'Captain America' first look: Chris Evans in his full costume

As you may have see via some blurry, scanned photos today on the blogosphere, this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly includes an exclusive first look at Chris Evans in his full Captain America suit in this summer’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Well, here’s the real, clean, clear, and expanded photo. If it looks strikingly different than the classic Captain America get-up — bold colors, flimsy material, a mask with weird little wings — that’s definitely by design. “You can’t really take him seriously in his flag pajamas,” director Joe Johnston told EW in last year’s exclusive first look cover story on the film. So instead, the hero’s main uniform was designed to resemble a tricked-out airman’s jumpsuit, the “A” on the helmet and star on the chest modest in size, the colors muted. It took Evans about 25 minutes to suit up. “He likes to do it all by himself,” explained costume designer Anna Sheppard. “I think it helps him feel like a super hero.” The film hits theaters July 22

Photos from Season of the Witch

The Season of the Witch managed to become one of the most anticipated. We Write Season Of the Witch Reviewthat you can check.

XIV century. In Europe, rampant plague. Blamed for the deadly disaster recognize defenseless girl (Foy), suspecting her of witchcraft. Dying Cardinal asks Knight Bemena (Cage) to deliver a witch in the remote abbey, where her charms must be destroyed.

Seven riders and carriage with an iron cage in which the accused imprisoned, sent on a dangerous journey. Soon the Knights are aware that their comely companion and true – not a man, a very fiend. Soldiers to be fierce battle with the evil spirits, which they could not imagine even the most horrible nightmare …

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Robert Shien, Claire Foy, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham, Rebecca Kennedy, Juliet Reeves, Christopher Lee and others 

SEASON OF THE WITCH” FX PHOTOS & COMMENTS

Though the Nicolas Cage medieval horror flick SEASON OF THE WITCH failed to work box-office (black) magic last weekend, the film at least spotlighted some snazzy CGI FX gags by Tippett Studio (the TWILIGHT and JURASSIC PARK films, PIRANHA 3D, DRAG ME TO HELL, etc.), including (SPOILER ALERT!) the heroes’ climactic battle with a winged demon. The Oscar-winning company shared some exclusive SEASON OF THE WITCH creature photos with Fango (see below the jump), and members of the Tippett FX team answered a few questions about the shop’s infernal contributions to the Dominic Sena-directed movie.

FANGORIA: What were your marching orders on SEASON OF THE WITCH?

BLAIR CLARK, VISUAL FX SUPERVISOR: We were asked to come up with a series of different designs for the demon and a design for a partial transformation of the girl [Claire Foy]into that creature, then complete the shots of the transformation, and the demon fighting Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman in the final battle. Our visual effects supervisor Eric Leven and data supervisor Eric Marko joined overall visual effects supervisor Adam Howard and visual effects producer Nancy St. John in Shreveport, Louisiana to shoot the additional footage for the third act.

FANG: How closely was Tippett Studio involved in the designs of the demon?

NATE FREDENBURG, ART DIRECTOR: We became involved very late in the film, so we had a very short development phase, but there had been no design work done on the demon when we came on. When we asked what they were looking for, we were told, “You know, a demon.” So it was an open playing field.

FANG: What were the inspirations for the design?

FREDENBURG: The demon was identified as Baal, so we started there. We looked at both old engravings of Baal and more contemporary renditions to familiarize ourselves with the range of interpretations. We decided this demon needed to be derived from old manuscripts to best support the story, so we leaned toward a classic representation.

FANG: Was it difficult coming up with something new and unique? What attributes did you want to give the demon to make it stand out from past devil creatures?

FREDENBURG: It’s always a challenge to find a fresh approach to well-established characters and monsters. Demons are amalgamations of our worst fears, and we expect them to have certain qualities. So we fully embraced the classic horns and wings you would expect. The demon possesses a girl throughout the film, so we decided to give it a more feminine look. It was also supposed to be ancient and [have gone] through many trials and tribulations in its quest to destroy the books, so we gave it a desiccated and tattered look.

FANG: What was the greater challenge: making it walk, fly or talk?

