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Fox has renewed Fringe for a full 22-episode second-season.  Hopefully, next year they won’t tinker with it — you know not airing episodes for weeks at a time, etc. 

“Fringe proved to be a notable addition to our schedule all season and it really has fans buzzing as it builds to a fantastic season finale,” said Fox’s president of entertainment, Kevin Reilly. “J.J. and the whole Bad Robot team have been phenomenal partners, and we look forward to years of making great television with them.”

It’s a solid show, certainly worthy of coming back.  It’s nothing special, doesn’t quite feel like appointment television like it should be.  Certainly John Noble as Walter Bishop has become one of television’s most fascinating characters. 

What I’d like to see happen is they pair this show with Dollhouse and see if Dollhouse gains viewers at all. 

Regardless, I’m curious at the direction the show will take.  If they would open the plotlines and let it breath some.  I know everyone wants to compare this to The X-Files, but the differences between the two shows is startling.  It doesn’t help using Boston as a background and having every case take place there, especially if you are going to cut to “Roxbury” or some such city and have it resemble nothing like the actual place. 

So, second season.  Get a consultant from Boston and give our characters cases across the globe/country.  Leave some plot lines dangling.  Say what you want about Joss Whedon, but the man knows how to build/payoff a story arc better than anyone working in television right now.  Fringe should follow his lead a bit.

So Paramount pulled a fast one last night in Austin, Texas and instead of showing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Alamo Drafthouse treated the audience to JJ Abrams’s Trek reboot in its entirety. 

All in all, it seems as if most people felt this was a solid, breezy summer tentpole movie.  Exactly what you want, but unfortunately nothing more. 

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The two moments in this trailer that have me geeked out are when the planet folds into itself and when James T. Kirk sits down in the Captain’s chair for the first time.

Star Trek is in theaters on May 8.

This will be updated as more movie commercials/trailers are added to the mix.

Race to Witch Mountain

Land of the Lost

It’s got Will Ferrell (which could be a plus or minus) and Anna Friel (a bonus) in it, but that’s about all I can say positively for this flick.  Universal looks like it has a trainwreck on its hands, everything from the plot, visuals, and jokes seems underwhelming pedantic. Seriously, though, what’s up with the Matt Lauer references?

Up

Pixar has yet to disappoint and by all accounts, they won’t with Up. Disney has also released a little short called Adventures with Carl and Russell which involves the unlikely duo’s journey through the jungle. While the story seems a lot more subdued than previous Pixar films, the characters are just so immediately lovable.  What strikes me as interesting about this movie will be its reception.  Pixar raises the bar with each movie, but with each new movie everyone says they’ll never top that one.  Will Up continue this trend?

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

It’s hard to take this movie seriously and something tells me that Stephen Sommers doesn’t.  I think this thing is going to be aimed squarely at young kids and teenagers, which is G.I. Joe’s target.  I’m almost glad that they’re not aiming for the disgruntled 30+ crowd, who’s no doubt going to be disappointed with the movie anyways.  Well, they’ve got my attention.  Especially the shot at the end with Snake Eyes flipping over a car.  That’s badass.  Though the goofy supersuits could be done away with.  Everything up until that reveal had me going, okay cast looks spot on plot seems like generic summer blockbuster fair.  All in all, this might be something I can get behind.

Fast and Furious

Is it good or bad that Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Vin Diesel are grovelling back to the racecar franchise that made them famous?  Now in it’s fourth installment, the franchise should be going the way of straigh to DVD and yet it isn’t.  Because said stars are all coming back for more.  Look, the first movie was better (re: fun) than it had any right to be.  Can they capture the same magic this time around?  Hard to say, but I see nothing hear that makes me think this will be anything more than disposable summer claptrap.

Also, I love the trailer opening with Paul Walker saying, “A lot has changed.”  Um, no.  Unless you mean there’s a bigger budget this time around.

