The latest teaser for Zack Snyder's Man of Steel is an effective one. The clip introduces General Zod via a grainy video transmission that makes Superman's arch enemy look a lot creepier than he does in production stills. more »
Ron Howard's time across the pond looks like it has been good for him. With the exception of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, I've never been a fan of racing movies. I realize that death lurks around every curve, but, from a spectator's perspective, auto races are about as thrilling as Major League baseball games. There's a lot of monotony in those laps (and innings).
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The new trailer for Steven Soderbergh's Behind The Candelabra sure is compelling, but will the HBO movie do justice to Liberace? The clip leaves little doubt that Michael Douglas, who plays the flamboyant entertainer in this tragicomic love story, and Matt Damon, who portrays his much younger lover, Scott Thorson, are going to be memorable, and that Soderbergh has taken a measured approach to the camp aspects of this story. But what I can't tell from the footage is whether Behind The Candelabra will give Liberace his due as a pioneering postwar performance artist. more »
The first trailer for the remake of another classic horror film — Stephen King's Carrie — is out, and it's looking anemic compared to the bloody and blood-curdling promotional campaign that Evil Dead has waged over the last several months. more »
The premise for the The Frankenstein Theory is an interesting one: what if Mary Shelley's novel was based on actual events and the monster has been living out in the Arctic wilderness for close to 200 years? The movie, which is slated to hit theaters and VOD in March, is a Blair Witch Project-style found-footage tale that follows a documentary crew and a controversial college professor John Venkenheim — a subtle homage to Ghostbusters' Peter Venkman? — as they tempt fate by going out in search of the reanimated monster. more »
Come off the ledge, Trekkies! I know it's been a bad few days what with J.J. Abrams trading in your future sequel pleasure for a shot at the Star Wars franchise, but he has not forsaken you. To the contrary, he wants you to know, via this eye-catching featurette that the action and the scale of Star Trek Into Darkness "is light years beyond what we did in the first movie," and, if that ain't enough, sparks are still flying between Spock and Uhura. more »
As ads for pharmaceuticals go, this clip for the anti-depression drug Ablixa is textbook perfect. Wooden actors progress from sad to happy with the help of digital dark clouds, sun rays, and, presumably, the being advertised. And there's the de rigueur reading of possible side effects. more »
Nicolas Winding Refn has said that the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre inspired him to become a filmmaker. So we shouldn't be surprised that Ryan Gosling appears to be sporting a quasi-Leatherface look in what may be a poster for Only God Forgives. (Check it out after the jump.) Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but the actor's face does look pretty damn tore up. more »
As Bella Swan goes, so goes Kristen Stewart. The Twilight saga star appeared on Today on Wednesday to talk a bit about her evolution from passive heroine to ass-kicking vampire in Breaking Dawn - Part 2, and ended the interview with a quote which suggests that, like Bella, Stewart has learned to be more of a bad-ass when it comes to her fans' and the media's prying into her personal life. more »
Oddly enough, after being moved by Snoop Lion's Reincarnated documentary at Toronto, I now have to say I agree with the little girl at the beginning of this music video who says she liked him better when he was Snoop Dogg. I get why Calvin Broadus — Snoop's real name — wanted to put his whole gangsta image behind him, even if it was purely a marketing decision. Artists must evolve. But with this video for "La LaLa," he's jumped the bong by making his bad-ass pot-smoking self a little too kid friendly. more »
Disney's first trailer for the big budget Wild West spectacle The Lone Ranger has everything but, y'know, the Lone Ranger himself — Armie Hammer, who's glimpsed here and there amid director Gore Verbinski's bright, sweeping vistas, but certainly isn't the center of attention. Based on this you'd think The Lone Ranger is about horses, runaway trains, slo-mo shoot-outs, and Johnny Depp as a painted face, bird-on-head, perpetually grimacing Tonto. Which, let's be honest, is why this movie exists in the first place.
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Jessica Chastain's had an incredibly good run of prestige films in the brief span of time that she's been in Hollywood: Take Shelter, Coriolanus, Tree of Life, The Help, and this summer's Lawless have made quite the highlight reel. So it was inevitable that the starlet would pop up in a horror film sooner or later. Might as well be a spooky one like the Guillermo Del Toro-executive produced Mama, right?
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Children of the Nintendo generation, take heed: Disney's Wreck-It Ralph was made just for you. In addition to setting up a rather compelling hero's journey for video game character Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) — an arcade villain who goes "game-hopping" to reinvent himself as the good guy — the animated adventure stuffs in more Gen X/Y video game references than you can count. Who will weep for Bowser as he gives his testimony at AA for baddies!?
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When Paramount moved their big-budget genre actioner Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters from March 2012 to January 11, 2013 — ostensibly to wait it out while star Jeremy Renner became a huge box office draw — many were appropriately skeptical. Now that the first trailer has arrived, see for yourself how director Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) updates the folktale with Renner and Gemma Arterton as the now-grown siblings/witch bounty hunters. Was the release date shuffle a case of brilliant thinking or a classic dumping ground offload?
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Kidding! Michael Shannon was born to play oddball creepy-types, and I mean that in the best way possible. So his turn as Richard Kuklinski, the notorious contract killer from New Jersey known as The Iceman who killed for sport and for gangsters for three decades, seems fitting. Anyone else feeling curious pangs of sympathy for the Mafia hitman-slash-family man who claimed to have murdered over 100 men over the course of his "career?"
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