out of clay and cardboard with a touch of greenscreen here and there.

You have a constant horror theme running through your work, is that your major film influence?
I grew up on horror and had a strong desire to be a horror film director all the way through my teens up until now even but I do a lot more comedy because that’s what people want from me but the principles of the horror genre are usually found in my videos because it’s what I’ve studied and feel comfortable with.

Is clay your full time gig?
For the moment it is, I really have no desire to be a claymation king like Nick Park or Will Vinton and that’s evident in my videos. Real animators have told me that they see the lack of skill in my animation and it’s true in a sense but never the less I try hard because it’s what I’m paid to do but ‘le passion’ is not there. One day I hope to work with actors and torture people for real.

Which classic movie are you attacking next?
I like to keep this stuff secret, I’ve got some real juicy stuff up my sleeves. If people liked the Pingu crossover, then, they’ve not seen anything yet! In a couple of weeks I’ve got a 60″ version of Hostel going up on my youtube channel and later on a 60″ version of Taxi Driver.

You can check out the extended version below and for more info on Lee’s claymation cult horrors take a visit to leehardcastle.com.

Directed by Gregory Kohn whos previous work includes the latest Sleigh Bells video, the film is set to be released on boxing day. You can view the trailer below and find out more at IMDB.

Last year we previewed Quentin Dupieux (aka. Mr Oizo)’s debut feature ‘Rubber’, which was an experimental genre film about a killer tyre.

WRONG, about to unleased on audiences at this years Sundance; is his follow up. Much like Rubber the film looks to be unashamedly weird. the film follows “Dolph (Jack Plotnik) as he searches for his lost dog, but through encounters with a nympho pizza-delivery girl, a jogging neighbor seeking the absolute, and a mysterious righter of wrongs, he may eventually lose his mind… and his identity.”

Unfortunately the film doesn’t have a distributor yet, but let hope that all changes at Sundance. You can check out the “Sundance Trailer” below and find out more at wrongthemovie.com.

Set post-World War I in England, THE AWAKENING follows a skeptical woman – the excellent Rebecca Hall (THE TOWN) – who travels to a countryside boarding school to investigate rumours of an apparent haunting. Just when she thinks she has debunked the ghost theory, she has a chilling spectral encounter which defies all her rational beliefs.

The film is in cinemas now, and is a must watch for horror and thriller fans alike. You can view the trailer below and find out more at Rotten Tomatoes.

A little while ago we posted the trailer for the Palladium Boots/Vice produced mini doc on Pharrell exploring Tokyo – Tokyo Rising. It is now up in its entirety to watch online. Split into 5 parts the series explores Tokyo’s recovery after 3/11, its thriving art scenes and some of the most interesting architecture and hidden gems the city has to offer. While persistent challenges still lay ahead for the residents, the city’s creative class is hell-bent on making sure that their hometown thrives. Innovative and resilient, they are defining the future of Tokyo on their own terms.

All you need to do for more info is head to www.palladiumboots.co.uk and you can check out all the parts below.

Episode 1 – Pharrell’s return to Tokyo

Pharrell meets up with the rapper Verbal to discuss the effect of 3/11 on the people of Tokyo and shares his love with the city he calls his second home.

Episode 2 – Under and Above Ground

Pharrell continues his exploration of Tokyo with Trippple Nippples vocalist Yuka Uchida who takes him to the G-Cans Project, a hidden 6km underground cavern designed to fill up with water when the rivers flood during natural disasters.

Episode 3 – Art in Flux

Mitsu 3331 a place thats like a community centre for artists by artists, a platform to share different creativities from fashion to dance. Pharrell goes to see the art pieces inspired by 3/11 including a piece that is made up of documentation by the victims, not artists.

Episode 4 – The Remix Culture

We meet a variety of creatives who discuss the urge that the Japanese people had to become westernised after the war, but how this unique culture put their own spin on it especially after the 3/11 disaster. Pharrell discovers the amazing Kita-Kore, championing D-I-Y culture from a visually spectacular hub.

