EPISODE III FOOTAGE

Get this one while you can, folks. It's extremely low quality, and looks like someone managed to sneak a video camera into the Euro Con promotional screening. Latino Review has an extremely hyper scooper who gives his opinion ("the greatest sword choreography ever!," "a nuclear explosion of a finale!"), and... well, it's interesting. It's all behind the scenes/green screen footage. It's always nice to see Ewan McGregor. The saber fights are intricate and done well. You briefly see Natalie Portman in a nondescript hood--amber yellow, I think it was. I guess the reason I'm not set on fire like the Latino Review guy is--think about it: the best scenes in the prequels have always been the action scenes. The Darth Maul duel. The Count Dooku (God, just call him Count Dookula and get it over with) duels. Various and assorted saber fights and high-speed chases. As promising as this footage is... the action is always good, and the clip in no way addresses the actual pitfalls of the previous two films: story and dialogue. So, for now, I will remain a skeptic.

KILL BILL VOL. 2

1. Thank God Yahoo has started offering files in Quicktime.

2. Nice.

ASSORTED TRAILERS

Just wanted to do a quick rundown of trailers I saw in front of Peter Pan, as I'd meant to download several of them as it was.

Two Brothers: I must have gotten this confused with a different Guy Pearce movie, because the title had me expected some sort of crime drama. Instead, it's about two tigers, "from the director of The Bear!" You get very cute scenes of a little girl sleeping with a tiger cub, at which point I leaned over to my mother and said, "He's so totally gonna eat her when he grows up."

Bring It On Again: I had never seen anything like this before, but the Wildwood Regal, apparently on a downward spiral, now has this "The Twenty" thing, which is twenty minutes of hell that, on this occasion, involved extremely loud featurettes on NBC's "Las Vegas" series, something that was mercifully blotted from my memory, and this. (Can I just ask? Why was a "Las Vegas" promo shown in front of a children's movie? Because it was oh-so-inappropriate.) After seeing this featurette, I will simply say that Bring It On Again is straight-to-DVD. The first Bring It On is also on DVD. You do the math.

King Arthur: I believe Vladimir already reviewed this one, but I hadn't seen it yet. I had seen tons of set pictures via Empire Movies, but there were some really beautiful shots--I can't remember clearly; a battle in the snow?--and the battles looked good.

Catch That Kid: Eh, I felt absolutely no interest in it--it's basically Mission: Impossible for kids--but then, this trailer wasn't meant for me or my age demographic anyway.

The Chronicles of Riddick: If I have to see this trailer in the theater one more time, someone is going to die. And that goes double for The Punisher.

MAN ON FIRE

I was expecting this to be pretty bad, but it's got that nice gritty Tony Scott look to it, and Christopher Walken, and of course Denzel Washington. It also has Dakota Fanning as the requisite precocious wise-beyond-her-years child, and the dialogue in the trailer is pretty hit-you-over-the-head Denzel-can't-open-up-to-people awful. (I say "Denzel" because his character's name is... "Creasy"?)

The problem is that the movie's about a bodyguard with something tragic in his past--I actually do know what it is, but kudos to the trailer for not giving it away--who then has to save his kidnapped charge. This may not be a problem for you, but I can't deal with children-in-jeopardy movies. Can't deal. Couldn't watch Ransom, won't see this. Which is too bad, because it looks better than I thought it would.

SECRET WINDOW

Clearly, if the trailer needs of my female readership are going to be taken care of, I'm going to have to do it. I mean, I have three guys reviewing trailers, and yet no one's hit a new movie from Johnny Depp. I mean, come on.

