It's not all that unusual for Tilda Winton to look like she's a model from some strange future.

In a first look image of Swinton in Snowpiercer, that's almost exactly the case.  She's probably not playing a model, but with her shaved head, androgynous beauty, and outlandish costume, Swinton's appearance makes it clear that Snowpiercer is thoroughly sci-fi.

Let's not wallow over the NHL lockout, folks.  Instead, let's throw our be-gloved hands in the air over the news that Goon, a damn fine hockey comedy filled with excessive violence, crudeness, and an endearing sense of decency, is getting a sequel.  Yep, Jay Baruchel, who co-wrote and produced the first film, is hard at work on Goon 2.

Since becoming managing editor of iamROGUE over a year ago, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to some of the most accomplished filmmakers of all-time including Francis Ford Coppola, John Carpenter, Lawrence Kasdan, Guillermo del Toro, J.J. Abrams, and Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. So you could imagine my delight recently when I was invited, along with several other members of the press, to attend a press conference with one of the most celebrated directors in the history of cinema … Woody Allen!

Allen, who very rarely does press, was in Los Angeles last week promoting his latest film To Rome with Love, which was the opening night film at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival and begins playing in theaters on June 22nd. The movie follows-up last year’s Midnight in Paris, which earned Allen an Academy Award for Best Screenplay and was also nominated for Best Picture. In fact, the director has now won four Oscars in total and has helmed such classic movies as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry, Sweet and Lowdown, Match Point, Scoop, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

To Rome with Love features another all-star “Woody Allen Cast” including Alec Baldwin (The Departed), Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful), Jesse Eisenberg (30 Minutes or Less), Greta Gerwig (Lola Versus), Ellen Page (Juno), Italian actress Alessandra Mastronardi, Italian tenor Fabio Armiliato, and Allen himself, as well as Penelope Cruz (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), Alison Pill (Goon), and Judy Davis (The Ref), who have all worked with the director before. The film’s plot revolves around a number of different people in Italy, some American, some Italian, some residents, some visitors, and the romances, adventures and predicaments they get into.

Woody Allen continues his European tour this Friday with To Rome With Love.  The legendary and prolific writer-director spent decades focused almost exclusively on his native New York, but starting with 2005's London-based Match Point, six of Allen's last seven yearly offerings have been set across the pond.  Something of a renaissance (more accurately one of the periodic critical upswings in a career as long and varied as his) has involved Vicky Cristina Barcelona and last year's Midnight in Paris, which marked a commercial best for Allen.

To Rome With Love, naturally takes place in the Italian capitol, and as he did with London, Barcelona, and Paris, Allen trains his directorial eye on both seemingly obvious and trivial observations of what makes each city special.  The comedy follows an ensemble of different unconnected characters, some denizens of Rome and others tourists.  Allen himself appears in the film for the first time since 2003's Anything Else, and he's joined by Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Greta Gerwig, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Alison Pill, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, and Alessando Tiberi.

In honor of the film's debut in limited release this Friday, we here at IAR decided to compile a list of ten notable films set entirely or partially in Rome.  A city with thousands of years of history and a founding myth as dramatic as the story of Romulus and Remus is obviously a perfect place for a compelling film.  So we present, in no particular order, ten examples of Rome-based movies.  Keep in mind, however, that this is not a "Best Movies Set in Rome," as we always welcome a few outliers and oddities.

Hey, Woody Allen fans, the trailer for the writer-director's next film, To Rome With Love, is viewable now and it is deliciously Allentastic, so much so that it actually includes the man himself in an increasingly rare onscreen role.  He's but one member of a rock-solid ensemble whose separate tales of romance, eccentricity, and comedy play out on the streets of the historical Italian city.

Opening in theaters on March 30th is the new hockey comedy Goon, which was written by actor Jay Baruchel (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) and screenwriter Evan Goldberg (The Green Hornet), and directed by Michael Dowse (Take Me Home Tonight). The film stars Seann William Scott (Role Models) as a somewhat dimwitted man who becomes the enforcer for a minor league ice hockey team. The movie also features an excellent cast of supporting actors including Baruchel, Liev Schreiber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Marc-Andre Grondin (C.R.A.Z.Y.), Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), David Paetkau (Final Destination 2), Kim Coates (FX's Sons of Anarchy), and Eugene Levy (Best in Show).   

