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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has found another piece of the puzzle for his upcoming thriller "The Woods" as Sigourney Weaver has joined the ensemble cast of the Walt Disney Co. feature. Weaver, who most recently appeared in the Disney family drama "Holes," joins Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard and William Hurt in the film's cast. Set in 1897, "Woods" revolves around a close-knit community that lives with the frightening knowledge that a mythical race of creatures resides in the woods around them. Shyamalan s also producing along with Scott Rudin and Sam Mercer. Filming is set to begin in the fall ahead of a summer 2004 release.In addition to "Holes," Weaver most recently appeared in the Focus Features drama "The Guys" and the Miramax comedy "Tadpole."

Adrien Brody Ventures Into 'Woods'
Wed Jul 16, 1:34 AM ET Add Movies - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Josh Spector

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The star-studded lineup of
director M. Night Shyamalan (news)'s upcoming thriller "The Woods"
is expanding to include Oscar winner Adrien Brody (news).

He joins Joaquin Phoenix (news), Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt
and Sigourney Weaver (news) in the Walt Disney Co. ensemble film.

Set in 1897, "Woods" revolves around a close-knit community that
lives with the frightening knowledge that a mythical race of
creatures resides in the woods around them.

Shyamalan, who penned the "Woods" script, also is producing along
with Scott Rudin and Sam Mercer.

Brody, whose breakout role in last year's "The Pianist" earned him a
best actor Academy Award, can next be seen in the upcoming Paramount
Classics musical "The Singing Detective," scheduled for an Oct. 24
release.

Cast:
Joaquin Phoenix
Sigourney Weaver
William Hurt
Adrien Brody
Ashton Kutcher
Bryce Dallas Howard

*Review from Buffalo Soldiers (The Evening Star London) FROM HERE Terrible truth of a GI, Other articles about Buffalo Soldiers HERE, Film about the military comes under fire HERE, Hollywood set for row over satire on US army HERE & another review HERE

Firestorm over Film depicting US soldiers as thieves and drug users (english) FROM HERE
Little piece out of it: Actor Phoenix explains, "I don't know why anyone would be offended. It wasn't a movie that was intended to offend. And if we don't show things as they really happen, then what's that about? Censorship!"

on Regis and Kelly, on the ABC Network & on The Late Show With David Letterman, on the CBS network

*Lost In The Woods:
William Hurt is the latest person to sign up for M Night Shyamalan's latest project. Hurt will join Joaquin Phoenix in The Woods, a film set back in 1897 about a close-knit community whose surrounding woods contain a mythical race of (almost certainly unfriendly) creatures. You just know this is going to be good. FROM HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE

07-07-From Ebay, Joaquin is apparently in a magazine called Play from 5 july 2003, you can find more info HERE. Apparently that magazine is only in the UK available for one day

Mangold's next project was thought to be Walk the Line, a biopic of country music legend Johnny Cash, with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon onboard to star. But two recent developments – Witherspoon's pregnancy and the death of Cash's wife, June Carter Cash – seemed to have stalled that film's start date

02-07-It is that time again at PETA, you can vote for The Sexiest Vegetarian ALive contest, you can vote for Joaquin & Summer HERE

And Ladder 49 includes both a sure-fire box-office draw in John Travolta, and a sure-fire hedge against taking the easy road in Phoenix. "Joaquin, he is the anti-sentimental," Russell says. Having someone like him in the film, even by just casting him, it's a nice check and balance."

But Russell's success is more than a matter of hiring the right people. It all goes back to those instincts he's learned to trust so implicitly

26-06-Article about The Woods, you can read it HERE, under here a little piece out of it

Shyamalan wouldn't say what will be on the poster of "The Woods," but it might well be faces younger than the ones normally populating his thrillers. He wrote one role specifically for his "Signs" star Phoenix, whom he called "The leader of the pack from his generation of actors." He wrote the lead with Dunst in mind, because, he said, "She has such chops and energy and is so much fun to watch."

Joaquin Phoenix's new military drama, "Buffalo Soldiers," may be a little too real for the Army.

The movie is set at an Army base in West Germany in 1989, toward the end of the Cold War, and depicts American soldiers engaging in drug dealing and arms trading.

