Keaton, Gyllenhaal, Carell, Cumberbatch, Pike and Witherspoon nominated at SAGs and first trailer for Pixar’s Inside Out

We’ve given a lot of awards coverage lately, the likes of Birdman, Gone Girl, Interstellar, Inherent Vice, The Imitation Game and Boyhhod are leading the Best Picture race, but the Screen Actor’s Guild has the intriguing premise of only awarding acting accomplishments. The likes of Foxcatcher and The Grand Budapest Hotel lead the way while there’s some interesting surprise mentions for Jake Gyllenhaal for the thriller Nightcrawler, Jennifer Aniston for the drama Cake, Robert Duvall for The Judge, Meryl Streep for the fantasy musical Into the Woods and Naomi Watts for Bill Murray’s light comedy St Vincent. The lack of a mention for Interstellar, Unbroken, Selma and American Sniper, other favourites, is slightly worrying. These are the nominations in full.

Best Leading Actor:

Steve Carell – Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal – Nightcrawler
Michael Keaton – Birdman
Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything

Best Leading Actress:

Jennifer Aniston – Cake
Felicity Jones – The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore – Still Alice
Rosamund Pike – Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon – Wild

Best Supporting Actor:

Robert Duvall – The Judge
Ethan Hawke – Boyhood
Edward Norton – Birdman
Mark Ruffalo – Foxcatcher
JK Simmons – Whiplash

Best Supporting Actress:

Patricia Arquette – Boyhood
Keira Knightley – The Imitation Game
Emma Stone – Birdman
Meryl Streep – Into the Woods
Naomi Watts – St Vincent

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture:

Birdman
Zach Galifianakis, Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts

Boyhood
Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater

The Grand Budapest Hotel
F Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Fiennes, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Lea Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson

The Imitation Game
Matthew Beard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Keira Kinghtley, Allen Leech, Mark Strong

The Theory of Everything
Charlie Cox, Felicity Jones, Simon McBurney, Eddie Redmayne, David Thewlis, Emily Watson

Pixar are the masterful company behind Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and the Toy Story trilogy but they’ve somewhat slumped in recent years. They were on a high with a triple bill of joyous masterpieces, Wall-E (2008), Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010), but Cars 2 crashed and burned critically. Brave was a solid instalment and Monsters University had the odd nice moments but the latter was far too generic to be comparable to their earlier greats. Their newly planned pictures include two dreaded sequels (Finding Dory and Toy Story 4) and a dinosaur tale in production disarray.

Above is the trailer for Pixar’s most promising new outing, an adventure delving into the mind and the emotions of a young girl. This preview is certainly entertaining and has the fun focussed feel of some of their earlier work but the animation quality itself seems far lower than some of their more technically and visually astonishing work. Peter Docter (Up) directs the cast of Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation), Bill Hader (The Skeleton Twins), Mindy Kaling (The Office), Lewis Black (Hannah and Her Sisters), Kyle MacLachan (Twin Peaks) and Diane Lane (Man of Steel).

Inside Out – July 24th 2015

Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool reportedly greenlit, Toby Kebbell joins Ben-Hur, new Agents of SHIELD teaser and (another) Interstellar poster

The marketing team for Christopher Nolan’s secrecy soaked sci-fi Interstellar will be having the time of their lives: across this week, a whole series of posters for the film have been revealed one by one. Today is no exception. This one sheet sees a spacecraft downed in either domestic or alien waters. Nolan, British writer/director behind The Dark Knight trilogy, Memento, The Prestige and Inception, directs the cast of Matthew MacConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Anne Hathaway, David Oyelowo, Matt Damon, Ellen Burstyn and John Lithgow.

A planned spin off for Ryan Reynolds’ (Safe House, Buried) crazed superhero Deadpool, who made his only, mediocre appearance in the vastly disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, has been in development hell for the past six years. Most of that time the project has only been kept alive by the comic book character’s ongoing popularity. It has now been reported that Fox have greenlit the film for an early 2016 release. Tim Miller, who for an excruciatingly long time has been attached to the film, is now confirmed as director. My key hope for the film is that it can settle for a 15 rating: any lower and it wouldn’t have the same tone as the often adult comics but higher and the gore would unfairly become the focus.

I was one of many distraught by Toby Kebbell’s casting in the prestigious role of Doctor Doom in next year’s Fantastic Four but the star proved himself greatly going up against Andy Serkis’ Ceasar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. He’s now setting himself up for another villainous role as Messala in the new remake of Ben-Hur. The historical epic already has Morgan Freeman (Batman Begins, The Shawkshank Redemption, Seven) signed on to play mentor Ildarin while Jack Huston (American Hustle, Broadwalk Empire) is negotiating to play the titular hero. 12 Years a Slave’s John Ridley writes while Wanted’s Timur Bekmambetov directs.

Finally today we’ve got an awesome new poster for season 2 of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. The expansion of the multi billion superhero universe got off to a fairly rough start but pulled itself together with an excellent second half to the series. Deduce what you like from the teaser. Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennett, Brett Dalton, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, BJ Britt, Adrianne Palicki, Patton Oswalt, Nick Blood, Reed Diamond, Adrian Pasdar, Kyle MacLachlan and Lucy Lawless will all feature in some way in the new season.

Agents of SHIELD season 2 – this autumn on ABC and Channel 4

Deadpool – February 12th 2016

Interstellar – November 7th

Ben-Hur – February 19th 2016