Opening in theaters on April 26th is the new comedy/drama Arthur Newman from first time director Dante Ariola. The film stars Academy Award-winner Colin Firth (The King's Speech), Emily Blunt (Looper), and Anne Heche (That's What She Said). 

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Colin Firth and Emily Blunt to talk about their work on Arthur Newman. The two actors discussed their new film, portraying characters that pretend to be other people, why they are trying to escape from their lives, how they bond with each other, and their lack of rehearsal time on set.

In Les Misérables, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway star as a pair of characters with history, characters familiar to readers and audiences across generations.

After all, the novel by Victor Hugo was published 150 years ago.  Jackman stars as Hugo's hero, Jean Valjean, a peasant who spends nineteen years prisoner 24601 after stealing bread for his starving sister and her family.  Hathaway, meanwhile, plays Fantine, a factory worker subjected to all manner of horrors in the story of injustice, identity, redemption, and revolution in nineteenth century France.

Directed by Oscar winner Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, The Damned United), Les Misérables is not a literal adaptation of the novel, but instead translates the phenomenally popular musical, performed on stages all over the globe for the last three decades.  The film utilizes the beloved play's music and lyrics by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil.  To belt out the musical's big numbers onscreen, Hooper assembled a cast which, in adddition to Jackman and Hathaway, boasts players such as Russell Crowe (Gladiator), Amanda Seyfried (Dear John), Eddie Redmayne (My Week With Marilyn), Helena Bonham Carter (Fight Club), and Sacha Baron Cohen (The Dictator), and Samantha Barks, who has played Eponine on stage to great acclaim.

The film arrives in domestic theaters on Christmas Day, December 25th.  While promoting Les Misérables earlier this month in New York, Jackman and Hathaway graciously sat down for a roundtable interview in which they discussed playing these famous characters, finding the contemporary relevance of Hugo's original text, the camaraderie of the cast, and physical transformations.

Two new character posters promoting Les Miserables, the ambitious musical from The King's Speech director Tom Hooper, have arrived online.  They show Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert, both of them looking rather intense and classy.  To put it in comic book terms, these character posters feature Wolverine and Superman's dad.

Attention, musical lovers.  The first trailer for Les Miserables has arrived on online, meaning that you can now get your first listen to Anne Hathaway singing her heart out as Fantine.  As she belts out a tune, the trailer offers up the first footage from this handsome-looking production, including players Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe as Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert.

Sorry, anybody hoping for a belated franchise revival, but Bill Murray is not doing Ghostbusters 3.  Not now and not ever.  There's no Ghostbusters 3 without him, so no Ghostbusters 3.  Let us instead put our attention squarely on what the planet's preeminent smartass is actually up to.  Specifically, take a look at seven new officials from Hyde Park on the Hudson, in which he stars as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of these United States.

We're now in 2012, and the last several weeks have, as always, included a plethora of movie-related lists summing up the year.  There are, of course, many a critical list, such as IAR's Top Ten of 2011, and there is also the year-end roundup of the top-ten movies at the domestic box office.  But what of the online black market?  Aren't we curious to see which films amassed the most illegal downloads over the course of the year we just left behind?  This is not be misconstrued as an endorsement of illegal movie torrenting, as it is instead a point of curiosity, a brief look at the most popular titles in this  ubiquitous practice.

Before he popped adamantium claws from his fists as the mysterious Logan in Bryan Singer's 2000 X-Men, Australian actor Hugh Jackman was more or less completely unknown to American audiences.  Based on his wildly charismatic performance as Marvel's single most popular mutant, however, Jackman became a star almost immediately.  While he's gone to roles in diverse films such as The Prestige, Van Helsing, and The Fountain, Jackman is still most associated with his signature role as the mutton-chopped shitkicker.

Though it was mauled by critics, the spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine was commercially successful, leaving 20th Century Fox eager to get Jackman back in his signature tank-top for another round.  Getting The Wolverine off the ground has not been easy, but there is now a new director in the form of James Mangold, with whom Jackman worked on Kate & Leopold before the director went on to helm Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma, and Knight and Day.  While promoting his new robo-boxing crowd-pleaser Real Steel, Jackman promised that The Wolverine is on the way, and also discussed the film's long development, including the recent hiring of Mark Bomback to provide rewrites.

If current estimates prove accurate, then Hop, the family film starring Russell Brand as the voice of the Easter Bunny, has earned not only the number one spot at the box office, but also the title of the biggest debut in 2011 so far.  Hop's projected haul of $38.1 million since Friday is about a million dollars above than previous 2011 title-holder Rango, which fell to eighth place in its fifth week of release, but is still the highest grossing film of 2011 so far with $113.8 million.

Bill Murray doesn't play by your feeble rules, and if he decides to play Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then he will play FDR and you will like it.  Vulture (via Collider) reports that Murray has signed on to play the 32nd President of the United States in Hyde Park on the Hudson, a live action adaptation of the British radio play. 

How do you follow up winning a Best Director and Best Picture Oscar for a classy period drama?  For The King's Speech director Tom Hooper, the answer is likely to be an adaptation of a venerated Broadway musical.  Variety first dropped the news that Hooper's next project will most likely be Les Miserables, the Tony award winning play based on the novel by Victor Hugo.