Remember there was a time when George Lucas didn’t screw up everything he touched?  It was so long ago.  Here is Kurt Russell’s not-so-good audition for Han Solo. Now imagine the original trilogy with Russell as Han instead of Harrison Ford. Wait for it, wait for it.  Okay. It’s strange and almost wrong, watching Russell’s take on a good-guy Han Solo.  It’s absent everything that became endearing about Han — the cockiness, the ego, the brashness. [via here/here]

First official trailer for Mike Newell’s big-screen adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The film, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, and Ben Kingsley, is due in theaters May 28, 2010.  And you know what?  I had my doubts but this looks to be another solid Jerry Bruckheimer summer blockbuster.  Sure, you’ll forget it 20-minutes after leaving the theater, but man those two-hours sure will be fun.

The latest xkcd comic features several insanely detailed Movie Narrative Charts showing the character interactions in various films. Here’s a larger version.

The charts graph time on a horizontal axis and then how each character interacts with another at any given time.  It’s a very cool way to visualize the plot of a movie — especially the convoluted Primer. 

It’s hard to image with the unmitigated success of Robert Rodriguez’s noirish adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book Sin City, that either a studio, Rodriguez or Frank Miller did rush a sequel into production.  That’s the Hollywood norm.  Yet, the movie was released waaaay back in 2005.

Speaking to Comics2Film, producer Stephan L’Heureux said “Sin City 2 will go into production in the second half of 2010. Unlike the first movie, which used graphic novels as both screenplay and storyboards, the sequel will be based on an original script by Miller. As with the original, Miller will co-direct with Robert Rodriguez.”

Even with a Predator update and Machete flick in the works, it’s unclear whether or not a Sin City sequel fits into the director’s time line.  What this could indicate is that Rodriguez will be producing or heavily involved from a distance, while Frank Miller directs solo.  That’s a scary proposition for anyone who attempted to sit through the putrid Spirit. [via]

Just a month until the movie comes out, John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road gets a second, much better trailer.  The movie, and story, is a hard sell because, um, not to ruin it for people who haven’t read this book (wait, what?  Seriously run out and read this book now!) yet, but it’s not exactly uplifting.  It’s dark and bleak and to polish the humanity contained within the grime is often difficult.  It’s not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those that like tidy, shiny boxes to unwrap.

John Lennon as a young man.  I’m glad they didn’t just go with bland, look-a-like actors, but it’s a bit strange that Paul McCarthy looks nothing like he did as a young man.  Also?  How come John is the only Beatle that gets any love when it comes to feature films?  C’mon Hollywood give me a George Harrison biopic.  Pretty puh-lease.

Martin Scorcese shares his 11 favorite horror movies.  There are some nice surprises, meaning movies I’ve never heard of or had forgotten about, or have yet to see.  The one I’m most intrigued by is Isle of the Dead, about a plague that ravishes a small Greek island.

This is a much better trailer, at least now I get the gist of the story and it’s not so much “oh look at me and my fancy CGI” which was all the last trailer wanted to do.  I might be sold with this one — even if Cameron did plagiarize his story from an old pulp novel.

If you’re going to make a movie about Nelson Mendela, it’s pretty much a given that Morgan Freeman would play the South Africa president. So it’s no surprise, then, that he shows up here in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-baiting flick about Mendela’s early moments as President, in which he attempts to unite a post-apartheid country through the national rugby team.

Matt Damon shows up as leading player, Francois Pienaar. Of course, the team captain guides his team to the 1995 World Championship and everything in South Africa has been peaches and cream since then. Or something like that. Expect nominations aplenty when this is released on December 11.

Am I worried that director Paul Greengrass has turned an adaptation of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone into a $100 million Bourne-esque action picture for Universal? 

Absolutely. This is a fairly standard cut action trailer. But that doesn’t make me want to see this movie any less.  Greengrass is, afterall, the Irish madman behind both kinetic Bourne movies and the politically charged  United 93  and Bloody Sunday.

“It’s great, I’ve seen it. They’re finishing some of the effects, and it’ll be ready for March. We got a $100m Iraq movie, so we’ll see!,” Damon said in an interview with Empire Magazine. “I do have high hopes for it, though. I think it’s really good. I know the Iraq movies haven’t been particularly popular so far, but hopefully this will find an audience. It’s a thriller, really, set against the canvas of Iraq in 2003.”

Universal needs to sell this movie (hence the straight forward trailer), but I’m guessing Greengrass has something far better and deeper up his sleeve than this trailer is letter on.

The Golden Globes haven’t had a host in 15 years, but if you’re going to try something different you might as well get a comedian who seems perfectly tailored to host an awards show. 

“”We never thought a host was necessary,” Philip Berk told the Hollywood Reporter. “Only when NBC suggested the idea that a host might enhance the show, my response was the only person we could consider for the task would be Ricky Gervais, and we were lucky to get him.”

And get him they did.  Gervais joins a recent list of outside-the-box hosts, including Ellen DeGeneres and Hugh Jackman at The Oscars and Neil Patrick Harris at The Emmy’s. 

This announcement has me curious enough to check out the awards show, when I otherwise wouldn’t.  There’s a lot of people who don’t care about the awards but would watch to see Gervais’s acerbic wit gently prod celebrities.

Nominations for the Globes will be announced Dec. 15. The 67th annual Golden Globes  will air as a live broadcast Jan. 17, 2010 on NBC.

Okay, it’s been a little bit since we were first introduced to Benecio del Toro’s Wolfman. And I’m not sold on director Joe Johnston, but I’ll admit this looks good. I might even be able to overlooked the strange decision to cast Anthony Hopkins as del Toro’s dad. You know? Genetics and all, they look nothing alike. And I should be able to forgive Emily Blunt from marrying Jim Halpert. [via]

When you woke up this morning, you probably said to yourself, “you know? I think I really want to watch a superhero movie about a car.” Welp, your dreams have come true thanks to Wanted’s Timur Blackmambatov and directers Alexandr Voitinsky and Dmitriy Kiselev.  The $8 million dollar movie comes to us courtesy of Mother Russia and though I don’t understand what’s going on since it’s in the native tongue, I do have the foggy notion that it seems to be a sweet mashup between Transformers and Spider-Man, can you dig it? [via]