New Looks At ‘The Muppets’ & ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1’
A bunch of new pics this evening as EW takes a look at the upcoming fall slate of movies, so sit back and let your eyeballs do the work.
While Clint Eastwood‘s “J. Edgar” won’t be hitting Venice, Telluride, TIFF or NYFF, don’t get it twisted — even one of the fastest working directors alive needs some time — and as the director continues to get his film across the finish line, Warner Bros are still eager to get a look out there and so, they’ve dropped the first official look at Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover and well, he kinda just looks like Leonardo DiCaprio. Ok, so the makeup department won’t win any awards here but the film still promises to be something special. ‘To me, it’s really a story of how absolute power corrupts absolutely,” DiCaprio told EW. ”He was always an outsider.”
Penned by Dustin Lance Black, the film co-stars Armie Hammer as Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s assistant/lover; Josh Lucas as famed aviator Charles Lindbergh; Ed Westwick as Agent Smith, an operative gifted with writing skills; Damon Herriman as Bruno Hauptmann, the man convicted of kidnapping and killing the Lindbergh baby; Judi Dench as Hoover’s mother; Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, a Justice Department file clerk who ended up being Hoover’s personal secretary; Ken Howard as lawyer and jurist Harlan F. Stone; Jeffrey Donovan as Robert F. Kennedy; and Stephen Root as Arthur Koehler, a wood specialist at Forest Product Laboratories who uses his expertise to help Hoover investigate the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby by tracing the origins of the ladder used by the perpetrator. Spanning his five decade career, “J. Edgar” will certainly have grand canvas to play on; we’ll see the results on November 9th.
The first trailer for Martin Scorsese‘s 3D family adventure “Hugo” was certainly divisive with some utterly baffled by the candy coated, slapstick feel while others saw past the horrible music and marketing with the hope that the director was throwing back to the grandiose children’s entertainments of yesteryear. Either way, it’s a new direction for Scorsese and we’re eager to see where he takes it. ”The films of Georges Méliès have always inspired me, and it was a gift to really live with them and think about Méliès as a person,” the director told EW.
Led by Asa Butterfield and Chloë Moretz, with a cast including Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lee, Emily Mortimer, Jude Law, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emily Mortimer and Ray Winstone the 1931-set film follows the story of the eponymous orphan boy living a secret life in the walls of a Paris train station. When Hugo encounters a broken machine, an eccentric girl, and the cold, reserved man who runs the toy shop, he is caught up in a magical, mysterious adventure that could put all of his secrets in jeopardy. It opens on November 23rd.
You may want to leave a couple of seats between you and the person next to you at the multiplex because after you watch “Contagion” you’ll want a shower before having any human contact. Steven Soderbergh‘s virus thriller continues to build up to it’s Venice Film Festival premiere and this new pic gives us a look at Kate Winslet and Laurence Fishburne who are just a fraction of the huge ensemble that includes Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Bryan Cranston, John Hawkes, Elliott Gould, Demetri Martin and Jennifer Ehle. Boasting a “Traffic“-like global sprawl and touching on genre elements that Soderbergh hasn’t really played with yet before, this will definitely be one to watch. “Contagion” opens on September 9th and you can see it on a regular screen or in massive IMAX. 
If you can’t get with the totally great vibe coming from “The Muppets” then we can’t get with you. The parody trailers have been great, this has a big, goofy, fun, childlike that is earnest but not overbearing and frankly, it looks it’s a total blast. ‘We’re coming from a really pure place,” Jason Segel told EW. ”The thing that would have ruined this movie is if it were done with a sense of irony, with a wink-wink. This is purely about love for the ‘Muppets.’ “
Written by Segel and longtime collaborator Nicholas Stoller, Segel is joined by Adams, Rashida Jones and Chris Cooper with cameos from pretty much everyone you can imagine, including Emily Blunt, Ricky Gervais, Alan Arkin, Jack Black, Billy Crystal, Zach Galifianakis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dave Grohl and more. On top of that, “Flight of the Conchords” star Bret McKenzie is writing songs for the film, which isn’t too surprising considering director James Bobin, also helmed episodes of the show. The plot will center around The Muppets reuniting for The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever to save their old theater from a greedy oilman who plans to turn it into an oil rig. So yeah, sounds good and this pic just totally confirms the big burst of sunshine this going to be. We’re not curmudgeons all the time you know.
Finally, RPatz and KStew. Do we have to say anything else? The only reason anyone is watching this is for the violent vampire sex. As for the rest of it? We don’t know and don’t care. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1” opens on November 18th.