Category: Trailer Bin

Escapades out on the D-Train. | Snikt.

Stand clear of the closing doors, please: In the trailer bin of late, it’s Tony’s Scott’s remake of The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 (and if you want a doo doo rhyme, then come see me), starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini, and Greg from Flight of the Conchords (a.k.a. Frank Wood). The trailer here has got a good bit of ADD Tony Scott shakicam, and what looks to be the ending mano a mano — so save yourself ten bucks and two hours and just watch this, if you’re so inclined.

Along those lines, there was a great to-do yesterday over the leaked release of a workprint of Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine onto the tubes. So, if you want to catch that, it’s flitting about the ether also. For my part, I don’t think I care enough about this movie to even spend the requisite time downloading it, much less watching the durned thing. And that goes double after the botch job that was X3 and Fox mucking about with Watchmen a few months ago.

Sure, Fox Searchlight still distributes some quality films, but Fox itself of late has been where once-decent properties (FF, Die Hard, X-Files, Aliens, Predator) go to die. (Let’s hope James Cameron is keeping the studio’s greasy hands away from Avatar.) The hackmeister currently in charge of Fox, Tom Rothman, is once rumored to have quipped “F**k the fans. We already have their money anyway.” Well actually, in this case, you don’t.

Into the Wild.

“I didn’t want to wake you up, but I really want to show you something.” The teaser for Spike Jonze’s long-awaited adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are appears on the Interweb (after debuting on Ellen this morning.) Along with Max Record, Catherine Keener, and Mark Ruffalo, WTWTA includes voice-work by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Lauren Ambrose, and Chris Cooper.

The Summer Contenders.

“I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life, this day of reckoning.” Some choice offerings from the rest of the Watchmen trailer bin, which are now online: Harry digs deep into the memory hole to Anakin up He-Who Must-Not-Be-Named in the second preview for David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (To be honest, I think I might’ve missed the first trailer from last November (at the same link) — that one’s not bad either.) Iowan ne’er-do-well James Tiberius Kirk straightens up and flies right in a preview for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek of epic scope. Hugh Jackman dons the claws once more in another look at Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (Meh, bub.) And an animated Ed Asner braves floating houses, boy scouts, and talking dogs in the newest trailer for Pixar’s UP. Pixar will go wrong someday — this doesn’t look to be it.

Chicago Vice.

A late addition to today’s trailer bin: Lawman Christian Bale tracks down the nefarious and freewheelin’ John Dillinger, nee Johnny Depp, in the new trailer for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, also with Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup. Looks like Mann is continuing in the hi-def verite style of Collateral and Miami Vice. (By the way, if you watch High Fidelity between now and July, be careful: Cusack spoils the ending.)

The Future isn’t Bright.

In the trailer bin, those confounded, robotic death merchants of the Skynet corporation have the temerity to wander into John Connor’s eyeline in the Sam Worthington-centric teaser for McG’s Terminator: Salvation. (I’ll probably see this come May, but I’m still not really seeing the point — Well, I guess the ten bucks accompanying my fanboy due diligence probably is the point.) And Six Feet Under‘s Ben Foster awakens to a very Event Horizon-ish situation in the far reaches of space in the new trailer for Christian Alvart’s Pandorum (I can’t say the words “from the producers of Resident Evil” instill much in the way of confidence, but Dennis Quaid used to have a pretty good eye for appealing, low-budge genre projects — Enemy Mine, Dreamscape — so here’s hoping.)

Basterds and Huns.

Look alive, privates: The teaser for Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming WWII epic, Inglourious Basterds, is now online, starring (among others) Brad Pitt with a ‘stache and nasty neck scar, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Bruhl, B. J. Novak, Michael Fassbender, Maggie Cheung, Julie Dreyfus, Mike Myers, and Rod Taylor

Hmm. So far, I’m not feeling it. Even notwithstanding the aggravatingly misspelled title, both this and the overly-jubilant AICN set review make Basterds sound like WWII torture porn, or at best another installment of Tarantino wallowing in his grindhouse and Z-movie fetishes for two hours. (See also KB1, KB2, Death Proof.) I hope I’m wrong, and that this is a return to the form of the Reservoir Dogs-to-Jackie Brown years. But, as a AICN talkbacker aptly noted, it’s looking more and more as if QT has gone the self-indulgent, self-derivative way of Brian DePalma.

Spy vs. Spy.

As seen several times over the weekend, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts play cloak-and-dagger in the world of corporate espionage — and cat-and-mouse with each other — in the trailer for Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity, also starring Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Denis O’Hare, and Tom McCarthy. (Gilroy’s last project, Michael Clayton, was good enough to give this a run, even if it does look a bit Mr. & Mrs. Smith-ish.)

In His Secret Life.

Dark City meets Cool World and/or Inkheart by way of Alice in Wonderland? AICN points the way to the trailer for a bizarre and intriguing British import, Franklyn, starring Eva Green, Bernard Hill, Control‘s Sam Riley, and Ryan Phillippe as apparently some kind of steampunk Rorschach. Well, I like the art direction, if nothing else.