Episode 5 – Trippple Nippples Show

We watch the crazy and surreal Trippple Nippples show from The Trump room, decorated with flashing lights and covered in mirrors before hearing from all the contributors to the series and their conclusions on how Tokyo will move forward into the future.

Hailed as a success at Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival, We Need to Talk About Kevin has taken its time to filter over to UK screens. But it has been worth the wait. This masterclass in film adaptation from Scottish director Lynn Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar), rips out the bloodied, beating heart of Lionel Shriver’s novel and moulds it into something fresh, visceral and entirely unforgettable. With first-rate performances from Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading, Michael Clayton), John C. Reilly (Magnolia, The Aviator) and up-and-coming young star Ezra Miller (Afterschool), We Need to Talk About Kevin is a profoundly chilling and utterly unique experience.

Tilda Swinton plays Eva Katchadourian, a mother struggling to readjust when her son conducts a brutally calculated high school shooting. Having been separated from her family and put on trial for parental negligence, Eva can look only to her bi-monthly prison visits for concrete ties to her old life. But the memory of what she has left behind lingers. Looking back at her former life from a grimy sofa in an empty house, she considers whether the relationship she had with her son formed the man he would become. Delving deeper even than Gus Van Sant’s Elephant into the stories behind the headlines, Ramsay’s film is a haunting study of the forgotten victims of these crimes.

It is Ramsay’s deep understanding of the power of imagery which sets Kevin apart from the rest. The narrative twitches erratically from past to present, splicing bright moments of familial bliss with the bleak, dreary reality of Eva’s existence in the present. Small visual cues thread the narrative together amidst all this chaotic toing and froing. A shot of cells dividing and multiplying – the moments of Kevin’s conception – is replaced by the similarly rhythmic, monotonous process of Eva’s photocopier in the present. Both suggest relentlessness, inevitability: there’s no turning back now.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is at its core a story about ambivalent motherhood. It poses the eternal question of nature versus nurture, of whether Kevin’s emotional disturbance is innate or learned. One element which Ramsay could have exploited more is the significance the book places on the ambiguity within the dysfunctional mother-son relationship. What is made clear throughout is that Kevin grows up with a mother who feels no connection to him. In the book Eva’s skewed unreliable narration prevents us from seeing the truth, so we never know who is truly to blame. One moment in the film does echo this idea. When Eva plunges her head into a sink of water, her face blurs and becomes that of her son. The similarity is striking.

While the book seems to suggest that they are ultimately both at fault, Ramsay’s film ultimately sides more with the idea of Kevin as the innately evil child and Eva as the fraught and helpless mother. However, this simplification is perhaps necessary for the film to work without the depth of explanation provided in Shriver’s novel. And this take on the relationship is backed up by some exceptional performances. Ezra Miller captures perfectly Kevin’s awkward, sneering sexuality; while Swinton remains vulnerable while still hinting at Eva’s stubborn and snobbish side with characteristically nuanced flair.

Adapting a novel which is so crucially tied to its narrative voice is no easy task. However, as Danny Boyle proved with Trainspotting, a successful adaptation harnesses the novel’s mood and tone and translates it into an entirely different vocabulary. While Shriver’s novel is dominated by Eva’s voice, Ramsay cannot not allow her Eva this outlet. Mired in thick and often unbroken silence, her life is haunted by words left unsaid. Johnny Greenwood’s score, complimented by a few artfully chosen tinkling 1950s pop hits like Buddy Holly’s ‘Every Day’, goes some way to filling this void.

