The cast of Iron Man 3 continues to grow as director Shane Black’s production is gearing up to start shooting next month. Variety reports that James Badge Dale (The Pacific) is the latest actor to join the third installment of the Iron Man franchise.

The actor is set to take on the role Eric Savin, also known as Coldblood. In the Marvel universe, Savin is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army put in charge of Project: Ultra. After he steps on a land mine, cybernetic surgery is performed on him, and Savin’s resurrected as the cyborg Coldblood.

While there is few details on the plot of Iron Man 3, we do know that it will be based in one way or another on the storyline of Warren Ellis’ Extremis series in which a newly engineered nanotechnology leads to the spread of a virus. Kingsley is set to play the main antagonist while Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall will play scientists Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen respectively.

I’m impressed by Shane Black’s casting so far and Dale should be another excellent addition to the fantastic cast. I really hope Iron Man 3 will wash the bad taste from the underwhelming second installment of the franchise. Dale will next be seen in Robert Zemeckis’ Flight and in World War Z alongside Brad Pitt.

What do you think? Are you a fan of James Badge Dale?

To mention a few obligatory runners-up before we get things started, some of these mothers include, but are not limited to the evil-ass Marietta Fortune from David Lynch’s unsung near-masterpiece Wild at Heart, the manipulating incestuous Lilly Dillon in Grifters, the super mom Helen Parr protecting her equally super kids in The Incredibles, the ever-irascible Mrs. Gump, mother dearest to her doofus son Forrest, and of course the woman who makes you exclaim Throw Momma From the Train!  And now, without further ado, I give you the ten movie moms you do not want to cross.

Special Mention goes to Norma Bates in Psycho

Since Norma really wasn’t herself that day, I will include her here as a very special mention, instead of on the list proper, because the old broad definitely needs to be given some kind of recognition here – for after all, a boy’s best friend is his mother – and this particular best friend is a doozy to please.

10. Eleanor Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate

As brilliantly portrayed by Angela Lansbury in the original 1962 classic Frankenheimer film, what we have here is one gigantic, manipulative bitch of a mother, who is not above the mental manipulation of her own son in order to fulfill her misguided wicked goals.

9. Pamela Vorhees in Friday the 13th

Poor Mrs. Vorhees was just trying to avenge her son. She wasn’t that bad, right?  Okay, she was completely stark-raving batshitcrazy, and no one should be surprised at what her son grew up to become, but does that mean she should not get a mother’s day card?

8. Mother in Mother

Her son, a bit slow on the uptake, is charged with a brutal murder which he may or may not have committed. The police seem to be quite ineffectual in getting to the truth of the case. So what does this mother of a mother do?  She stops at nothing to find, and punish those she believes may be behind this heinous crime.

7. Edwina “Ed” McDunnough in Raising Arizona

She wants that baby!  And she will not stop until she has that baby. In this  early film by the Coen Brothers, Holly Hunter’s would-be mommy browbeats her ex-con of a hubby, Nicholas Cage, into kidnapping a baby from a local millionaire. Hilarity ensues. And when someone threatens that baby, look the hell out.

6. Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest

The one mother on the list that is actually a real person, the iconic Miss Crawford does not get the most rewarding of portrayals here, even if Faye Dunaway does a spectacular job at portraying the actress. But in her defense, Christina was told no wire hangers, so who is really at fault here.

Continue Reading 10 Movie Moms You Do Not Want To Cross >>

Transferring a novel to the silver screen is a tricky process. You have fans of the novel to please who often want a film that adheres fairly strictly to the novel, but you can’t shackle yourself to their wants, otherwise the film will be cinematically flaccid to general audiences. Payne has a special touch, and the filmmakers behind recent successes like “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “No Country For Old Men” appear to as well. Others don’t quite possess it however, and the amount of failed cinematic adaptations of novels is unfortunately high.

One recent example of a failed adaptation is the 2009 film “The Lovely Bones.” The pedigree was there. Based on the wildly popular novel “Alice Sebold” and directed by “Lord of the Rings” maestro Peter Jackson, the tale of a girl who solves her own tragic murder from another realm should have been a success. But Jackson, a tremendous filmmaker by all other accounts, simply had trouble juggling the emotions of this sensitive story. It didn’t help that he had a trio of unusually lackluster supporting turns from Mark Wahlberg (typically better in supporting roles than as a star), Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon.

