We recently brought you news about a screenplay that No Country for Old Men writer Cormac McCarthy surprised his agents with. The author’s first spec script is being called The Counselor, which is described as a dark legal drama set in the Southwest. The producers behind McCarthy adaptation The Road promised “sexual obsession,” two women intruding into a “masculine world,” and one of the scribe’s “most disturbing and powerful works” yet. We got excited, of course. Now Deadline is reporting that the screenplay finally has a director attached: Ridley Scott. Better yet is that the website believes there’s a “high likelihood” that Shame star Michael Fassbender will be toplining the production. McCarthy is apparently chatting with a number of high profile acting potentials for the “No Country for Old Men on steroids,” project — expected to go before the cameras on May 1. After the emotionally toiling sex addiction film, we think that Fassy can handle McCarthy’s tale about “a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down.” Don’t you?

Folded in among today’s DVD releases, presumably overlooked amid your Twilight sequels and Harold and Kumar 3D yuletides and “Shakespeare didn’t write his plays!” screeds, is one of 2011′s best films: The Sunset Limited, written by Cormac McCarthy, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, starring Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Wait, you might be thinking. (You might be!) What a fine pedigree! What an excellent cast! I would have gone to see that! Did it not play at my local art house or multiplex? No, hypothetical reader, it did not. It was made for HBO, and since Sunset Limited, based on McCarthy’s play, is primarily a two-handed conversation piece about race, class, mortality, and despair, it’s probably not surprising that it found a home on a pay cable network rather than at a Hollywood studio. But this is nothing new; dialogue and intellect-driven efforts like this migrated to television long ago, as studios lost interest in telling small stories.

Since they started airing in the mid-1960s, TV movies have taken risks — either on subject matter or on rising young talent. The results weren’t always commendable; there’s a reason that the phrase “made-for-TV movie” calls up images of Tori Spelling cowering on Lifetime, or broadcast networks airing simultaneous dramatizations of the lurid Amy Fisher story. But between the networks and cable, we’ve seen an assortment of genuinely beguiling television movies; we’ve gathered ten of our favorites after the jump, with plenty of room for yours in the comments. (And, just to keep it simple, we’ve steered clear of miniseries, documentaries, and films like The Believer that were intended for theatrical release but premiered on television instead).

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1. If you blinked during last night’s Super Bowl half-time show, then you might have missed MIA flipping off the crowd while performing “Gimme All Your Luvin” with Madonna and Nicki Minaj, but now it’s all that anyone is talking about. The official apology from NBC: “Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers.” [via THR]

2. Chronicle, Fox’s low-budget new movie about a group of teen boys with superpowers, topped the Super Bowl weekend box office (which is usually a total wasteland), taking in an estimated $22 million. Daniel Radcliffe’s thriller Woman in Black surprised everyone by coming in second place with $21 million, followed by The Grey, which made about $9.5 million. Not so lucky? That Drew Barrymore saves the whales movie. [via ArtsBeat]

3. The @CormacCMcCarthy Twitter account, which counts Margaret Atwood and Jack Dorsey among its followers, has been exposed as a hoax — news that isn’t entirely surprising given the famed novelist’s belief that “anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” [via Guardian]

4. Harrison Ford is in talks to resurrect his Rick Deckard character in Ridley Scott‘s new Blade Runner film. Does this mean that it’s going to be a sequel as opposed to a reboot? [via Vulture]

5. Here is that slightly-extended version of The Avengers trailer that debuted last night. There’s not a lot of new footage, but you do get a better look at Mark Ruffalo’s take on the Hulk and the army that Loki has amassed.

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1. Based on “public safety and quality of life concerns,” Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer has rejected a permit request from MTV to shoot upcoming episodes of a Jersey Shore spinoff featuring J-Woww and Snooki in her town. Smart lady. [via Fox News]

2. In other MTV-related news, the network is teaming up with Logo on It Gets Better, an hour-long special on the struggles of LGBT teens; hosted by Dan Savage, the show will chronicle the stories of three young people and include appearances by celebrities like Zachary Quinto, Margaret Cho, and Chaz Bono. [via EW]

3. Rumor has it that after the stock market closes today, Facebook will submit its paperwork to regulators for a $5 billion IPO, making it one of the biggest market debuts in US history. (For reference, Google’s IPO was a mere $2 billion.) [via The Daily Beast]

4. Taran Noah Smith — aka gawky Mark, the youngest and most forgettable of the Home Improvement brothers — was arrested last night and charged with a DUI and possession of hash. This is what happens when you’re a child star who grows up in the enormous shadow of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. [via Gawker]

5. It looks like Ridley Scott is interested in directing The Counselor, Pulitzer-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy’s first attempt at a spec script; given that the “disturbing and powerful” story features two women in its leading roles and is set in the Southwest, we think that the Thelma and Louise helmer could be an excellent fit. [via Vulture]

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The producers behind the Cormac McCarthy adaptation of post-apocalyptic drama The Road have made a deal with the author to produce his first spec script, The Counselor. The writer’s agents were apparently waiting for his next novel, but he delivered a screenplay instead — which is being described as a dark legal drama set in the Southwest. If you know McCarthy’s work, then you’ll already understand this won’t be some terrible John Grisham throwaway thing. Producer Steve Schwartz spoke to Deadline about the project, centering on a respected lawyer who gets sucked into the drug trade and fights to survive the ordeal:

“Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.”