Anthony Swofford, author of "Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War," has raved about the movie. But when Miramax reps recently offered to screen it for Army brass in Washington and L.A., they got the brush-off.

"We did not support 'Buffalo Soldiers,'" Army spokeswoman Kathleen Canham Ross tells us. Though she hasn't seen the movie, she said, "From what I have read, it isn't a movie that we would particularly care to have the United States military's name associated with."

Another film kept from Australian audiences - Buffalo Soldiers starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by award-winning Australian Gregor Jordan (Two Hands, Ned Kelly) - will get its first local screening at MIFF.

The film, a black comedy about US soldiers based in Germany in the late 1980s, was held back following the September 11 terrorist attacks after it was labelled anti-American by some critics.

Buffalo Soldiers will close MIFF on August 10 along with Australian short Cracker Bag, which won the Palme d'Or at the recent Cannes Film Festival.

20-06-Review from Buffalo Soldiers HERE from the the Los Angeles Film Festival

Miramax is keeping the peace.
Posters for the studio’s “Buffalo Soldiers” showed Joaquin Phoenix, dressed in military fatigues, flashing a peace sign under the words, “Steal All You Can Steal.” The movie studio was deluged with calls from irate supporters of the war in Iraq who interpreted the poster as anti-war or unpatriotic. The outcry was so intense, that the studio was mulling plans to scrap the posters and print up more innocuous ones in time for the flick’s July 25 opening. But when that news leaked, the studio was swamped with pro-peace sign callers. “People were outraged that a peace sign has turned into something obscene that should be banned,” says one source. “Some people were also outraged with what they saw as a squelching of first-amendment rights.” “We heard from people who were both for and against the poster,” says a Miramax spokesman. “And while we respect the opinions of both parties, we’ve decided to let Joaquin flash his peace sign.”

Buffalo Soldiers

What's the big deal? Moral issues (or, rather, morale issues) aside, are U.S. audiences eager to sit through an unsparing critique of the military's institutional character?

(AMRY OF ONE Phoenix does more bad than good as a drug-dealing military clerk)

''A friend of mine asked me if I would even do the film now. And I don't know if I would.'' So says Scott Glenn of this pitch-black, military satire about rogue U.S. soldiers in 1989 Berlin using their base as a front for illegal activities. The movie premiered at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival and sold to Miramax -- on Sept. 10. Unsurprisingly, it's taken a long and bumpy route to theaters since then. A screening at January's Sundance festival signaled that the film's thematic underpinnings -- that peace is boring and people will find ways to fill that void with conflict -- have become no less controversial. ''There were people at the screening who called the film unpatriotic,'' recalls Glenn, who plays an unstable sergeant bent on bringing down Joaquin Phoenix's drug-dealing batallion clerk. ''They called me a redneck. That's fine. I am. A liberal redneck. When Stravinsky first played 'The Rite of Spring,' there was a riot outside the theater. Better to get a reaction.'' No problem there: One incensed Sundancer even lobbed a water bottle at the screen.

''I guess she wasn't bored,'' says Australian director Gregor Jordan (whose first major film, ''Two Hands,'' starred Heath Ledger). ''That woman somehow represented a movement of ignorant, belligerent people in America and throughout the world. These are people who don't want truth. They want a myopic, distorted version of the facts. These people are scary.''

*SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2003
This Week at the Seattle International Film Festival
Buffalo Soldiers, Just Walking Home, and more.

Buffalo Soldiers
9:30 p.m. Sat., June 7 at Egyptian
4 p.m. Sun., June 8 at Egyptian
Buried by its studio (Miramax) after its Toronto Film Festival debut the week following Sept. 11, Soldiers is wholly out of step—and wholly welcome—in the new Bush II era of superpatriotism. It's set in 1989, during the Bush I era of collapsed Cold War patriotism, as punch-drunk superpowers teeter exhaustedly in the ring, waiting for the Berlin Wall to fall. On a U.S. Army base in Stuttgart, supremely cynical supply clerk Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is a smack-dealing, black-marketing Sammy Glick figure who observes how his fellow enlistees in the all-volunteer army are "criminals and dropouts." For Elwood, the service is a wildly profitable scam until his racket is threatened by a hard-ass sergeant (Scott Glenn) with a babely daughter (Anna Paquin). Compared to this amoral dark comedy (where you root for the crooks over the cops), M*A*S*H makes the armed forces seem almost wholesome and respectable. Some may not want to see GIs shooting up, then shooting one other, but I suspect Soldiers—based on Robert O'Connor's 1993 novel—is a movie Anthony Swofford (Jarhead) would approve of. BRIAN MILLER