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick recently had a chance to sit down with actor Seann William Scott, as well as actor/screenwriter Jay Baruchel to discuss their new film Goon. Scott and Baruchel talked about the new film, their characters, Baruchel's love for the sport and his inspiration to write the script, Scott's unusual character and his approach to playing him, working with Liev Schreiber and the rivalry between their two characters, and the two actors all-time favorite sports comedies. 

Another new trailer for the R rated comedy Goon suggests that the film is less a hockey movie than you might guess.  Yeah, Seann William Scott plays a guy recruited to a minor league hockey team and there looks to be appropriate amount of on-ice action, as well as the requite wacky supporting characters on Scott's team.  But more than being a hockey movie, this looks like a movie about fighting, and as such, the new trailer contains possibly the most punches to the face of any trailer ever produced.  Scott's character, Doug, earns his place on the team not to play hockey, but to exercise his preternatural skill at knocking people on their asses with his bare fists.  It's a simple story, and the trailer suggests that Goon could be a ridiculously fun time at the movies, especially considering its supporting cast.

Not many comedies have been successfully built around the brutal, graceful game of hockey, but based on the new red band trailer for Goon, this one just might join Slap Shot, Mystery Alaska, and The Mighty Ducks as a hockey movie that it does it right.  Regardless of how successful the film ends up being, Goon will most assuredly contain much more gleeful violence and vulgarity than any of its counterparts in the subgenre.  Sean William Scott stars as Doug Glatt, a bouncer "touched by the fist of God" and born to beat the ever-loving sh*t out of opponents on the ice.  Like its simple hero, Goon looks to have a charming scruffy dog quality, and the red band trailer sells it senseless.

While here in the States, the sport has never gotten the traction that one might expect, given its velocity and violence, Canada is a national that loves some hockey.  It's fitting, then, that the hockey comedy Goon, which is currently playing the Toronto International Film Festival up the Great White North, has a whole lot of Canadian DNA.  A new international trailer showcases all the Canadian actors on board, though the lead is played by an American, Sean William Scott (he's from Minnesota, though, where I understand hockey's big).  His character, Doug, is a bouncer recruited to play for a minor league hockey team simply to provide some solid violence.  Check out the trailer for Goon and enjoy some vulgarity, violence, and Canadian delights.

Summer is, of course, the season for cinematic slugfests centered around robots incomprehensibly beating the robo-piss out of each other, but this year one of the most phenomenal success stories was Midnight in Paris, the latest film from writer-director Woody Allen.  Of the more than forty movies that Allen has created, it is now officially his highest grossing film, having spent the summer consistently on the weekly top ten chart.  Since premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, it has also earned rapturous praise from both critics and audiences, even those inexplicable folks who aren't fans of Allen's work.  This Friday, August 26th, it will again expand to even more theaters; if you have yet to do so, see it immediately.  Then come back to read our exclusive interview with actor Corey Stoll.

The story follows Owen Wilson as Gil, a successful screenwriter visiting Paris with his fiancee (Rachel McAdams) and her parents.  In a wonderful twist of magical realism, Gil, a romantic who is completely taken with city, finds himself nightly visiting the city in the 1920's, where he commiserates with literary and artistic titans of the early 20th Century.

While several Oscar caliber actors portray these familiar figures, Corey Stoll makes the most of his time onscreen and upstages all the rest.  The acclaimed stage actor, who starred on Law and Order: Los Angeles and appeared in Salt and Push, plays modern literary icon Ernest Hemingway.  To act as such a well-known figure is no doubt a daunting task, but Stoll creates onscreen the Hemingway who exists in every reader's imagination, and the result is thrillingly funny and perfectly realized.  It's even surprisingly resonant, as when Stoll owns the movie during a monologue that incorporates seemingly all of the author's favorite themes in hard, spare, perfectly delivered prose.  Corey Stoll was kind enough to talk to IAR in a exclusive interview, discussing the film, it's famous director, his Hemingway research, comedy, and even superheroes.