Tom Hardy in "Lawless."

Credit: The Weinstein Company

The director: John Hillcoat (Australian, 50 years old)

The talent: You want names? You got 'em. Hillcoat's latest brings together a handful of the industry's brightest young things, including Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Mia Wasikowska and newly minted Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain. Burnishing the lineup a bit are older hands like Guy Pearce (who worked with Hillcoat on "The Proposition") and Gary Oldman, also fresh off his first tip of the hat from the Academy. Meanwhile, between Pearce and Wasikowska, plus fellow Aussies Noah Taylor and Jason Clarke in support, Hollywood immigrant Hillcoat remains committed to keeping his home flag flying. 

Also making a very Australian affair of this all-American bootlegging tale is the fact that the screenplay is by rock icon Nick Cave -- his first since penning Hillcoat's 2005 breakout feature "The Proposition." Naturally, as has been the case with all Hillcoat's work, Cave (alongside regular collaborator Warren Ellis) is also responsible for the original score.

Catwoman gets a face-lift in the upcoming "The Dark Knight Rises." Does Michelle Pfeiffer's 1992 portrayal merit consideration on our list?

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Joss Whedon's "The Avengers" opens Friday, but it doesn't merely signal the beginning of the summer movie season. It signals the start of a summer highlighted by comic-based tent pole filmmaking. Still to come are Sony's reboot, "The Amazing Spider-Man," and the denouement of Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise, "The Dark Knight Rises" (the latter having dropped a new trailer last night).

So it makes sense to keep the lists going this week with something pegged to Marvel's big, inevitable event film. But who wants another "top 10 comic book movies" list, anyway? I couldn't go there. Narrow it down? Top 10 Marvel movies (stretching back to pre-Marvel Studios, of course)? I just don't like enough of them.

When I laid out my brief thoughts on "The Avengers" last week, I noted that, for me, what makes the film so special and work so well as a piece of entertainment is how organic the ensemble is. Everyone gels, major actors with major franchises coming together to make something greater. With that in mind, how about focusing on performances in comic book movies?

The new deal goes into effect this summer.

Credit: Dolby

After some back and forth with CIM Group, commercial real estate owner of the theare (formerly known as the Kodak) at the Hollywood & Highland complex that has been home to the Oscars for the last decade, a new deal has been struck to keep the annual show there for another 20 years.

According to a press release, another deal was also struck, with Dolby Laboratories, Inc., to name the venue The Dolby Theatre. So it's goodbye Kodak, hello Dolby. And as Roth so pointedly noted a few weeks ago when these rumblings first began, it's somehow poetic and sad to see one of the last bastions and earliest creators of celluloid take its exit here as the company that created a digital 3D projection system steps in.

Of course, Dolby's major imprint has always been trailblazing in the world of audio. Indeed, further into the release it is noted that during the term of the agreement "Dolby will continue to update the theatre with innovative, world-class technologies to ensure that the theatre remains state-of-the-art, beginning with the immediate installation of its recently released Dolby® Atmos™ sound technology."

Michael Haneke, Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant on the set of "Amour."

Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

The director: Michael Haneke (German-Austrian, 70 years old)

The talent: After the low-profile ensemble of "The White Ribbon," Haneke returns here to the big names. Isabelle Huppert has a history with Haneke and Cannes: she won the festival's Best Actress award (her second) for "The Piano Teacher" in 2001, and headed the jury that handed him the Palme d'Or three years ago. This marks her third collaboration with him, and her first since 2003's "The Time of the Wolf," but she doesn't appear to be the primary focus this time: that'd be two veterans of the French New Wave, Emmanuelle Riva ("Hiroshima, Mon Amour,") and Jean-Louis Trintignant ("Three Colors: Red" and "Z," for which he won Best Actor at Cannes in 1969). (Fun fact: Riva played the lead in Georges Franju's original film of "Thérèse Desqueyroux," Claude Miller's new adaptation of which is closing the festival.) Also on board: British opera baritone William Shimell, who made an impressive film debut opposite Juliette Binoche in 2010's "Certified Copy."

Matteo Garrone on the set of 'Reality.'

