First Look: George Clooney In ‘The Descendants’ & New Photo Of ‘A Dangerous Method’


Update: “The Descendants” image removed by request.

Yes, we may be here all day with first look photos thanks to the 2011 Toronto Film Festival. Deal with it. 🙂

We have seen the poster and trailer for Alexander Payne‘s latest bittersweet dramedy, “The Descendants,” but now we have our first official still image. It’s of George Clooney next to his daughter played by Shailene Woodley. The film also stars Beau Bridges, Judy Greer and Matthew Lillard.

The TIFF website says, “George Clooney plays the leader of a storied Hawaiian family as they are forced to decide what to do with their last, vast parcel of land. At the same time he learns a secret about his critically ill wife. From the director of ‘Sideways.’”

Here’s the TIFF press release info on Payne’s film: From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning Sideways, set in Hawaii, “The Descendants” is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney), an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.

It’s 115 minutes long and there’s no word on who wrote the score yet, but we assume a good guess would be Rolfe Kent who scored all of Payne’s last three films.

Then there’s a new photo of Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender in David Cronenberg‘s “A Dangerous Method.” It’s the third consecutive collaboration between Mortensen and Cronenberg, and it’s adapted from Christopher Hampton’s 2002 stage play concerning the turbulent relationship between Carl Jung (Fassbender) and his mentor Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) as they struggle to treat a troubled patient (Kiera Knightley). Also, as we’ve noted recently, it’s vaguely similar to an unmade Terrence Malick film that tracks almost the same subject.

Fox Searchlight is releasing “The Descendants” in limited release on November 23 and Sony Pictures Classics will deliver “A Dangerous Method” likely some time in the fall. Here’s the trailer to Cronenberg’s film and here’s the trailer for Payne’s.

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