Ron Howard’s 2006 adaptation of the Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code” was lambasted by critics upon its release. This response from the community was entirely merited. Whereas Brown’s novel never let up on its excitement levels, Howard’s film felt grounded for most of the film, and simply like a remake of the miserable “National Treasure” franchise at others. And if there’s such a thing as a bad Tom Hanks performance (which believe me, I thought that was a myth), it’s contained in this movie. Even when Tom Hanks is not at his best, he’s always interesting. He seems to be sleepwalking for a majority of this film. The chemicals used to maintain whatever that hairstyle was must have had an adverse effect on his talents.

Now this next pick of mine may construed as controversial, but I can’t help it: I hated “The Help.” Now before I get tarred and feathered, I’m not alone here. Tate Taylor’s 2011 adaption of Kathryn Stockett’s novel was one of the more divisive films of recent memory. While general audiences seemed to fall head over heels for this tale about a young woman determined to tell the stories of several black housemaids in the Jim Crow era south, many like me saw past the hooey and the sap and saw a movie that was manipulative, thinly drawn, thematically bloated and ultimately and most importantly naïve and underhanded in its interpretations of racial tensions. This was no fault of the performers, as the cast is uniformly excellent. Fault Disney for, um, Disneyfying this important story.

“The Help” managed to score a Best Picture nomination in 2012, thanks mostly to its exceptional box office performance. I don’t know how on earth “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” Stephen Daldry’s maudlin and messy adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s acclaimed novel, managed to score a similar nomination in the same year as well. Daldry’s corny, manipulative and pretentious treatment of Foer’s tale about a young autistic child trying to make one last connection with his father who died on September 11, was neither a hit with audiences or critics. But Oscar took notice. Maybe because it was indeed corny, manipulative and pretentious. This isn’t Daldry’s first novel to film violation either.

If Alexander Payne is the New York Yankees of the art, Stephen Daldry is a mediocre little league team. His 2008 adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s “The Reader” was as boring and limp as it was bewilderingly again, beloved by the academy. The story about a sexual relationship between a naïve teenaged boy and an illiterate Nazi prison guard is noteworthy only for the sensational performance given by Kate Winslet as the guard, but honestly, is she ever not sensational?

These are just a few examples of films that struggled to successfully transfer their source novel to the screen. Believe me, there are many more (I don’t even want to begin with “Battlefield Earth”). Alexander Payne can’t do them all I suppose. What are other terrible movie adaptations you can think of?

Author bio: Zack Mandell is a movie enthusiast and owner of www.movieroomreviews.com and writer of movie reviews such as The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. He writes extensively about the movie industry for sites such as Gossip Center, Yahoo, NowPublic, and Helium.

As you may already know, a Steve Jobs movie is already currently shooting with the unlikely Ashton Kutcher set to play the late technology mogul. Thankfully, this is a completely different project, much more prestigious and anticipated if I may say. For one, Sorkin comes with an impressive pedigree, having also written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for last year’s Moneyball.

Here is what Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment had to say in the press release:

“Steve Jobs’ story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we’re confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing.”

And now the speculation may begin as to who will portray Jobs. There were rumors late last year that former ER co-stars George Clooney and Noah Wyle were vying for the role but with Sorkin now officially attached, expect more big names to pop up in the coming days and weeks.

What do you think? Who should take on the role of Steve Jobs?

And she is not done diversifying her body of work as Variety reports that Adams is in negotiations to star in an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel Dark Places. The film will revolve around a woman who, at the age of 7, witnessed her family getting murdered and notoriously testified again her brother as the murderer. Twenty-five years later, a group obsessed with solving notorious crimes confronts her to uncover the truth about the crime.

The premise sounds a bit sketchy but having not read the book, I can’t really comment on where the story is going. Hopefully, Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah Keys), who wrote the script, will be able to make something out of this. The fact that Adams chose to star in this project is nonetheless a good sign.

The actress just wrapped Man of Steel as well as the baseball drama Trouble with the Curve with Clint Eastwood. She’s currently working on Spike Jonze’s untitled movie, and is set to appear in Paul Thomas Anderson’s much anticipated The Master later this year.

Read the synopsis for Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places:

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her.

The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club . . . and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer. [Amazon]