Since your average movie, especially one with a budget in excess of $100 million dollar and an already-announced release date, need a director and a writer, Marvel Studios has been working hard to get both those things in place for Thor 2.  After a bumpy road getting and keeping a director for the sequel to last year's Asgardian outing, the studio selected frequent Game of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor just before Christmas.  That left the need for a screenwriter to rewrite the sequel script in time for production, a need which has apparently been filled now that Marvel and Disney have hired Oscar-nominated scribe Robert Rodat to do just that.

Ever since the post-credit sequence of the first Iron Man, Marvel Studios has been using each new franchise film to built towards the crossover The Avengers, currently in production under director Joss Whedon.  With that film only a year away, though, we're starting to get an idea of the post-Avengers strategy.  After successfully introducing the Asgardian God of Thunder in May's Thor, Marvel and Disney have announced that the tentatively-titled Thor 2 will hit theaters on July 26, 2013.  Breakout star Chris Hemsworth will once again wield Thor's hammer, but Thor helmer Kenneth Branagh is not returning to direct.

When Marvel Studios first announced the ambitious plan for Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and ultimately super cross-overThe Avengers, it seemed like the sort of wild idea that would never actually come to fruition.  Yet here we are, with Thor less than a week from theatrical release, Captain America a few months behind it, and The Avengers currently in production for release next year.  Since The Avengers has long been the endgame for Marvel Studios, the question now inevitably arises: What next?  At a press conference for Thor, Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige shed some light on the potential Thor sequel, and his actors had opinions of their own on Marvel's cinematic future.

We're just a week from the American release of Marvel's Thor, and if you live in a metropolitan area, you're probably used to seeing the Thunder God's hammer, Mjolnir, smashing billboards and buses everywhere you turn.  While those ads don't exactly show off a lot of the film's fantastical content, a brand new Japanese Thor trailer shows off more of Asgard, the plot, and Sif and the Warriors Three (Jaimie Alexander, Josh Dallas, Tadanobu Asano, and Ray Stevenson) than we've been privy to so far.  There's a whole lot of new stuff in the trailer, so peep it post haste.

Synopsis: Anne Hathaway portrays Maggie, an alluring free spirit who won’t let anyone - or anything - tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie (Gyllenhaal), whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with the ladies and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie’s evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love.

Last month I wrote about a project called Loosies, a Peter Facinelli-written, Michael Corrente-directed comedy-drama about a pickpocket who learns he must change his fancy-free lifestyle. It had already attracted a couple of wild character actors in the forms of Michael Madsen and Vincent Gallo; not content to stop there, Corrente has brought a couple more live-wires on board.

According to Variety, William Forsythe (The Devil's Rejects) and Joe Pantoliano ("The Sopranos") have joined the flick. While it's not been specified who the two are playing, I think it's safe to say that they'll enjoy chewing the scenery... just enough to leave some left over for the rest of the quirky cast, that is.

And in case you feared that this was just a tough guy buffet, Jaimie Alexander (the upcoming epic Thor) has also been cast, as a love interest (natch).