As much as we adored Repo! we're even more excited about this exceptionally graphic gorefest, Repo Men. Anything that's "near future" we're sold on, and we love the actors - Liev Shrieber looks great alongside Law and Whitaker. And the mechanical innards? Yes, this movie has our full attention. The screenplay is from Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner, who worked on House and Matchstick Men. Repo Men will be out next April.

[Repo Men]

In Gilliam's film, the ancient and immortal Dr. Parnassus travels with a troupe of entertainers, including his teenage daughter Valentina. One of their attractions is the Imaginarium, a mystical mirror that transports people to a realm of imagination. But all is not well for the troupe; Parnassus long ago pledge any child he had to the Devil, and the time on their deal will soon be up. As the clock ticks down, Tony, a mysterious stranger, wanders into their midst.

Here, we meet Heath Ledger's Tony for the first time:

Parnassus helps the amnesiac Tony jog his memory:

A young carnival-goer takes a candy-coated jaunt through the Imagniarium:

Tony, now played by Colin Farrell, enjoys a romantic boat ride with Valentina:

And now Jude Law gets his turn as Tony, climbing a literal ladder to success:

And finally Johnny Depp plays Tony, although here he calls himself Barry:

And in non-Tony-related business, we get Dr. Parnassus' first meeting with the Devil:

And another meeting, during which Dr. Parnassus, who has agreed to give up any child he has in exchange for immortality, makes a new deal with the Devil:

[via Cinema Blend]

You have to admit the sight of Tom Waits as a sleazy, louche devil gets you kind of excited. And then there's the added visual evidence of Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell all playing the same person, which is something no other movie will ever attempt. Will the movie disappoint? You'll find out for yourself, when it opens Oct. 16.

[Cinemablend and Playlist]

First off it looks like we're getting extra helpings of Terry Gilliam's demented psychedelic world, and a whole lotta wire-work. Let's keep our fingers crossed for Gilliam's success, so we can possibly get more than one Gilliam movie every five years.

Here's the wild synopsis:

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day. It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick, in which he won immortality. Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr Nick. Valentina is now rapidly approaching this 'coming of age' milestone and Dr Parnassus is desperate to protect her from her impending fate. Mr Nick arrives to collect but, always keen to make a bet, renegotiates the wager. Now the winner of Valentina will be determined by whoever seduces the first five souls. Enlisting a series of wild, comical and compelling characters in his journey, Dr Parnassus promises his daughter's hand in marriage to the man that helps him win. In this captivating, explosive and wonderfully imaginative race against time, Dr Parnassus must fight to save his daughter in a never-ending landscape of surreal obstacles - and undo the mistakes of his past once and for all...

Doctor Parnassus will be out October 16th.

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• The film was originally supposed to the called The Eighth Day, but a Belgian film with that title forced the film-makers to change theirs. In the film, the center where Vincent's parents go to genetically engineer another baby is called "The Eighth Day." It's a reference to the biblical line "And on the Seventh Day, God rested." Presumably, on the eighth day, man started tinkering around on his own.
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• The production budget for the movie was $36 million, but it only grossed $12 million. Sadly, there is no genetic testing for a box office hit.
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• The film boasts a fairly impressive cast: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Alan Arkin, Ernest Borgnine, Loren Dean and Gore Vidal.
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• Jude Law's character Jerome starts referring to himself as his middle name, Eugene. Perhaps a sly reference to eugenics.
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• Uma Thurman's character is named Irene Cassini after the 17th century Italian astronomer. He discovered the gap in Saturn's rings, along with several of its moons.
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• They didn't have a large budget for the futuristic look and feel of the movie, so they modeled the "near future" after the past. Men wear dark suits with fedoras, women wear form-fitting dresses, cars are retro models, like Vincent's 1963 Studebaker Avanti, outfitted with electric engines (just an electric whine on the soundtrack).
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• The government agents/detectives in the film are called "Hoovers," not only as a nod to J. Edgar Hoover, but to the fact that they vacuum up hair and skin cells when they collect evidence.
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• When promoting the movie, Sony placed fake ads in newspapers around the country offering "Children made to order." The ads looked so real that they got thousands of phone calls, and The American Society for Reproductive Medicine asked Sony to change them to make it clear they were fake advertisements.
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• Sony knew the film would be under close scrutiny from scientists, so they hired human-gene-therapy researcher French Anderson as a science consultant, and had test screenings for The Society of Mammalian Cell Biologists.
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• Scientists seemed to love the movie for the most part. In fact molecular biologist Lee M. Silver said "Gattaca is a film that all geneticists should see if for no other reason than to understand the perception of our trade held by so many of the public-at-large." Too bad there weren't a ton of geneticists hitting the theaters back then.
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• Bioethicist James Hughes wasn't so fond of the movie, however. His book Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future railed against the genetic testing in the movie.
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• The original ending of the film featured images of people who may have never been born if we'd had genetic testing: people like Albert Einstein (dyslexia) , Abraham Lincoln (Marfan syndrome), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (asthma) and John F. Kennedy (Addison's disease) were shown over a background of stars with their afflictions listed. It then ends with the statement "Of course, the other birth that may never have taken place is your own." People in test screenings said it made them feel inadequate.
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• As a lesson in the DNA-uninformed (like me), the tile of the film comes from the four DNA bases: Adenosine, Guanosine, Thymine, and Cytosine. They sometimes line up to form GATTACA in a DNA sequence.
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• The announcements that come over the PA system in the Gattaca building are in Esperanto.
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• Frank Lloyd Wright's futuristic Marin County Civic Center was used as the exterior of the Gattaca building. It's got that sort of hipster-50s retro cool look. It was also used extensively in George Lucas' THX-1138.

In one corner, you have Director Darren Lynn Bousman's independent effort with Lionsgate, Repo! The Genetic Opera. Weighing in on the studio side is Repossession Mambo from Universal. While Repo! stars Paul Sorvino and Paris Hilton, Mambo has Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. Both are about people who pay for body organs on credit, and then find out what happens when they can't pay the bills. So long new set of lungs!

To make things even more bizarre, Bousman blogged that they are sharing post-production facilities with Repossession Mambo. Talk about being able to see what the enemy is up to. He remains steadfast that his film will trump Mambo, and points out they "We really did start this Opera shit!" He seems to have a valid argument as well, since he'd already shot a short version of Repo! in 2006, and used it to pitch the feature to studios. Plus his movie has singing and dancing and... Paris Hilton.

One of these is a dramatic movie, and the other one looks like a Rocky Horror Picture Show for a new generation. We'll let you decide which is which.

Every so often two films come down the pipeline with the same basic plot and smash into each other. Once the dust settles, a winner is declared, and the loser slinks into bargain bins and late-night showings on cable TV. This gave us such memorable box office battles as Armageddon vs. Deep Impact, Volcano vs. Dante's Peak, A Bug's Life vs. Antz, and Transformers vs. Transmorphers.

Repo! vs. Repo Hits The Editing Room [Bloody Disgusting]