Last year, Stuart Blumberg unexpectedly penned an awards season darling, “The Kids Are All Right.” Blumberg’s resume pre-“Kids” was a mixed bag, with screenwriting credits for “The Girl Next Door” and “Keeping the Faith” to his name, along with a stint writing for “MADtv” – in short, not the sort of titles you associate with a writer who has now been nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. But “The Kids Are All Right” walked a delicate line of warm humor and hard dramatic truths, and Blumberg looks to be continuing that sort of work with his next film, “Thanks for Sharing.”

Blumberg has co-written the script for the film with Matt Winston, and will use the project as his directorial debut. The film is billed as a comedy that revolves around sex addicts. “Thanks for Sharing” will chronicle the rehabilitation of the addicts, as they work through a 12-step treatment program and attempt to form real relationships. Unlike Steve McQueen’s upcoming sex addict film, “Shame” starring Michael Fassbender, “Thanks for Sharing” looks to be a touch more light-hearted (at least, let’s hope). According to Variety and The Playlist, the film is now set to star Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Joely Richardson.

Paltrow will play businesswoman Phoebe, who ends up falling for Ruffalo’s character. Richardson will play Robbins’ wife, Katie. Though it’s unclear, it appears as if Paltrow, Ruffalo, and Robbins will play the apt-to-sharing sex addicts, with Richardson likely playing a bit of a straight man to the oversexed others.

The film is set to start filming next month in New York City.

Most Star Wars fans have committed every frame of George Lucas’s masterpieces to memory (I speak of the three original films, of course, not the largely reviled prequels). Whether it’s Darth Vader’s first dramatic appearance with his black cape flowing, Yoda using the force to lift Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing out of a Dagobah swamp, or a metal bikini-clad Princess Leia choking Jabba the Hutt with her leash, every moment in these epic tales is so well known, so iconic that they almost feel part of some Divine Order. So when a new tidbit shows up with our favorite characters, scenes that were shot but deleted from the original films, the effect can be jarring, almost sacrilegious! 

A never-released scene between Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) from the beginning of “The Empire Strikes Back” is being included on the upcoming “Star Wars: The Complete Saga” Blu-ray set (out on September 16). The scene takes place in a frigid corridor of a rebel base on the ice planet Hoth. The embattled Rebel Alliance is hiding out there as they plan their next move against the Galactic Empire. The sexual tension between Solo and Leia is off the charts but with so much at stake, and after experiencing so many chaotic setbacks in their struggle against Vader and his minions, the two rebel leaders are at each other’s throats. 

The dialogue in this deleted footage is crackling. “You’ve been so busy being a princess, you haven’t learned how to be a woman,” Solo snaps, his finger wagging in Leia's face. “I could have helped you!” Priceless! Many diehards feel that Lucas was right to delete this exchange, which becomes more bitter by the second. Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia looks genuinely hurt when Ford’s character pronounces her “as cold as this planet” and repressed sexual energy abounds as she spits back, “And you think you’re the one to apply some heat?” Showing Leia’s trademark feistiness, Fisher declares that Ford has “all the breeding of a bantha…and just about as much charm.” Ouch.

Take a look at the clip after the break:

In Part Two of our interview with Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy of "Warrior," the two actors digress more than a little -- about their past experience, their upcoming films "The Great Gatsby" (Edgerton) and "The Dark Knight Rises" (Hardy) and about the art and philosophy of being elbowed in the head.

In general, getting into the business, what were your hopes? What did you expect?

Edgerton: My expectations -- don't know whether it was I didn't back myself or because I came from a very small town -- but my expectations were that I would be a theater actor, and that's what I would be, and that I would never be in the movies. Then when I got a chance to be in the movies in Australia, I never imagined that I would end up in the movies here. I kept getting surprised by how far I could push things. When I got here, I felt like at some point recently I was like, 'Maybe I should actually start setting goals for myself.' I could achieve more if I actually had my eyes on the future rather than going, 'This is where the train stops, right here at the theater.' I've gone well beyond my expectations, and I'm very happy, and anything that happens from here I'm excited by and happy about. But I'm happy now that I feel like only now am I starting to get the challenges that I want to have as an actor. I often sat around on set of a little movie thinking, 'I wish I had his part.'

