Haunting the Web Since 1999
“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.
“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.
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.)
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.)
Can’t say I cared much for the first one. Nevertheless, the teaser for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is now online, and it looks like it’s shaping up to be the Mother of All Michael Bay movies, and might possibly be fun with the appropriate lubrication.
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.
“Have you ever wished for a different life? Be careful what you wish for.” Via AICN, a decidedly creepy new trailer for Henry Selick’s stop-motion Coraline appears online. Some of that eerie seam-splitting business looks like Nightmare Before Christmas by way of the Brothers Quay.
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.)
Strangelove much? The Japanese trailer for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is now on the tubes, which contains some spoilery-type new footage if you haven’t read the graphic novel. (Note also the new Minutemen featurette on the official site.) Interesting that this trailer foregoes all the Dr. Manhattan-exemplifying-American-might stuff in favor of more emphasis on the alternate history and Cold War doomsday clock.