It might seem an unlikely tipple for a casino high roller, but at least James Bond won’t have to worry whether it comes shaken or stirred. The secret agent is to swap his martini for a beer in the forthcoming 007 film, Skyfall.

The move is the result of a commercial deal cut with the Dutch brewers Heineken as part of a whopping $45m in reported product placement. The film’s director, Sam Mendes, will even shoot an advert for the beer featuring the suave secret agent.

Read more here (via The Guardian)

US actor Forest Whitaker will follow in the footsteps of acting great Morgan Freeman when he portrays an iconic South African in a forthcoming movie.

Whitaker (50) was cast to play Archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Archbishop and the Antichrist, a film based on a play by Michael Ashton that focuses on Tutu’s work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Bang Showbiz reported.

The film’s director, Roland Joffe, wants to finish the project before the end of the year. He is currently working on a romantic drama starring Josh Hartnett and Neve Campbell, contactmusic.com noted.

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The nominations for the 32nd Annual Genie Awards – Canada’s equivalent of the Oscars – were announced by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and included seven nominations for the movie The Bang Bang Club, a film about South Africa’s famed team of photographers Ken Oosterbroek, Kevin Carter, Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich.

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Despite being a little behind on the movie front here in South Africa (most international films reach local circuits several months after their initial release abroad), most of us like to get an idea of which movies will garner hype and which will tank come Award Season.

To mark this auspicious time of year in the Hollywood calendar, TIME has selected their top 20 movies to see this season. Here are just some of the films to look forward to in 2012:

1. Haywire -

Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring Gina Carano and Michael Fassbender

TIME says: Heist, action-comedy, historical drama, indie experimental — Soderbergh is adept  across many genres, so we’re just going to trust him here. 

2. The Hunger Games -

Directed by Gary Ross. Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth

TIME says: You’ve read the book, we’ve read the book and there’s a huge Harry  Potter–size hole in all our hearts.

3.The Amazing Spider-Man -

Directed by Marc Webb. Starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone

TIME says: After three Spider-Man films starring Tobey Maguire and directed by Sam  Raimi, the franchise gets a reboot.

See more films and read the full article here.

In order to accommodate the least-deserving movie star of all time, makers of the upcoming “R.I.P.D.” have changed the name (and implied ethnicity) of Ryan Reynolds’s character, from Nick Cruz — as it is in the corresponding comic book and graphic novel — to Nick Walker.

The technical term for this little operation is “race-lifting,” and it happens all the time. Sometimes it’s repellent, like when “Spawn” director Todd McFarlane caved into studio concerns and turned a key black character white, and sometimes it’s simply silly to hang on to a character’s original ethnicity at the expense of an actor or actress who truly fits the part. At all times though, something is lost, the idea of a person who’s enthralled us somehow.

Read the full story here (via The Huffington Post)

The duo has become as sure a bet as any actor-director team in Hollywood, but for their next project together, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio may be going gambling.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese is signing on to direct a remake of the 1974 James Cann-starring drama, “The Gambler,” about a New York English professor who, despite his legendary work in the classroom, suffers from a secret gambling addiction.

Read the full story here (via The Huffington Post)

Retribution opens by panning across an arid, bleached landscape with a dramatic male voice-over saying something about justice and the order of things.

Soon, the camera settles on a patch of blood seeping into the dusty ground outside a rustic cottage, instantly establishing the film’s thriller genre. Within minutes, we determine that a retired judge (Joe Mafela) is on a writing retreat in this isolated cabin, where he is virtually cut off from the outside world.

Read the full review here (via The Mail and Guardian)

A rambling indie comedy about a shambling hippie man-child, Our Idiot Brother sets loose a sweetly innocent farmer (Paul Rudd) amongst uptight urban siblings (Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer), and … well, that’s about it, really.

There’s no particular high-concept rationale or low-rent aesthetic to the comedy that ensues. There are laughs — quite a few, in fact — though somehow not in the sort of sequences that build on one another to achieve outright hilarity.

Read the full review here (via NPR)

Brad Pitt is taking on an on-screen zombie invasion in Scotland, but for a moment on Thursday night’s shoot, the Oscar-nominee took on the role of a real life-saving hero.

