I don’t know what to say about this remake of a very good, very influential movie, other than to say you could see it coming with blinders on and it looks like utter crap.

Okay, okay. The movie itself doesn’t look bad, but that trailer. My god. I’m no rocket scientist but what is up with the Limp Bizkit score and the movie’s tagline: “Titans Will Clash”? The movie is called Clash of the Titans and the best the marketing department could come up with as a slogan/tagline is titans will clash. Jesus H. Christ someone should be fed to the guillotine.

Also? Is Sam Worthington the real deal or is he just the latest in a string of Hollywood male leads they are really trying to jam down my throat. It was hard to tell with the latest Terminator, but we’ll get a really good look with Avatar and now this. Still, if anyone has seen Somersault then you know the guy is capable of delivering a nuanced and subtle acting performance.

Amy Adams is, without reservation, poised to inherit the romantic comedy crown Julia Roberts was more than willing to walk away from.  And after sitting through the dreck of Night at the Museum 2 where Adams’s plucky Amelia Earhart was the only redeeming thing, it’s evident she could act her way out of a Chinese prison camp (do those even exist?!?) with both hands tied behind her back.

Adams is a revelation and there is nothing wrong with the plucky heroines she portrays time and time again.  It’s a rare quality that few actresses can believably pull off and do so without being annoying.  I would watch her in just about anything, even if we already can tell how the movie will end.

The title aptly sums up my feelings for this movie.  Normally, I’d say no thank you to a movie like this (think any of those recent Diane Keaton flicks where she falls in love with Jack Nicholson, Steve Martin or Keanu Reeves, or whomever), but it’s hard to resist the charms of Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin.

I have a feeling this is a rental I’ll end up watching when I visit my parents in Boston, either on the airplane or when there is nothing else to do.

I’m still not sold on this flick, but the voice talent alone might make it worth it.

Normally, a premise as hackneyed as this one — two brothers go off to war and when one is suspected of being dead his widow falls for the living brother — has about as much chance of being a decent flick as it does a Lifetime Original.

But the talent behind this picture is too huge to ignore. Director Jim Sheridan is back to challenging, emotionally human interest drama (we’ll forgive him his paycheck cashing 50 Cent gangster flick) with the talents of Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobie Maguire in front on the camera.

In Columbia Pictures’ Salt, Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer who swore an oath to duty, honor, and country. When she is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy, Salt goes on the run to clear her name and ultimately prove she is a patriot. Using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative, she must elude capture and protect her husband or the world’s most powerful forces will erase any trace of her existence.

This movie was originally written with Tom Cruise starring as Evan Salt (or something like that) but when he dropped out it was rewritten for Jolie.

Salt hits theaters on July 23, 2010.

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.

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.

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.

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]

It seems that Mel Gibson, who hasn’t acted in a movie in seven years, couldn’t be bothered to perfect his Boston accent.  Not that I’m complaining, because it’s a mercurial thing, the boston accent, something most native Bostonians spend a lifetime running away from.  Well, the educated anyways. 

This thriller, where Gibson sees his daughter murdered on the steps of his home and that MacGuffin leads to shady corporate coverups, looks like standard material.  But I’m interested!

Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale) directs the movie, which is a remake of the very highly regarded UK mini-series from 1985 – also directed by Martin Campbell.

Goddamn, if I didn’t shed a tear with Randy Newman singing over the montage of Andy growing up.  Men of a certain age and time have been there when the difficult decision to put away childish things comes, and yet, we hold on to toys and action figures and recycle our memories into sugar-coated summer movies in the hopes of feeling a fleeting moment of happiness that we felt then.

It’s obvious this one, written by Oscar-winner Michael Arndt, is aiming for the themes of homelessness and abandonment and finding a place in the world as it prepares to leave you behind.

Thomas Jane making his directorial debut with what looks to be a fairly creepy, fun movie.  It’s going straight to DVD, which means you can look for it on torrent sites within the next few months.

Geek Tyrants said it, “hearkens back to classic Twilight Zone and film noir elements, rides the dark edge of comedy, and feels like an old DC Comic book that you can reach in to… and often times it feels like it will grab you right back.”

It feels so right to have Disney making classic 2D cell animated films again.  [via]

Warner Bros. debuted the first teaser for their reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street, which will star Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach from Watchmen) as Freddy Krueger.

It’s going to be pretty difficult to top the original, but at the very least I’m excited for a few scares and to watch Haley’s take on the iconic character made famous by Robert Englund.

Englund made the character both scary and a demon worth rooting for. Whenever I watched one of those movies, I would inevitably cheer on Kreuger to gruesomely murder those stupid high school characters. Let’s see of Haley can do the same or something totally different.

A Nightmare on Elm Street scares its way into your dreams April 30, 2010.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you watch a trailer and think to yourself, “holy shit this movie exists and some ass-clown of a studio executive decided to green light it.”

