When the worlds of Washington, DC political intrigue, infidelity, fitness centers and internet dating intersect and collide in a darkly hilarious fashion, you must be watching a film by the Coen brothers. Burn After Reading, Joel and Ethan Coen's follow-up to last year's critically lauded award winner, No Country for Old Men, was actually written by the duo as they were adapting No Country, but the two films couldn't be more different.

The colliding worlds in Burn After Reading involve a CIA analyst named Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who's summoned to a top-secret meeting only to find out that the secret is he's being demoted due to his drinking problem. Cox blows a gasket and quits rather than taking the demotion, planning to spend his new-found spare time working on his memoirs and refining his drinking. Cox is married to Katie (Tilda Swinton), a icy pediatrician with the worst bedside manner imaginable, and she's less than sympathetic to her husband's life crisis.

Burn After Reading, the latest from the Coen Brothers, makes its North American debut this year, following last year's rapturous Toronto reception for the Oscar-winning success of the tense, terse No Country for Old Men. After making No Country for Old Men, in perverse Coen-logic, the timing is clearly right for a messy, mean-spirited, profane punchy comedy. Burn After Reading is built around a classic Coen plot -- there's a valuable something out there, and various ill-equipped, dimwitted people see it as the answer to all their problems -- and the pleasure of seeing the big ensemble cast bite down hard on small parts until the juice drips down their chin is dry, funny and rich. (Brad Pitt's work alone as a fitness trainer whose I.Q. is as immeasurably low as his body-fat percentage is, bluntly, inanely great -- full of verve and conviction, and deeply funny.)

The Coens make movies about desire -- the stuff of drama -- but they often choose to make them about idiocy -- the stuff of comedy -- as well; as various characters around Washington, D.C. pursue, posses or hope to profit from a lost CD of data that an ex-CIA man (John Malkovich, fussy and hilarious) has misplaced, the plot's in part just a canvas for Coen-syle, carefully-timed punchlines and comedy so dry it'll leave your lips chapped. There's also some great inside-baseball movie-joke stuff about the cliches of every techno-thriller -- the Taiko-drum scores, the lower-left-of-the-screen-type establishing place and time, the moody shots of shadowy figures who may or may not be following our heroes -- that work in a smart, sideways fashion, too. And every actor in Burn After Reading is playing someone having some kind of mid-to-late-life freakout, grabbing at chances to be happy, and failing while flailing and spitting out four-letter words as they go down; Kim will have her full review up later, but we laughed. A lot.

There may not be much footage that we haven't already seen in either the original red-band trailer or the international teaser for the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, but I noted enough bits and pieces to feel these two new videos worthy of sharing. Plus, for those of you who have a preference, George or Brad, you now have a trailer that fits you best. Personally, I'm hoping that the ladies, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, get their own character-centric trailers. And while Focus Features is at it, how about individual spots for John Malkovich? Heck, give Richard Jenkins, J.K. Simmons and David Rasche each their own, too. I'm that excited about this movie that I want more, more, more.

Fortunately, we've only got about a month until Burn After Reading opens on September 12.

Helena Bonham Carter gave a few hints on her surprising Terminator: Salvation role to Sci-Fi Wire -- and surprise surprise, it's not a cuddly one! "I kind of play a baddie, definitely a baddie. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but I'm a very bad person."

Now, I know there's readers out there who are more up on their Terminator mythology than I am (and it feels weird to even refer to it having a mythology), but were there bad humans? Turncoats who helped the machines? Evil scientists from Skynet? I feel certain this was discussed somewhere in a Kyle Reese monologue, but I may just be filling in gaps. Of course, Bonham Carter could be playing a Terminator (Summer Glau has proved you can be tiny and lethal), but I'm trying to keep all options open.

Given Bonham Carter's late in the game casting, it turns out she was replacing another actress -- Tilda Swinton, who I now want to pop up as a Terminator at some point. (I think I would instantly surrender.)

As for Bonham Carter's own interest, it turns out it was all due to her other half. "Tim [Burton] would have killed me if I hadn't done it, because he's such a Terminator fan. I've been in big movies before ... but I've never been in this kind of big popcorn action movie, a male one, an action one." And honestly, I like that she is in one. I continue to be amazed at the talent who has been attracted to this film, and like the rest of the world, I'm excited to see what becomes of it.

Terminator: Salvation opens May 22, 2009. We must try not to get overdosed on it ... and that's going to be really hard.

The consensus I've gotten from people after they've seen the red-band trailer for the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading is that nobody understands what it's about, and nobody cares, because everybody thinks it looks awesome. Well, if you thought that trailer was confusing, or at least lacking in plot synopsis, just imagine how moviegoers outside the U.S. feel after seeing this new international trailer.

As you can see, marketing to international audiences is more about selling the stars. Hence the CLOONEY, the McDORMAND, the MALKOVICH, the SWINTON and the PITT titles. As for story, there's even less revealed here than in the red-band trailer. In fact, it's almost a joke how little is said about the movie. Each actor/character maybe gets to slip in one or two words, which actually just serve as response to more intertitles telling us about the other major stars of the film: the Coens.

