The latest trailer for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland arrived on the scene this morning, 48 hours ahead of its 3-D IMAX introduction ahead of Avatar. And for once, we're getting a look at the true scope and feel of the thing -- which is to say, Johnny Depp doing a ton of mugging against a fittingly sprawling, doleful Burtonian canvas. It's not as bad as it sounds.
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In addition to unveiling two new photo stills from the set of Robin Hood, Universal on Monday saw its first trailer for Ridley Scott's revisionist action epic released into the wild. I don't know what we all should have been expecting, but if you had "loud 90-second car commercial-meets-Gladiator" on your own prediction scorecard, please step forth and collect your winnings!
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No sooner had a stunt driver taken out a Sbarro in Times Square than everybody knew that Disney had some dark, curse-y magic on its hands with The Sorcerer's Apprentice. But only today, as the first trailer arrives online, do we realize just how dark. (Hint: Pretty dark!)
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The Harry Potter franchise may be in its final stages, but it's about to attempt a heavily scrutinized gambit: the late-in-the-game extension of a series by splitting its final chapter in two. (It's a strategy so seemingly win-win -- please the fans who want everything included, and please the studio bean-counters who never want this exciting money train to stop -- that the Twilight franchise may employ the same thing.) How does the newly released teaser for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sell it?
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In January, Lionsgate will release the vampire movie Daybreakers, and the trailer for the film is after the jump. Before you take a look, though, why not peruse the equation used to develop the movie?
New Moon
plus
The blue tint from the original Twilight
minus
Abs
(continued)
Do you know how Tennessee Williams died? He choked on an eyedrop bottle cap. True story. It was February 24, 1983, and he was staying at the Hotel Elysee. He had a habit of opening the bottle, placing the cap between his teeth, then leaning back and placing a drop in each eye. Only this time, the cap fell into the back of his throat and got stuck there, blocking him windpipe and killing him. His body was found the next morning; he was 71. I bring this up because one, it's sad and interesting, but also because we are soon to receive a rare new Williams work from beyond the grave -- and one that chillingly has the word "teardrop" is in the title.
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A couple months ago, Mark Duplass told us that part of the fun of making Noah Baumbach's Greenberg was that he got to be "a dick" to Ben Stiller -- something that's usually reserved onscreen for Robert De Niro or a talking statue. Now that the trailer for Greenberg has debuted we can see why Stiller's character might incur some wrath: He's jobless, ornery, and (worst of all) a fastidious letter-writer! Fortunately, he has pretty good hair, so he might get laid regardless.
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Once upon a time, Robert Pattinson was God, nervously running his hands through his hair, then flicking that filmy follicular residue into a vast galactic expanse to create suns, solar systems, and human life itself. Then, our new deity seemed to vanish, handing over his media appeal, and screen time to the underage boy-king Taylor Lautner. With the trailer for Remember Me released today, will our absentee Lord return to us once again?
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A fantasy film like Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief has a tricky marketing task ahead of it, mostly because there are so many ways it could go. Should it play up the fact that it was made by Chris Columbus and aim for the Harry Potter audience, as its first trailer did? Should it take a page from Twilight and turn teen lead Logan Lerman into the next Rob Pattinson? Or should it intently study The Vampire's Assistant: Cirque du Freak for a case study on what not to do?
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As trailers go, The Last Song's new one has a few disadvantages right from the get-go. For starters, as the second Nicholas Sparks adaptation planned for release in 2010, Song is automatically guaranteed to shrink in the long, hulking shadow of the Channing-tacular Dear John. Second, it opens with expository narration that could have been lifted from an ESL divorce class. Third, there's no Touchstone logo at the top -- the studio equivalent of wearing Groucho glasses and a mustache to its daughter's coming-out party. Fourth, it turns out to be Miley Cyrus's coming-out party. Need I go on? All right, if you say so.
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Fox Searchlight isn't wasting any time getting over its slumpy fall trifecta of Whip It, Amelia and Gentlemen Broncos, choosing instead to play its ace in the Oscar hole with next month's Crazy Heart. A few strategic early screenings resulted in exactly the buzz the studio intended for Best Actor hopeful Jeff Bridges, and now the film's trailer reveals to the rest of us a few slivers of the folksy woe and redemption that the Academy is likely to reward next spring.
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Suddenly, it's the plot du jour: Old friends, younger wives, and even younger children get together on a vacation. Sometimes, it leads to a Guitar Hero commercial. Sometimes, it leads to MURDER! And sometimes, as in the case of the Adam Sandler comedy Grown Ups (which just debuted its trailer), it leads to a Saturday Night Live cast reunion. Sandler and his SNL cronies David Spade, Chris Rock and Rob Schneider team up in the film with Kevin James, who unexpectedly had a bigger hit this year than any of them.
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So now you finally get to see what all the hoopla surrounding Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass was about at Comic-Con last summer, as Lionsgate has released a teaser trailer online. With virtually no residual traces of his native British accent, 19-year-old next-big-thing Aaron Johnson stars, lending his aspiring superhero a warm, nerd-hot vulnerability and just the right amount of Steve-from-Sex and the City, Brooklynese warble to his narration.
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Imagine if Precious had a sequel that brought back all you favorite characters -- Precious, her mom, Mrs. Weiss, Cornrows, Nurse John, and the rest -- only this time around, it isn't another harrowing story about a beaten-down soul who finds unlikely redemption in an inner-city classroom. Rather, they'd reunited for a wacky road trip aboard a runaway bingo bus in search of $1 million in buried bank-robber loot! And it's called It's a Precious, Precious, Precious, Precious World. Sound good? No? It sounds like an utterly ridiculous departure in tonality and subject matter from what made the first Precious so successful?
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It's been a long, interesting ride for the Sherlock Holmes promotional campaign, which began with a shot of Robert Downey Jr stripped to the waist and now finishes with a final trailer full of homoerotic banter. "This is not your father's Sherlock Holmes!" the trailer cries. "Did your father's Sherlock Holmes flirt with Watson all day? Did he sublimate his sexual urges for Jude Law into a simultaneous, side-by-side orgasm of gunfire? Did Moriarty sit this one out, biding his time until the proper threesome could be written into the sequel?"
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