If you were trying to make an action-adventure/superhero/geek movie that contained every imaginable genre cliché, you might end up with something like Thor. A short catalog of conventions contained in this super-sized Comic-Con trailer contains: Vikings! Norse mythology! A glimmering, polished-metal city! A hero with Daddy issues! Natalie Portman! Anthony Hopkins! Looks like Marvel’s latest will hit all the fanboy pleasure centers, but will it offer much for those of us can’t be won over by shiny special effects and Queen Amidala? Watch the clip and let us know what you think after the jump.
Todd Solondz is all about the sequels lately. In 2004, he hit us with Palindromes, a sort of experimental follow up to Welcome to the Dollhousein which no fewer than ten actors portrayed the protagonist. Next month, Solondz fans and haters alike will finally get a chance to see Life During Wartime, a sequel to Happiness, 1998′s controversial indictment of suburbia, that has been kicking around the festival circuit for long enough to spark our impatience for a theatrical release. The trailer, while still full of dark comedy, seems to show a somewhat kinder, gentler Solondz than we’re used to. Oh, and Pee Wee Herman’s there, too! Tell us whether you’ll see Life During Wartime when it comes out July 23 in the comments.
The cryptic new trailer for JJ Abrams’s Super 8 is so well-executed that it actually makes us want to pay $15 to watch the entire film. (What’s inside that armored boxcar?!) It is refreshing. There’s no godlike voiceover, violin crescendo, too-revealing dialogue selected from the best scenes, or increasingly rapid stream of images climaxing with a sober shot of the movie’s title. To celebrate this departure from fixed formula, we’ve rounded up ten trailers from the past decade that were brave enough to defy the standard Hollywood fanfare. Viva creativity.
The trailer for Angelina Jolie’s crime thriller Salt hit the interwebs yesterday afternoon. (A bit of trivia: The movie was originally supposed to star Tom Cruise.) In it Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer accused by a defector of being a Russian spy with a plot to kill the president. She flees the scene, changes her hair color, and must prove her innocence before all traces of her existence are eliminated “powerful forces.” The lovely Liev Schreiber plays her friend/supervisor. Watch the trailer after the jump, and check out photos of some of our favorite Salt looks. She might have had twins just six months prior, but good god this woman is hot — especially inactionflicks.
The Men Who Stare at Goats, a new film which stars Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Robert Patrick, and Jeff Bridges, opens in theaters this Friday. It was inspired by reporter Jon Ronson’s eponymous non-fiction bestseller, which explored the U.S. government’s “attempts to harness paranormal abilities to combat its enemies.” Yep. After the jump, a clever new ad for the film which spoofs the little horror movie that could, Paranormal Activity.
The extended trailer for Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland premiered during Spike TV’s Scream Awards on Tuesday night, and it sure is eerie. We catch our first glimpse of the White Queen’s palace and a grinning Cheshire Cat, all through a bizarre mix of live action, animation and stop motion. Burton’s Alice takes Lewis Carroll’s imaginative prose and injects it with CGI-infused ‘roids, the screenwriting skills of Linda Woolverton (The Lion King) and, of course, a heavy helping of the director’s notorious goth hallucinations. Watch it after the jump.
We don’t live on the West Coast, so we haven’t had the chance to check out Green Day’s wildly popular American Idiot rock opera at Berkeley Repertory Theater as of yet. Luckily for New Yorkers, now there’s a trailer. And watching it makes us feel really old.
If you live in California, we’re sorry. Your beloved state gets swallowed up by the Earth first. Your only chance of survival is to rent a plane with John Cusack and fly to momentary safety. In preparation for the November 13th release of 2012, Columbia Pictures pictures staged what SlashFilm calls “the largest American media roadblock ever.” Read More »
Our Sundance correspondent Erik Davis described Mystery Team as “a Napoleon Dynamite meets Encyclopedia Brown comedy from the internet-famous Derrick Comedy troupe out of New York.” In fact, it was one of his favorite films of the festival: “It’s silly and raunchy, and kind of reminded me of The Brady Bunch Movie on crack.” Note: Donald Glover, who stars, is a writer on 30 Rock and will appear on NBC’s Community this fall.
The video above is for a track entitled “Get Like Me,” which is the comedy’s theme song. It’s directed by Courtney DeWitt, and features heaps of cool Super 8 and stock footage. View a trailer for the film and download a free MP3 mixtape after the jump. Read More »
The theatrical trailer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are dropped yesterday (the earlier version was just a teaser), and it has us even more excited to see this film when it opens on October 16. There’s a lot more of Max in this one — in fact, the moment when he cries out, “Let the wild rumpus start!” gave us chills. And you get to meet a handful of the wild things outside of KW (Lauren Ambrose): Carol (James Gandolfini), Judith (Catherine O’Hara), Ira (Forest Whitaker), Alexander (Paul Dano), and Douglas. Read More »
