Episode 34: “Wow. yoo hoo”

Wall-E is just the cutest robot ever! I’ve been dying to see this movie ever since the first trailer came out and this new clip only makes me want to see it more. [Via /Film]

WΔZ
Again a movie trying to use mathematics as some interesting plot device. In this case we’ve got Stellan Skarsgard (Dogville, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3) and Melissa George (Alias, 30 Days of Night) as two cops trying to track down a gruesome serial killer. But, wait, he (or she) is not just a serial killer! He’s looking for an equation to determine what it will take for someone to murder a person they love. Ooh, then after watching this movie we should find an equation to determine what the best way is to make gullible people believe in your movies! [Trailer]

Smart People
I just saw Juno two days ago and I must admit I’m impressed with Ellen Page. She doesn’t play the main role in this movie, but the whole cast seems pretty great (except Sarah Jessica Parker, I don’t get what people see in her). It’s about a widowed literature professor (Dennis Quaid), who has to deal with his perfectionist daughter (Ellen Page), his out-of-work brother (Thomas Hayden Church) and his new relationship with his doctor (SJP). [Trailer]

Snow Buddies
Whoa, sickeningly cute puppy alert! This movie is a direct-to-dvd release and after seeing the trailer I completely understand why. Some movies just should never be mad, let’s leave it at that. Watch the trailer at your own risk. [Trailer]

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
Once in a while a movie comes along, that is so bad, it actually becomes good (in some cases intentionally, in other cases unintentionally). Judging by the trailer, I’m guessing this is one of those movies. The premise of the film is simple: Jack Brooks find his true destiny as monster slayer. There’s a weird Evil Dead/Buffy vibe I’m getting off the trailer, so I’m curious to see if the whole film has that same spirit. [Trailer]

Be Kind Rewind
Sweding: the art of re-creating, remaking movies from scratch. The movie Be Kind Rewind is about two guys (Jack Black and Mos Def) who, after accidentally erasing all the videotapes in Def’s video store, decide to swede all the erased movies. The real trailer has come out a couple of months ago and since then sweded trailers have come out for GhostBusters, RoboCop and Boyz N’ The Hood (link). Now there’s a new sweded trailer of the Be Kind Rewind, created by the director of Be Kind Rewind, Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Be sure to watch the original trailer first though.. Fun Fact: the term “sweding” was coined by Condry, but it was supposed to be “sueding” (as in the fake leather). The cast didn’t understand him though through his thick French accent and it turned into sweding. [Trailer]

Son of Rambow
This is one of those movies that will make you secretly smile. It just seems so sweet and genuine. The movie’s about two boys who want to remake Rambo (hey, sweding!) and all the troubles and adventures they get into while doing so. The only problem I have with this film is that it looks a lot like this article about two boys who remake Indiana Jones. Yes, there are differences (setting, story, etc), but they just seem so similar, it’s hard to believe it’s not a rip-off. [Trailer]

I did a post like this way back in October (check it out if you haven’t seen the trailers yet of Repo! The Genetic Opera and The 10 Commandments; both unmissable, but for completely different reasons) and ever since then I had been planning to turn it into a weekly returning post. I noticed that a lot of the trailers I see on movie blogs, don’t show up on the Apple Trailer site for quite some time. So what I want to do is create a list of all the trailers that have come out during a week (most trailers come from FirstShowing and /Film). I’ll try to comment on each of the trailers, but I’ll have to see first just about how many we’re talking about. This first post will be a bit longer than usual, cause I’ll be showing the trailers from the last couple of weeks (instead of only one single week).

The Oxford Murders
This movie (based on the book with the same name) is about a professor (John Hurt) and a grad student (Elijah Wood) are trying to solve multiple murders linked by mathematical symbols. Most of the time I have problems with “mathematical” plots, cause they only lightly touch the mathematics and completely bungle up or misuse the real theory. I’m hoping this is not the case with this film, though, cause it could turn out to be a nice little murder mystery. [Trailer]

My Blueberry Nights
I’m not sure what to think about this movie. It’s about a woman (Norah Jones) who takes a soul-searching journey and meets a bunch of eccentric characters a long the way (Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz). It just looks a bit strange and different, but somehow maybe it could work. And what’s the deal with Natalie Portman’s hair and accent?? [Trailer]

Sleepwalking
This film just doesn’t look interesting at all: “Charlize Theron plays a rolling stone mother, Joleen, who abandons her daughter (AnnaSophia Robb) to take off on the road with a random guy, right after the two move in with her younger brother (Nick Stahl)“. It just sounds and looks boring as hell. [Trailer]

Star Trek
Do I even have to explain what this is about? It’s not a real trailer yet, just the teaser and (as usual with teasers) doesn’t really show anything yet, but boy does it look pretty. There’s also a whole viral marketing campaign starting again (what did you expect from JJ Abrams?); just click on the red light next to the “Under Construction” message and you get sent to a site (here) where there’s a ‘live feed’ from the construction site of the Enterprise. [Trailer]

Baby Mama
I heard about this movie some time ago and was looking forward to it. Although the plot isn’t really my cup of tea (a woman that wants a baby, but can’t have it herself and gets a surrogate), both the main two actresses (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler) and the writer/director are from SNL, which led to me thinking this film might actually be funny. Seeing the trailer though… nope, not funny. [Trailer]