Starring as Gerry Lane in the big screen undead apocalypse film, “World War Z,” Pitt was in the midst of shooting a scene in which fearful masses rush through Glasgow’s George Square, trying to get away from the scourge of the face eaters. One woman, involved in the stampede of fearful Scots, fell over amidst the madness, and was in danger of being trampled upon by her fellow extras.

Read the full story here (via The Huffington Post)

The producers of the 23rd James Bond movie have threatened to shift the filming from India to South Africa if permission to shoot a show-stopping train stunt is refused.

According to a leading Indian newspaper, the bosses are becoming frustrated at the slowness of the officials in granting permission and are threatening to move the shoot to South Africa instead.

Read the full story here (via The Times of India)

The Ghostbusters are being called on once again, Dan Aykroyd insists. But its most iconic star may not be answering the phone.

Aykroyd, the mind behind the hit comedy franchise, told Dennis Miller today on his radio show that the long-awaited “Ghostbusters” film would be lensing in Spring, 2012 — with or without Bill Murray.

Read the full story here (via The Huffington Post)

Above all else, Tom Cruise is still a major movie star.

And as such, being his film love interest is a major shot of exposure and star power, a boost A-list actresses openly seek as aggressively as they did during Cruise’s 80s and 90s heyday.

Read the full story here (via The Huffington Post)

“Now all of this may look like some crazed hallucination,” Johnny Depp, as Hunter S. Thompson stand-in Paul Kemp, says, “but it’s all true… I think.”

And so it goes in this long-awaited big screen version of “The Rum Diary,” Depp’s latest film adaptation of a Hunter S. Thompson novel.

Read the full story here (via The Huffington Post)

Al Pacino says he got burned while making Scarface.

Literally, he grabbed the hot barrel of a gun that had just shot 30 rounds during one of Tony Montana’s violent scenes.
“My hand stuck to that sucker,” the 71-year-old actor recalled. He couldn’t work for two weeks.

Read the full story here (via The Mail & Guardian)

Male heroes, in the big action movies, get to save the world by blowing it up.

The journey of women, especially in indie films, is different: passive saints, they abide and endure and finally, bravely, say no. Their heroism is a defiant step outside the church of patriarchy.

Read the rest of this article here (via Time Magazine)

Tree of Life actor says he was trying to figure out what role he played in Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winning film, while Christian Bale signs on for a new Malick project.

Penn, who spent the majority of Malick’s Palme d’or-winning film moping around a mystery metropolis, was not the only person who found The Tree of Life a difficult watch.

Read the rest of this article here (The Guardian)

For the Blu-Ray release of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, the sage Frank Oz puppet has recieved a digital makeover.

Has Yoda had some work done on his famously craggy face? Yes, in a sense: Twelve years after Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace debuted in theaters, the Jedi master has received a digital makeover.

Read the rest of this article here (via The Week)

British star Kenneth Branagh, director of the recent big-screen fantasy epic Thor, is walking away from Asgard, and no one is sadder than star Chris Hemsworth.

“I’m really disappointed,” Australian Hemsworth said of Branagh’s decision to pass on Thor 2, which is aiming for a release in July, 2013, and may begin filming in May.

Read the rest of this article here (via The Mercury)

England’s Daily Mail has a stern article up detailing inaccuracies in Meryl Streep’s upcoming Margaret Thatcher biopic, which was screened last night for an audience of Thatcher’s closest friends.

The article claims the movie, called “The Iron Lady,” uses dream and hallucination scenes to paint Thatcher as a woman haunted by regret over her own ambition.

Read the rest of this article here (via The Huffington Post)

Director is reported to be in negotiations with Bavaria studios for funding of movie to be shot in Munich.

Munich looks likely to be the next stop on Woody Allen‘s grand tour of Europe. Allen, currently shooting The Bop Decameron in Rome, is in negotiations with Bavaria studios to fund his next project, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The film, as yet untitled, has an estimated budget of $17m (£10.2m).

Read the rest of this article here (via The Guardian)