Monsters University Teaser Posters Land

Before you look at the new Monsters University teaser posters below, know this: you are about to have serious letterman jacket envy. Damn you, MU, damn you. Frustratingly, even if you head over to the still-really-rather-impressive Monsters University website, there's no way you can order yourself a proper letterman jacket. Disney! Pixar! Have you no mercy?  Anyway, here are the posters in question, one with Mike & Sully in their dorm and another complete with some appropriately-titled books littering the floor. Would you read 'Scareonomics' if it was in your local library? It's a pretty safe bet...   Monsters University arrives Stateside on June 21, 2013, with the UK looking at July 12 as the date to write down in their Monsters University school diaries.

New Iron Man 3 Pictures Soar In

If you've been reading the latest issue of Empire - out now, fact fans! - you may well recognise the following four Iron Man 3 stills, now released onto the internet by Marvel HQ. The pictures don't reveal a huge amount of plot, but it's great to see certain photos close up, especially War Machine in his new stars and stripes-inspired armour, complete with rectangular arc reactor window. Note the "LT. COL. JAMES RHODES" tag on his chestplace. Then there's Pepper Potts holding Iron Man's broken helmet in her hands, Tony, erm, looking at something and the ever-beautiful Rebecca Hall looking rather distressed despite the nice Adidas trainers she's sporting. Take a look at the stills for yourself below, and let us know in the comment box just how excited you are about Tony squaring off against Sir Ben Kingsley's Mandarin come April 23. Of course, this is just a tiniest slice of what's in the actual magazine, so be sure to check out all four pages of Iron Man 3 goodness in the latest issue – and for more details on that, take a look at this little sneak peek here, as well as the covers below.

Empire Joins The EE Rising Star Jury

Empire is pleased to announce that we've been asked to join the star-marking jury that will decide the shortlist for this year's EE Rising Star Award. The award, which honours a young actor or actress who has demonstrated exceptional talent and ambition and has begun to capture the imagination of the British public, has become an integral part of the EE British Academy Film Awards over the last few years, and the winner will be announced at next year's awards on Sunday, February 10. Chris Hewitt, News Editor and host of the Empire Podcast, was our representative on the EE Rising Star Award jury, which thrust together a smattering of film journalists, from the mighty Mark Kermode to Charles Gant to Metro's Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Grazia's Paul Flynn and Shortlist's Jonny Pile, and figures from the film industry, including Touching The Void director Kevin Macdonald, casting director Nina Gold, film PR Kate Lee and chairperson Pippa Harris. Oh, and there was some guy called Benedict Cumberbatch too. Apparently he's an actor of some kind. "I am honoured to have been asked to be part of this year's EE Rising Star Award jury," said Cumberbatch. "It's a great platform for young actors and actresses to shine and I'm thrilled to be on board." "What he said," echoed Chris Hewitt. The jury met yesterday (Thursday 29th November) to have a lively discussion about the longlist. The content of those deliberations will remain private, but the results will be known on Monday January 7, when the shortlist of five will be announced at BAFTA HQ. Last year's winner was Adam Deacon, who triumphed over the likes of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, while previous winners have included Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf and Kristen Stewart. For more details, visit www.ee.co.uk

Monsters University Teaser Poster Lands

Before you look at the new Monsters University teaser poster below, know this: you are about to have serious letterman jacket envy. Damn you, MU, damn you. Frustratingly, even if you head over to the still-really-rather-impressive Monsters University website, there's no way you can order yourself a proper letterman jacket. Disney! Pixar! Have you no mercy?  Anyway, here's the poster in question, complete with some appropriately-titled books littering the floor. Would you read 'Scareonomics' if it was in your local library? It's a pretty safe bet...   Monsters University arrives Stateside on June 21, 2013, with the UK looking at July 12 as the date to write down in their Monsters University school diaries.

The Empire Podcast #39 Is Here!

A interview triple bill for you on this week's Empire Podcast with actor Jake Gyllenhaal (End Of Watch), director Ben Wheatley (Sightseers) and producer Stephen Woolley (Great Expectations) all dropping by to talk a whole load of glorious waffle with the team. Elsewhere, the Star Wars Episode VII news round-up continues apace, Star Trek Into Darkness gets a synopsis and Susan Boyle biopic casting suggestions are made. Then there are reviews of Rise Of The Guardians and The Hunt (as well as Great Expectations and Sightseers) and your questions answered, including one of the biggest asked so far: what's the best musical ever? Well, exactly... So for all that and a whole lot more, click play on the SoundCloud file below, or subscribe to the Empire Podcast via our iTunes page (though you'll need to wait a moment) or this handy RSS feed.