Okay, I bought us a little bit of time with that title, but understand the video above won't be around that long. This is the first Spanish-language trailer for David Fincher's new flick The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, though I have a feeling it's just dubbed and not a completely different trailer from the one currently playing in front of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I've been hearing a lot about this trailer in the past 24 hours; so has Peter from Slashfilm, as his readers have been emailing him -- claiming this trailer is the greatest thing in the history of great things.

It certainly looks odd, wild and beautiful -- almost as if David Fincher and Tim Burton had a child; this is what it would look like. The clean, crisp full English-language trailer will probably debut within the next few days online, so feel free to wait for that one or snag a taste from the one above. In case you're wondering, Benjamin Button stars Brad Pitt as a man who was born in his eighties and starts aging backwards. That's all I'll say for now; oh, and it also stars Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Elle Fanning and Julia Ormond.

Let us know what you think -- the film comes out December 19th.

One thing I've noticed about most epic sci-fi/fantasy stories is that they're essentially about war, albeit disguised and softened with weird monsters, robots and other creatures with funny names. There's usually a bad guy (with a really sinister sounding name) who wants to take over the world or something similar, and a reluctant hero -- plucked from his comfortable, yet mundane home -- who has to stop him. The trick is to make it all fun. Because let's face it, we humans love war. If we didn't there wouldn't be so many movies and books about war, as well as -- you know -- real wars. (More specifically, I think, we love watching them, rather than fighting in them.) The Lord of the Rings trilogy worked so well because Peter Jackson projected his own twisted glee into every frame; he loved making those movies and it showed. The characters felt an anxious anticipation toward the battle, like a buildup, and the battles themselves were explosive releases. The new film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the second in an unfortunately ongoing series, treats war as if it were already played out, rather than happening before our eyes. It's a dead dog dull bore of a movie, but that won't stop it from making a fortune. (See also Jette's review.)

After the gut-wrenching terror of No Country for Old Men (I haven't been that tense in a movie theater since, well, ever), I can safely say that I am incredibly relieved that the Coens' next film, Burn After Reading, looks like it is going to be a lot more fun. First Showing now has some stills from the Coens' black comedy, and it would appear that the brothers are returning to what I like to call their 'Raising Arizona roots.'

Burn is the story of a CIA agent (played by George Clooney) who is assigned to investigate the case of a former agent named Ozzie Cox (John Malkovich) who has taken his revenge on the agency by writing a tell-all memoir. When Cox's ex-wife (played by Tilda Swinton) steals the only copy and leaves it behind at her gym, the gym's owner (Frances McDormand) and star personal trainer (Brad Pitt) see an opportunity to engage in a little blackmail.

The Coen flick just got the nod to open the Venice Film Festival this year, but Burn will not be making an appearance at Cannes this year (which is a little strange considering the luck they had at the French festival last year). This makes it zero for two for Pitt now that his other high-profile film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, also failed to make the list for Cannes. Burn After Reading is scheduled for wide release on September 12th, 2008.

I really like Tilda Swinton, and I think she's a great actress. That being said, I think that her Oscar win this year was just a little silly. While it was, by no means, a bad performance, it didn't seem like the sort that would ever be considered the best there was last year, especially over Amy Ryan or even Cate's Bob Dylan. Was the win due to Tilda getting all pit-sweaty? Whatever the case, I'd like to see her acting chops praised for a wow performance rather than a normal good one. She has a whole ton of projects on the way, and has just added another, so maybe it will be one of these.

Variety reports that Swinton will once again team up with Italian director Luca Guadagnino (The Protagonists) to star in his new romantic drama, I Am Love (lo sono l'amore). She will play "a foreign society matron in Milan who falls for a young chef," and Variety says the film focuses on "the irreparable consequences brought about by love in a high-bourgeois family." Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher also has a role, but the rest of the cast hasn't been set yet.

I imagine this will be mostly romance with a wee little bit of food while the chef is at work, but the foodie in me hopes that we can get a good dose of Italian delicacies to feast on as well.

Even though a lot of fans of The Coen Brothers haven't been all that happy with the results of their collaborations with George Clooney (I think I was one of the eight people in the world who actually enjoyed Intolerable Cruelty.), I've still got a good feeling about their CIA comedy, Burn After Reading. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Focus Features will release the dark comedy on September 12th of this year.

Burn has an all-star cast including Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, and Tilda Swinton. I would guess that it's been like 'old home week' on set; we all know that Clooney and Pitt are buddies, and Swinton could be an honorary member of the boys club after her Oscar winning performance in Michael Clayton (and judging by her acceptance speech, she seems comfortable with a little verbal rough-housing).

The comedy stars Malkovich as Ozzie Cox, a CIA vet who gets fired for being an alcoholic, and writes out his revenge in a memoir. His soon-to-be ex-wife (Swinton) accidentally leaves the memoir at a gym, where it falls into the hands of a trainer, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), and the gym's owner Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who want to exploit the discovery. It sounds like a pretty 'fluffy' flick, but I think we could all use a break from the Coens' more "intense" point of view, wouldn't you agree, friendo?