JIM BROWN, ANIMATION SUPERVISOR: Walking was the greatest challenge. Walks are always difficult with bipeds because audiences are very used to looking at walks and will immediately call out something that doesn’t look “right.” Then if you add wings, cloven feet and painful convulsions, it becomes a difficult task to create a believable walk that sells the weight, balance and emotion of the demon.

FANG: How long does it take to create a CGI sequence like SEASON OF THE WITCH’s finale?

CLARK: After the demon design was approved and ready for production, we started working on shots in early September and finished mid-November 2010.

FANG: What kind of stuff will Tippett Studio be creating for the upcoming PRIEST?

CLARK: We are working on shots of vicious, slimy, vampire goodness. Yum!

Season Of The Witch; A plague on all their houses

As if you haven’t had enough turkey over ­Christmas, January is a traditional dumping ground for atrocious ­Hollywood movies, and the first two U.S. ­blockbusters of the year fall straight into that category. 

Nicolas Cage can be a great actor (as in Leaving Las Vegas) or an endearingly nutty one (Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans). Never before has he looked tired and depressed about being in front of the camera. 

To understand his leading performance in Season Of The Witch, so subdued that he appears to be under the influence of horse tranquillisers, it is helpful to know that Cage appears to have money problems. Despite earning $20 million a picture, he recently had to sell a castle he purchased and ­renovated near Bath. 

Watch the wig: Nicolas Cage's bad hairpiece is just one of many bad things in the film

He just lost his Las Vegas mansion to a bank, and both his New Orleans homes in a foreclosure auction. Cage has also become increasingly eccentric. He recently ­purchased a two-headed snake and announced that the only animals he will eat are those leading ‘dignified’ sex lives. 

In light of this information, it becomes easier to understand why he took on the role of a 14th-century knight but decided to play him with a slurred voice and defiantly modern U.S. accent, beneath his barmiest wig yet — a Shirley Temple-style ­monstrosity of long, blond ringlets that degenerates over the course of the movie into strands of ­seaweed coated in engine grease. 

He and his best friend (played by former Hellboy Ron Perlman) play wise-cracking Crusaders who love killing Muslims. The fi

rst part of the movie is Lethal Weapon with ­crossbows, and these two are as authentically medieval as an armour-plated iPad.

Trials and tribulations: The characters have to battle wolves, Black Death... but resemble Monty Python rather than heroes

A few hundred computer-­generated killings later, they are disillusioned with all that action stuff. A dozen years of pillaging, rape, decapitation and ­dismemberment have led them to one momentous conclusion: ‘The killing of the women and children must stop!’ 

These guys may not be quick on the uptake, but their belated moral stand lands them in ­trouble with the authorities, in the form of a dying cardinal — Christopher Lee, sensibly ­making himself unrecognisable beneath hideous plague pustules. 

Our heroes’ task, if they wish to avoid execution, is to deal with an alleged witch — that’s Claire Foy, the lovely and talented young actress who played Little Dorrit on TV but who, in her big-screen debut, is blamed for single-handedly ­causing the Black Death. 

Historians may be especially impressed with this achievement, since the first outbreak of bubonic plague happened more than 70 years after the last ­Crusade, but hey, who’s counting? 

The lads’ job is to escort her to a remote monastery, where she will be put on trial and  exorcised. They are accompanied by a ­cliched and highly expendable supporting cast: a pervy priest (Stephen Campbell Moore); a good knight (Ulrich Thomsen); an insufferable altar boy (Robert Sheehan); and an unreliable guide — that’s British actor Stephen Graham, inexplicably attempting the accent of a Brooklyn cab driver.  

Director Dominic Sena claims to have been inspired by Ingmar ­Bergman’s The  Seventh Seal. 

But the adventures on screen bear more of a resemblance to Monty Python And The Holy Grail, especially when the ­travellers battle fake wolves — only slightly less risible than killer rabbits — or reach the obligatory treacherous rope bridge over a bottomless abyss. 

Sena previously worked for ­big-money producers Jerry Bruck­heimer (Gone In 60 Seconds) and Joel Silver (Swordfish and ­Whiteout). Here, he appears to have fallen on hard times and lower budgets. The armour seems made out of cardboard. The swords look ­plastic. The backdrops resemble stage scenery. 