Defiance
I usually don’t really go for war movies, but this one has grabbed my attention. It’s about three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell) who join a group of Russian resistance fighters during WWII. I’ll bet it’s going to be a major contender for the Oscars next year. [Trailer]

The Life Before Her Eyes

I have a strange feeling this film will also do well with the Oscars next year. It’s about: “A woman’s survivor’s guilt from a Columbine-like event twenty years ago causes her present-day idyllic life to fall apart.” The woman is played both by Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood (different ages). [Trailer]

Doomsday
During the first minute of this trailer you’re going to think something like: “Hmm, some bad 28 Days Later rip-off with a bit of Children of Men thrown into it”. It’s not though; just wait till the latter part of the trailer and you’ll see what type of movie this really is: a Mad Max meets Resident Evil movie. In other words: a lot of action, not that good a plot, but still great fun to watch. [Trailer]

I clearly remember the first time I played Soul Calibur II. It was a couple of years ago at a friend’s birthday party and I was playing with Ivy. At the time I didn’t like fighting games that much. I didn’t dislike them; I had played Mortal Combat and Battle Arena Toshinden on the PSone and then Dead Or Alive and Virtua Fighter a lot on the PS2, but that was more about winning from my brother and sister, then really finding it a great, good game. The first thing I noticed of SC was it’s fluidity; the game play was so smooth and graceful. It felt like watching a perfectly choreographed scene from a movie. Then instead of the standard “everybody uses their hands and feet and kicks and punches”, here everybody had a specific weapon: swords, staffs, katanas, etc. So, the first time I was playing I had Ivy. Now, for those of you who don’t know the game, Ivy’s weapon is kind of peculiar. It’s called a snake sword and with the right button the basic sword can actually turn into a whip. Imagine my surprise when that happened the first time!

When Soul Calibur III came out, I was amazed again. You could make your own complete characters! Plus their was a RPG-like mode added to it, so you could level up your characters and collect more items (weapons, clothes, extras). I spent hours trying to get further in the game, but alas my gaming skills aren’t that great. At a certain point, I just wasn’t good enough to beat the computer (I know I’ll be able to do it with enough effort and training, but I really don’t have the time for that). Anyhow it remains one of the best “beat your friends”-games (btw, I love Cassandra and Sophitia).

So, why I am I going on about these old games? A new trailer for Soul Calibur IV has come out during CES and it looks extremely wicked. A lot of the regular characters were alreayd confirmed to be back (Astaroth, Cassandra, Ivy, Mitsurugi, Nightmare, Raphael, Siegfried, Sophitia, Taki, Tira and Volvo) and one new character had been revealed, Hilde. The new info though? The PS3 and the Xbox360 both have special (unlockable) characters, namely…drumroll please… Darth Vader and Yoda! Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of the images below (via 1UP.com) or at the trailer. More images here and here.The downside is though that Darth Vader will be only in the PS3 version and Yoda only in the Xbox360 version. So we won’t be having any great Darth Vader vs. Yoda fights. However, 1UP.com is expecting some more surprises:

…we suspect that Namco Bandai still has plenty of stuff up their sleeve. Given their recent Ace Combat 6 shenanigans, we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that additional Star Wars characters are paid-for downloadable content. It’s unlikely that the company would go through all these negotiations with LucasArts to obtain the rights to only two characters, so expect more announcements as we get closer to SCIV’s release date.

Now there’s finally a reason for me to get a PS3!

Episode 2: “Roman Epic Movie”

I never realised how often Trajan is actually used, but after watching this video I keep seeing it everywhere.

There are some great trailers over at FirstShowing.net, most of which haven’t appeared on the Apple trailer site yet. Here’s a quick look at the ones I find interesting:

Kung Fu Panda
It’s been ages since I heard about this movie for the first time: a panda that does Kung Fu, how can that not be great! The trailer is kind of funny, but I have a feeling the best moments in that film won’t be coming from Jack Black, but from all the other characters. I mean you get: Angelina Jolie as Master Tigress, Lucy Liu as Master Viper and Jackie Chan as Master Monkey!

Awake
I’ve read a couple of reviews about this movie and trust me when I say that this trailer does not give much away. If you’re interested in the film, I would suggest though staying away from future trailers, knowing the track record Hollywood has with managing to spoil a film with their trailers. Oh yeah, it’s got Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alblah in it.

The 10 Commandments
Now this trailer is on the Apple site already and I had actually seen it a couple of weeks ago. I really thought this was a trailer for a fake movie! It just looks sooooo bad, but has a lot of well known voices in it. Are all those actors (Ben Kingsley, Christian Slater, Elliott Gould, Alfred Molina) really that desperate?

Repo! The Genetic Opera!
I’m a sucker for musicals, but I admit most are too cutesy and happy. This movie though just looks deliciously dark and creepy and they’re singing! It just looks plain weird, mixing great musical singers (Sarah Brightman) with actors that can sing (Paul Sorvino, Anthony Head, yes it’s Giles!) with pure trash (Paris Hilton). I don’t know what to make of it, but I am very much intrigued.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
The title above has a link to the first trailer, there’s also a second. I love that they’re trying to market this movie in different ways. The first trailer is more general, showing a bit of everything in the movie. The second is purely focusing on the horror aspects of the film and I heard a third trailer is coming soon focusing on the musical parts. It’s looks dark and disturbing, but what would you expect of a Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter? I also love that they cast Alan Rickman and Sasha Baron Cohen.