03-06-This year it will be 10 years that River passed away. We ( Helene, Debbie, Scott & I) made a site as tribute for River Phoenix. A site where you can add poems, letters and songs you wrote to River & art that you made. Beautyriversoul

31-05-Brother Bear Official site is open :) with an exclusive preview ( the teaser trailer) Funny to see a bear with Joaq his voice :), it also say Coming only to Theaters November 7

Piece out of the article: A deal for the twentysomething Howard to join the cast was reached last weekend, shortly after Shyamalan saw her perform in the Public Theater production of "As You Like It" in New York. Her film debut will likely see her starring opposite Ashton Kutcher and Joaquin Phoenix, who were also in talks to join the cast of the Disney project.

'Gladiator' and 'Signs' star JOAQUIN PHOENIX is teaming up with JOHN TRAVOLTA for 'Ladder 49,' a true-to-life drama about the brave Baltimore, MD, fire department. Tonight on ET, our own MARK STEINES is on the set for all of the fiery action!

"The bottom line is [the real-life firefighters] have no choice," John tells Mark. "They couldn't live with themselves if they didn't go in [to battle a blaze], and that explains a lot about why they're so heroic. I feel honored to have learned what I've learned, but they really do it. We're just playing at it."

In the film, Joaquin stars as Jack Morrison, a fireman who begins to reassess the physical toll and low pay his high-risk job requires due to his wife and kids. Despite the encouragement of his mentor and chief (Travolta), he can't shake the feeling that something's not right. When Jack's caught in the worst blaze of his career, it's up to his brave brothers in arms -- and his own resourcefulness -- to save his life before it's too late!

In order to accurately portray these real-life heroes on-screen, the gear for the movie is completely authentic and the cast trained together as a unit at the Fire Academy.

"[They taught us] the fundamentals of firefighting," explains Joaquin. "First you learn the signs of fire and fire behavior and how materials burn. And then you do rappelling and working with ladders, understanding the tools, and then how to find your way out of a building if you get lost, how to follow a hose out. ..."

"They put you through a maze that is so claustrophobic you don't know where you are at any time," elaborates John, "and you're in full equipment -- mask, air gloves, helmet and everything, which is, what, 60 pounds we're talking here? Oh, easily. And you have to twist and turn to get through nooks and crannies like a rat would through a maze."

Directed by JAY RUSSELL ('Tuck Everlasting') and also starring MORRIS CHESTNUT, ROBERT PATRICK and BALTHAZAR GETTY, 'Ladder 49' is set to light up theaters next year.

24-05-I have Updated my Rain & Summer Site, new Summer article from The Telegraph UK & some clips from Rain & her band The Paper Cranes

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - After mining cornfields for thrills in last year's "Signs," M. Night Shyamalan will turn his attention to "The Woods" for his next feature, with Ashton Kutcher, Kirsten Dunst and Joaquin Phoenix in talks to star. Read more HERE

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) will make a supernatural thriller film, The Woods, for Disney, the first film in a new two-picture deal, Variety reported. The Woods stars Ashton Kutcher, Joaquin Phoenix and Kirsten Dunst. Scott Rudin and Sam Mercer will produce, and shooting will begin in October in Philadelphia for a summer 2004 release. Set in 1897, The Woods tells the story of a close-knit community with a mythical race of creatures residing in the woods around them, the trade paper reported

Today's Variety reports that Shyamalan will direct The Woods with stars Ashton Kutcher and Kirsten Dunst – with his Signs co-conspirator Joaquin Phoenix also signing up for the cast. Set in the late 19th century, the film tells the story of a rural community whose surrounding woods are home to a 'mythical race of creatures'.

File photo / ... Joaquin Phoenix in 1998's Clay Pigeons, the crazy mixed-up teenager has been a steady part of popular culture. There's a reason: the development of teens' brains may temporarily make them virtually insane, according to new research

*I have Updated my Rain & Summer Site