Credit: Fandango

The director: Matteo Garrone (Italian, 43 years old)

The talent: You'd have to be pretty au fait with contemporary Italian cinema to recognize most of the cast members here: the biggest name on offer is Claudia Gerini, best known for supporting turns in Italian hits "Don't Move" and "The Other Woman," as well as minor appearances in "The Passion of the Christ" and "Under the Tuscan Sun." The young actor Ciro Petrone, who made an impression four years ago in Garrone's "Gomorrah" (if the image of a gangly youth in his underwear brandishing a gun comes to mind, you're there), reappears here -- as, on the evidence of some other cast members' CVs, does the director's partial affinity for inexperienced actors.  

Brad Pitt in "Killing Them Softly."

Credit: The Weinstein Company

With apologies for yesterday's non-delivery.

The director: Andrew Dominik (Australian, 44 years old)

The talent: Ever heard of a guy called Brad Pitt? He's going places, I tell you. The star has, of course, worked with Dominik before. In 2007, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" won Pitt the Best Actor prize at Venice and effectively started a new, more studious chapter in his career: two leading Oscar nominations and the career peak of 2011 later, it'll be interesting to see what this reunion brings for him. (As he did on "Jesse James," Pitt also takes a producer credit here.) The supporting cast, meanwhile, could hardly be tastier, blending trustily weathered character actors like Sam Shepard, Richard Jenkins and James Gandolfini, more ragged, unpredictable talents like Ray Liotta, Garret Dillahunt, a bristly relative newcomer in Scoot McNairy ("Monsters") and, most excitingly of all, Dominik's compatriot Ben Mendelsohn, who recently killed in "Animal Kingdom." Not a lot of room for the ladies here, mind.

Brit Marling in "Sound of My Voice"

Credit: Fox Searchlight

This weekend the science-fiction meditation on faith, time travel and the human desire to subjugate oneself to something “greater,” Zal Batmanglij's “Sound of My Voice,” opens in theaters. And the film is in part the result of actress Brit Marling’s (“Another Earth”) desire to create interesting roles for herself.

Marling found that the types of characters she wanted to play simply were not available to her, and so she and Batmanglij, a college friend and long-time creative collaborator, chose to invent one. The film follows a Los Angeles couple, Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) as they attempt to uncover the truth about a cult leader (Marling) who claims to be from the future.

Those are the broad strokes of the plot. But what the film is really looking at is faith, a culture in which a sense of community has become painfully fragmented and the seductive and potentially dangerous power of a person who purports to have the answers so many are seeking.

Nicole Kidman in "The Paperboy."

Credit: Millennium Films

The director: Lee Daniels (American, 52 years old)

The talent: Thought Robert Pattinson was the unlikeliest name you'd see leading a Competition title at Cannes? Try Zac Efron out for size. The "High School Musical" teen idol takes on his first fully adult dramatic lead in this thriller, with several more experienced star names to back him up: Matthew McConaughey (in the first of his two Competition film appearances this year), Nick Nolte, John Cusack, Scott Glenn and, generating the most pre-premiere chatter about her performance, Nicole Kidman.

Meanwhile, sandpaper-voiced soul singer Macy Gray narrates. If you enjoyed her performance in Daniels's debut feature "Shadowboxer" and often find yourself wondering how she'd have fared in Mo'Nique's role in "Precious" -- in other words, if you're me -- this is very good news indeed.

Sissy Spacek at the Country Music Awards in 2010.

Credit: AP Photo/Evan Agostini

The Seattle International Film Festival has announced that it will recognize Oscar-winning actress Sissy Spacek and director William Friedkin as 2012 tribute honorees. Sissy Spacek will receive the festival’s award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting on June 7 and William Friedkin will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award on June 9.

“Sissy Spacek and William Friedkin have captivated audiences repeatedly throughout their careers with critically acclaimed works that boast multigenerational appeal,” said SIFF Artistic Director Carl Spence via press release.

Spacek has a particularly special place in my heart. Her first firm step onto the world stage was in “Badlands,” the debut film of one of my favorite director’s, Terrence Malick. But it was her Academy Award-winning turn as country singer Loretta Lynn in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” that really left an indelible mark.