As casting gets under way the rumour mill is working hard. Charlize Theron (Hancock) is favourite to take the role, with Carey Mulligan (Never Let Me Go) also thought to be in the running.

Now as much any actor could portray anyone if they set their mind to it, there is a limit. In what way do either of these actresses look even remotely like Princess Diana?

I’m not denying their talent, but Diana was such a unique looking woman, I can’t see how any kind of makeover could truly turn them into the Princess.

British film producer Stephen Evans who is behind The Iron Lady, is supposedly basing the film on the memoirs of Diana’s former bodyguard Ken Wharfe, who could be portrayed by Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge).

“The emphasis on this really is authenticity and to discover what she went through,” Evans told The Sunday Mirror.

The film will follow Diana in the 11 years after Harry’s birth, through the breakdown of her marriage to Prince Charles. However the film will not go into detail about her affair with Dodi Fayed, or the conspiracy theories that surrounded her death.

Ken Wharfe’s book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret was published in 2009, 12 years after her death. Evans insists the film will not set out to feed an opinion of her to the audience.

“The movie’s not saying she is unbelievably wonderful or she’s a pain in the neck, the audience can make their own view.”

Very generous of him. So what do you think: could any of these actresses pull of Diana? Let us know your thoughts!

Ruffalo has reportedly signed on to play a record producer in the upcoming romantic drama, Can a Song Save Your Life? In the film he discovers an emerging songstress, played by Johansson, and helps her to kick-star her singing career, whilst the pair also begin to fall in love. Awww.

Alright yes, it might have the potential to be almost as bad as the 2007 record-writing rom-com, Music and Lyrics – the title alone might actually be worse. However, we’re willing to give Can a Song Save Your Life? the benefit of the doubt, since writer/director John Carney is currently to helm the production, having previously worked on the award-winning Irish musical film, Once.

That and the fact that we know Johansson can actually sing – she released an album back in 2007, and has since appeared on the soundtrack for He’s Just Not That Into You and Wretches And Jabberers. She can also be seen (not singing) in the Cameron Crowe’s upcoming comedy-drama We Bought a Zoo, which gets its UK première at the Glasgow Film Festival later this month.

Carney’s also best known for specialising in low-budget indie films flicks, something which it seems Ruffalo has become a fan of appearing in over recent years. He was heavily nominated for his role in 2010′s The Kid’s Are All Right, and was last seen in Kenneth Lonergan’s somewhat elusive film, Margaret.

Can a Song Save Your Life? isn’t due to reach cinemas until 2013. However, you can catch the pair of them on screen, together, in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, which is due to be released in the UK this April, and sees both Ruffalo and Johansson star as part of a team of superheroes.

We’ll keep you posted!

There amongst the sporting action (which saw the New York Giants clinch victory over the New England Patriots) was a new extended advertisement for John Carter, the film that sees Taylor Kitsch play a former American Confederate captain who is transported to Mars and finds himself in the middle of a war. He must get involved as it looks as though he is the planet’s only hope. From this new trailer (below), it looks as though there will be plenty of drama and motivational talking, not to mention various aliens and a beautiful princess played by Lynn Collins. John Carter will be released in the UK on 9th March.

Battleship, out in the UK 11th April, also had a new trailer broadcast during the Super Bowl, and it was one that suggests it will be about more than just the board game. This film sees Taylor Kitsch make the jump from battling aliens on Mars (above), to battling aliens on his own planet alongside Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgard and Rihanna. After watching the trailer, “fire everything” rings in your mind and you know the film is going to feature a perilous journey. Of course, you would also be very likely to “fire everything” if you are on the only ship in the world that is inside the protective force-field of an alien vessel, a vessel that seems intent on destroying the human race.

Lightening the mood quite a bit, we also have The Lorax, which had its own exclusive spot for a new trailer. Featuring the voices of Danny DeVito, Taylor Swift and Zac Efron and based on the zany Dr. Seuss creation, this animated film updates the story significantly and features a fantastic-looking dose of comedy. If you want a film with an environmental message lit up with bright colours, imagination and down-right weird scenes, then look out for this creation that comes out on 27th July.