Star Trek

I’m already sold.  Great cast and with J.J. Abrams at the helm I’m fully convinced he can make not only a decent Trek picture but one that appeals to a wider audience.  We’ll call it the Star Wars audience.  The other space franchise has no problem appealing to a wide audience, but for whatever reason Star Trek has been relegated to nerds, dorks and geeks.  It’s been stigmatized.  I don’t think that will be the case this summer.  We see some new shots, but overall not a whole lot more than what’s already been revealed.

Year One

Columbia Pictures has released a sneak preview of the upcoming Judd Apatow-produced biblical comedy Year One. The film stars Jack Black and Michael Cera, as a couple of lazy hunter-gatherers who are banished from their primitive village, and set off on an epic journey through the ancient Biblical world.

Directed by National Lampoon’s Vacation and Groundhog Day helmer Harold Ramis, and written by Office scribes Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg (you know, the guys working on the new Ghostbusters script).

The Super Bowl sneak preview clip shows Black and Cera’s characters trying to hunt for food, when they run into a bunch of farmers named Cain and Abel (David Cross and Paul Rudd).  They also run into Adam and Eve, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.

I’m not entirely sold that this is anything more than an extended sketch-comedy skit or will be anything better than other pre-historic comedy movies (re: Caveman starring Ringo Starr).  I love that Michael Cera can’t play anything other than shy and awkward, even as a caveman he comes across as George Michael Bluth.  Adorable or a sign that his career will be over in five years?

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

ZOMG!  I can’t Michael Bay just reduced me to a 14-year-old fanboy.  We’ve obviously saved the best for last.  A few things.  It looks like the dog robot is Ravage and the giant fucking robot that Optimus Prime hangs off of at the end of the trailer is only one of the Destructicons.  So do the math, but if there are 9 of them in the movie forming Devastor, then the mother of all robots is going to the size of a Dubai skyscraper.

Massive.  This movie is going to be massive both in scale and at the box office this summer.  Still, no Dinobots and that’s just disappointing.

According to Slashfilm, a couple of weeks ago one of the Constructicon toys found their way online at tf08.net.  “The unnamed Transformer which has been referred to as the figure’s alt mode: “Steam Shovel” appears to look exactly like the Transformer at the end of the Super Bowl clip. TFW2005 user yizhi521 has even posted an image of the toy with a Legends Of Cyberton series Optimus Prime hanging on to the figure, and it looks very much to scale. I’m not sure about you guys, but the image below looks a lot like the huge transformer shown at the end of the teaser,” writes Peter Sciretta.

What has me curious though, is that the photo below looks exactly like the final image from the teaser trailer.  It seems odd that this photo would surface weeks early and then show up in the Superbowl teaser.  Meaning what?  I’m not sure to be honest, just that either the Transformers fan wanted to see how big the toy was compared to Optimus Prime or that it’s too convenient a coincidence.

Fox has compiled a videoclip detailing every appearance of “The Observer,” the show’s mysterious bald man indirectly related to the pattern.  He appears discretely in every episode and may be extraterrestrial or well, we don’t really now.

Since new episodes of the show don’t return until January I get the sense that this clip, along with the most recent episode that ended on a cliffhanger (and more importantly who’s plot didn’t tidely wrap up by show’s end) signals the show could be changing gears slightly. The Observer will play an important part in that.

For those that have stuck around, the below clip will tickle your jones.  For those that never watched the show or bailed early on, you might not be as interested.  I enjoy it for what it is, even though the main girl Olivia constantly looks constipated (what some might call acting).  It’s not the X-Files, but few shows are.

Everything is ship shape. Or something to that effect.

Update: We decided to take down the bootleg and just provide a better quality version of it.  After seeing the trailer in front of Bond this weekend, dare I say it, but I might actually be excited for this version of Star Trek.  Purists be damned.

It’s not the best footage, but since this trailer doesn’t come out until Monday, I figured we’d throw it up.  I’d say it’s hard to tell anything about the plot of J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, but it looks huge.  It looks like an epic space opera – in the way that lots of Star Trek fans probably imagined a big screen version of the franchise looking.

I’m not the biggest Trek fan, but I like it enough to believe in the franchise’s potential.  Let’s hope Abrams and the cast delivers.  You can catch this in front of Quantum of Solace and judging by the early returns it looks like a lot of people are seeing that movie this weekend, according to Steve Mason.

