My geek pride took a massive hit when I didn’t attend San Diego Comic-con this year, but at least with the internet around I can sort of feel like I did (it’s much less exciting this way, but it smells better by at least a little). Without a doubt, one of the most epic moments of the con was the reveal of this absolutely massive trailer for AMC’s upcoming series The Walking Dead, and now thanks to the work of one aspiring videographer, we can all bask in its YouTube glory (that is until the suits claw their way to it).
If anyone can create a film about Facebook that’s actually worth sitting through, it’s probably David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin. Prior to the release of this trailer for the The Social Network, there’s was approximately no part of me that had even a little interest in witnessing the meteoric rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but apparently Fincher and Sorkin are so goddamn smart, they know what I want even when I don’t!
It would appear that M. Night Shyamalan has finally burned through all of the good will he had left in Hollywood, as Universal pictures has decided to eradicate his name from the title of the upcoming thriller Devil, despite the fact it was the first film produced by Shyamalan’s much discussed Night Chronicles development house [...]
UK director Neil Marshall is certainly an unpredictable fellow. He kicked off his career with a picture about soldiers battling werewolves, and then moved on to tackling creepy cave monsters before eventually diving into head-first into the realm of crazy, Carpenter-esque sci-fi. So how does a director flesh out a resume like that? With a Roman war epic, naturally.
Let’s be honest, nazis on surfboards is so 1987. In this day and age, we moviegoers expect bigger things from our ideologically retarded warmongers, and what could possible be any bigger than freaking outer space? I think the world is truly ready to see some white supremacists die in zero gravity, but right now we’re all going to have to make do with the teaser trailer for Iron Sky
If there’s one thing I love about Arabic folklore, it’s all of those hunky adventurers running around in wife-beaters while unloading an endless series of machine gun clips into the resident cyclops. Say what you will about the ancient Arabs and their lack of ability to invent the refrigerator, but those jerks knew how to write a damn good yarn.
I’ve probably wasted more than enough energy explaining my take on film remakes in the past, so I’ll just kick this off with the short and sweet version: No remake could ever sully the good name of the original. Some remakes are incredible. Some remakes suck ass. The end. Just where the upcoming Hammer version of Let the Right One In — sadly re-branded as Let Me In — will fall remains unclear, but I’ll put myself down as very cautiously optimistic for now, and the newly released set of stills of Chloe Moretz (Hit-Girl) as everyone’s favorite little blood-sucker certainly aren’t hurting things any.
While Machete is getting positively drowned in a sea of pre-release hype, it’s not the only fake grindhouse trailer that’s currently being made into a full-length film. Prior to the release of the original double-feature, Robert Rodriguez held a contest asking fans to make their own little trainwreck of a trailer, and Jason Eisener’s Hobo With a Shotgun snatched up the crown. While few of us actually got to see Jason’s work in theaters, there’s just no stopping the twin barrels of hobo justice once they get going, and soon this insanely ridiculous bit of hobosploitation will be let loose upon the entire world as an actual feature.
Sure, Aussie horror director Brett Anstey is clearly a big fan of Sam Raimi, but who in their right mind isn’t? More importantly, the trailer for Anstey’s upcoming flick, Damned By Dawn, looks like a really fucking good time. I absolutely love it when contemporary horror directors tap into the fun and inventive spirit that carried through Raimi’s early work, and despite how cherished those classic films are, it’s not something the horror community gets enough of these days.
Post-rock legends Mogwai are going to be releasing a concert film titled Burning this August, to coincide with the debut of their first ever live album Special Moves. I’ve been lucky enough to see the band perform many times over the years, and it’s an experience that would prove incredibly difficult to properly capture with a camera, but if the teaser trailers are anything to go by, directors Vincent Moon and Nathanael le Scouarnec have absolutely nailed it.
If 2009 wasn’t already looking like a damn good year for sci-fi (and it sure as shit is), Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 would almost certainly give it the edge it needed. While this film is the first feature with Blomkamp in the director’s seat, you may have heard his name start to pop up about four years back when he released the 6-minute sci-fi orgasm that is Alive in Joburg. Needless to say, it wasn’t too surprising when the 29 year old film-maker landed in the lap of the beautifully bearded Peter Jackson, who has been tasked with producer duties on this quickly approaching epic.
While Anvil: The Story of Anvil is all but set to be my documentary of the summer (if you haven’t watched that trailer already, what the hell are you waiting for?), I am definitely going to be making room for Food, Inc. Directed by Robert Kenner, Food, Inc. sets out to take a long, hard look at the food industry in America, focusing on the corporate-driven imbalance of profit over consumer health, which is something even those of you currently eating a Big Mac should probably be worried about.