Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul Join 'Eye in the Sky'; Tilda Swinton Goes Feline for 'The Infinity Engine', and More

More Cannes deals keep rolling in, including what may be Tilda Swinton's weirdest role yet.

First up, Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul have joined Pierce Brosnan in Eye in the Sky, a drone warfare thriller directed by Gavin Hood. Guy Hibbert's script "centers on London-based military intelligence officer Colonel Michelle Madden who is remotely commanding a top secret drone operation that aims to capture a group of terrorists in Nairobi. The mission suddenly escalates from a “capture” to a “kill” operation when she realizes the targets are about to embark on a suicide mission, which would result in the deaths of many innocent civilians. Meanwhile, American drone pilot Steve Watts is poised to destroy the safe-house when a nine-year-old-girl enters the kill zone."

Next, Tilda Swinton has starred in three films for Lynn Hershman Leeson (Strange Culture, Teknolust), but the fourth will have her playing a cat. That's right, an actual feline. A phosphorescent cat at that. In The Infinity Engine she'll be "a rebel talking cat that glows because she has genetic code from a jellyfish. The cat is on a search for freedom, enlightenment, and humane humans in the halls of a biotechnology company". Ever seen the famous glowing cat used to study HIV/AIDS? Well, this character is based on it, and yep that is really friggin' weird.

Anton Yelchin, Catherine Keener, Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men), Riley Keough, and Annie Starke (Glenn Close's daughter) have joined The Greens are Gone, directed by Peer Pedersen. The story centers on "a matriarch who is pushed to her tipping point over the disappearance of her son," while she has "a bipolar daughter whose reality is warped in magical realism."

Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, and Natasha Lyonne have joined the previously-cast Alison Brie, Jason Sudeikis, and Adam Scott in Sleeping with Other People. Directed by Leslye Headland (Bachelorette), the story follows “a womanizer who befriends a serial cheater, only for a romantic attraction to develop between them."

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Trailer for Clark Gregg's 'Trust Me' Starring Sam Rockwell

It's been six years since Phil Coulson...er, Clark Gregg's last directorial effort, the Chuck Palahniuk adaptation, Choke. He's been pretty busy dealing with superheroes in the Marvel Universe ever since, but now he's getting back behind the camera for Trust Me, and now it has a trailer.

Gregg also wrote and stars in the film, playing an agent for child actors who discovers a teenaged star (Saxon Sharbino) who may finally catapult him into the big time. But first he has to deal with the girl's overprotective father, scheming producers, and his nemesis played by Sam Rockwell. The cast is great with Allison Janney, Amanda Peet, Felicity Huffman, and her husband William H. Macy all making appearances. It's a premise brimming with potential, so hopefully Gregg is able to make the most of out of it.

Trust Me hits VOD on May 6th and theaters a month later. 

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New trailer for 'Identity Thief' with Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy

"She's like a hobbit. I'm going after Bilbo". Well, I guess it can't hurt to tie-in to the top grossing movie of the week, but everything else about the trailer for Identity Thief looks pretty average. Melissa McCarthy doing Kelis' 'Milkshake' in the passenger seat? Meh. She deserves better, and since she didn't get hardly anything to do in Judd Apatow's This is 40, hopefully Identity Thief's best gags are being held back.

Sporting a huge head of hair, McCarthy plays Diana, a criminal down in Florida who has stolen the identity of Sandy Bigelow Patterson, using his accounts to go on a whirlwind shopping spree. To save his good name and credit, Sandy travels across country to track her down, only to run into trouble trying to drag her all the way back to Denver. There are a couple of decent laughs and zingers, like when McCarthy tries unsuccessfully to run away only to be chased down easily, but in general this looks like a conventional road trip comedy. Ok, the bit with her and Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet is kinda great.

Directed by Seth Gordon(Horrible Bosses) and co-starring Amanda Peet, T.I. Harris, Genesis Rodriguez, Morris Chestnut, John Cho, and Robert Patrick, Identity Thief opens on February 8th 2013.

