Director Baz Luhrmann is currently hard at work adapting F. Scot Fitzgerald’s famous novel The Great Gatsby, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio. We’ve gotten the first image of DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, in a shot with co-stars Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire. The Great Gatsby is scheduled for release later this year.

“Satori” means “understanding” and stems from the word “kensho”, a Japanese term used in Zen, meaning “seeing into one’s true nature.”

The movie is in development with Leonardo DiCaprio as Nicholas Hel, a Westerner raised in Japan by a martial arts expert. The expert is a genius at Go, the complex chess-like Japanese game.

Hel kills his master in an act of devotion to prevent his prosecution as a war criminal. Hel ends up in prison for the deed and gets caught up in the chaos of post-WWII as the U.S., Soviet Union, France and China maneuver for power in Southeast Asia in the early 1950s.

Added to the mix is the CIA offers him a ticket out of jail, providing, if he kills the Soviet commissioner to China.

Martin Scorsese’s hackery knows no bounds. Whoring himself out to any genre isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it was the norm in the 1940′s; just look at Howard Hawks’s filmography), but when he ends up making shallow dreck like The Aviator and Shutter Island, you can’t help but feel he’s be better off sticking to writing film essays and documenting rock gods like Bob Dylan. And now it seems that Scorsese, fresh from his 3D kiddie movie Hugo (out in November), is setting his sights on remaking The Gambler.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese is planning to team up with writer William Monahan and cast Leo DiCaprio as the lead. The good news is that these three collaborated on the director’s best film in 15 years, The Departed (which wasn’t astounding but certain leagues ahead of everything else he has come out with recently).

The original 1974 film involves a New York English professor (who ironically teaches the Dostoyevsky novella which the movie is an adaptation of) who has a crippling addiction to gambling. James Caan played the lead role which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Hopefully, Scorsese and Monahan can bring something new and fresh to a story that’s over 140 years old, and not just rehash something familiar or superficially homaging a classier era.

George Clooney picked up the rights to direct a big-screen adaptation of the off-Broadway play Farragut North about three years ago.  He had aspirations to cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. 

Today Clooney’s plans to direct the political drama about campaign dirty tricks written by former Democratic political operative Beau Willimon seems to have jelled.  He hopes to start production in February with a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti.  Even Chris Pine might join the production playing Stephen Myers, which Pine played on stage in LA.

According to Vulture via ACIN, first reported this development, Clooney has offers out to Evan Rachel Wood (to play a teen staffer with whom Myers has a sexual dalliance) and Marisa Tomei (for the role of a probing journalist). We also hear Clooney plans take a small role in the movie.  

There are more facts to this production such as Clooney take on a minor role with Vulture guessing the political candidate.

The Matrix Trilogy mash up with Inception for a pretty cool epic effect by Nick Bosworth.  I like Keanu Reeves with Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice because his voice is stronger in tone, fits the image.

Everyone will be in line for Christopher Nolan’s Inception this weekend. I was passed this clip from Rotten Tomatoes capturing the good ol’ days of Leo in three minutes or less. What was your favorite movie? Basketball Diaries? Titanic? Shutter Island? The Aviator?

Virginia Madsen signed on to star with Amanda Seyfried in the medieval thriller Red Riding Hood. Madsen will play the mother of Seyfried’s character. 

Catherine Hardwicke is directing the supernatural thriller that also stars Lukas Haas, Shiloh Fernandez, Julie Christie and Gary Oldman. David Leslie Johnson wrote the script, which is set in a village haunted by a werewolf. 

The movie is set for March 11, 2010 release date. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way banner is producing.

An Inception character trailer hit the web today and is being described as a spoiler at many movie web sites.  I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to say all that much, but gives a good idea of what to expect when you go to see the movie.

Here is a new international trailer for Inception that aired on Japanese television during an interview with Ken Watanabe. You will hear the interviewer and Watanabe talking toward the end of the trailer. If you speak Japanese, you will know what they are saying. If you don’t speak Japanese, you will not know what they are saying.

The trailer has new footage  and shares more of the story. The movie opens in theaters July 16, 2010.