They are calling it “the new Blair Witch.”  Whatever that means.  I suppose the difference between then and now is that over the ensuing decade nobody is going to believe this is real footage; however, that doesn’t make this look any less scary.

Ah, the Kristen Bell promise from me to you.  Sometimes it’s great and um, sometimes I have to post on trailers like this.  Still, I think Bell is one of the more underrated comedic actresses going, even if I am worried she’s going to end up trudging the same desert sand as Sandra Bullock.

It boasts an impressive cast: George Clooney plays a professional downsizer, flying from city to city, accumulating frequent-flier miles, and firing employees the bosses are too scared to fire themselves. On his way to a million miles, he makes a connection with a fellow traveler played by Vera Farmiga. Their relationship is threatened when Clooney’s job falls in jeopardy. 

Also making appearances are Jason Bateman (previously paired with Reitman in Juno), Danny McBride and Zack Galifianakis.

The teaser doesn’t give much away, but features a very Tyler Durdon-y speech from Clooney.

A new documentary on William S. Burroughs is in production and the trailer looks pretty great. Titled “A Man Within,” the film is directed by Yony Leyser and features a cornucopia of his collaborators, including: Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, V. Vale, Anne Waldman, James Grauerholz, Genesis P-Orridge, and David Cronenberg. Peter Weller narrates and Sonic Youth composed the soundtrack.

Disney has just debuted the second full-length theatrical trailer for The Princess and the Frog, their return to both hand-drawn animation and classic princess fairy tales.  Truth be told, I want this movie to succeed way more than I have an interest in watching it.  But it feels like if this movie succeeds then tradition 2D, hand-drawn animation will be in vogue again and if it fails we may have to rely on Japan’s animation industry for that fix.

Always curious by anything Rachel Weisz does, but I’m not sure about this one.  Visually, it’s quite striking.  Otherwise, the new movie from director Alejandro Amenábar (The Sea Inside, The Others, and Open Your Eyes), looks like a tough pill. 

Historical movies like this, are always a tough sell, especially when no one in the movie seems Egyptian.  Regardless, Weisz plays the Atheist female philosopher Hypathia trying to preserve her culture’s wisdom during a time when Christianity was on the rise in the Egyptian Empire.  Of course, there’s a love triangle too, as these movies often do.

Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats (Overture, 11.6) is based on supposed truth, or more precisely Jon Ronson’s 2004 non-fiction book about the U.S. Army’s exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal.

When the project was announced, it sounded cool.  But here, at least the trailer from Overture, we’re treated to what amounts to a slapstick yarn with Clooney and Ewan McGregor.  A bit disappointing from what I thought the project was going to be. It feels derivative, in a broad sense, like I’ve seen this before — as if The Coen Brothers crossbred with David O. Russell’s Three Kings.

Ah well.

Warner Bros. and Yahoo have just premiered the new teaser for Christopher Nolan’s Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, which is due in summer 2010.

Not much is known about the thriller, but Variety reports the film is “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.” How very Matrix-y, including the crazy fight scenes. 

Still, Nolan has always been obsessed with the themes of identity and memory and how the two can often be misleading.  Something tells me those themes will be at play here as well.

What looks to be the apotheosis of all Michael Moore movies rolled into one.

“It’s a crime story. But it’s also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it’s also a love story. Only it’s about an abusive relationship.

“It’s not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make.”

Due in theaters October 2.

I would be more excited about this movie if director Mark Romanek hadn’t been kicked off a few weeks into shooting and replaced by the serviceable Joe Johnston.  Maybe it works for Johnson because everything was already in place to make a Victorian gothic horror picture.

Still, it’s hard to believe Benecio del Toro is Anthony Hopkins son, he doesn’t remotely look or sound British in this movie.  That might not matter to some, but I’ve detested entire movies based solely on their ill-fitting soundtracks.

It’s a new trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar, which some people are calling “the movie that could change film-making for ever. It has the power to alter your mind. Watching it will be like dreaming with your eyes open.” 

I would call it, okay.  Not to dismiss a 3-D movie based on it’s 2-D teaser promo trailer, but the whole thing just looks like insanely silly and in CG.   Especially the Na’vi aliens.  So much for Cameron bridging the uncanny divide.

Full-screen version here.

They’re really playing up the not-Edward Cullen guy a lot in this trailer.  Weird.  Or not, maybe if you’ve read the books it makes sense.

Jared Hess’s (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) latest madcap comedy.

The film, stars Michael Angarano (a fairly talent lad at both the comedy and drama), Jennifer Coolidge, Mike White, Sam Rockwell, and Jemaine Clement, and is due in theaters October 30.

