With so much to cover this week, we’ll skip the formalities and get right to the goods starting with…

Straw Dogs

Why anyone would bother with a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s great film is beyond me but here we have it, at the hands of Rod Lurie and starring James Marsden and Kate Bosworth as the couple who, this time, move to the young woman’s home town in the deep South and find themselves under attack by the locals.

If this starred anyone else, I might skip it all together but the production also had to go and snatch up both Alexander Skarsgård and Dominic Purcell making it one I really can’t skip.

Straw Dogs opens September 16th.

Here’s an odd one. Playing at Cannes, This Must Be The Place stars Sean Penn as Cheyenne, a bored, retired rock star in full goth gear who sets off in search of his father’s executioner, a Nazi war cirminal who is living in the US as a refugee. What Frances McDormand has to do with this story is beyond me but judging from this first clip from the film, she knows Cheyenne.

This is another one I’d generally skip, I’m not a huge fan of Penn and as much as I love McDormand, this is just doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. And then I look to find that this is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, the same Sorrentino who in 2008 impressed with the offbeat biographical drama of Giulio Andreotti Il Divo. Another one to add to the must see list.

This Must Be The Place currently has no release date.

House of Tolerance

Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance is set in the early part of the 20th century in L’Apollonide, a brothel on its last days. The film centers on the women of the house and their sharing of happiness and grief under the watchful eye of Madame Marie-France. There really isn’t much to go on as far as plot goes and the trailer gives even less but a few things I did notice that caught my attention are the great sets and costumes and the air of mystery around this trailer though I’m certain what got everyone buzzing at this teaser when it made its appearance online earlier in the week was the nudity (the trailer is NSFW) and the fact that it is accompanied by Lee Moses’ “Bad Girl (Part I)” which is not the first thing you’d expect for a period film.

House of Tolerance is screening in competition at Cannes.

After the horrible Four Christmases, I lost track of The King of Kong director Seth Gordon. And then earlier this week a trailer appeared for the upcoming comedy Horrible Bosses which stars Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day as regular working stiffs with horrible bosses played by Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell (looking hysterical with a bad headpiece) and Kevin Spacey who is no stranger to playing the asshole boss. I chuckled at the trailer and then go figure, discovered it was directed by Gordon.

Now that’s not much of a selling point considering he’s struck out more often than he’s delivered but this cast certainly has me interested and seriously, who hasn’t though about killing their bosses? We can all relate.

Horrible Bosses opens July 8th.

Already a winner of the Audience award at Sundance this year, Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance is the story of a young woman living in Iran and struggling against the expectations of her family and culture. I love teen movies, particularly those that tackle bigger issues and this tale of self discovery seems to fit the bill beautifully.

Circumstance opens August 19th.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since there seems to be a convention for everything but when I head the worlds “Ventriloquist Convention” I still managed to say “What?”

For Dumbstruck, director Mark Goffman travels to Vent Haven Convention in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, ventriloquism capital of the world to meet a group of people, a huge group of people at that, who love playing with puppets and even a handfull who do so for a living. Goffman follows a group of them, including Kim Yeager, the beauty queen turned ventriloquist and Terry Fator, the winner of “America’s Got Talent.”

Now don’t go thinking this is going to be some hard-hitting documentary exploring why people love their ventriloquist dolls and what ventriloquism does for them and though I don’t doubt some of that will come up, this really looks (and from the reviews is) a feel good documentary. Nothing wrong with a little bit of fun.

Dumbstruck has been screening here and there since April with a DVD release coming later this year.