Fox Searchlight Pictures along with Camelot Pictures are set to release Margaret on Friday, September 30^th to limited platform release.  With a stellar cast that includes Anna Paquin (True Blood), Allison Janney (The Help), Matthew Broderick (Tower Heist), Matt Damon (Contagion), Kieran Culkin (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), the film centers on a seventeen year-old New York City high school student, Lisa Cohen (played by Paquin), who is convinced that she has inadvertently played a role in a bus accident in Manhattan’s Upper West Side that caused a woman’s horrific death.

Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count On Me, which was nominated for two Academy Awards), and produced by the late director Sydney Pollack (Three Days of the Condor), Gary Gilbert and Scott Rudin with the late director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) as executive producer, the film takes the audience along on the tumultuous journey as she tries to make things right.  Met with opposition at every turn as she takes legal action against the bus driver (Ruffalo), she is torn apart with guilt as revelations about telling the truth in the real world prove frustrating and disappointing.

She's now most known as Rogue in the X-Men films and Sookie Stackhouse on the Southern Gothic HBO series True Blood, but Anna Paquin won an Oscar at the age of twelve for her supporting role in The Piano, so there's no doubt that she can hold her own in the heaviest of dramas, even without mutants and/or vampires.  That's good news for Margaret, the sophomore film from writer-director Kenneth Lonergan in which Paquin stars as a high school student who must grapple with some serious, grown up stuff after she witnesses a terrible accident.  The first trailer for Margaret has premiered online, and it starts off like a jaunty, whimsical little comedy before abruptly switching gears.  Watch the trailer to see how, in a matter of seconds, a preview can take you from, "Oh, this looks like fun" to "Oh, oh my god."  Also, the impressive supporting cast includes Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo, both of whom look to be doing nicely restrained work.

Fifteen years after horror got all self-aware and postmodern with the first Scream, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson are hoping to rejuvenate the franchise, which has laid dormant since Scream 3 in 2000.  In that film, you knew the Scream train had gone off the rails when Jay and Silent Bob inexplicably showed up for a cameo.  Franchise restarter Scream 4 goes back to basics, returning to Woodsboro and introducing regulars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette to a new generation of potential victims, including Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Rory Culkin, Erik Knudsen, and Alison Brie.  Check out three new clips from Scream 4, all of which focus on bringing together franchise newbies and alums.

October 29, 2010: Trick 'r Treat

A mean old man scares trick or treater’s away from his spooky old home. Yet something is not right when the doorbell rings again. Something is far from great when he finds dozens of jack-o-lanterns outside in his front yard.  It is a beautiful, yet terrifying.

It seems someone is taking this whole “Trick or treat” thing too far!

This little scamp however, is not your typical child searching for candy. In fact Sam could be something of a demon, or a monster. Whatever he (or it) is, its persistent!

This is only a sampling of the ghoulish delights that appear in Michael Dougherty’s superb Trick 'r Treat. Four interconnected stories not only frighten, but they examine Halloween and its rich and vivid history. Seldom does a horror film fully commit to its inspiration, but this most certainly does.

Ghosts, child killers, vampires, werewolves and all the ghouls and goblins you could ask for in an anthology such as this. As creepy as it gets, it never forgets how to have fun without winking at the camera too much.

The cast is terrific, including Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker, Brian Cox and Lauren Lee Smith. And the sincere love of All Hallow’s Eve is simply wondrous. The set design, the lighting, the constant use of decorations and all the things that make October 31st special.

If you haven’t sat down and watched this gem of a movie, this is the perfect weekend to do so. You wouldn’t want to upset Sam would you?

What are you going to watch this Halloween weekend?

Synopsis: Over the course of one raucous night at a seaside wedding seven close friends, all members of a tight, eclectic college clique, reconvene to watch two of their own tie the knot. Laura (Katie Holmes) is maid of honor to Lila (Anna Paquin), her golden girl best friend. The two have long rivaled over the groom, Tom (Josh Duhamel). Friendships and alliances are tested and the love triangle comes to a head the night before the wedding, when the drunken friends frolic in the nearby surf and return to shore… without the groom. Based on the heralded novel by producer, novelist, director Galt Niederhoffer, THE ROMANTICS is a Zeitgeist love story and generational comedy that breathes new life into the genre and recaptures the camaraderie of youth.

Apparently, an intimate oral sex scene was cut from the hot HBO vampire dramedy, True Blood. However, it is reported that it was cut NOT due to its graphic nature NOR due to the actors being totally game for doing the sex scene but DUE TO an awkward camera angle/lens problem, i.e., “technical difficulties.”

True Blood Vampire, Stephen Moyer (aka Bill Compton), whose head would have been in between real-life lover, Anna Paquin’s legs (aka Sookie Stackhouse), says, "It was scrapped because ….the number of camera set ups they had planned."