Eric Lavallée

Imogen Poots has joined Ethan Hawke and Synecdoche, New York duo Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener in Yaron Zilberman's feature debut, A Late Quartet. We believe Poot replaces the once attached Olivia Thirlby as the youngest member of the quartet.

At the beginning of every month, IONCINEMA.com's "Tracking Shot" features a handful of projects that are moments away from lensing and in the same token, we feel are worth signaling out. We ring in the new year with nine titles going into production this month that are worth pointing out. Among the projects that were originally slated for January but are slightly pushed back we have Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton's Will starring Paul Rudd Zach Galifianakis, the new Stephen Daldry film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Polanski's Carnage. This January can officially be called the "Abi Morgan" month as the scribe has not one but two projects that'll be lensed.

I'm cheating here as I could have put it on last year's list, but I felt it was more of a 2010 title as it preemed on the world film fest circuit in fall classics such as Venice and Toronto. While I have no knowledge of how they faired before in 1999's The Protagonists or the 2002 docu short Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory, I do know that their third film together in I Am Love (Lo sono l'amore) was golden for Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino and actress Tilda Swinton.

She might overtly come across has neurotic but there is a subtext in Manville's work here which ultimately allows the viewer to pity the character in the final season of the film when all possible compassion for the character, at least from her immediate friends is paper-thin. It's another strong female heroine designed by Leigh, but this one doesn't illicit the kind of passion that will have propelled her in awards season, but it nonetheless made a mark back at Cannes and has remained throughout the year.

Rooster Cogburn won't "overtake" Jeffrey Lebowski as Jeff Bridges' best Coen Bros' character, and perhaps Bridges didn't outdo the original John Wayne perf, but unless you include McDormand's Marge Gunderson character from Fargo, you couldn't find a more classic good guy role archetype in the Coen Bros archives. Bridges lays on the charm really thick with this half drunk, half white knight hard living U.S marshal, and if Bridges hadn't won for Best Actor at the Oscars last year he'd certainly be in the running this year.