Feb 26 2011 10:17 PM EST
By Brian Warmoth, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Director Christopher Nolan told Aaron Eckhart personally that “Dark Knight Rises” script wouldn’t have a part for him. Eckhart took the news in stride, though, and the nominee for Best Male Lead at Saturday night’s (February 26) Independent Spirit Awards said he expects the movie will do just fine without him — even if Nolan won’t tell him what will be going down onscreen.

“I was just with Chris, and he’s pretty tight-lipped about things,” Eckhart told MTV News on the red carpet outside the Spirit Awards.

The man who played Harvey Dent and ushered the character into madness as Two-Face in “The Dark Knight” wouldn’t admit to disappointment over not returning for the new Batman sequel. In fact, he claimed to have seen Two-Face’s omission coming.

“I never intended to come back,” Eckhart said. “That’s Heath [Ledger]‘s movie. It should live solo, and Chris is gonna go on.”

Nolan’s third Batman movie will include , best known in the Batman universe for her villainess alter ego Catwoman. Eckhart expressed high hopes for her.

“I think Anne Hathaway is going to be wonderful,” Eckhart stated. The closest he would come to complaining about his absence from “The Dark Knight Rises” was to joke about sucker-punching Nolan after hearing that Harvey Dent wouldn’t appear.

Eckhart lost in the Male Lead category to “127 Hours” star James Franco at the Spirit Awards, though judging by the gracious response he gave about the Bat-films going on without him, he seemed like he must be at ease with passing the spotlight around.

Eckhart made himself available last year, just in case Nolan had a change of heart, but now that the script is getting finished, and the big remaining casting searches seem to be limited to females, it’s probably safe to consider Eckhart politely and amicably finished as a Bat-villain.

Source: MTV.com (video at the source)

Here are more interviews coming in from the press junket of “Battle: Los Angeles”, including one from the set.

Access Hollywood has posted an interview with Aaron talking about Battle: Los Angeles and possibly a sequel.

Feb 24, 2011 by Roth Cornet

Battle: Los Angeles opens early next month, and yesterday we were given some early insight into what to expect from this latest version of an alien-invasion tale from the film’s star Aaron Eckhart, at the Los Angeles press junket.

Eckhart stressed that it was vitally important to both he, and director Jonathan Liebesman, to infuse the film with a sense of realism saying that, “The goal was: this is a war movie, a documentary style war movie – with aliens in it.”

The actor went on to make a comparison to director Chris Nolan’s approach to the Batman franchise, and The Dark Knight in particular. He takes note of how the film utilizes intimate physical locations as a backdrop, rather than falling back on extensive CGI destruction of more archetypal vistas (like the Hollywood sign) to tell the story. He feels that the local feel helps to ground the film in the real world:

“It’s the same thing with The Dark Knight, you know Chris (Nolan) uses green screen, but the movie doesn’t rely on green screen, so you always get that feeling from Chris that this movie is real, and that’s why it adds that depth and texture. I think that it’s the same thing with this film.”

Jonathan Liebesman agrees that the raw, stripped down, filmmaking techniques help to heighten the stakes for both the actors – as well as the audience. It is a style that the director found extremely effective for this film and one he plans to utilize, to varying degrees, in his future projects.

“I learned a lot from doing it, it’s great because it gives the actors freedom. Again, it helped me elevate what was on the page. It’s a style I am going to take forward into my next movie (Wrath Of The Titans, the sequel to last years Clash Of The Titans) but definitely tweak, because the next thing will require different things. I mean this is embedded footage with a Platoon, that’s the vibe of this movie.”

As a mythological tale, Wrath of The Titans, will likely require a scope and majesty that would have been inappropriate for Battle: Los Angeles. Read more on Liebesman’s plans for Wrath of The Titans, including how he plans to adjust his shooting techniques for a scheduled 3D post-conversion, HERE.

As for Battle: Los Angeles, look for an article on the “real” battle Los Angeles (a UFO siting on the coast of Santa Monica at the onset of WWII) early tomorrow – as well as continuing coverage of the film in the weeks to come.

In the interim, take a look at the most recent poster for Battle: LA below. The image gives the viewer a sense of how this film works as a hybrid war/alien-invasion movie.

Battle: Los Angeles opens in theaters on March 11th.

Source: Screen Rant

Here’s a new clip from Battle: L.A. Enjoy!

Source: IGN

Here is the first clip from Battle: Los Angeles!

Source: Yahoo! Movies

The promotion for Battle: Los Angeles is very much under way…

Firstly, here’s the Battle: Los Angeles YouTube Channel.

Secondly, an unknown aircraft hovers over the 110 Freeway:

Lastly, make sure you check out the Battle: Los Angeles Facebook page to play the B:LA Game where you have a chance to win some awesome Sony products including Blu-ray players, a PS3 system and much more!

Here’s a short article about the filming for The Expatriate in Montreal. Below is a rough translation with some sentences fixed.

The year looks promising
Source: Canoe QC

It is too early to know if the right words of Paul Giamatti will inspire other producers to shoot in Quebec, but the Office of Film and Television has several shootings in their diary in 2011.

[...........]

In March, the team will run for four weeks with Transfilm for their new thriller, The Expatriate, a production of $15 million that will include Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight, The Black Dahlia).

“It tells the story of a former CIA who quits his job to find his 13 year old daughter, but his past catches up,” says co-producer of the film (with Claude Leger), Jonathan Vanger.

The film is a coproduction with Belgium and the team will travel to Brussels just to shoot scenes for a period of three weeks.

MovieWeb has posted a TV spot for “Battle: Los Angeles”. Check it out!

“Rabbit Hole” will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 19, 2011.

You can pre-order the DVD ($18.99) and Blu-ray ($27.99) discs on Amazon.