Sightseers

From Badlands to Natural Born Killers, lovers-on-the-run flicks take pulp-fiction narratives for romantic rides across America, the sweep and the drama of the scenery matching the magnitude of the heroes’ emotions - and their crimes. The genius of Kill List director Ben Wheatley’s third film, a parochial black comedy based on a screenplay by lead actors Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, is that it takes all this cultural baggage and transports it, by caravan, to Redditch. As normal-seeming new boyfriend Chris (Oram) whisks homebody Tina (Lowe) away on a UK holiday, the trail of deaths they cause begins mundanely, with a car park-based RTA at the Crich Tramway Museum. The settings more than match, as the pair explore Little England in all its pretty pettiness, from Castleton’s Blue John Cavern to Keswick’s Pencil Museum. Even their star-crossed love is constantly undercut by their deadpan patter, not to mention Tina’s penchant for pot pourri and crotchless (but crocheted) knickers When she envisages them dying together in the name of romance, Chris’s response is characteristically practical/Partridge-esque. “Going to salsa's romantic,” he says. “We could try that first.” It might not sound much on paper, but it’s all in the delivery, the appealing lead performances combining with Wheatley's sudden tonal shifts to produce a film that’s funny, sinister and strangely moving. Don't write in, but the Midlands accents help here: unpretentious and unexpected, they bring to mind Shane Meadows’ early wor k (which this strongly recalls) and undercut the characters' more extreme pronouncements. “He's ruined the tram museum for me now,” huffs Chris of his first victim, while Tina’s attempt to talk dirty results in: “He said he wanted to shit in my hand and make me use it as a brown lipstick!” Between killer lines and skull-cracking murders, there's a weary reality that makes Sightseers sad where lesser works might skew silly. As Tina's fear of being left behind by Chris lead them further along the road to ruin, their deteriorating relationship is echoed by the increasingly desolate surroundings. One scene ends with a dog eating sick - you don’t see that in True Romance. Another, in Keswick Pencil Museum, leaves you unsure whether to laugh or cry. It may peter out a little towards the end, as all road movies must, but for the most part this is a staycation to cherish. Sightseers News and Features

Life Just Is

Brit director Alex Barrett's dialogue-driven debut follows four believable, if none-too-compelling London uni grads across a week, as they stew over growing pains and romantic dilemmas (Jay grapples with her new relationship, while Tom and Claire negotiate a growing attraction). Barrett admirably tries to stretch beyond this run-of-the-mill TV-drama set-up via the housemates’ debates over larger questions. But pretensions toward Scandinavian arthouse territory (one character reads existential philosophy and is tormented by visions of St Francis) sit awkwardly. Life Just Is News and Features

Confessions Of A Child Of The Century

Pete Doherty makes his first big-screen outing in this sterile stab at Alfred de Musset’s 1836 confessional. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, casting the former Libertines frontman as Octave, the debauched Parisian, but the novelty soon wears off. Suffocated by Sylvie Verheyde’s lifeless direction, Doherty’s so ill at ease you’d think his britches were too tight. A love story between Octave and his cousin Brigitte (Charlotte Gainsbourg), it doesn’t help that - in a French film - all dialogue is in English. The result is dusty, drab and dreary. Confessions Of A Child Of The Century News and Features

Tu Seras Mon Fils

Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) plays an arrogant winemaker, proud owner of a St-Emilion château, who despises his son as a talentless weakling. Instead he starts to groom the son of his estate manager, newly returned from California, to succeed him. Writer/director Gilles Legrand’s study of fraught father/son relationships builds the tension, helped by a fine cast – especially Lorànt Deutsch as the put-upon son, his face registering every slight – while the vineyards of Bordeaux offer a deceptively serene backdrop. The only downside is Armand Amar’s over-explicit score, underlining every dramatic moment. Tu Seras Mon Fils News and Features

