Stupid trailer of the week: Gamer

Everything tells me i should keep as far away from this nonsense as possible but damn it i know i'll watch it. This comes off as Running Man meets Death Race meets Surviving The Game (Rutger Hauer/Ice T) with all the insanity that implies but hell Michael C Hall's in it!

Okay that's pretty much why i'll watch it. It could be fun, it could be awful and Butler isn't worth the bother but Michael C Hall in a villain lead role? I am so there. I'd watch any movie they put that guy in after Six Feet Under and Dexter, the guy's fantastic.

So count me in for this stupid looking movie, i just pray it's fun.

http://gamerthemovie.com/

Frustrating trailer of the week: Precious

I really feel this is under-selling this movie. This trailer is clearly tailored specifically for the US African American audience, fronted by the Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry presents tag and then proceeds to look merely okay. In fact this is one of those trailers that if i didn't know what it was for i would say, "nah, won't bother with that".

But Precious is the renamed Push which met with huge acclaim at Sundance and sounds fantastic. I think this trailer has hints of that and i pray they recut to cater for international audiences because otherwise i'll never convince my mates to watch this, and this is one of my must-sees for this year. Anyway, in the meantime the fairly generic and undersold trailer:

http://www.oprah.com/media/20090506-tows-precious-trailer

Hang on... a damn minute (remake madness hits 90s)!

Okay so now they are solidly in the 90s! Cliffhanger is being remade. That’s 1993 for crying out loud!

The bit I love is that it is being remade by Neal Moritz under his fantastically ironic production company Original Films (currently remaking Escape From New York and Total Recall and responsible for the remakes of Prom Night and I Am Legend, the TV-show based S.W.A.T. and endless Fast & Furious and I Know What You Did Last Summer sequels!) Who says Hollywood producers have no sense of humour?! – oh, but then, maybe he doesn’t get it’s funny.

This follows news that the latest horror to get the remake treatment will be Fright Night, but i've been expecting that for some time. What 80s horrors are there left to remake? Sleepaway Camp i suppose.

New trailer: Nine

It is destined to be one of this year's awards front-runners but i have to say i find this trailer for Rob Marshall's Nine fairly uninspiring:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/nine/

Here you have a musical full of big names with more Oscars to there names than probably any other cast in history and yet you cut a trailer that features not a hint of any of the performances (except for a couple of lines by Judi Dench) and none of the songs! Does this scream lack of confidence to anyone else?

This trailer comes across more like an agent provocateur advert!

Still, Kate Hudson must be happy. I don't envy being her in this cast once the inevitable awards-season trailer hits with all it's "Academy Award winner..." proclamations. In a cast with DDL, Dench, Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Sophia Loren who are all Oscar-winners and many multiple nominees her "Academy Award nominee..." proclamation is going to read like "LOSER!!!"

Loving this Up poster

So Up is greating a lot of coverage today from its Cannes premiere last night and the trade reviews in Variety and Screen International are glowing (naturally, it is Pixar after all!)

So i decided i'd add to the Up flow today and just say i love this character poster for the film. I really really want to make this my screen saver but for political reasons I won't go into that's not possible.

Still, go Pixar! (Can't believe we have to wait until October in the UK)

New trailers: Whatever Works, Princess And The Frog

Okay so any new Woody Allen (with the possible exception of Cassandra's Dream) is cause for celebration with me, but the combinations of Larry David and Woody Allen is too good to be true. Add a cast that includes Patricia Clarkson, Ed Bedley Jr and Michael McKean and a great looking performance from the always excellent Evan Rachel Wood (amazing in last year's The Wrestler) and this is a must see - which is way it was in my 10 most wanted to see films of 2009 back at the beginning of the year (see bottom of blog main page).

Here is the trailer for Whatever Works, which my sources tell me is hilarious and lives up to how funny it looks:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/whateverworks/

And while we are talking about great looking trailers feast your eyes on the beautiful trailer for Disney's long-awaited return to feature hand-drawn animation, The Princess And The Frog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6DmEgtibOg

I don't know how good the story is going to be on this one, will it be fun but largely forgettable like The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch, woeful like The Rescuers and Oliver & Co., or timelessly stunning like Dumbo, Beauty & the Beast, The Jungle Book, Snow White, Bambi, The Lion King, etc? One thing's for sure the animation itself looks awesome. I hope Disney knock this one out of the park.

New trailer: District 9

Suitably intriguing trailer for apartheid allegory sci-fi film District 9:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/district9/hd/

essentially seems to be a feature exploration of the themes the director had in his 2005 short film Alive in Joburg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNReejO7Zu8

Still, promising.