The script is by someone with the improbable name of Bragi F. Schut, who does not seem to have bothered to do much ­homework on medieval speech patterns. I’m reasonably sure that ‘Let’s get the hell outa here!’ and ‘I’ve saved your ass’ are anachronisms. 

If only the rest of the film weren’t so boring, the so-bad-­it’s-good finale — which involves ­flying zombie priests and one of our heroes head-butting the Devil — is almost worth the price of admission. 

On a genuinely historical note, this is the first film I’ve seen about the bubonic plague that blames the disease not on rats and fleas, but on Satanic ­possession, and the first modern work about witchcraft to side with medieval zealots who ­condemned innocent peasant girls to death. I’m not convinced this represents progress.

Season of the Witch star Ron Perlman says acting helped him get past twisted insecurities

The aptly-named Death Mountains in the Austrian Alps in the middle of winter seem a lot farther from Washington Heights than just the other side of the planet, but somehow that's just where native New Yorker Ron Perlman found himself filming his latest movie, "Season of the Witch."

"We shot a whole bunch of stuff at night, where we're chasing the witch when she escapes from the cage," says the 60-year-old actor. "And I think we shot that sequence over six nights, culminating in a scene where there's a horrific cesspool, a graveyard of these plague-ridden bodies. And I think the temperature dropped that night to 15 below zero Celsius."

Even worse than the New York blizzard.

It was all worth it, he says, for the chance to work opposite Nicholas Cage on the medieval horror movie about a pair of disillusioned Crusaders forced to transport a teenage girl, suspected of being a witch who brought about the Bubonic plague, to trial.

But how does the son of an electronics teacher and an employee of the City Clerk's office make it all the way out there?

"He just gets really, really lucky," says Perlman. "It's like a Dr. Suess story, 'Oh the Places I Will Go.'"

At Manhattan's George Washington High School, Perlman says, he was just an awkward kid, uncomfortable in his own skin who found a haven in school shows by pretending to be other people.

Outside of school, you could find the teenage Perlman on the basketball court in Inwood Park playing pickup basketball with a young Lew Alcindor Jr., years before his legendary NBA career as Kareem Aubdul-Jabbar.

His dad, forced to give up his career as a jazz musician for electronics once he had a family, pushed his son to follow his dream. Perlman himself wasn't too sure.

"Everybody I knew who was a professional actor had horrific lives: had no money, were eating spaghetti seven days a week in clothes that had holes in them," he says.

Nevertheless, he toiled off-off-off Broadway through the '70s -- and once in a while as a "torch carrier" in a Broadway show. Those lean years weren't all bad -- he met his wife, jewelry designer Opal Stone, while he worked a day job at a friend's boutique in the Village. ("She walked in to buy a pair of earrings and she never left," he says 35 years later.)

The turning point for Perlman came with an add looking for "freaks" to play cavemen in the 1981 movie, "Quest for Fire." The next thing he knew he was on location in Kenya.

That led to two decades of roles that planted him in the makeup chair: a hunchback in "The Name of the Rose," the lead in the cult TV series, "Beauty and the Beast," and as "Hellboy"  in two movies.

"Because I was a late bloomer, it took me a long time to be comfortable in my own skin," he says. "The only way I could have functioned as an actor especially in those early days was doing all that mask work, where I got to go so far up field from my own twisted insecurities."

Front and center as the star of FX's motorcyle gang drama series, "Sons of Anarchy," Perlman is over that insecurity.

He's not over New York, though, even though he spends most of his time in LA. The first thing he does after the plane touches down on the tarmac is make a beeline for the nearest Sabretts' hot dog cart. If it's baseball season, and the Yankees are home, you'll find him in the Bronx.

"I will always consider this home and I will always maintain a residence here, " he says. "My wife is a diehard New Yorker. And my daughter (singer/actress/Brooklynite Blake Perlman) is a die-hard New Yorker, and my mom doesn't know how to live anywhere else but here. "

His mother made it down for the celebrity premiere of "Season of the Witch" at the Loews Lincoln Square, beaming at the chance to meet Nicholas Cage, and proud as heck of her son.

