New production stills from Amber’s films The Ward and And Soon The Darkness have been added to the gallery. Movie screencaps from Darkness will be added within the next few days. Stay tuned!

Here is some footage from Bloody-Disgusting.com that features Amber on the red carpet at the premiere of The Ward (about 3 minutes in). The film’s introduction at the end with John Carpenter is super funny so you should also check it out!

Check out this video which shows Amber speaking at the Q&A during the premiere of The Ward at the Toronto International Film Festival. The footage was shot by Tasya van Ree.

Amber is super active these days – not that we mind! Just wanted to remind you of what we have confirmed coming up soon too.

- The Ward Toronto International Film Festival premiere

Amber and Tasya will be taking part in Women for Equality on Sunday, October 3.

Amber will be attending the premiere for Nowhere Boy on September 21, 2010 in New York.

Here is a couple more reviews for The Ward and, again, unfortunately most of them not very complimentary of the film. Even Amber’s performance gets very mixed reviews. Screen Daily loved her and /Film says she’s the highlight of the movie – while Ain’t It Cool News says she is forgettable in the role. Either way, I am definitely curious to see this one and would love to hear any comments from the fans who got to attend the premiere.

From: Screen Daily:

While the screenplay is hardly a model of ingenuity or probing psychological insight, it gets the job done in terms of establishing Kristen as a smart, resourceful, edgy young woman who won’t let this mysterious ghoul take her out without a fight. (Not surprisingly, Kristen’s fellow patients are stock characters that give the killer victims to slay over the film’s nicely compact running time.) Like many attractive young actresses, Heard has struggled to find roles that allow her to do some real emoting – she does have the cult horror movie, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, on her résumé – but as Kristen, she really commands the screen, credibly playing an imbalanced woman who still is sharp enough to outsmart both the institution’s guards and the murderous phantom.

From: /Film:

Heard is the highlight of the movie – her performance is believable even when the situation is not. Heard did the best she could with the material provided to her. The other characters are not much more than tired archetypes we’ve seen in movies time and time again. The movie works fine as a direct-to-dvd horror film, but will probably be judged harshly against Carpenter’s acclaimed past efforts.

From: Ain’t It Cool News:

Amber Heard plays the lead and she’s easy on the eyes but instantly forgettable in the role. She gets haunted, tries to escape, gets caught, gets put back in her cell, gets haunted again. When she’s not being haunted, or trying to escape, or being put back in her cell, she’s trying to solve the mystery of the evil ghost, but unfortunately the mystery just isn’t all that compelling. She’s assisted in her mystery-solving by four one-note female characters who also reside in the ward (it’s the bitchy one! the innocent one! the one who’s not as crazy as she seems!). Did these characters even have names? Probably, but I can’t remember them.

As we reported on beforehand, Amber was in attendance for the midnight premiere of The Ward at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. Her fellow stunning co-stars, Danielle Panebaker, Laura-Leigh and Mika Boorem, were also present at the event. Amber wore a gray dress with nude pumps and, of course, the trademark red lippy! Stunning!

By the way, it should be noted that the film is no longer coming out this month in the US. The release date is now to be determined. Hopefully TIFF will help get the film a proper release date soon.

The very first reviews for The Ward have started to pour in since the film’s midnight TIFF premiere yesterday. The reviews thus far unfortunately paint the film as a rather decent effort that doesn’t quite work with today’s audiences, although there are some mentioned highlights. Either way, as a big fan of the genre, I’ll definitely still be checking it out. Read a few of the first available reviews below.

From: The Torontoist
“This is an old school horror movie made by an old school director,” John Carpenter himself said about his first movie in nine years. Unfortunately, audiences have already graduated.

From: FEARnet

The Ward feels a little bit like Lucky McKee’s The Woods, in that it’s a new horror movie that pays frequent homage to the creepier works of Dario Argento and Roman Polanski. Thematically and structurally, The Ward is perhaps best described as a “throwback” horror flick in that much of it feels like a thriller from 1978, but of course there’s no generation gap on good scares, and this movie has a big juicy handful to toss at you.

As far as what Carpenter brings to the table … the film is composed and shot in lovely fashion. Even the horribly generic recreation room in the mental ward is framed with sharp angles and crafty shadows. The practical effects (both the creepy ghost and the gory bits) are handled by veterans known as Berger & Nicotero. The Ward is also cut down to its bare essence (it runs about 88 minutes all told), and doesn’t waste any time on superfluous character banter or narrative wheel-spinning. The cast of young ladies is quite excellent, and although it’d feel unfair to point out a particular “favorite,” one must note that Ms. Gummer’s performance is particularly memorable. (I guess that what happens when your mom is Meryl Streep.)

And of course there’s always a small but sly sense of humor that trickles in between the scary stuff.