New trailer: Shutter Island

Be warned: this is from the Robert Zemeckis school of "give as much away in the trailer as possible" so if you haven't read the book (which i have) that this seems to stick quite closely to, you may not want to watch this trailer before seeing the film.

That said it does look good and hopefully will be much better than Scorsese's overrated The Departed. Unfortunately it is yet another of the Scorsese/DiCaprio team ups (please make a new film with DeNiro Marty and forget pumpkin-headed Leo who's not fit to shine Bobby's shoes) but it has a hell of a cast: Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Max Von Sydow, Ted Levine, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Elias Koteas, Jakie Earle Haley etc etc etc. Plus the trailer has clear stylistic vibes of Hitchcock and Kubrick which is interesting.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/shutterisland/

New trailers: Mr Nobody, The Answer Man, Shrink, The Final Destination

All the links for these are in the trailer bar on the right as usual so i'm not reporting them, but new trailers put up today cover the gamut!

Mr Nobody - looks intriguing. Obviously very low-budget (perhaps too so for what looks like an ambitious project) this could be genius like a Vincenzo Natali picture or a Charlie Kaufman, or it could be frustrating like Science Of Sleep.

The Answer Man - looks light and not stunning but fun and Jeff Daniels is always easy to watch. Looks like his character from Squid & the Whale meets Jack from As Good As It Gets via standard Sundance sort of fare. Still, i'll watch this one.

Shrink - looks like a missed opportunity. This looks lazy and uninspired. I hope with Spacey in a lead role again and support from the likes of Robert Loggia i'm wrong but i have a feeling this ones not going to be worth it.

The Final Destination - ah, what would a week be without a stupid cheesy trailer. It would seem that not only have New Line now thrown out any hint of an okay actor or coherent plot line to go for cheap-as-you-can teen-fodder in a 3D sequel to Final Destination, but they've also been watching that box office on Fast & Furious and thought to themselves, "Hey, that title is like, retro cool, seems franchise and yet possibly original"! And so now instead of Final Destination 4 we have THE Final Destination! Add a The get a whole new audience! Although one can't help but think that technically it should be The Final Final Destination, but i guess that's being far too logical for a franchise about fate taking you out in various gruesome ways that will presumably in this film entirely involve methods of demise that require things to fly directly at the screen. So much for the "the new 3D is about depth and creating a world to better serve the story, rather than a gimmick to just have things flying out of the screen" argument! Horror films like It Came From Outer Space and Creature From The Black Lagoon made 3D popular in the 50s before people got bored, then horror resurrected it in the 80s with films like Jaws 3D, Amityville 3D, Friday the 13th, Part 3D(!) and beat it into the ground once again. I can't help thinking that films like My Bloody Valentine, The Final Destination, Piranha 3D etc may end up countering all the good done for the format by films like Up and Coraline this time around. Still, we'll see i guess. It is also interesting that the makers of the Final Destination franchise are obviously cowardly, having originally announced the third film as planned for 3D (that films rollercoaster set piece is a dead giveaway of being thought up with 3D in mind) but they bottled it (probably because there just weren't that many 3D screens back then). Now other films have forced cinemas into adding screens and proven the format tobe popular once more, look who's back on the bandwagon. This sequel looks about as cynical as they come!

Latest screening: Terminator Salvation

Okay so it isn't T1 or T2 but Terminator Salvation (which wisely avoids the abbreviation that in the UK would forever make teenagers think it was the big-screen adaptation of a weekend morning kid-culture show) is a perfectly serviceable sequel.

I can see why fanboys got up in arms, it does have huge leaps in logic that kinda make no sense and it doesn't really live in a universe that could have followed on from the original 2 films. But like T3 (why send the Terminatrix back when she was clearly an inferior model to T2's T-1000?) any normal person won't really care. There's good and bad here but you mostly only notice the bad in the first half and get so caught up in the second half you'll forget all that and enjoy it.

The main negative is that, like its star, it could desperately use a sense of humour. This is played dead serious. Batman Begins serious, only that had Michael Caine's Alfred so more than that. Not that the Terminator's need humour. The classic '84 original had little humour and was awesome regardless. The third film over-played the humour and that was its biggest failing. But this all feels a little po-faced, especially in the 1st half when there's not a lot of action. I also found myself really missing Arnold during the first half. These characters just aren't as interesting as the Austrian oak was to watch.

Still it picks up. Once key plot elements come into play in the second half and the action steps up you get swept along with it. And the action and effects are excellent, really well staged. The film is genuinely exciting in these latter stages and the climax had me almost as on the edge of my seat as the climaxes of T1 and T2.

