From the Weinstein Company to Delgo's ashamed parents at Fathom Studios, animation has often proven to be something of a fool's errand for independent studios and distributors. Focus Features is doing interesting things this year with Coraline and 9 (both with historical ties to Tim Burton, himself a former Disney animator), but they're perhaps the exceptions that prove the rule that money, brand and unparalleled technology own the feature-animation game in Hollywood. So what happens when the upstart Summit Entertainment throws its burgeoning heavyweight muscle behind a glossy new adaptation of the anime classic Astro Boy? As today's Two-Minute Verdict discovers, it might be better off sticking with Twilight.
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It's been a year of ups and downs for Emily Blunt: Though Sunshine Cleaning was one of 2009's biggest indie successes, The Wolf Man was pushed back to next year, and her plan to star as Black Widow in Iron Man 2 was thwarted when Fox instead exerted its option to place her in the Jack Black comedy Gulliver's Travels (forcing the role to be recast with Scarlett Johansson). Still, Blunt has one potential bright spot coming up in The Young Victoria, a period romance where she plays Queen Victoria.
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Don't be fooled by this fancy trailer and Lionsgate logo: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus still hasn't been set for a U.S. release date. It's been ages since the film's Cannes premiere and yet no studio has picked it up, though we've heard rumors that there may be some domestic release news soon. Until that day comes, Lionsgate's produced an international trailer for the film that leaves us scratching our heads.
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The latest New Moon teaser is out this morning, offering a 14-second spot that makes The Lovely Bones's infamous trailer-for-a-trailer look like Lawrence of Arabia in comparison. I'm not talking strictly about breadth, either. This could just as easily have been pulled from an afterschool special about sexual abuse as a supernatural teen love triangle between a human, a vampire and a werewolf -- not least of all because there's no Robert Pattinson.
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After a long period of time where it seemed that everything was going wrong for Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, now, finally, everything seems to be going right. At each juncture, its footage has turned viewers into true believers; there was that first teaser, then a surprising, rapturously received chunk of scenes at Comic-Con, and now there's a gorgeous new trailer (below the jump). Should we toss Wild Things into the wild rumpus that is the Oscar derby?
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With all the talk of Judd Apatow evolving into the next James L. Brooks, it's easy to overlook the fact that the title might already belong to another writer/director making ambitious, bittersweet and talky ensemble comedies for grownups: Nancy Meyers. Like Apatow, she too finds her laughs in moments gone wrong -- botched seductions, broken marriages, portraits of aging ungracefully -- and like Apatow, she has two beautiful blonde daughters, Annie and Halley, whom she's cast in her films. But she can also write about and for women -- something Brooks could do, but Apatow can't. That's a big but.
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Universal hasn't had the best year, but at least it's got that big Weitz brother vampire movie coming out this fall! No, not New Moon -- that's Chris Weitz, and Summit has that. We're talking about his older brother Paul, who helmed The Vampire's Assistant for Uni. Who needs Taylor Lautner's abs when you've got Salma Hayek sporting facial fuzz, right?
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Now this is more like it: The heart-racing anticipation spurred by Tuesday's 30-second tease pays off this morning as the world has its first look at the actual trailer for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. Everything you hoped for -- with the notable exception of Entertainment Tonight's insistent, self-promotional narration -- is here, and now we can get down to the real business of waiting for the full-length adaptation coming this December. Unless, that is, you still don't buy Mark Wahlberg's raging wig and some of the other, finer points Jackson and Co. are selling in their tightly packaged peek at one girl's afterlife.
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While Justin Timberlake has already established himself as something of an indispensable satellite member of the SNL cast, his forays into the realm of film acting have been limited to lower-profile affairs, serving mixed results. His notices for Alpha Dog were good, he emerged relatively unscathed playing a Quebecois hockey player in Mike Myers' critically trounced The Love Guru, and bit turns in Black Snake Moan and Southland Tales made no lasting imprint. But Timberlake clearly wants to break on through to the other side, and what the Prince of Pop wants (a shot at), the Prince of Pop gets. Unfortunately for him, the chance to pull on a pair of green tights and save the world slipped through his fingers.
But there's always The Open Road.
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The promotional cycle has gotten to the point now where, thanks to Entertainment Tonight, anticipation of a trailer is no longer the breathless, calendar-watching slog it used to be. Take its 30-second spot previewing the actual preview for The Lovely Bones, which the show will premiere tonight; it's the first footage available anywhere online, a maze of typically dreamy Peter Jackson visuals and A-list actors emoting in clipped, quick-cut bursts. Which is all fine, I suppose, except that it's probably not supposed to be this hilarious.
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One day, Chris Rock's daughter asked him the provocative question, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" Somehow, this has led to a documentary where Raven-Symone adjusts her two-piece weave on camera. Let's connect the dots!
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In basic Trailer 101 terms, the new spot for The Fantastic Mr. Fox -- Wes Anderson's animated adaptation of the beloved Roald Dahl novel -- does almost everything it's supposed to do: Lists the great voice cast (George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray), showcases its unusual style in concert with Anderson's trademark dryness, and spiritedly, economically lays out a concise plot summary. So why do I feel like running away from it and the movie it's trying to sell?
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As pertains to their work, Joel and Ethan Coen have developed something of a taste for cannibalism. Since No Country For Old Men essentially remade Raising Arizona through Cormac McCarthy's nihilistic prism (swap out a baby for a satchel full of cash, and work your way down from there), Burn After Reading inverted parts of the bloody, triple-crossing intrigue Fargo as a bloody Bush-era farce, and now A Serious Man is noshing on all the neuroses that seemed to fuel Barton Fink. Jewish male panic, professional irrelevance, sexual frustration, the struggles of the "life of the mind"... and that's just what I got from a little over a minute and a half. And which, I guess I should add, makes me all the more excited for the finished film.
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Hey, do you like nudity and outlandish blood spurting? Haha, trick question, we all like those things. Rarely, though, has an ad campaign focused on the two to the exclusion of all else, but then, Starz has to make a name for its news series Spartacus: Blood and Sand somehow. Come in and let's take a look at the NSFW trailer, shall we? Wear a smock (but nothing else).
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Streets of Blood would probably qualify for enshrinement among this site's Bad Movies We Love if any of us had been able to view it prior to today, when the Val Kilmer/Sharon Stone/50 Cent corruption-in-New Orleans thriller finally makes its domestic debut via DVD. But we'll always have the trailer to consider for our Two-Minute Verdict -- a red-band, NSFW marvel of genre archetypes, ethnic stereotypes, filthy language, guns, scowls, and, from Stone, perhaps the worst Southern accent in modern cinema. Oh, and yes -- plenty of blood.
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