Really, though, this is your typical Stephen King "Let me go out into the woods where no one can possibly come to my aid while a freaky guy stalks me. Also, I am a writer. You have totally never seen this movie before. No, really" story. Although it wigged me out when I finally realized that Freaky Guy is John Turturro, because he's really working the Satan's Amish look here. It seems that Johnny (or "Mort," as we must call him) is fixated on writing the ending of his book, "the most important part," and then Satan's Amish shows up to claim he stole his story, even though they've never met before, and then Charles Dutton's all like, "You don't even want to know [what you're dealing with]," and that drives me crazy when people say that in movies, because trust me, you ALWAYS want to know. In fact, now you just want to know more. You think people would figure this out, you know? Anyway, there is stalking and the leaving of Amish hats on doorsteps and fire and exploding windows and your general Stephen King mayhem. The most remarkable thing about the trailer, I would have to say, is that, other than the beachy-bleachy hair, Johnny Depp seems to be playing a completely normal person. Huh.

VAN HELSING

THANK YOU. GAHHH.

Update: Now that I've thoroughly screen-capped the trailer, I have to say... yes, c'est cheese. It's sort of like ("The Mummy" + Wolverine) x ("Bram Stoker's Dracula" - R rating). And you know what? It looks pretty awesome. I mean, the accents and the special effects aren't anything to write home about at this point, but the little things you see when you frame-by-frame it look pretty cool.

Also, I don't know how Hugh Jackman manages to look hot in that Vampire Hunter D outfit, but... that's talent, y'all.

Update 2: Here's your screen caps (122 images). I know a lot of LJ folks are starting to migrate to the blogs, so feel free to make icons/desktops/whatever.

VAN HELSING

MUST EVERYTHING NEW BE STREAMING MEDIA???

So: from the people who brought you The Mummy--wow, these accents are cheese-a-rific, y'all. Is Jackman going for Dutch or British or what? I can't really see much more than "Wow, the movie looks pretty cool... are those effects going to be that sketchy in the finished version?" More when the trailer HITS QUICKTIME, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

BLUEPRINT

Another report from Gunther: "Iris Sellin is a world famous pianist and composer. She's seriously ill from Multiple Sclerosis but she wants to have a daughter who should inherit her musical talent. She convinces a scientist to clone her. Her daughter (aptly named Siri) grows up and also becomes a gifted piano player but without knowing that she is a clone. Only years later it is revealed to her and the public that she is a clone of her mother. This puts Siri into a major crisis. Both roles, mother and daughter, are played by Franka Potente (of 'Run Lola run' fame). An interesting film that mainly deals with the problems of one's own identity/narcissism and - to a lesser extent - the possible consequences of gene technology. The trailer gives a good impression of the subject of the film, so if you're interested, download it. [Now playing in Germany.]"

DON'S PLUM

I am a bad person with an unkempt inbox. From Gunther, a week ago:

"Later in the month a film called 'Don's Plum' will be starting in (a few) 'selected' theaters in Germany. I don't know if you are familiar with the story of the film (I certainly wasn't until last week). About eight years ago someone shot a few (mostly improvised) scenes with some young, unknown actors. If I understand it correctly, they just wanted to make a short movie but the plan never came to fruition. As it turned out, two of the young actors were Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire and as you can imagine the owner of the scenes tried to make a few bucks with the young superstars. Next, everybody sued everybody. Some documents can be found at the Smoking Gun. Finally a compromise was found: The producers are allowed to show the film outside the US & Canada but not in those two countries. I know in times of digital data transfer that usually means that everybody can get it over the Net (so you might have seen the complete film already)."

Personally, I remember seeing about three seconds on Access Hollywood, running in the background of a segment on the lawsuit. Everyone's pretty much forgotten about it over here--just as they want us to, I suspect.

"But in case you have not and you are interested, you can have a look at the trailer. (More info here.) The dialogue is translated into German. It's just talk about dates, love, sexual preferences, etc. As far as I can see the film is not very interesting, but thanks to the lawsuit the producers have an excellent (sort of) marketing tool. But I don't think a lot of people will watch it. I read two reviews. Neither one could explain why the actors sued (doesn't every actor have a few film-corpses in the closet?) nor why someone should watch the film (except die-hard fans)."

Seriously. I still can't figure out why this movie was such a big deal--so it's a bad little indie movie. They're spending a lot of energy on keeping people from seeing it, when I can pretty much guarantee you no one over here would go see it anyway.