Martial arts champion and being a movie star: Is there any comparison there?

Edgerton: I reckon I'd be able to compare anything to anything else if you gave me enough time.

Did (director) Gavin O'Connor come to you (Hardy) before 'Bronson,' or after 'Bronson?'

Hardy: He hadn't seen 'Bronson' at that time, so I'm surprised that he came to me. I actually flew right out and knocked on his door about midnight one night to tell him why he should hire me to be Chuck Norris, because at the time when I read 'Warrior' the first time, I thought it was Chuck Norris he wanted. I stayed with him for a week, and we talked a lot about Marines and about 'The Smashing Machine,' his documentary, about UFC, and about acting process. What was interesting is that we bonded entirely on how to process, on acting method. I got a wooly hat, and I had it embroidered 'Gavin "The Work" O'Connor' because he's very interested in the work. His process is intrinsically his own. As actors, we have the opportunity to work with many directors. Directors only work with themselves and other actors; they never know what it's like to work with another director, so that relationship that one has with the director is entirely always the king. We spoke for a week about his process, which is the be-all-and-end-all. At the end of that, he totally went to bat for me to play Tom.

Like many of today’s moviegoers, I used to dismiss silent movies as melodramatic, poorly acted relics from the distant past. Worth saving for historical purposes, perhaps, but please don’t make me sit in a theatre and watch one. Then I saw  a screening of F. W. Murnau’s “Sunrise,” a 1927 film starring Janet Gaynor, and found it be one of the most exciting, engaging film experiences I’d ever had. (It’s no wonder Gaynor won the first-ever Best Actress Oscar for this film—she’s amazing!) I also became a fan of Buster Keaton’s “The General” (1926), Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” (1925), Erich von Stroheim’s “Greed” (1924), and Frank Borzage’s “Seventh Heaven” (1927), among many others. Fantastic acting, brilliant direction and cinematography—who needs sound?

There have been a few homages to the era since talkies came onto the scene (remember Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie?”) but none so appealing and gorgeous as “The Artist,” a new film by French director Michel Hazanavicius. Told completely in the style of a silent film, “The Artist” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year where its star, Jean Dujardin, won the Best Actor Award. 

The film is set in Hollywood between the years 1927 and 1931 and tells the story of Georges Valentin, an internationally famous movie star whose career begins to falter just as the fortunes of a young extra, Peppy Miller (played by the director’s wife, Bérénice Bejo) start climbing into the stratosphere. John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller, James Cromwell, and Missi Pyle are on hand as pitch-perfect Hollywood characters from the era.

The Weinstein Company will be releasing “The Artist” in the U.S. on November 23. A black-and-white movie with no dialogue may be a hard sell these days, and I don’t anticipate the film starting a trend, but I urge you to give this beauty a chance. Check out the the stunning trailer below:

Brian De Palma's "Scarface," ostensibly a remake of the Howard Hawks gangster classic, moves the iconic rise and fall crime opera from the tommy-gun gangster wars of the prohibition era to the cocaine wars of Florida in the eighties. In the process, De Palma, screenwriter Oliver Stone and star Al Pacino carved out a film that redefined a generation of gangster cinema.

See below for details on the insanely deluxe edition ($1000 retail) and footage from the August 23 cast reunion.

Pacino's Tony Montana, a Cuban criminal fresh from Castro's prisons looking for his piece of the pie in Miami, is a predator from the moment he hits the shore and Pacino is pure drive for success: get the money, get the power, and then you get the girl, is his mantra, and he pulls along his loyal immigrant comrade Manny (Steven Bauer) for the ride to the top.

Oliver Stone's screenplay keeps the general shape of the original story -- Tony's friendship with Manny, his fierce over protectiveness of his kid sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who isn't a virginal as he imagines and his obsession with the boss's ice-queen mistress (Michelle Pfeiffer), the trophy for the winner -- while rethinking it in terms of the Miami cocaine boom of the early eighties. It's a whole new spin on the immigrant story and the American Dream as an underworld nightmare and a fitting bookend to the two "Godfather" films. The façade of family loyalty, underworld authority and the mob code is trampled in the feral battle to get to the top of the cocaine mountain as Tony robs and murders his way to riches and power, and then numbs himself into a fantasy of invulnerability with his own product.