….Or, McLovin is finally in a superhero movie.
Based on the comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., Kick-Ass already looks like its going to live up to its name. It certainly isn’t the first comedy to feature superheroes with no super powers, Mystery Men comes immediately to mind, but it may be the most epic. Come on, how can watching fail-tastic teenagers beat up hardened criminals not be entertaining?
Oh, and the man in the red cape at the beginning of the trailer? He’s my new hero.
The trailer for the long-awaited, long-delayed, and, for everyone who has cherished the book since childhood, slightly dreaded, live-action version of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was unleashed on the interwebs. I had the usual fan overprotectiveness upon hearing about this project, but after several enraptured repeat viewings of the trailer, I’m already deeply in love with this film. After the jump, the trailer, and six other reasons to not fear the Wild Things:
A new Pixar movie is always a reason to celebrate!
Well, the more I see from the forthcoming movie Up, the more I can’t wait!
Yesterday it was announced that Up will be the Opening Ceremony film of the 62nd Festival de Cannes in Disney Digital 3-D on Wednesday May 13th, 2009. This is the first time that an animation film, in 3-D, will be the Opening Ceremony film at the distinguished film festival.
Here is the new Theatrical Trailer! (High | Low)
I don’t know about you, but I am loving Up! In this new trailer Pixar shows us some of the various environments Carl and his little Wildlife Explorer stowaway Russell visit and explore, as well as two new characters.
I have one word to say!
Squirrel!
Upon watching the new and probably final Star Trek trailer, I sat there stunned and then said to no one:
Holy Expletive! That was Bad Expletive!
JJ Abrams, who I have enormous respect for as a director and writer of high intensity / high emotional movies, has hit a chord inside of of me with this new trailer. I knew this movie would be good, and I still have no idea how closely these new actors will be able to pull off these established and well loved characters, but after viewing the trailer below I have more confidence! Surely more confidence than I did walking into Watchmen.
May is looking like a very good month, indeed! May 1st we get Wolverine, then on May 8th we get to go trekking!
So what do you think? Great trailer? Could the movie be equally great? Does the Eric Bana nemesis come from the future, since he mentions James T. Kirk “was a great man, but that was another life?” Great stuff, can’t wait!
With Watchmen being released everywhere at midnight tonight—and my review of the movie being posted here also at midnight tonight—I felt it important to observe one element from the review before it is released.
And if you are wondering, yes, I really enjoyed Watchmen. As a fan of cinema and as a fan of the graphic novel.
One of the terrible things that occurs when a graphic novel is adapted to the screen is a loss of certain story elements that simply can’t fit in with the movie medium. This happened to Watchmen when director Zach Snyder could not interweave the sub-textual story Tales of the Black Freighter from the graphic novel into the movie. Watchmen is a series of stories within a story, and fans will undoubtedly be sad that Black Freighter was not included.
But not to worry. Snyder and company created Tales of the Black Freighter anyway, voiced by Gerard Butler, and made it its own DVD release. Here is the trailer for it:
From a fan point of view, I am happy Snyder did this. From a storytelling point of view, I really hate it because it is one big tease. The reason the story Tales of the Black Freighter worked in the graphic novel is because in each page Alan Moore used it to give more meaning to the actual Watchmen story around it. Connecting the two tales creates a stronger resonance for the literary merit of the graphic novel—a small bit of literary merit that was missing in the movie sadly.
In a way, I wish Snyder could release a Deluxe Edition of the movie where Tales of the Black Freighter was interwoven in with the actual theater release. Won’t happen, but I can wish right!
Still, this trailer looks sweet! Enjoy!
A few days ago I posted the first TV Spot for the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which reunites Hugh Jackman as Wolverine with Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth in a movie of epic proportions.
The first TV spot, Outcasts, hints at the origins of Logan, who as a child witnessed the murder of his stepfather and through his anger exhibits the claws that would later make him so distinguishable from other heroes.
Here are the second and third TV Spots Fox will be using to spur interest in this May 1, 2009 movie release!
TV Spot II: Brothers
TV Spot II: Legends
I’ll be there opening night. Yup. Fer sure, bub!
Whether you like American Football or not, the one thing geeks the world over get to look forward to come Super Bowl Sunday is advance looks at forthcoming sci-fi and fantasy movies! While the Super Bowl yesterday was an amazing game, I watched the commercials with the same intensity as I watched the game—maybe even more so!
I felt like today would be a good day to compile the various trailers we saw yesterday into one post. Even though I am really looking forward to Star Trek and love almost anything Will Ferrell is in, the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen trailer really stood out for me. Giant robots, great action, and Megan Fox!