The Super Bowl television also played host to others including a new Avengers offering which you can see here, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Dictator.

The Super Bowl is a massive advertising opportunity as millions tune in. Among the movie trailers that made an appearance: The Hunger Games and G.I. Joe: Retaliation being two, we finally have footage of The Avengers.

And it wasn’t a disappointment. The new teaser was packed full of superhero action.

For anyone not in the know, The Avengers is the next comic for Marvel to tick off their list. And they don’t even have to cast new heroes! Each character has already made an appearance in another film.

When an unexpected enemy lands on the scene, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) needs to recruit a super team to keep the world from the brink of disaster. Enter Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Captain America, who all band together into one unstoppable team of awesomeness.

The trailer shows Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America and Scarlett Johansson in combat as Black Widow. Meanwhile Robert Downey Jr. gets the last word against baddie Loki as Tony Stark aka Iron Man.

Loki: “I have an army.”
Tony Stark: “We have a Hulk.”

We can’t wait either. It’s looking epic!

The film will be released world wide on 27th April 2012. Check out our lowdown on The Avengers here and the trailer below:

The supernatural film, starring Dane DeHaan (The Front) and Alex Russell (Wasted on the Young) scooped the top spot, earning a staggering $22m during its opening weekend.

However, the spine tingling chiller The Woman in Black, starring Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe, took in an impressive $21m during its three-day opening, from Friday to Sunday.
The film, based on Susan Hills’ classic novel, was shown in 2855 screens and topped the record for the highest earning opening film in Hammer history.
Radcliffe’s period ghost story even beat the likes of Paranormal Activity, which grossed $19,617,650 in 2009, and The Grudge 2, which earned $20,825,300 three years before.
The CEO of Hammer was pleased with the record breaking result and was reported saying; “The fact that a gothic horror has attracted such a large audience on opening weekend shows the demand for elevated and intelligent genre films which Hammer aims to produce.”

Ghosts aside, in third place came Liam Neeson’s latest thriller, The Grey, which earned $9.5, dropping just one place from last week. Pulling in $8.5m, was the heart-warming, family fun film, Big Miracle, featuring John Krasinski (It’s Complicated , Leatherheads).
But a league behind Big Miracle came Underworld: Awakening, which earned just over $5m – a quarter of The Woman in Black’s intake.

One For The Money – starring Knocked Up’s Katherine Heigl – slid from third to sixth place earning $5.5 million, while Red Tails ranked seventh. George Clooney’s, The Descendants, remained in eighth place, making just $4.6 million. The Man On A Ledge has plummeted from fifth to ninth place making $4.5 million, and scraping in at number ten was Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close raking $3.9m last weekend.

Miss Piggy has proved that she can glam it up with the rest of the stars. The  picture above shows her looking fabulous arriving at the premiere of The Muppets back in November, and now she will be preparing to be the centre of attention yet again. It has been announced that the glamorous piggy, who is the long-time love interest of Kermit the Frog, will be the official red carpet host for the BAFTAs.

These prestigious film awards will be taking place this Sunday, 12th February, and Miss Piggy will be right there on the front-line. It will be her job to bring back the interviews everyone is waiting for, and by all accounts she is not planning on holding back. She is reportedly especially looking forward to grilling the likes of George Clooney, Michael Fassbender and Jean Dujardin who are all up for the category of Leading Actor – only the best for our famous Muppet!

Miss Piggy has said that she “will be asking questions that only moi would dare ask” – which should certainly make for some entertaining viewing. We can’t wait to see what questions she has in mind to fire at the unsuspecting actors and actresses, as well as finding out who the winners will be. The BAFTAs will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday, 12th February at 9pm and the BAFTA Red Carpet Show With Miss Piggy will air on Monday, 13th February.

