Let's say you've got a violent, bone-bleak survival drama starring Viggo Mortensen. When it comes to cutting a trailer that'll draw an audience for such a film, a little advertising sleight-of-hand is to be expected. But have the Weinsteins gone too far in their attempt to sell The Road?
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It's not exactly news (or a spoiler) that the new Star Trek and original Star Wars share uncannily similar narrative and thematic arcs. But there's something to be said for the person who went to the trouble of diagramming those arcs in one convenient video after the jump (Warning! The footage does include spoilers.)
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The first trailer for Rob Marshall's Nine debuted online this morning, and it seems to fulfill the promise of its development-phase hype: Flash, music, skin, bombast, set pieces, and a cross-section of Oscar-caliber talent going back almost 50 years. But does it make any sense? Does it even need to?
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With Allison Iraheta gone, last night's dudes-only Idol had lost much of its Manic Panic energy; it felt less like a battle for galactic karaoke supremacy, and more like a trio of college-aged furniture movers arriving at your door to pick up a bookshelf. ("Yeah, that's the one. Careful, now -- it's heavier than it looks! You guys thirsty? Because I have some lemonade in the fridge. No? OK. Oh! Watch the sconce!") What were we talking about again? Oh right, Idol. In any case, this was a do-or-die moment for all still standing. It's assumed Adam Lambert will breeze through to the finals on the peppermint wings of Kokring the Flying Unicorn.
If we learned anything from the red carpet premiere of the 24 season finale last night, it's that the writers of the show are "amazing." Or that the show is "great." Or that the characters are "amazing." Or that making the show is "such a great experience." In other words: No one talked about Kiefer Sutherland's recent facial assault. But with all the great amazingness floating around, there was no reason to comment on actual news. We also learned what happens in the finale, but revealing those details would be too great and way too amazing for you to handle.
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Try, for a moment, to conceive of an alternate reality, where events as we know them unfold in completely unpredictable patterns due to creases in the time-space continuum. Now picture this being explained to you by a facially obscured figure who, in a dramatic reveal, winds up being Leonard Nimoy. If that sounds like Star Trek, you are correct. But it also describes the fantastically perplexing Season One finale to the best supernatural detective show since The X-Files, Fringe. It's no coincidence both were brought to you by the powerhouse creative team of J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci, who -- like the viral video that liquefies the brains of anyone who watches it in the episode called "The No-Brainer" -- refuse to let up until your neural circuits are turned into a plate of runny scrambled eggs.
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"That's a pretty expensive joke!" writes a commenter at MTV Movies, which this week unleashed the trailer for a Z-grade monster flick known as Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. The mini-sensation has grown formidably on the strength (or, rather, the weakness) of spellbindingly primitive CGI and a redoubtable power-tandem of Lorenzo Lamas and Deborah Gibson. And while there can be no doubt about the inspiration-by-the-ounce that went into the rendering of a great white gnawing on the Golden Gate Bridge, are we in the minority who will doubt it's anything but an MTV stunt? But for what?
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Though Sundance sensation Precious (formerly Push) is currently in the middle of a Lionsgate/Weinstein Co. custody battle, that hasn't stopped Lionsgate from proceeding with its note-perfect plans for release. Its current placement at Cannes will help add a patina of awards luster, and while its teaser poster is admirably arty, it's not any more "beyond" than the early one-sheets regularly put out by producer Tyler Perry. Oh, and the trailer premiere? Is on Oprah.com, people. Can this campaign manage to sell a tough movie about abuse that many Sundance wags dubbed "uncommercial"? Let's have a look.
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For a while there, despite years' worth of anticipation around Hollywood, the Web and, well, everywhere, it looked like Spike Jonze's live-action adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are might die of neglect in some Warner Bros. utility closet. Studio boss Alan Horn said Jonze still needed to get the hang of the material; Jonze said Warners misunderstood his vision. But today, an unlikely observer may have the key insight into what's wrong with Wild Things. It's caught on tape after the the jump.
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Ah, Hollywood: a place where winsome, dreamy-eyed slacker boys can go to become unbelievably shredded bodybuilders. The latest in our hit parade is the formerly dewy Jake Gyllenhaal, whose abs were glimpsed looking insane in brand-new Prince of Persia footage released over the weekend. Sure, Gyllenhaal has bulked up before for Jarhead, but the quality of his Persia sixpack and its lack of resemblance to concomitant, shirtless paparazzi photos have provoked the internet's most conspiracy-prone beefcake lovers to smell a rat.
Finally exhumed after more than year in Lionsgate's climate-controlled junk drawer, Gamer will finally make its way to theaters this fall. And now, a week after its poster debut and a couple months after its overseas trailer was leaked (and yanked) from the Web, the studio finally seems ready to show audiences what they have to look forward to with Gerald Butler's mind-control shoot-'em-up. Hint: Less mind, more shooting.
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More than two decades ago, Saturday Night Live guest host William Shatner leveled the shot heard 'round the pop-culture world (or at least a few thousand mothers' basements) when he told visitors to a Star Trek convention to "get a life." Over the weekend, with the updated film achieving maximum warp speed at the box office, it was Leonard Nimoy's turn to admonish potential haters.
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Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works, had already stumbled out of the gate at the Summer Marketing Derby before its first trailer was introduced today. Sadly, this latest injury might be the one that sends it off to pasture for good.
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We here at Movieline support all kinds of filmmaking, from big budget space spectacles like Star Trek (a must see!) to esoteric art house fair to insanely involved Michael Bay spoofs that must have taken eight zillion hours to make and involve spraypainted, actual ponies galloping through a high school corridor. As such, for our latest installment of The 2-Minute Verdict, we present My Little Pony: Reign of Buttercup Sprinkles, in which the planet is overrun by an alien species of hostile dwarf equines. Only through the courageous intervention of a Megan Fox-type, polishing a motorcycle with her ass hiked up in the air, can we hope to survive. This blows Tommy and the Cool Mule out of the water.
PETA Verdict: Arrest these people.
Our Verdict: Giddeeeeeeeyup!
It only looks like Zach Galifianakis Day at Movieline, where the comic's interviewing techniques are complemented here with glimpses of his turn in the forthcoming comedy The Hangover. But there's something far more essential about the NSFW teaser following the jump -- something that transcends Galifianakis and comedy and, really, pretty much all of cinema preceding it: Mike Tyson sings.
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