Precious little is known about Christopher Nolan’s upcoming contemporary sci-fi film Inception other than the initial blurb describing it as being “set within the architecture of the mind”, but cast additions have shed a little bit of light on the relationship of the characters to each other. Today two more cast members were announced: Tom Hardy (Star Trek: Nemesis, Bronson) as a member of Leonardo DiCaprio’s team and Ken Watanabe as the main villain who’s trying to blackmail DiCaprio.

The pair join a cast which stars DiCaprio as a CEO, Ellen Page as his grad student sidekick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his business associate, and Marion Cotillard as his wife. Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine also have roles, but details about them haven’t been announced yet.

Watanabe has seen his star rise on two continents since co-starring with Tom Cruise in the bizarrely inaccurate, yet generally entertaining Hollywood film The Last Samurai in 2003. Since then he’s been bouncing back and forth between high-profile Japanese and Hollywood film projects like Memoirs of a Geisha and Letters from Iwo Jima. In 2007 he took home an elusive Japanese Academy Award for his potrayal of a successful executive stricken with early onset Alzheimer’s disease in Yukihiko Tsutsumi‘s Memories of Tomorrow, breaking a string of fruitless nominations over the years.

Inception will actually be Watanabe’s second villainous role in a Nolan film, after having played the enigmatic Ra’s Al Ghul in 2005’s Batman Begins. Here’s hoping he gets a little more actual screen time in this one.

Source: THR via /Film

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Kind of old news I guess, considering this project was first announced last summer in the production notes of horror films Shutter and The Strangers, but Warner Brothers is officially putting their weight behind the live-action Hollywood adaptation of the Japanese manga Death Note. Screenwriters Charley and Vlas Parlapanides (“War of the Gods”, still in production) will be penning the screenplay. Warner Bros. Pictures Japan was responsible for the three previous live-action adaptations of the franchise, but the initial word is that the new film will be based entirely on the original manga and won’t draw anything from the movies that preceded it.

The best-selling 13-volume manga revolves around a college student who comes into possession of a “death note” dropped by a mischievous god of death. The death note allows him to kill a person simply by writing their name in it. At first he uses this power to kill criminals who he thinks weren’t rightly brought to justice, but as police attempt to track down the source of the deaths he begins using it to cover his own crimes.

Founders of Vertigo Entertainment, Roy Lee and Doug Davison, will produce the film with Dan Lin and Brian Witten.

Source: Variety via @aicnanime

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Last month Keanu Reeves told MTV he was trying to do a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop. Well it’s now official. The Hollywood Reporter is confirming that the project is moving ahead with Keanu starring as the easygoing mobster-turned-bounty hunter, Spike Spiegel.

Set in 2071, a time when interstellar travel has been made possible by a network of hyperspace gateways, police have turned to bounty hunters to track down criminals that use these gateways to hop around the galaxy and evade capture. In the original anime, Spiegel teams up with another bounty hunter and former cop named Jet Black who pilots the spaceship Bebop around the galaxy to collect bounties.

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Quint at AICN has some new exclusive production stills for Rian Johnson’s upcoming film, “The Brothers Bloom” starring Rachel Weisz (♥♥♥), Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, and—most importantly—Rinko Kikuchi as an explosives expert named “Bang Bang”. Included in the stills is Bang Bang in all her detonation-poised glory, as you can see to the left. But you’ll have to check out their article for the huge version of awesomeness.

Also, you may recall from when I posted the trailer that this film was originally slated for release on October 24th. Well, I guess someone thought better of that, because instead of fighting for attention during a very crowded October and November, national release is being being pushed back to early 2009, with only a limited release in December. God forbid anyone miss gems like “Saw V” and “High School Musical 3: Senior Year”. What the flying F.. I’m moving to another planet.

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Take this with a grain of salt, but Film Junk is reporting that an anonymous source claims Fox execs are so unhappy with footage of their upcoming live-action Dragonball adaptation that they’re actually considering shutting down the project altogether and cutting their losses. Now, I totally believe the part about the footage being terrible. Any time you hire a former cast member of MTV’s “Real World” for a role you know you’re in trouble. But I have a really hard time believing they’d completely shut down something they’ve put so much time and money into already. So before all the 12-year-olds start to cry and the manga purists throw a victory parade let’s wait for some confirmation one way or the other.

Update:

Bzzt, they changed their minds.

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