Peter Mullan, who we last saw playing a violent alcoholic in his 2010 film, Neds, takes on the similar role of Joseph. This time around he’s an angry, perhaps lonely, widower. His often uncontrollable rage is tinged with a sense of bitterness and resentment, and prone to surfacing whether he be nursing a pint or wielding a baseball bat. Mullan presents a character whose actions are far from justifiable, and yet his attacks on people, objects and even animals often seem to be as much an act of self-destruction as they are of harm to those upon whom they are inflicted.

Mullan stars opposite Olivia Coleman who, perhaps until now, will have been best known for her role as Sophie Chapman in Channel 4′s Peep Show. Tyrannosaur sees her demonstrate her extraordinary ability as a film actress by taking on the role of Hannah, a middle class charity-shop worker, privately suffering unimaginable domestic violence at the hands of her husband, played with terrifying malice by Eddie Marsan.

Joseph initially dismisses Hannah’s compassion and offers of prayer, and you don’t have to be an angry alcoholic to sympathise. However, as their encounters become more regular, he begins to see this apparently content and composed woman unravel, living in much more tragic circumstances than even he might have expected.

The key to this gripping depiction of a rather bleak suburbia lies largely in complexity of Considine’s characters. Born out of his 2007 acclaimed short film, Dog Altogether, the actor-turned-director has expanded upon Joseph and Hannah, in order to evoke a sense of cinematic truth which tends to be almost exclusively reserved for films from the likes of Alan Clarke, and perhaps more recently, Considine’s regular collaborator, Shane Meadows. Yes, we see Joseph antagonising those who do not deserve it, and acting cruelly towards many who have not provoked him, but we also witness the more tender moments which he shares with his dying friend, the surprisingly protective friendship which he has with a young neighbour, and even his own vulnerability as an ageing man.

In lifting the veil on Hannah’s happy charade, Tyrannosaur reveals a world just as damaged by alcohol dependence and hidden humiliation. The setting for this tale is too destitute for it to be a love story; instead it is a much more touching depiction of the way lost souls often gravitate towards each other. Granted, there is all the grey scenery and tensed fists that you might expect, but the sense of misery – which is more-or-less mandatory when dealing with such brutal subject matter – is permeated with unlikely moments of tenderness and even humour.

Those who missed the cinematic release of Tyrannosaur may have escaped seeing this harrowing tale blown up larger than life, but worry not – this is a film which is  just as affecting watched on a smaller screen. With incredibly powerful performances from both Mullan and Coleman, Considine’s disturbing directorial début feature is nothing short of remarkable.

Tyrannosaur is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from 6th February 2012.

This year’s Stoke Your Fires film festival will be taking place from the 10th-24th February, and we’ve got a pair of tickets for the opening gala to give away, including the world première of the Blood and Bone China film.

For those who love both films and filmmaking, the Stoke Your Fires festival has plenty to offer. This year’s festival highlights include five UK/World premières, three professional master classes from industry experts, a free animation workshop, a 72-hour film-making competition, and screenings of a huge range of great films from right across the board.

Find out more about the Stoke Your Fires film festival here: http://thefilmreview.com/film-news/stoke-your-fires-film-festival-takes-place-week.html

Or take a look at the Stoke Your Fires website: http://www.stokeyourfires.co.uk

The screening will take place at the Mitchell Arts Centre, Stoke-on-Trent, on Friday 10th February and will start at 8pm (All guests need to arrive at 7:30pm to be seated). The event will finish around 10:15/30pm.

If you want to be in with a chance of winning two tickets to the opening gala with entrance to the screening of Blood and Bone China, then simply answer the question below!

Competition Rules
1. Entry to the competitions is restricted to one entry per person please.
2. Multiple entries will be disqualified.
3. Automated entries, bulk entries or third party entries will be disqualified!
4. The competition is open to UK residents only.
5. Prizes can only be sent to a valid UK address.
6. Winners will be chosen at random from all valid entries.
7. Winners will be contacted via email names displayed on our website.
8. The Judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered in to.
9. The competition will run from 06/02/2012 until 09/02/2012.
10. TheFilmReview.com is compliant with the data protection act. Our policy is such that we will not pass on your details to any third party without your prior consent.
11. By entering this competition, you will assent to receive a monthly newsletter from The Film Review.