After the jump you will find trailers for: Aliens vs. Monsters, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Land of the Lost, Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Up!
Which is your favorite?
Today I went to an advance screening for the forthcoming new movie, Coraline. Adapted and directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) from the Neil Gaiman book, Coraline is just simply a fantastic movie for most ages. 3D goodness! 3D goodness! 3D goodness! I will be writing a much longer review here in a few days when it is allowed, but all I can say is I loved it.
Here is the new and probably last trailer for Coraline. Hope you enjoy it! And be sure to buy your tickets now to go see it when it is released on February 6th. Get your 3D glasses ready! I truly doubt you’ll be disappointed!
In the spirit of the “Yes We Can” feeling that’s running strong this morning, let’s take a look at three young filmmakers who can say, “Yes We Did!” I’m talking about Jessika Pilkes, Renee Baltsen, and Ben Cox, whose book trailers made them the finalists from this past year’s Teen Book Video Awards.
Every year Random House Kids books and the Kirkus Review team up to host and produce the Teen Book Video Awards. And what are these? Well, it asks students to create a trailer for a young adult book. But if you’re thinking that this means sitting through a lot of low value productions, think again. These entries are skillfully produced and edited to the point that you’d be forgiven if you thought the trailers were for films.
Now, if you read, or have read, much YA fiction, then you know that there is a high level of fantasy running through the uber-genre. To the best of my knowledge, there always has been. From the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm to Harry Potter and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, the fantastical is ever present throughout. So it should come as no surprise that the three finalists in the Teen Book Video Awards are all for fantasy titles.
Check out the videos for the past year’s finalists (2008) below as well as an overview of the contest and quick interviews with each video writer/director.
Trailer for The Forest of Hands and Teeth conceived and directed by Jessika Pilkes:
[even more after the jump]
From the moment I began reading comic books at the age of 8, Wolverine was my favorite comic book character. It was his dual nature that intrigued me—a man with a shady past wanting a better future. When the X-Men movies were released, I was happy because Hugh Jackman understands the character even though he is far too tall to play the ole’ Canucklehead!
So when I heard Hugh Jackman would be back to reprise the role of Logan in a stand alone movie, I was very happy! When I heard Liev Schreiber would play a younger Sabretooth I thought it was genius casting. And now that Gambit is involved, it could be a great deal of fun. Seems like Marvel may have another blockbuster on their hands!
Now, I actually love this trailer. As a walking Wolverine catalog, I like how they’ve blended the Origins story from a few years ago and wrapped it together nicely with several other Wolverine stories that came before it. I can’t wait for this! What about you??
In an earlier blog post I professed my quasi love/hate relationship with the Terminator movies. They are all so different. The first movie is a horror movie at its heart. The second is a great action flick with a lot of heart. And the third… well… the third movie was a slow, ill-conceived prologue that was probably necessary for what is to come next…
In May 2009, we will get Terminator Salvation.
Warner Bros. has released the first full trailer for the forthcoming Terminator movie—and I am more curious about this than ever. I really like the look of the film, full of action and fairly strong dialog, and if Terminator: Rise of the Machines can be redeemed at all it will be through this new movie. I will keep my reservations in check, view and review the movie with an open mind, and we’ll see.
In the meantime, check out the new trailer HERE! And share your thoughts!
Getting in touch with our inner geekdom—especially because we are geeks—is easy to do. So imagine how the geek rose up within me when I saw that not only was Astro Boy being made into a CG movie but a teaser trailer was already released for it!
It’s kind of the dream every young boy has. To be go on an adventure. To prove one’s self to the parents. To be accepted. That’s Astro Boy in a nutshell.
The trailer looks great and the talent Imagi Studios has gathered is pretty incredible. The movie will have the voice work of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Nathan Lane, Matt Lucas, Bill Nighy, Eugene Levy, Donald Sutherland and Scarlett Johansson. Great cast!
We’ll have to wait and see if the blast from the past movie can live up to the hype I’m attributing to it. I have some time to digest this; the movie doesn’t come out until October 2009.
View the teaser trailer HERE!
Big fan of Neil Gaiman here. Have been for years. He is a very genuine and warm author, despite the black leather jacket and the rock star black sun glasses, and he simply has more talent than I care to admit. At least I get to read that talent and be very entertained.
From the more childlike—and possibly twisted—part of Gaiman’s imagination came Coraline, a young adult book with a great story. Now that story has been given the Hollywood treatment! Henry Selick, the director who brought us The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, has adapted Coraline into a screenplay and is directing its journey to the silver screen. With voice work by Dakota Fanning, Ian McShane and Teri Hatcher, the movie is sure to be a hit when it is released on February 6, 2009.
