HIDALGO

Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Omar Sharif, a really fortunate horse

Features: Lots of sand. Lots of horses. Lots of action, in the sand, with horses. Mortensen looking salty. (Also: I cannot believe this man has now made two consecutive movies where he gets knocked on his ass and then bodily dragged around by a horse.) A really, really intrusive voiceover narrator whom I loathe--the Disney announcer, you know? Not quite as deep a voice as your normal "IN A WORLD" announcer? He talks. All the way. Through this trailer. Which would be a great service if I were blind. But I'm not. So shut up.

Is it worth downloading? The quality is crappy and the dimensions are small. So on one hand, wait for a better resolution. However, if you thought that Aragorn and that horse in Two Towers deserved a movie all to themselves, well, this is the trailer for you. (Why are you looking at me like that? Shut up.)

LXG CLIP FROM X2 OFFICIAL SITE

Stars: Sean Connery, Peta Wilson, Stuart Townsend, Richard Roxburgh

Features: "Before there were X-Men... there were Gentlemen!" All right, where to start here... Point the first: Since there is, in fact, a woman in the League, "Gentlemen" is rather sexist. Point the second: They were first only in the sense that LXG takes place in an earlier time period than X-Men; IIRC, the X-Men comics have been around for more than 30 years. Point the third: And Connery was here before Jackman. Which one do you currently want to see shirtless? I'm just sayin'.

Anyway: This is hardly a "clip"; it's a mishmash of fast-mo shots and a sad attempt to introduce the characters. Again. Connery: "I'm waiting to be impressed." Seriously, they need to stop playing that line in trailers, right. now. It writes its own jokes, y'all. "An" Invisible Man? I know it has to do with the character rights, but... man, that is lame. Parting shot? A clipped "Shut! Up!" from Connery. Man, they can't even find anything cool to put in the trailers, can they?

Is this worth downloading? No. Unless you're particularly interested in the fortunes of this movie (or the comic on which it's based). Otherwise, there's nothing fresh to download.

Additional features: The X2 site (which is hosting this clip) gives you a link to the official LXG site and to a coming-soon LXG "Xtreme Desktop," which will "chang[e] your desktop from stagnant image to multimedia gateway." It's a nice idea, I suppose, but I would like to point out here that the X2 "Xtreme Desktop" totally crashed my computer to hell and back (and I even have Xtreme XP), so caveat downloader.

ENVY

Stars: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Christopher Walken, Rachel Weisz, Amy Poehler. Dir. Barry Levinson

Features: Stiller and Black as wage slaves. Black invents the Va-Poo-Rizer (seriously, where does the poo go? I have a feeling I'm not going to like the answer). Stiller is wracked by... well, envy. Enter Christopher Walken as... what was that, a... hobo, or something? Anyway, Hobo!Walken becomes Stiller's mentor in envious malice.

Is it worth downloading? I'm not that big a Jack Black fan, but go for it.

THE PUNISHER

Stars: Thomas Jane

Features: "They murdered my family. They thought they murdered me. My actions are not vengeance. No, not vengeance. [Say it all together now:] PUNISHMENT." Congratulations! You have now seen the entire teaser trailer!

Is it worth downloading? If you saw the title of this entry and said, "The Who?," no. If you have any clue who this character is, you might be interested. For the rest of us, though, it's just a trailer clip off Access Hollywood, of all things.

RUNAWAY JURY

Stars: John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz

Features: Gene Hackman's crack team finding out things about jurors "their husbands and wives don't even know." Dustin Hoffman struggling on the other side of the case. John Cusack as an unhappy juror. And Rachel Weisz as... I'm not quite sure what, but she claims to be able to play the jury either way. Also: she ain't afraid to kneecap you if you've got her against the wall.

Is it worth downloading? I hate to admit this, but I really didn't want to like this one; courtroom thrillers just don't interest me much, and I'm not real fond of John Grisham. But you know what? The Rachel Weisz character has sold me on this movie.

THE CAT IN THE HAT

Stars: Mike Myers, Spencer Breslin, Dakota Fanning (in the trailer); also Alec Baldwin, Sean Hayes.

Features: A lot of Myers' mugging and Celebration, FL-style sets; as with The Grinch (whose producer, Brian Grazer [grrrr] this movie trumpets sharing), the visual style is good, but I fear for the execution of, you know, the rest of the movie. This is where I get on my soapbox--Seuss had such a strange, unique, whimsical style--it was at once innocent and sly, and Myers/Carrey-style humor just stomps all over that. Which is to say: don't listen to me, I have personal issues with these movies. (God forbid they ever make The Lorax.)

Is it worth downloading? I think this is one of those curiosity downloads--even if you don't care about the movie (or fear it, as I do), you'll want to see what they're doing with it.

ETA: Heh. I'm not the only naysayer here.

PINK, "FEEL GOOD TIME" (CHARLIE'S ANGELS 2)

Stars: Pink; the Angels

Features: A combination of "Agent Pink" foregrounded in some of the actual CA2 scenes (doesn't she have a cameo in the motorbike racing sequence anyway?) and doing her own thing in those settings. My favorite part was where, after kickboxing some guy on the beach, she ran to get... something (tiny screen, all right?), and ran away and dove into the sand, you know, the way action heroes do when something behind them is going to blow up. And nothing blows up. And she gets back up and is all like, "The hell?" BOOM!

Is it worth downloading? Downloading? No. I shudder to think of trying to catch this on MTV, given that I'm allergic to most of the videos they play now (do they even play videos anymore?), but that's where you'll want to see this--not on a square-inch Windows Media screen. I dig this song, and personally, I think they should just show her performance of it on the MTV Movie Awards, but then, I guess that's not Angeled up enough.

GIGLI

Stars: The mutual hubris of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck

Features: Sadly, Lopez seems to be the better actor of the two; Affleck is stuck with a goombah accent and a horrible, show-and-tell script. Seriously--the whole trailer is him talking about how "beautyful, sexy, unattainable" she is and how it's driving him crazy. (The trailer does not mention that she is a "lesbian," and I use that term only in the lightest, Hollywood-fantasy sense.) Here's another thought for you: why is it that whenever a famous couple does a movie together, it's overwhelmingly about how beautiful the female half is, and how bad the guy wants her? (See also: Vanilla Sky.) Oh, and she's the cow--he's the bull and she's the cow, dammit!

Is it worth downloading? Hot. Buttered. Ass. Download only if you truly loathe the Bennifer, and want to mock them for the duration of the trailer.