Well for a start, you get Aaron Sorkin to write, David Fincher to direct and Trent Reznor to score it.  There, you have my attention..

Favourite trailer of the year so far by a country mile.  Just love the feel of this - the two teasers have been brilliantly understated too.  Casting looks spot on, say what you like about Timberlake but Jesse Eisenberg does the twitchy geek better than anyone.  I doubt Mark Zuckerberg will be flattered, and it's based on a pretty contentious book, but as I said, you already have my ticket.

 

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Categories: Geek | Movies | trailers | want

Just a quick update as I'm keeping my eye on this one - it's the remake of "Let The Right One In".  As I mentioned before, I really don't see the point of this other than to prevent the dumb from having to read subtitles, which is the stupidest excuse I've ever heard.  However, the first trailer seems to have the right mood, but again it seems to just be a shot-for-shot do-over.  If they went back to the book for more inspiration that's one thing, but being the US market you can guarantee that the will omit *that* shot which was a major shock in the original (hope I've made you all curious enough to check it out now, heh) as it would be too controversial.

Having said that, it does feature a couple of very good child actors, Chloe Moretz who has already proven herself fearless in "Kick-Ass", and Kodi Smit-McPhee from "The Road", who has the same odd look as the boy playing Oskar in the original.  I may be wrong.  I'm not holding out hope though and if I hear too much negative I'll give it a miss rather than tarnish the original.

Anyway - trailer:

Tags: geek, opinion, rant, vampires, trailer
Categories: Geek | Movies | Opinion | rant | spoilers | trailers | vampires

About time for another catch-up of upcoming movies of interest (to me anyway, I know no-one else reads this).

JJ Abrams new "secret" project -"Super8".  This is being virally marketed much the same way that Cloverfield was.
Only a teaser so far but looks interesting at least:




Fresh insanity from Japan, for an upcoming animated TV show called "CatShitOne".  Based on a Manga series called "Apocalypse Meow", it's basically a war movie with cute animals representing different countries.  There is more details on the Wikipedia page




Very excited about this next one.  It's Luc Besson's latest project "Les Aventures Extraordinaires D'Adèle Blanc-Sec", and looks like a female Steampunk Indiana Jones, with dinosaurs.  It's French, but the trailer is subtitled.  Personally I think this looks amazing:

Next is George Clooney's latest "The American".  Clooney is one of my consistent favourite actors, he really has that "old Hollywood" charm about his work and this is no exception as it feels very much like something from late 60s / early 70s in tone and style.  Sign me up for this one:




I know next to nothing about The Green Hornet, except for the Bruce Lee conection to the old TV series.  Main draw for this is the director, Michel Gondry, who was responsible for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and a number of amazing music videos.  There are a couple of flashes of his trademark camera tricks here, and the trailer looks quite good fun, but we'll see:




"Predators" is the sequel to the 80s classics.  Hopefully going to wipe away all memory of the AvP movies and get back to some great action - starting with a good director and a stellar cast is a positive start I think.  Adrien Brody, Lawrence Fishburn, Danny Trejo... I'm there when it opens next weekend




Finally, this just landed today - teaser trailer for the latest from David Fincher.  Called "The Social Network", it's the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.  Just having Fincher attached guarantees my ticket:

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Categories: Geek | Movies | Sci-Fi | trailers | want

No spoilers, honest!

A sequel to one of my favourite movies of the past 5 years was always going to be pretty high on my "Must See" list - the first movie was great fun and just plain entertaining from start to finish.  It was both a terrific movie and a great origin story from which to build up the myth and begin the road towards the Avengers in 2012.  This second one is also very entertaining but doesn't quite hit all the high notes of the original IMHO.

Sequels always seem to have to "one-up" the original, which usually for comic-book movies means cramming in as many bad-guys as possible.  Thankfully that isn't really the case here.  You have Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko, aka Whiplash, a man out on a revenge trip following the death of his father who helped Howard Stark (Tony's father) design the reactor which Tony subsequently miniaturised.  Ivan's father dies a drunken failure, and Ivan is out for revenge, leading to a spectacular sequence at Monaco during a motor race.

Also we have a couple of more realistically human antagonists - Justin Hammer (the brilliant Sam Rockwell) who just really wants to be Tony Stark in every way but cannot pull off the playboy act anywhere near as convincingly.  Garry Shandling also turns up as Senator Stern... boy he's really put some weight on!  Cannot say the same for Scarlett Johannsen though... wow, just... wow!  As Tony says, "Can I have one?".

Robert Downey Jr once again steals the show, and I suspect a good portion of the film is improvised dialogue as with the first.  This does mean that it can be a little hard to follow and pick out the wheat from the chaff as RDJ is babbling on to himself a good portion of the time.  It's very funny to watch however, you just have to pay attention and hopefully not have a twat sitting behind you who insists on narrating the film as well...

Finally a word about the special effects - absolutely top-drawer.  The single complaint I had about the second Hulk movie (with Ed Norton) was that I lost interest when the two monsters started throwing cars at each other, it lost me and lost all I had invested in the plot and characters.  No such problem here - the final act is terrific and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.  Nothing looked stupid or fake, and the action was well directed enough to not cause my eyes to bleed, unlike say the first Transformers movie whose action I just found it impossible to follow.

All in all a great fun action film.  As I said, I didn't quite think it was as good as the first, but that is a high bar to reach again.  It keeps me interested in the upcoming Thor, Captain America and Avengers movies too - particularly now Joss Whedon is getting involved.  Oh, speaking of the upcoming films, you should stay until the end of the credits if you have any interest at all in where this series is going.

