Oh, Universal. Are you trying to hide your new The Wolfman trailer from the world? Did no one tell you that James Cameron would finally be unleashing the first Avatar trailer on this sleepy August Thursday, greedily gobbling up fanboy mindshare for the film that is going to forever change how we watch 3-D movies about giant, apostrophe-happy blue aliens implanted with the consciousness of Earthbound cripples? Or are you trying to sneak one by us, tucking your teaser under your arm and slipping out quietly while Avatar works the room?
Strategic decisions/oversights aside, on to the trailer itself.
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After numerous teases and fakes (one of which came awfully close to fooling even Movieline), an honest-to-goodness Avatar trailer has found its way on to the Web. Yes, it's a French import sans dialogue, but you're not here for the script anyway, right? Watch after the jump.
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Rob Zombie's 2007 Halloween reimagining did little to impress critics, who seemed disappointed that the director had chosen to abandon the steady-handed terror orchestrated by John Carpenter in favor of a messier take that sought to shed some light on Michael Myers's childhood and psychological motivations. Still, some got it -- the Village Voice's Nathan Lee called it "a biopic, and a superb one at that... Zombie's portrait is every bit as reverent, scrupulous, and deeply felt as any Oscar grubbing horrorshow." Despite expressing reluctance to return to the material, Zombie's sequel arrives in theaters next week.
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It's always interesting to learn what celebrities' proposed platforms would be were they to run for public office. Brad Pitt recently told the Today Show that his mayoral campaign in New Orleans would run "on the gay marriage, no religion, legalization and taxation of marijuana platform." Alec Baldwin, who's both teased and denied a Senate run, would nevertheless work tirelessly to push through his divorced dads' rights initiatives. And now we have Britney Spears on last night's Late Show with David Letterman, delivering ten campaign promises for her inevitable go at the White House.
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As you've been told repeatedly in the run-up to its release, if you care about movies, or kick-ass 3-D experiences, or the future of mankind in general, then you care about James Cameron's bold, interstellar-Smurfs-on-steroids vision more commonly known as Avatar. And if they've already succeeded in getting you to drink the blue Kool-Aid, you've undoubtedly had one eye trained on Apple's movie site, where a countdown clock is ticking away the minutes until Avatar's trailer goes live. Can't wait that long? You don't need to! The Official Unofficial Trailer has already hit the web, and it's a showstopper! Strap yourself in for an adventure, the likes of which you have never seen!
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Of the many not-particularly-interesting things about Jay Leno, his exotic car collection is arguably the very least interesting -- a rich man's hobby that offers the viewer little by way of entertainment or relatability, no matter how enthusiastically he lays on the "Dixie"-playing horn of his WWI-era, high-speed touring roadster outside a crowded Fuddruckers in Burbank. Still, among members of that exclusive club of breakthrough comedians who earn a gazillion dollars per year or more, autophilia is an extremely popular practice, with lengthy provisions woven into their pre-nups that retain all cars upon divorce, and, in some extreme cases, permit for instances of extramarital sex, so long as it is conducted upon a chrome exhaust pipe.
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The actual English-language trailer for New Moon has been released, and I have to say, I actually preferred the French-dubbed bootleg. There, the mystifying choice to let Taylor Lautner narrate the entire clip was balanced out by his sophisticated French; in English, though, he simply sounds like an overzealous disc jockey. But hey! There's Dakota Fanning, right?
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Sometimes, after I've watched a great deal of trailers back to back, I'll briefly forget what film I'm actually at the theater to see. My guess is that the endless trailer for the Kristen Bell romantic comedy When in Rome might induce the same effect, as it's pretty much guaranteed to be longer than the actual movie you've bought a ticket to.
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For a director who's obsessed with packing his movies full of subplots, tangents, and diversions, it seems appropriate that the side stories that have sprung up during Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds press tour are at least as entertaining as the movie itself. First, there was the Purple Dildo of Set-Napping Shame, and now Tarantino's topped even that with a truly amazing list of his twenty favorite movies of the last seventeen years. The kids-killing-kids classic Battle Royale was number-one on the list, but it's the number-two film Tarantino revealed that's the real shocker.
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Hey, here's something that had been off my radar til now: Gentlemen Broncos, the next movie from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess. A new trailer has been released for the film and it looks like Napoleon all right, but with Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement added in for good measure.
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The new trailer for Law Abiding Citizen is out, pitting vigilante Gerard Butler against prosecutor Jamie Foxx in a battle of wills from which no one shall emerge unscathed. Or maybe "unscathed" isn't the right word -- perhaps we should go with unexploded, or untortured, or un-power-tooled, or any of the other variety of ways the bereft Butler's psycho-revenge plot takes on the criminal justice system in Philadelphia.
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1. Uma Thurman isn't simply a harried mom trying to adjust to the multitude of demands on her schedule -- she's also a blogger with a site called "The Bjorn Identity." At some point, we've got to believe the marketing team is going to sell this puppy based on three shots alone: Thurman typing, butter sizzling in a pan, and, oddly, Julia Child cooking beef bourguignon.
2. Jodie Foster has an uncredited cameo as herself, for some reason.
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"The End is Near! The Apocalypse is coming! But forget horsemen and Endtime Rulers and all that. It's actually going to play itself out a lot like Bagdad Café (the movie version, not the Whoopi Goldberg TV adaptation), and Paul Bettany is going to lead the fight against an army of demon ice cream truck drivers and foul-mouthed grannyzebubs as Dennis Quaid's skin boils while he's nailed upside down to a cross and his whole torso explodes. And there's going to be guns. Lots and lots of guns! Thank god Dr. Addison Montgomery is there -- she can help deliver the savior baby! Did you ever notice how much black-winged angels look like bats when flying in formation?"
Verdict: What happens when that guy in the Denny's parking lot wearing a discarded bra on his head and screaming at the top of his lungs sells his first screenplay.
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When I worked at a video store in college, one of my favorite things to do was to put a really cheesy DVD on the big TV but turn on English subtitles and French dubbing. Like clockwork, shoppers would stop to stare, wondering what sophisticated foreign film they had just discovered, before the sudden, jarring presence of Mariah Carey would alert them that it was Glitter.
All this is to say that the new, full-length trailer for New Moon seems custom-made for me: this isn't the 14-second snippet, nor the actual English trailer, but instead a French-dubbed version somebody videotaped. Can the foreign language ameliorate the story's inherent cheesiness?
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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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