Christmas 2012 just got a whole lot more interesting.

With Leonardo DiCaprio set to see the release of his Quentin Tarantino-directed slave picture, Django Unchained on Christmas Day next year, Box Office Mojo has revealed that another DiCaprio film has set the day as its debut date. The outlet reports that the actor’s turn as Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann‘s long gestating take on the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, The Great Gatsby will premiere on that date as well. Talk about a hunky way to spend Christmas.

At one time or another, you’ve probably seen one of the paintings that various people in a position of power have had commissioned of themselves. One particularly notable portrait out there is that of the Russian general, which someone has taken to an extremely entertaining new level.

George Dawe, an English portrait artist who has painted 329 portraits of Russian generals, uses a digital copy of his work as a basis to add his friends, family, and some celebrities into the paintings using Photoshop.

So far he’s done a bunch of celebrities, and most of them look amazing. If we didn’t know who these people were, you wouldn’t think twice about whether most of them were a legit Russian general or not. Some look a little off such as Sean Connery, for example, who looks as though he’s just passed gas in a room full of people, and is pleased that none of them can figure out who it was.

Continue on below now to check out the pictures, and to the source link for even more.

For those who are not aware, yes, Baz Luhrmann, the director behind visually stunning musicals like Moulin Rouge! and beloved story re-imaginings like Romeo + Juliet, is working on a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s classic novel, The Great Gatsby.

The movie is currently set to star Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire with hopes for release at some point in 2012, but it was something that Luhrmann said at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that has eyebrows raising the world ’round.

Luhrmann said that though no official decision has been made, he has “workshopped” Gatsby using 3D technologies and that he might ultimately decide to create his version of the story about glitz and glam and bootlegging during post World War I Prohibition in the roaring 1920s.

Brothers
DVD | Blu-ray
Directed by Jim Sheridan
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Release Date: March 23, 2010

Detached in genre but alike in context, director Jim Sheridan‘s new film Brothers, a remake of the 2004 Danish film titled Brodre, ironically provokes emotions that ran rampant in his 2003 masterpiece In America. In that film an outsider is welcomed into an Irish-American family and in return he forever changes whatever their prior perspective on life was. Most of Mr. Sheridan’s films show an intense interest with man’s ability to detach himself from the parade of inabilities, setbacks, and tragedies that universally correspond with the orders of humanity. The roadblocks that face most of his characters are appropriate given their specificity in life. How Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in My Left Foot or Djimon Hounsou’s character in In America are able to unshackle themselves from their imprisonment to nature is what makes Sheridan’s films rigid and universally true: Man has a desire to deliberately shun away all the perplexities that nature is bound to, paving a path that can eventually lead to some form of freedom.

When it was announced that Sony had decided to completely incinerate their plans for a fourth Spider-Man, as well as everyone involved from director Sam Raimi to stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, we could only imagine who might step in and replace them for the proposed overhaul of the franchise.

Not too long after that, it was announced that (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb would be the new man at the wheel, and now we’re beginning to hear the names that could become Spider-Man himself.

In a chat with Access Hollywood‘s Billy Bush, Logan Lerman was pointed out as a prime candidate for the new Spider-Man, and was then asked if he was in any sort of talks about the role. Lerman excitedly admitted that he has had conversations with Sony and the producers of the film, and that he’s hoping that more talks will follow. He also admitted that it was the producers who sought him out, and not the other way around — surely a good sign for Lerman, whether he lands the role or not.