8.5 / 10

Tags: awesome, comics, geek, movies, reviews, robots, suoerheroes
Categories: Comics | Geek | Movies | Reviews

About time I got this finished - apologies for the delay but I'm here now so here goes:

Centurion
I'm including this one as I've just recently seen the new trailer and it looks pretty good.  Another movie about the real-life disappearance of the 9th Legion in the Scottish Highlands.

The Losers
Another comic book adaptation but not a superhero in sight.  Instead this could be a "grittier A-Team" as Dark Horizons put it.  Trailer looks at least promising and Peter Berg has a couple of solid movies behind him

Paul
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost - enough said.  Admittedly without Edgar Wright, but still count me in for this tale of UFO buffs finding an actual escaped alien just outside Area 51.  No release dates or trailer yet.

Predators
Sequel from Robert Rodriguez, who has a lot of credibility riding on this one.  Please let it be good!

Scott Pilgrim vs The World
What Edgar Wright did while Pegg and Frost were making "Paul".  This is likely to be the major geel hit of the summer, and as I know nothing of the plot or the original comic book I'll leave it there.  Trailer imminent.

Shutter Island
Scorcese does psychological horror.  Saw the trailer for this in front of "The Wolfman" this weekend and liked the look of it - an on-form Decaprio and an adaptation from the writer of "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone" make this a must see I think. Hoping for good brooding fear rather than constant jump-shocks (yes "...Wolfman", I'm looking at you...)

Toy Story 3
Pixar.  Enough said.  Check out the trailer

Tron:Legacy
The original is legendary for properly introducing the world to computer generated effects.  The teaser from ComicCon shows the updated light-cycles.  This will be something to see in 3D Imax no doubt.

So that's that.  I highly recommend you check out the full list on Dark Horizons, as I've only scratched the surface here with a few that appealed to me.  The original list is very detailed and a terrific bit of work.

 

 

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Categories: Comics | Geek | Movies | Sci-Fi | spoilers | trailers | Web

I considered writing a short piece looking back at 2009, but eventually decided against it as it was a pretty lousy year for me all in all.  On the work front, a major crisis in February didn't help, I lost some long-term friends through that, but did make some new ones so I guess that balances out.  It was an odd year that I'd rather put behind me.

There were some great movies last year though - most notably "Zombieland", "Let the right one in" (definitely my film of the year), "The Hurt Locker", "Watchmen" (the 4-hour full version anyway), "Benjamin Button", "Up", "Star Trek", "District 9", "Terminator Salvation" (not a good Terminator film, but a good generic action movie), "Moon", "Sherlock Holmes", and of course "Twilight" (heh, just kidding folks!!!).  There were some others I saw which I thought were ok, a couple of outright disappointments, and some which I missed which I will definitely be getting on disc (Coen Bros "A Serious Man" being top of that list).

All in all a pretty good year for movies, even most of the big "blockbusters" were actually worth the time and money of going to the cinema.  3D is seemingly back in a big way, only time will tell if it's going to stay a gimmick used to cover up lazy plotting and lack of characterisation, or if it will actually be used inventively to enhance a great film instead of just shoving things in your face because it can.

So, 2010.  "Dark Horizons" movie site has been running a multi-part guide to the upcoming movie goodness for the next year, so I thought I'd post a few things that have caught my eye:

Number one on my can't-wait-for list is "Kick Ass" - just wait until the Daily Mail get a load of Hit Girl, a foul-mouthed 12 year old chopping bad-guys legs off.  Here's the second trailer, but I seriously recommend checking out the Red Band trailer:

"Kick Ass" - UK April 2010(?)


The re-imagining of the A-Team just looks like fun...
"The A-Team" - UK July 2010


One of my earliest cinema memories is Clash of the Titans, and I'm a bit protective of it.  However, the director Louis Leterrier didn't make a bad job of "The Incredible Hulk" (which I liked very much until the two very badly done CGI monsters started smashing the city up at the end) so here's hoping.
Clash of the Titans - UK March 2010


"The Eagle of the Ninth" - in 140AD an entire Roman legion disappeared in the highlands of Scotland.  I remember reading about this when I was at school so it has my attention - plus it has Kevin MacDonald directing, who made the excellent "Last King of Scotland" and "State of Play".  No trailer or UK date yet.

The Expendables - as Dark Horizons says "Stallone's $80 million tribute to 80's action cinema is a much-anticipated love letter to a time when men were men, computer effects were non-existent, and hard R-rated violence and politically incorrect humour was the norm.".  Might just have to switch my brain off for this one:


Inception is Chris Nolan's follow-up to "The Dark Knight".  He seems to be keeping his cards close to his chest with the odd but striking imagery in the trailers.  Definitely one to see on as big a screen as possible:
"Inception" - UK July 2010


The first Iron Man movie was a hoot-and-a-half, this looks to follow on nicely.  Anything with RDJ in it is high on my list anyway:


Dark Horizons sums up "The Killer Inside Me" nicely - "Everyone figures Lou Ford, a West Texas sheriff, to be a normal kind of guy. They don't see the ruthless, sociopathic murderer underneath and as victims pile up, suspicions begin to emerge.".  Extended trailer below really piques my interest.


That's enough for now - part two to follow.

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Categories: Geek | General | Movies | Opinion | Sci-Fi | trailers | Watchmen