"But she still thinks I should find something secure to do if this acting doesn't work out," Perlman says as he walked through his old neighborhood on the morning after opening. "Like a good civil service job."

Ivan Reitman on Ghostbusters 3

When do we get to see 'Ghostbusters 3'?" You know it's the first thing you'd ask director Ivan Reitman. ComingSoon.net got a chance to sit down with the man who brought us Slimer to chat about his new film No Strings Attached. Sure, we talked about the film, (check back for our interview soon) but there was no way we were leaving the room without getting the scoop on whether we'd see the proton packs again. There has been plenty of news, from who's read the script and who hated it to whether Venkman's son would be taking over the business. Here's what Reitman has to say.

ComingSoon.net: So, you know we have to ask you what's going on with "Ghostbusters 3," right?
Ivan Reitman: [laughs] We have a really good script, but Bill (Murray) has to read it. He hasn't read it. There has been all kinds of chatter online about him reading it and not liking it. He has not read a thing. He's never read anything. And I just sent it to him. So we'll see. God knows how long that will take. But we'll see.

CS: There have been a ton of stories online. Lots of back and forth...
Reitman: There is almost nothing that is accurate online about that film. Will you write that for me?

CS: I will!
Reitman: There is nothing... I mean, all these stories... there has been a ton of stuff about casting, about who's in... none of it is true.

CS: The whole Sigourney Weaver thing about her son taking over and Bill Murray coming back as a ghost...
Reitman: Oh, no, yeah... I mean, Sigourney Weaver has a role in this movie. All the original characters have parts. As well as a whole bunch of new characters... it's got a really good story, this one. Maybe the best of the whole series. I hope we get to do it.

True Grit Tops Slow Weekend Box Office

The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.

The holidays were officially over as the box office took a sharp decline with only one movie grossing $15 million, that being Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit (Paramount), which topped the box office after three weeks of playing second fiddle to the Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro comedy threequel Little Fockers (Universal). Starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, the acclaimed Western crossed the $100 million mark this weekend, the Coens' first movie to do so, and with $110.4 million under its belt, it's officially the third highest grossing Western of all time and should pass Wild Wild West later this week to be #2.

After a solid run through the holidays, Little Fockers dropped to second place with $13.8 million, down 46% from last week with a total gross of $124 million.

Nicolas Cage's action-thriller Season of the Witch (Relativity Media) opened in third place with $10.7 million in 2,816 theaters, averaging roughly $3,800 per venue. 

Disney's FX-driven action flick TRON: Legacy dropped to third place with $9.8 million, bringing its one month total to $148 million domestically. It has grossed $291 million worldwide.

The big breakout of the weekend was Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman, which moved up four places to fifth, grossing $8.3 million with a minimal theater expansion. Down just 6% from the holiday weekend, the much-discussed award contender has grossed $61.4 million to date and will be expanding into roughly 500 further theaters for the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. 

After playing for a few weeks in a platform release, the Gwyneth Paltrow musical drama Country Strong (Sony/Screen Gems) expanded nationwide into 1,424 theaters where it brought in a decent $7.3 million to take sixth place.

The Mark Wahlberg-Christian Bale boxing drama The Fighter (Paramount) dropped to seventh place with $7 million and $57.8 million since opening in December. 

Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (Weinstein Company), starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, moved up two notches to eighth place with $6.8 million in 758 theaters and $33.3 million total. 

It came out just ahead of the family film Yogi Bear (Warner Bros), which dropped all the way down to ninth place with $6.8 million and $75.6 million total. 

Disney's animated Tangled dropped 47% to take tenth place with $5.2 million and $176 million total.

The Top 10 grossed an estimated $90.8 million, which was down 38% from 2010's opening weekend where James Cameron's Avatar remained on top for a fourth weekend with $50.3 million, followed by two other returning movies that brought in $16.5 million each. The top new movie was the vampire flick Daybreakers, opening with $15.1 million, more than this weekend's top movie.