Films seen so far this year: 385
Films seen this week: Legend of the Guardians – The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Blue Valentine, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Vampires Suck, Burroughs, The Next Three Days, Never Let Me Go, Secretariat, Biutiful, Conviction, The Mosquito Net, Armadillo, Lemmy

Superhero News
After skimming over some other snippets of superhero news in favour of the Harry Potter 2D decision in last week's blog, this week brought a whole new batch of freshly baked superhero news stories. First up is the news that, according to The Wrap, Rhys Ifans has signed on to play The Lizard in the Spider-Man reboot. That Ifans is definitely on board isn't in dispute, but as far as I can see, Sony have yet to confirm that he's playing Doctor Curt Connors. Personally, I'm against the idea – for one thing, Dylan Baker played Doctor Connors in two previous Spider-Man movies and was perfect casting, so it would be a shame to lose him. And for another thing, I'd rather see Ifans playing someone like Electro, The Vulture or, even better, The Scorpion.

The second piece of news was that Tom Hardy has been cast as the villain (or one of them, anyway) in Christopher Nolan's new Batman movie, which starts shooting in April / May. I used to really hate Tom Hardy (his early performances still infuriate me), but his performances in both Bronson and Nolan's Inception have really turned me around, so I'm officially excited about this. No word yet on who he'll be playing, which has naturally sent the blogosphere into something of a frenzy of speculation but my money's on The Riddler, Bane or Two-Face.

Finally, it was also announced this week that a new live-action TV series of The Incredible Hulk has gone into development. This is excellent news and it'll be interesting to see whether the series attempts to follow the comics (Hulk comics having come a long way from the “GRRR! HULK SMASH!” days) or whether they stick more closely to the Bill Bixby / Lou Ferrigno TV series (closely modelled on The Fugitive), where the Hulk helps someone out each week then moves on. Either way, I hope they keep The Hulk's iconic twinkly piano music.

Trailerwatch: Unstoppable
Judging by the trailer for Unstoppable, Denzel Washington must have really resented John Travolta getting all the train-based action in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. Here he plays train driver Frank Barnes, who's saddled with rookie co-driver Will Colson (Chris
Pine) on the very day that, whoops, a runaway train goes out of control. Not just any old runaway train though, oh no. A runaway train carrying a cargo of poison gas and combustible liquids that could take out an entire city. And -oh noes!- there's a bus-full of schoolkids on the track! Or something. This being a Tony Scott movie (does Denzel work with anyone else these days?), you pretty much know what to expect, but even so, the trailer gives away way too much. Still, Denzel can do this sort of thing in his sleep and he seems to have good chemistry with Pine (who's, like, so hot right now), so this could be fairly decent. It also has Rosario Dawson in it (as an improbably glamorous train controller), if you like that sort of thing. Hilariously, the trailer claims the film is “inspired by true events”. Gee, I wonder which parts they made up? Opens here November 24th.

Top 10 Films On Release This Week (as recommended by me):
Only one new entry this week, but what a new entry – David Fincher's The Social Network is, for my money, one of the top five films of the year and is my third favourite, behind Winter's Bone (still on general release so catch it while you can) and Dogtooth (out now on DVD – see previous blog). I've dropped Scott Pilgrim from the list as it seems to have disappeared from London cinemas but you can probably still catch it on a second run somewhere.

Elsewhere you can still read our semi-exclusive interview with Oliver Stone, our interviews with Made In Dagenham stars Jaime Winstone and Rosamund Pike, our interviews with Winter's Bone star and director Jennifer Lawrence and Debra Granik , our interview with Enter the Void director Gaspar Noe and our interview with Tamara Drewe cast Gemma Arterton, Tamsin Greig, Dominic Cooper and director Stephen Frears here. One day I'll have the full set of interviews to go with each of the top ten spots but four out of ten isn't bad (I could cheat by adding Wall Street 2: Electric Boogaloo to the top ten, but I'm not going to).

1. The Social Network
2. Winter's Bone
3. Enter the Void
4. Toy Story 3
5. World's Greatest Dad
6. The Town
7. Buried
8. Tamara Drewe
9. Made In Dagenham
10. A Town Called Panic

DVD Of The Week: Greenberg (out now, RRP £15.99)
This week's DVD of the Week is Greenberg, written and directed by Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding). Ben Stiller stars as depressive part-time carpenter Roger Greenberg, who comes to LA to house-sit for his brother (Chris Messina) and strikes up a relationship with his brother's personal assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig). Meanwhile, Roger reconnects with his old friend Ivan (Rhys
Ifans) and obsessively pursues his ex-girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), despite the fact that he's meant to be dating Florence. This is an enjoyable character study that makes up for its relative lack of plot with a superbly written script and terrific performances from Stiller, Gerwig and Ifans. It's not the easiest film to watch (Greenberg is a difficult character to warm to) and it's certainly not the laugh-out-loud comedy you might be expecting but there are some terrific scenes and it's ultimately rather moving.

The disappointing extras package includes: a 3 minute behind-the-scenes featurette (including very brief interviews with the cast), a 2 minute featurette on the LA locations and a one-minute featurette with Baumbach explaining how he approached Greenberg like a novel. This feels very much like padding and both the latter featurettes could have been slotted into the first, only then it would have looked like the film only had one extra. It's a shame, because Greenberg could really have used a commentary and some deleted scenes and out-takes wouldn't have gone amiss either.