What Shriver conveys through words, Ramsay must bring to the screen in images. Eva’s own culpability, for example, is referenced throughout by the constant use of red. The film’s opening sequence is slathered with it. Eva is held up above a crowd of revellers at Valencia’s La Tomatina festival, soaked like a new-born baby in deep red juice and pulp. As the narrative shoots back to the present we see her wake up, pale and groggy, bathed in crimson light. In an ominous warning from a targeted vandal, her house and windows have been covered in blood-red paint. But rather than merely painting over it, Eva dedicates what seems like weeks to sanding and scraping the paint away. This is a therapeutic process, a slow and masochistic search for catharsis that will never truly be realised. The Lady Macbeth references are rife; blood-red paint covers her hands, and turns up unexpectedly on her face and hair.

A moody, chilling and provocative rollercoaster of a film, Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Kevin is a masterpiece in its own right. Shying away from the sensationalist scenes which could easily have cheapened it, Ramsay’s film is bold but restrained. With dense imagery and whirlwind editing, We Need to Talk About Kevin is visually impressive and eerily affecting. Not to be missed.

“Love is a burden. A poison. Never fall in love.”

French thriller director Dominik Moll’s adaptation of this gothic 1796 novel is an ambitious attempt to revive an old and controversial story for a modern audience. Expectations were high, but despite starring the inimitable Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, La Haine, Mesrine) in the lead role and featuring a bold visual style, The Monk is sadly no greater than the sum of its parts.

Cassel plays Brother Ambrosio who, abandoned at a Madrid monastery’s door when he was just a baby, knows little of life outside its walls. Under the watchful eye of the friars, Ambrosio grows up to become a talented preacher with an apparently unimpeachable moral compass. However, when a dark presence arrives at the monastery the form of a stranger in a wax mask (eerily reminiscent of Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face), Ambrosio finds his faith tested for the very first time. Risking everything for a taste of forbidden fruit, Ambrosio’s inevitable descent into evil will lose him his profession, his standing and ultimately, his soul.

The Monk is heavily stylised, making great use of the surrounding landscape to create a striking balance of darkness and light. In a subversive play on familiar tropes, the monastery as a beacon of religious ‘good’ is shrouded in darkness while the outside world is bright enough to be almost blinding. As with his previous works Lemming (2005) and Harry, he’s here to help (2000), Moll admits that his visual style is greatly indebted to Hitchcock and this is quite apparent throughout. Certain homages to Hitchcock, like the ‘iris’ shots (where the screen is engulfed with a black circle to mark the end of a scene) seem a little gimmicky and out of place. The Monk often seems so preoccupied with its visual impact that other important elements are lost along the way. More time could have been spent on the costumes, for example, which look inauthentic to the point of caricature.

The performances are very much a mixed bag. Vincent Cassel flounders a little in the early scenes; portraying Brother Ambrosio as the embodiment of religious dignity and devotion seems a little out of his comfort zone. Perhaps unsurprisingly for French cinema’s go-to villain, Cassel thrives in the latter half of the film when he is thrown something a little juicier to chew on. Other stand out performances include Roxane Duran as the tragic and fragile Sister Agnes and Sergí Lopez in a brief appearance as the monstrous child-molester. Some characters, meanwhile, come across as rather two-dimensional and underdeveloped, making it hard to feel any emotional investment in their fates. The love story between bland suitor Lorenzo (Frédéric Noaille) and beautiful Antonia (Joséphine Japy) makes particularly trying viewing.

While The Monk does not lack ambition, with a highly controversial and rich storyline, the delivery is sadly lacking. Despite a strong story and adventurous cinematography, the film fails to pack an emotional punch. It is perhaps The Monk’s aspirations which are its outdoing; it may well have benefitted from a little toning down.

The Monk will be showing at the BFI London Film Festival and is set for general UK release in 2012. You can check out the trailer below.

50/50 follows Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who suddenly gets diagnosed with cancer and his subsequent struggles to deal with his affliction. Helped by his best friend (Seth Rogen), his mother (Anjelica Huston), who is also dealing with her husband (Serge Houde) who has Alzheimer’s disease and girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), he fights his way through and trys to make the best of a horrible situation.

50/50 hits cinemas September 30th and you can find out more at 50-50themovie.com and check out the trailer below.