Clement plays Ronald Chevalier — here’s his hilarious viral website — an internationally famous fantasy novelist. He winds up ripping off a young writer’s (Michael Angarano) short story and then that story is made into an hilariously bad-looking movie-within-a-movie.

What’s drawn me to Hess’s films is the sweet and innocent nuggaty center. Most people sorta want to lump him in with say, Wes Anderson, but Hess has never tried to be cool, if anything his movies hand you their heart off their sleeve.

Remember there was a time when Dennis Quaid actually cared about his acting career?  When he was one of Hollywood’s most underrated leading men and he chose good to decent projects?  It’s like he just gave up trying.  Seriously Dennis Quaid, you were in Inner Space for crying out loud.  Now you’re just some creepy washed up actor taking a paycheck left and right.  Sad.

And shame on Paul Bettany who’s actually talented and has never seemed to do anything right with his career, except marry Jennifer Connelly.

Um, also?  I guess this movie is some action flick about angels and whatnot, but it’s hard to care.

First full-length trailer for David Bowers and Imagi Animation Studios CGI adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy.

The film, which features the vocal talents of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Bill Nighy, Kristen Bell, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Donald Sutherland, Matt Lucas, Samuel L. Jackson, and Charlize Theron, is due for wide release October 23, 2009.

Obviously the important thing here is the voice talents of Kristen Bell.  This is probably the closest we’ll ever come to some sort of Mega Man movie, so I guess I’ll just have to live with it.  For background on the original Astro Boy, this site has loads of information, and you can also watch episodes of the TV series (1980-81 and 2003-04) on YouTube. Some of the ’60s Astro Boy stuff is there as well; here’s the very first episode.

I’ve long felt that Terry Gilliam was a director that hasn’t quite earned his reputation.  Now, I know that diehard fans of his are more than willing to debate this with me.  But it always feels like his movies are almost there, like he’s never fully put it together outside his work with Monty Python.  This isn’t to argue that he’s not great or worth watching or worth debating, because he’s certainly worthy of all that praise.  I guess I just never understood people’s slavish devotion to him.

That said, whoa.  I had no expectations for his latest, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, aside from it being Heath Ledger’s final movie, but dang this looks kinda funky.  I don’t know if he’ll be able to pull it together, but jeeze, he’s got some exquisite eye for set design and imagery.

It’s nice to see that trademark Gilliam tone back, like he’s having fun shooting on the edge of insanity and not caring.  It’s what makes his most special projects stand out.

Director Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are has to be the Laure Ling and Euna Lee of movies.  One minute there’s trouble with the project (CGI, puppet work, the rough cut) and it’s going to be sent to the proverbial hard labor camp and then poof a trailer shows up (Bill Clinton in this hackneyed metaphor) and all of a sudden the movie is on a plane and headed towards Oscar contention.

Seriously.  I’ve never seen audiences react to a trailer in a way that they react to this movie.  It’s pure adulation.  There is, there has to be, a profound connection between people and the source material.  Just the thought of Max and the Wild Things reduces people to a rambunctious six-year-old.

That’s a good thing.  A great thing.  A thing of beauty.

I believe this Paul Weitz film was originally titled Cirque de Freak, but I’m guessing the marketing department wanted to capitalize of the vampire craze of felt there was something inherently unmarketable about the original title. 

Either way, this looks like a silly, action-filled romp, based on the popular series of books by Darren Shan.  It’s a fantasy-adventure about a teenager who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. 

Not to be taken seriously.

Directed by Peter Jackson, who personally purchased the film rights to the book. This one feels like it’s been long in development (remember Ryan Gosling was fired for showing up paunchy to the set and replaced by Mark Wahlberg), but certainly worth wait.

Based on the 2002 book by Alice Sebold, “it is the story of a teenage girl who, after being brutally raped and murdered, watches from heaven as her family and friends go on with their lives, while she herself comes to terms with her own death.”

From the trailer this movie feels like the culmination of everything Jackson has been working towards — the personal character study of Heavenly Creatures, the effects work of King Kong, with some fantasy elements from Lord of the Rings.

It hits theaters on Decemer 6, 2009.

Huh.  So they made a movie out of Michael Lewis’s book, The Blind Side. Looks like it could be decent, if not schmaltzy.  Hopefully, this is more like Friday Night Lights and less like a Lifetime Original. 

Nice to see Sandra Bullock looking good and doing something other than a terrible rom-com.  It even looks like she may be using Michael Oher to open a lane to Oscar-baiting daylight. 

For those scratching their heads, Michael Oher was the Baltimore Ravens’s #1 pick in this year’s NFL draft.  But back in high school, before the football glory, he was struggling to live in a Memphis ghetto; then he was adopted by a white family in rural Mississippi and given a second chance.  Because he was built like a Mac Truck, with the grace of a ballerina, the high school football team turned him into a left tackle, one of the NFL’s most highly sought-after positions.