Above is a new trailer! And it looks great. Just as dark and twisted as I had hoped with its sentiments still firmly rooted in the childhood experience.
The question now is: How long before we see The Graveyard Book brought to the screen? It seems to me that the director style of Henry Selick would be perfect for Gaiman’s latest book…
It used to be that January was a dumping ground for movies — especially horror movies. That changed in 2008, when a killer marketing campaign propelled “Cloverfield” to massive opening numbers, and what will probably be the highest grossing horror movie of the year.
So suddenly, 2009 is packed wall-to-wall with horror movies. And not just any horror movies — movies that are highly anticipated. I’m already carving out major time in January to make sure to not miss any of these.
First up, the “8 Films to Die For” series has moved from October to January. 8 horror films showing various times in 7 days. In other words, I see about 4000 calories of popcorn being ingested in that time period. Of the films scheduled, be sure not to miss “From Within,” which is a genuinely creepy tale of a suicide virus that hits a small town’s teen population.
Now onto the major releases:
The Unborn — January 9,2009
Seriously, this trailer scares the hell out of me. And I don’t scare easily. Here’s hoping the trailer isn’t the entirety of the good moments. But I’ll be first on line to see this. In fact, I’m going to go get in line right now.
More January horror trailers after the jump (and vote for which one you’re digging the most)…
I heart Pixar! I know I’m not the only one. They have produced some of the best movies ever brought to the silver screen, and the genius of their model is the notion that animated films can be fun for adults as well as for children.
It looks like their next movie, Up, will sustain that same great idea! Featuring a crotchety older man bent on traveling a world he always said he’d explore but never quite did and an eight year-old Wilderness Explorer who is too curious for his own good, I can already tell children are going to love this as will their parents—or any adult with a young at heart philosophy!
Released today on Trailer Addict, here is a new trailer:
Trailer Addict has posted a hilarious trailer for a new movie titled Monsters vs. Aliens.
Monsters vs. Aliens is a computer-animated 3-D feature film scheduled for a March 27, 2009 release from DreamWorks Animation. It stars the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson with Stephen Colbert and Kiefer Sutherland. Sounds pretty awesome to me! What do you think?
So you may have heard that Quentin Tarantino called Takashi Miike one of the world’s greatest living directors. So you’ve probably seen some of Miike’s films, including his terrifying Audition, and perhaps have formed your own opinions. And so you may know of the long and fascinating American/Japanese cultural exchange inspired by the Western that stretches from Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone to Tampopo and Kill Bill.
Still, there’s no better argument to be desperately excited to see Miike’s new film, Sukiyaki Western Django, than the trailer (the film debuts in New York and LA on 8/29):
I have never watched a full episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. I admit it. I’m never going to live that little nugget of truth down from my fellow geeks. But, in my defense, three of my favorite movies of all time are Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. I fell in love with Kirk, Spock and Bones; I fell in love with how these characters interacted, the Enterprise mythos and the adventures they found themselves on.
When Star Trek: First Contact came out featuring the New Generation characters, I too loved it—but in an additional way. I enjoy those characters a great deal and have watched dozens of episodes and all of the movies, but it was the storyline of First Contact that I really embraced: We were allowed into the past where we saw Zefram Cochrane, the creator of warp drive, initiate a brand new era of “faster than light” travel for Earth and what would ultimately become the Federation and space exploration.
Cue the Star Trek theme music for J.J. Abrams, creator of Alias, Lost and Mission Impossible III—and the new Star Trek prequel!
I was 15 when Terminator 2: Judgment Day came to movie theaters. It was one of the first movies I saw on the big screen and it left an indelible impression on me. The scope of the story and the special effects were fantastic. Very few sci-fi movies before 1991 captured the greatness of the genre, but Terminator 2 was one of them. I believe I was an official geek from that moment on.
There are many reasons why the first two movies were blockbusters, but the main one did not even appear in the movie. James Cameron directed and co-wrote the first two movies, the second of which raised the bar where the blending of story and special effects were concerned. Sure, technology versus nature has been a theme in sci-fi for decades, but in the terminators nature met its match—mankind met its match.
Then Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was released. It was not directed by James Cameron and make no bones about it lacking his vision and subtlety. It did well at the box office but fans of the series were angry; they wanted a continuation of greatness from Cameron and instead got lukewarm results.
Now, the fourth Terminator movie is in full production. And again, James Cameron is not in the director’s seat. What does that mean for fans of the series?
What does director McG have to offer?
“I can speak to snakes too. They find me… whisper things.” That gave me the goosebumps!