AICN head honcho Harry Knowles got an early peek at J.J. Abrams Star Trek. The few shots he saw were without proper CG or color timing. Basically, what he saw was put together raw footage. It also goes without saying that it is impossible to take anything Knowles says without a Grand Canyon-sized piece of salt.

It’s widely known that whatever he writes usually ends with some sort of childish enthusiasm (good or bad?) and verbal diarrhea of praise. Regardless, he’s the one who gets access and has James Cameron on his speed dial and he’s the one who’s seen some scenes.

It all ended with characters arriving on the bridge, under the command of Captain Pike. Sulu was at the helm � and the bridge. And the uniforms� Classic Trek. Nice. Then for the first time in the history of Star Trek, it looked amazingly functional. It echoes that classic Trek look � but imagine if you handed that design to the folks at APPLE and said� Make it really work. I instantly believed in the functionality of everything. That�s hard to quantify, but it is true. Remember when you saw the war room underground on Hoth in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK? How it just felt functional � that�s what this looked. And it looked Star Trek, without looking as cheap as Star Trek. It was a tech-fetishists wet dream.

I will say this � I�ve no idea of what this is going to be, but I got a sense of what JJ is up to. He�s very much reinventing it � the way Robert Wise did � and at the same time � he�s directing the actors with an energy and an aliveness that we haven�t seen. This was exciting, yet strange and it felt somehow� real.

He saw about seven minutes in all and came away, I guess, impressed. No surprise there. But if anyone could reboot the Star Trek universe if would have to be Abrams. Some minor spoilery scenes after the jump. MORE »

I got a chance to watch the new J.J. Abrams pilot Fringe last night. It’s pretty good in the vein of Alias, albeit without all the kick ass action. But it’s sort of similar with shadowy agents and organizations with big conspiracies and what not.

The plot centers around an FBI agent, a mad scientist and his vagabond genius child (Joshua Jackson) trying to piece together a mysterious infection or incident aboard a flight from Hamburg, Germany to Boston’s Logan Airport.

Yes, it’s cool it takes place in Boston, but it’s not cool that it’s so obviously not taking place in Boston or that the show’s writers didn’t do their homework about Boston. There is absolutely no way there is a giant storage facility in Boston’s Back Bay. Sorry. If you take the time to visit the Back Bay you would know this.

Gripes aside, this is an intriguing procedural with enough paranormal mystery and interesting characters to keep me coming back in the fall. It’s a J.J. Abrams show via The X-Files. Need I say more.

Fringe is scheduled to air in September. The leak is here. DC Comics will publish a comic-book prequel to Fringe Aug. 27 and the show already has a few fan sites, including this one.

I’ll be offering more thoughts on the show and doing a full review, but I just wanted to quickly let you know the show is out there to watch. Now anyone know if Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse has leaked yet?

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We’ve been concentrating a lot on the new Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku project at FOX, Dollhouse. But FOX also has a new show in the works from god J.J. Abrams. It’s called Fringe and is sort of an FBI investigation show, revolving around mystery and science.

Hercules at AICN put it best: “What if somebody at ABC said, �Y�know, David Lynch is a fucking genius. Maybe we should give his show a year in a decent timeslot and see what happens.�

What if someone at Fox said, �Y�know, what would happen if Scully started remembering all the crazy shit she saw in the previous episode every week?�

What if somebody at ABC said, �Y�know, J.J., instead of exploring Sydney�s relationship with her boring fucking half-sister for two seasons, how about digging a little deeper into this Milo Rambaldi business?�

Press Release: From J.J. Abrams (�Lost�), Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind �Star Trek,� �Mission: Impossible III� and �Alias,� comes a new drama that will thrill, terrify and explore the blurring line between science fiction and reality.

When an international flight lands at Boston�s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (newcomer Anna Torv) is called in to investigate. After her partner, Special Agent John Scott (Mark Valley, �Boston Legal�), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to DR. Walter Bishop (John Noble, �Lord of the Rings�), our generation�s Einstein. There�s only one catch: he�s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son Peter (Joshua Jackson, �Dawson�s Creek�) in to help.