The Road didn’t have the same command over audiences as the book, while No Country for Old Men remains the greatest adaptation of a McCarthy tale yet. Will a screenplay written by the scribe make it more difficult to translate on film? Some have suggested that McCarthy may be unfilmable, like Faulkner, but he’s vehemently disagreed with that sentiment in the past. When the Wall Street Journal asked the writer if his critically acclaimed Blood Meridian — which follows a teenage runaway amongst 19th century bounty hunters in the American Southwest who are recovering Indian scalps — was impossible to put to film, McCarthy had this to say:

“That’s all crap. The fact that’s it’s a bleak and bloody story has nothing to do with whether or not you can put it on the screen. That’s not the issue. The issue is it would be very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary.”

Here’s hoping they find the right filmmaker for the job. Care to speculate who might be right? Share your thoughts below.

As we all know, the world is supposed to end this year, dropping us all into a huge pit of who-knows-what. In an effort to be prepared, we’ve been thinking about what kind of post-apocalyptic world would best suit us — and since the end-date is a fantasy, we think it only fitting that the only resultant post-apocalyptic scenarios we consider be just as fictional. In our pop-culture focused minds, it just seems like it ought to work out that way. Accordingly, we’ve sifted through the many post-apocalyptic worlds in literature and film to find the best and the worst possible outcomes, at least in our eyes. But to each his own — would you rather live in Zombieland than in the Matrix? Or is your worst nightmare or best case scenario not represented here? Let us know in the comments.

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[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published May 18, 2011.] Jezebel-writer Anna North’s debut novel, America Pacifica, is out today. The story centers around an impoverished teenage girl who is struggling to survive on an increasingly toxic island in the Pacific Ocean after a future Ice Age sets in and freezes the mainland. Though the writing can be a little clunky — especially with respect to class issues — North provides good lens into the many ways an aggrieved soul can turn against the world, and how difficult it is to get back our dignity once we’ve lost it. With this in mind, we decided to run a post on books that expose the darker side of humanity — a roundup of the most disturbing novels and short stories through time, if you will.

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Recently, it was drawn to our attention that there exists an online bookstore whose wares are meant for dudes and dudes alone. Yes, it’s The Man Cave. As the site suggests, “guys do read – they like it, in fact.” Well, we knew that. What we did not know was that the kind of books guys like to read are things like manuals treat them like children (How Do You Light a Fart?) or scream Urban Outfitters bargain table (Sweet ’Stache: 50 Badass Mustaches and the Faces Who Sport Them) or are basically just pictures of scantily clad ladies (100 Sexiest Women in Comics) — actually, maybe we knew that last one. Our disappointment at the Man Cave’s offerings led us to create a pop-up bookstore (of sorts) of our own, a list of books that will ensure your own Man Cave shelves are covered in the very manliest of literature. After all, in our minds, there’s nothing more manly than a guy who reads good books. Maybe while sporting a thick moustache, but that’s not strictly necessary. Obviously there are hundreds of books that could fit into this category, so after you peruse our list, be sure to let us know which other manly reads you would have chosen in the comments.

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This week, the always excellent Everyman’s Library released a gorgeous new printing of Phillip Pullman’s epic fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials. Not only is it a beautiful edition, but it’s the first time that the three books have been published in one volume, so it is quite a neat little package. Inspired by Pullman’s wonderfully evocative new cover, we’ve collected a few other utterly gorgeous book cover redesigns for your viewing pleasure. Many of these are full backlist redesigns — after all, there’s something magical about a set of books designed to be together — but all of them are, we think, rather glorious. Click through to feast your eyes on these redesigned books, and let us know if we’re missed any of your favorites in the comments! Read More »

Lars von Trier is a great filmmaker, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d much like to hang out and have a drink with. Aside from all that Nazi stuff, his films tend to traffic in the grimmest possible subject matter: he’s tackled rape, slavery, the death penalty, paralysis, and genital mutilation, so it somehow seems logical that his latest picture, Melancholia (on demand now, in theaters Friday) is about nothing less than the end of the world.

Apocalypses are a popular topic for filmmakers — though most are more interested in the narrative possibilities of the post-apocalyptic world than the event itself. Melancholia distinguishes itself by being something of a pre-apocalyptic picture, delving into the anxiety and fear of those who are awaiting the earth’s possible collision with a foreign object (timely!). After the jump, we’ll take a look back at a few of our favorite cinematic apocalypses. Read More »