Since the first Academy Awards in 1929, votes have been sent through the post. However thanks to their partnership with the company Everyone Counts, who develop software for internet elections, the Academy have decided to move their voting ballots to the web.

The move is intended to make it easier for members to vote. This way they can submit their electronic ballots wherever they are in the world.

Now ignoring the obvious point that many of the older members might not even have an email address, let alone know how to use an online voting system, computer security experts have warned that the new system will be vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Everyone Counts claim that their “multiple layers of security” and “military-grade encryption techniques” help keep voting honest and protected from less noble members of society. So naturally there has been deep scepticism from members of the computer sciences community.

“Everybody would like there to be secure internet voting, but some very smart people … can’t figure out how to do it,” said professor of computer science at Stanford University, David Dill, the founder of Verified Voting.

“If someone casts a ballot for best actor A and the vote is recorded for best actor B, the voter has no way of knowing the ballot has been altered, and the auditor won’t be able to see it either.”

Government elections do not allow online voting for this very reason, and while the Oscars do not hold the same significance, the Academy has prided itself on the secrecy of its voting for the last 80 years.

The 84th Academy Awards is to be held on 26th February 2012. Hugo, The Artist, War Horse, Moneyball, The Help, The Descendants, The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close will fight it out for Best Picture.

What do you think? Will the votes be tampered with next year?

Not only that, but many people have also been questioning whether or not this will damage his chances of winning an Oscar for The Artist. Is the French advertising authority, ARPP, right to denounce the posters and remove them, or is this a perfect example of political correctness gone too far?

The first sign that points strongly to the latter is the fact that the ARPP has said that they received only four complaints about the poster, yet they expect this to sound impressive. Only four? There are surely always at least four people who will not agree with something, whether it is a racy film poster, Brad Pitt’s new facial hair or a new flavour of crisps… Is this really enough to merit the word ‘scandal’?

The poster is promoting Les Infideles (translated as The Players), a film that takes a comic look at male infidelity. Dujardin will be starring alongside Gilles Lellouche (Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Love Me If You Dare), as what the former has called “flamboyant idiots”. Lellouche is also seen on a poster with a woman’s head near his groin as he talks on the phone, saying “It’s going to cut out, I’m going into a tunnel”. However, not everyone sees the promotion material as something that is satirising a very real part of human society.

The reason given for this “outrage” according to head of ARPP, Stephane Martin, is that the posters “present a downgrading image of women, because in both cases  you do not see the woman’s face.” He also says that the posters present an image of women as objects. Hang on, so if the woman was in the same position but you could see her face, this wouldn’t be downgrading? Anyway, this prompted L’Express magazine to ask ”Could the Infideles scandal damage Jean Dujardin?”.

So, could it? Scandals always attract attention, and sometimes not the right kind. However talented an actor is, if they do something deemed controversial, it can damage their chances in certain situations. Take Michael Fassbender for example, an actor who was everywhere in 2011, from brooding in period drama Jane Eyre to metal-bending in X-Men: First Class. However wonderfully his portrayal of the sex addict in Shame, there seems to have been too much of his anatomy on show for him to be given an Oscar nod.

So a wonderful performance can be overshadowed by controversial subject matter. However, the furore surrounding Dujardin at the moment is actually nothing to do with the film that he was nominated for. Two questions remain – are the posters demeaning to women? Even if they are, should that affect Dujardin’s chances of getting an Oscar for a different film?

While the poster is definitely not…how shall we put it…romantic or respectful, surely there have been worse images in the past that have created less talk. Perhaps people should stop worrying about a pair of legs in a poster, that are probably highly photoshopped in anyway and concentrate on films that condone violence and racism.

Looking at the photo, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that should effect the success and recognition of The Artist. As it stands, Dujardin did a fantastic job in The Artist and these new posters for Les Infideles look raunchy and yes, not all that respectful of women, but it is very likely that people are taking them all too seriously, as after all, Dujardin himself has said that the film is a satire on infidelity, not a documentary condoning it.