There are little issues. Bryce Dallas Howard and Michael Ironside are completely wasted. Sam Worthington's accent slips occasionally and while paying homage to the originals in nice touches and, oddly, The Great Escape it does blatantly rip things off from everything from Transformers to Cloverfield! It is nice to see that in a post-apocalyptic world dental hygiene is still LA excellent though!

Generally this surprised me. It may of helped i had verylow expectations but i enjoyed it and like Godfather Part 3 and the last two Alien films i feel as a stand alone movie it would seem much better than it may if simply compared to stunning originals. It may be an entirely unnecessary sequel but it is enjoyable entertainment and i'm fine with that.

This is brilliant!!! Pixar vs DreamWorks

Click on the image to make full size and readable.

Genius!

Found this on http://www.culch.ie/2009/04/02/pixar-vs-dreamworks/?w9591

New trailer: Toy Story 3 teaser

As if it isn't bad enough that US audiences are already enjoying the wonders of Pixar's Up, 5 months ahead of the UK opening (damn Disney!) and, of course, another genius Pixar short film in Partly Cloudy, but they also got the teaser trailer for next summer's Toy Story 3.

Thankfully while not on a glorious giant digital screen we can at least see the TS3 teaser online. As usual with Pixar it is very much a teaser with no relevance to what we are likely to see in the film, but it is nice to see these characters back after a decade away! The Ham line is the high-point for me.

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/259996/toy_story_3_see_the_teaser_trailer_here.html

With Up grossing an excellent $68m in the US at the weekend for Pixar's third best launch and another $4.2m in its international launch in Russia (yes, damn them too!) for the best Pixar launch yet, it looks like things continue on a winning run for Pixar. Can't wait for Up, can't wait for the 3D re-release double-bill of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, can't wait for Toy Story 3! Damn, i love these guys!

Oooh, cheesy thrillers! New trailer: Beyond A Reasonable Doubt

Damn, I'm a sucker for cheesy thrillers, especially those, like this, that feel like they should have come out in the '80s. This is probably because i grew up entertained by the '80s batch themselves.

And among such wonders were The Star Chamber, Running Scared (which i think of as an comedy really but it was still great), Narrow Margin, The Presidio and of course "High Noon in space" Outland. I loved every one of these and they all had one thing in common, director Peter Hyams. Add to those the "Muscles from Brussels" most entertaining effort TimeCop and the criminally entertaining The Relic (plus classic Capricorn One) and i think we can agree (or agree to disagree) that Hyams knows how to make a damn fun piece of daft entertainment. Well, Hyams is behind the lens of this Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and frankly that would get me into the cinema.

Add to that that it also has Michael Douglas (reteaming with Hyams for the first time since 1983's Star Chamber) in one of his shady characters that are always his most watchable roles. Okay so it stars "rent a handsome face" Jesse Metcalfe who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag but then acting ability is hardly a pre-requisite for this time of movie.

It even has a gloriously '80s poster!

So chalk this one up to a must-see piece of hokum in my book.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/beyondareasonabledoubt/

It's official - I am NOT watching the movie of The Road

That's it, the trailer is out (below and on side trailer bar) and i am NOT watching The Road.

I've been nervous about this one since it was announced, largely because what i loved about the book (one of 3 all-time favourites along with A Christmas Carol and 1984) was the knowledge it could never be made into a movie - it's too internal.

Then someone i know who had read the script but not the book gave me their impressions of the story and i started to get the idea the adaptation might be going places that would make me unhappy.

Last year i re-read the book only a year after i had read it for the first time because i wanted to make sure i read it again before my memories were sullied by the movie (if that occurred). Then it was delayed. Then it was delayed again. Now i plan to read the book again.

Now the trailer has hit and worst fears appear manifest. One of the greatest things about the book is the fact it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world but the events preceding the story in the book (solely about the emotional, spiritual and physical journey of a father and son survivors) are not gone into. We don't know what happened, why it happened and we don't need to. It is NOT IMPORTANT. The only things that are important are the father; the son; their survival - their story!

But this trailer suggests we are going to get the explanation, that the mother character (Charlize Theron here) has been significantly enlarged; that the brooding danger of the books rare close-shaves with cannibalistic survivors has become a much more in your face fight for survival from them.

I wish i could go back and stop myself watching this trailer as the images from it are already bothering me but at least i can still stop myself from watching the full film and ruining my experience of the book.

So that's it, i shall go on re-reading and loving the book but now i know for certain i shall not be watching this film.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810037227/video/13468775/