The Official MovieSet Blog

Out in theaters today is The Express, a new sports biopic about the first black football player selected by the NFL. In 1960 Ernie Davis began to play for Syracuse University and show how great he was on the gridiron but his greatest obstacles came at him from off the field. America was undergoing a social change and awakening and race relations were at the forefront of the movement. Even though he led his team to victory, it was often the color of Davis' skin that people saw first. The Express stars Rob Brown (Finding Forrester) as Ernie Davis, Dennis Quaid (The Day After Tomorrow) as Coach Ben Schwarzwalder and Charles S. Dutton (Alien 3) as Willie "Pops" Davis.

The first photos of Downey as Sherlock Holmes have gone up at Just Jared, one of the 'net's top spy photo sites. There's a bunch of shots of Mr. Iron Man in his Victorian era duds including the one you see on the right showing Downey walking alongside the film's director, Guy Ritchie. Jude Law plays Dr. John Watson, Holmes' confidant, assistant and Robin to his Batman. Ritchie says that his version of Sherlock Holmes will feature more action and portray the detective in a more physical manner than earlier version which tended to only show the character's massive intellect. At no point will Robert Downey Jr. get into a suit of iron and fly through the sky (or at least I think that's the plan.)

That's what Bill Murray is saying to the press, or at least MTV. While yakking about his latest work in City of Ember, Murray told the music-themed website that he's keen on seeing what the two writers hired by Columbia Pictures to do the script for Ghostbusters 3 will come up with. Both scribes work on NBC's hit series The Office, and that credential was enough for the comedian to raise his hopes that the third Ghostbusters story would not suck as much as Ghostbusters 2.

Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for The Dark Knight on DVD/Blu-ray and they've pegged the home video release date as December 9. While Warner Bros. hasn't made an official announcement for when they plan on rolling out their superhero megahit on DVD, 12/9 seems like about the right time. Plus, when have you ever known Amazon to be wrong about major DVD release dates?

The cast for George Clooney's upcoming comedy/drama Men Who Stare at Goats is coming together nicely. In addition to the salt-and-pepper haired Ocean's Eleven star (who's also producing) we've got Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges and Stephen Lang. About to join is actress Rebecca Mader, best known as the tempestuous redhaired Charlotte on ABC's Lost. And yeah, the movie is about a bunch of guys that stare at goats (but only because they want to kill them.)

According to El Mayimbe over at Latino Review, and according to an insider at Warner Brothers, Canadian actor, Ryan Gosling, is being considered for the role of the Green Lantern in the film set to shoot in Spring 2009.

What would a visual representation be of all the dialogue in a film? That's the question that the folks at the Wattsei website asked when they broached the notion of laying out who said what in Kevin Smith's first movie, Clerks. The designers color coded which characters said what lines by breaking the film down into one second chunks, then arranging these blocks into rows of 60 (60 seconds are in one minute = one row equals one minute of screen time for Clerks.) The resulting miasma of nicely arranged colored blocks is interesting to look at, but I can't help but wonder if this kind of exercise would work better if you wanted to graph out the intensity and frequency of an action film's action sequences, or the number of times characters embrace or kiss or emote their feelings for each other in a romance film.

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is shaping up to be one of this fall's more interesting films. It tells the story of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal team whose job it is to defuse the way too numerous IEDs scattered across Iraq. As you can imagine, stress and exhaustion are a daily part of the job. Summit Entertainment will release the movie this fall and Jeffrey Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere just delivered to us the final movie poster.

You've noticed it in nearly every mainstream movie, the moment when our hero/heroine pulls out a cell phone and the name of the company is prominently displayed, or they're sitting down watching TV and the company name of the TV manufacturer is front and center, or...you get the idea. Branding is everywhere in movies these days. So what would it look like if a movie poster showed you how many companies were represented in the film? I'm guessing that those kinds of posters look a lot like these babies.

Somewhere in the deep Oklahoma woods lurks a frightening parasite not seen by man until now. Splinter tells the story of two couples, one planning to spend a romantic weekend away from the city, the other a couple on the run and looking for a vehicle. Eventually the four people come to rest at a remote gas station where they encounter the bizarre animal that infects animals and humans to make more versions of itself. Once the creature gets under your skin you start growing spine-like quills from your skin. Soon after your body begins to make jerky movements that you aren't in control of. How do you fight something that attacks you from the inside and uses your body as a weapon?