When Santa Fell To Earth

Watch out, someone's spiked the eggnog. Cornelia Funke’s festive kids’ book is manhandled into a cheap German pantomime, complete with Dogtanian dubbing and the kind of frighteningly surreal plot that gives grown-ups waking nightmares. A shaggy young Santa is chased out of Christmastown by the dastardly Goblynch and his army of giant inflatable nutcrackers. Escaping to the real world in a flying caravan, Santa (along with his pet elves and an invisible reindeer) enlist the help of two kids to try and save Christmas. The filmic equivalent of a lump of coal. When Santa Fell To Earth News and Features

Derek Connolly Writing New Pixar Film

Though Sundance success Safety Not Guaranteed has played well in the US, we in the UK don't get to see it until Boxing Day. But the film's creative team, including director Colin Treverrow and writer Derek Connolly, have been reaping the rewards for months. Treverrow has been courted for several films (and was even briefly rumoured as a possible Star Wars candidate) and Connolly has been working with a little company called Pixar on one of their still-bubbling projects. Though the film he's writing for Teddy Newton (who directed the short Day And Night) is naturally being kept under wraps by the Emeryville gang, he's enthusiastic about the experience so far. "It's totally different, the way they do things up here," he tells Variety. "You're here everyday. You don't go away for three months and come up with a script. You're involved with a director and it's very collaborative." He's apparently been spending months at a time in Emeryville, though Team Pixar is also encouraging him to work on other films. He has an original script, Hank, inching through development at Disney and, along with Treverrow, will be working on a remake of Flight Of The Navigator. The 1986 sci-fi pic saw a 12-year-old boy go missing and then reappearing eight years later not having aged a day. Turns out he was on a spaceship adventuring with aliens. Lucky blighter. You know, except for seeing his family age around him… Brad Copeland was hired to write the first draft of a new version in 2009, but now Treverrow and Connolly will craft a re-write, which Treverrow may direct.

Sightseers Is Off To Sundance

As we write this, UK cinemagoers will be able to see Ben Wheatley's latest film, crazed caravan trip pic Sightseers, wherever it's playing. But US audiences are going to have to wait a little longer. Still, those headed to the Sundance Film Festival in January are in luck, as Sightseers has been selected as part of the fest's Spotlight strand, alongside a batch of other films. Yesterday brought the Dramatic, Documentary and NEXT films from the US and around the world and today it's the turn of Spotlight, Park City At Midnight and New Frontier titles. A blend of the quirkier films or – like Sightseers, films that might have premiered around the world but are new to the US –- the strands represent Sundance's mission to bring a wide variety of movies and the people who make them to a wider audience. Among the films also listed are comedy Ass Backwards (above), horror anthology sequel S-VHS, comedy writing stalwarts Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon's directorial debut Hell Baby and a documentary called kink that explores the inner workings of an Internet pornography company. That one is produced by James Franco and directed by his long-time collaborator, Christina Voros. Sundance runs between January 17 and 27 next year. For a full list of the latest announcements, point your browser at the Sundance site. And don't forget that a selection of films premiering in Park City and beyond will also be headed over here for Sundance London, which lands on April 25 at the O2. For some exclusive coverage of Sightseers, check out the latest issue of Empire, which is in all good and one or two trans-dimensional newsagents now. You can also find it on the iPad.

Forest Whitaker Up For Black Nativity

For a while there, it looked like director Kasi Lemmons was going to score Samuel L Jackson for one of the main roles in her latest, Black Nativity. But he never made a deal and with the casting on shakier ground, Fox Searchlight was all set to shelve the project shortly before production could kick off in October. But call the heavenly choir, for according to Blackfilm, there is good news: Forest Whitaker is stepping in to take the part instead. Lemmons adapted the script from Langston Hughes' 1961 gospel Broadway musical, which follows a black teenager from Baltimore dispatched by his single mother to stay with the grandparents he's never met in Harlem. A troubled type, he learns the importance of faith, family, and quite possibly funk, thanks to his grandfather's Christmas Eve sermon and stylized, dream-sequence re-tellings of the classic nativity story. Whitaker is on to play Reverend Clarence Cobbs, the estranged grandfather, with Angela Bassett as his wife Aretha. Jennifer Hudson is set to be the boy's mother, who has not spoken to her father since she got pregnant. Though she's still looking for an actor to play the young man, Lemmons appears set to start shooting in late January. Whitaker will next be seen in The Last Stand with Arnold Schwarzenegger when the film hits on January 25.