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So I’m trying to figure out how the heck I’m going to play dumb enough and finagle my way into a test screening of Watchmen tomorrow night here in Portland, but outside of that I’m intrigued by this trailer for a flick named Franklyn.

The dystopian fantasy film is from first-time filmmaker Gerald McMorrow.  He’s concocted a “split narrative set simultaneously in contemporary London and in a future metropolis ruled by religious fervor.  It’s the story of four lost souls, divided by two parallel worlds, on course for an explosive collision when a single bullet will decide all their fates.”

Ryan Phillippe plays a masked vigilante detective named Preest, the only atheist in Meanwhile City, who is searching for his nemesis in the monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervor. Bernhard Hill plays Esser, a broken man who is searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of London’s homeless. Sam Riley plays a heartbroken guy named Milo, who is desperately trying to find a way back to “the purity of first love.” And Eva Green plays an art student named Emilia whose suicidal artwork is “becoming increasingly more complex and deadly.”

That much we do know.  How they all interlock and collide together we don’t.

The cast is good enough and the plot sounds interesting enough, but the trailer doesn’t do much for me.  It’s okay, even though it seems shoddily put together (there are some weird transitions and it’s evident that right now a moratorium needs to be placed on recycling a Clint Mansell score).  Hard to get a read on the movie because it’s going for the seductive play your cards close to your chest routine.

We’ll see.  Franklyn comes out in the UK on January 30th.  No distribution or release date has been lined up yet.

What’s up with Vin Diesel pretending to be Bono? Kinda weird. Anyway, this is the first poster from Vin Diesel’s upcoming flick Babylon A.D.

Babylon A.D. is directed by French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz, who also directed 2003’s Gothika. The film hits theaters on Leap Day next year, February 29th, 2008.

This poster comes courtesy of First Showing. According to them, the flick is about:

Veteran-turned-mercenary Thoorop (Diesel) takes the high-risk job of escorting a woman from Russia to China. Little does he know that she is host to an organism that a cult wants to harvest in order to produce a genetically modified Messiah.

Kassovitz showed some promise with Gothika even if the movie was ultimately a dud.� The plot sounds promising and cool enough.� And you know we’re suckers for Sci-Fi so even despite this goofy Bono worshipping poster, we’ll reserve judgement.