When Olivia�s investigation leads her to manipulative corporate executive Nina Sharp (Blair Brown, �Altered States�), our unlikely trio along with fellow FBI Agents Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick, �The Wire�), Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo, �Oz�) and Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole, �Law & Order: Criminal Intent�) will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth.

Zap2It has script reviews for two highly anticipated television projects. The first is for Fringe by JJ Abrams, starring Joshua Jackson (Pacey) and the second is Dollhouse by Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku (whom I attended high school with when she was there and not filming some movie or whatnot).

Both series will air on FOX in the fall season.

Fringe is “going to be sold as FOX’s attempt to reclaim the X-Files demo that the network has jeopardized with the swift cancellation of too many shows from folks like Whedon and Tim Minear. The script lends itself to a large-scale pilot and it should leave viewers knowing exactly what to expect in the episodes to come, which is more than can be said for.” Also, getting into the JJ Abrams business is a good thing. His track record is fairly spotless and his following is very loyal.

The same thing can be said about Joss Whedon. His following is not so much loyal as it is messianic. But his track record with FOX is horrible. They’ve canceled every good show he’s done and not just his shows, but shows from Whedon’s acolytes like Tim Minear.

“While recognizably Whedonesque, Dollhouse finds Joss going in different direction, one that may be less quippy and less plot-driven than some might expect. The fans will still love it, I suspect, but will Dollhouse be able to find an audience beyond the Whedonverse? I’m not sure. So this could be one of those “Enjoy it while you’ve got it” gems.” That doesn’t sound good. Well it does, it just sounds like it will get canceled too soon.

In case you’re wondering how these could potentially play out as pilots, the article goes on to expound on what makes a compelling pilot.

A good pilot should do one of two things: It should either lay out the blueprint for the rest of the series or it should intrigue you so much that you can’t wait for the second episode. Fringe falls into the first category. It leaves almost nothing to the imagination in terms of what’s coming next. Dollhouse falls into the second category.

Collider has gotten their hands on the pilot script for JJ Abrams next television show Fringe. The show has lined up Pacey Whitter, er actor Joshua Jackson and Mark Valley (Keen Eddie) to star.

So what’s the show about? Apparantly it’s a 25/25/50 mix of House/Bones/X-Files. Full caveat, the reviewer got his hands on an early draft.

The fringe the title refers to is fringe science. The weird stuff. The stuff that will make X-Files-philes blush with anticipation. This pilot goes into how three people � a Federal Agent, an institutionalized scientist and his genius son � come together to address the problems this field�s work births into the world.

Ultimately, the script reads like a 25/25/50 mix of House, Bones and X-Files and I say that as a person who enjoys/enjoyed all three of those shows. The conspiracy seems to stem from a company called Prometheus founded by none other than William Bell � Walter Bishop�s old lab partner. Yes, I know those familiar with mythology may think the company name a bit heavy-handed but I dig it.

So, we’ve got JJ Abrams with a mysterious group , conspiracy and an acerbic, socially inept main character? Sounds good to us. No word on when this is going into production or when you can expect the show on your cathode ray tube.

There was a bootlegged version of the new JJ Abrams Star Trek floating around, no doubt pirated off of this weekend’s showing of Cloverfield.� However, the quality was pretty awful.� Now it’s up at Yahoo and I think I like it.� Never been much a fan of the series, but I like that they are connecting this reboot to JFK and man’s early quest to explore outer space.

Only time will tell if the cast put together for this one will be inspired or just a trainwreck.

Also: I am more willing to give Abrams the benefit of the doubt, not because of his past track record (which is just about spotless in my eyes) but because of what he did for one dying trekkie, Randy Pausch.� AICN has the scoop on it and um, I think that was a tear in my eye you just saw.

Pausch is a Carnegie-Mellon professor who will die from pancreatic cancer.� He gave a much emotional “last lecture,” which Abrams caught wind of and then offered him a role in the movie.� That’s pretty cool thing to do.� His lecture after the jump. MORE »