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Maya Rudolph, Amanda Peet, and Rob Corddry join 'The Way, Way Back'

So how much better could things get for Jim Rash and Nat Faxon? The duo already took home an Oscar for adapting The Descendants to universal acclaim, so that now any project they want to get done is going to attract the hottest stars. They've already got an action comedy lined up with Kristen Wiig, and they've been pulling together a remarkable cast for their directorial debut, The Way, Way Back.

With Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell and young Liam James headlining, the final touches have now been put on the cast. Maya Rudolph, Rob Corddry, and Amanda Peet are the latest to join the coming of age dramedy, which tells the story of a boy who starts a friendship over the course of one summer that gives him the strength to stand up to his boozing, abusive stepfather. Carell will break from the norm as the stepfather, with Collete playing James' mother, and Rockwell as the water park manager he forms the bond with.

AnnaSophia Robb(Soul Surfer) and Allison Janney(Drop Dead Gorgeous) make up the rest of the versatile cast. Filming is set to begin next week in Massachusetts. [Deadline]

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Snap Judgements: Please Give

Nicole Holofcener has been driving me to the cliff of insanity with her movies for years. The writer/director of such Lovely & Amazing, Walking & Talking, and Friends with Money, her films are always superbly cast but devoid of real emotion. You can always find Catherine Keener entrenched in the middle somewhere, pulling grunt duty trying to bring any emotional weight she can to Holofcener's consistent story of upper middle class W.A.S.P. angst. I look at the director as the female version of Guy Ritchie. Not that she makes action flicks, but in that if I strung all of her films together without breaks you'd never know the difference. They all look and feel the same. Please Give is no different, but in its attempt to explore the contradictions and hypocracies of its characters it is absolutely her best work to date.

Kate(Keener) and Alex(Oliver Platt) spend way too much together. Afterall they are married, with a teenage daughter suffering from bad skin and chronic insecurity. They own a high-end furniture store in Manhattan, buying up the merchandise of the deceased then marking them up to ridiculous prices for sale. It's a scummy job, but apparenly somebody's gotta do it. Adding to the yuck factor is their vulture-like hovering over their next door neighbor, an elderly woman named Andra. Kate and Alex have an agreement that when she finally kicks the bucket they get first dibs on her apartment, which will become part of an expansion. She's a feisty old goat, though, tended to by her loving granddaughter, Rebecca(Rebecca Hall). The other granddaughter, Mary(Amanda Peet), is a shallow, superficial facialist who never holds back from showing her hatred towards Andra. 

Kate doesn't know how to feel. She adores her upper class lifestyle, but simulanteously feels guilty when confronted by those who are less fortunate. Yet she continues to take advantage of those very same people. She deprives her own daughter, preferring to give money to strangers than family. Her relationship with Alex is less husband/wife and more co-worker/buddy, and she's starting to wonder if it'll ever be the way it used to be.

After about twenty minutes I was tempted to walk out of the theater, not willing to sit through another Holofcener whine fest. Then a funny thing happened and these characters started to become real. My biggest problem with her work isn't necessarily that she's a poor writer or the acting is awful, but that we're never really given a reason to care. Not that the  problems of the upper class are any less burdensome than anybody else's, but we need to be shown why we should even try to relate. These are all very shallow people, and their problems don't go beyond the surface level. Kate is the only one who recognizes her own nature, and that recognition further erodes her self-confidence. It's not a role that I'm used to seeing Catherine Keener play, which might be why it struck such a chord with me. I wish all of the other characters got the attention that Kate does. Unfortunately most of their ventures don't get much screen time and never amount to much. I'd like to say that Rebecca Hall continues her streak of stand out performances, but her character is too much the reverse of everybody else. Where they are all hatable, she's way too saintly to be believed.

Please Give isn't exactly a walk in the park. It's not cheerful at all, and most of the characters are either loathsome or pitiful. But they are fun to watch as they crash about in their shallow lives, and there's even the possibility of a happy ending if you look closely enough.

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