Cinematical

Trailers? Oh yeah, we got your trailers here.

Star Trek
Like a lot of people, I got my first glimpse of this one when it played with Quantam of Solace last weekend. While this will obviously play hell with Star Trek continuity, I am one Trek geek who is looking forward to the J.J. Abrams take on the franchise. It opens on May 8.

Astro Boy
Here's a teaser for the CGI animated adaptation of the classic anime about a robot boy built by a scientist to replace the son he lost. The trailer doesn't give us much to go on, but the impressive voice cast includes Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Donald Sutherland, Eugene Levy, and Nathan Lane. Things get cosmic on October 23.

Coraline
I find it odd that Neil Gaiman's name isn't mentioned in the trailer, since the film is based on his novella. Gaiman isn't a household name but I would have figured he was well enough known to catch a few people's attention. Nevertheless, this stop-motion animated feature from Henry Selick, the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, deals with a young girl who finds a pathway to a parallel world in which duplicates of her parents sport buttons for eyes. This deliciously creepy looking film will be in theaters on February 6.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
All of our favorite characters return for this third installment of the series, and this time it's in 3-D. The only one we see in this new trailer is Scrat, on the trail of not just another acorn but apparently romance as well. The one hits on July 1.

As soon as the Lone Ranger started to be pulled into modern Hollywood, I knew other cowboys would follow. If Hi, Ho, and Silver, aren't your idea of a good time, how about Bill "Hopalong" Cassidy?

Variety reports that 300 producer Mark Canton is joining forces with Pterodactyl Prods. on a film that will feature the iconic Hopalong. The hero, who was created back in 1904, made his way through stories and novels before going Hollywood in 1935 and appearing in a whopping 66 films through the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Canton says: "We're looking to ring in the modern age with a branded, well-loved hero that we approach in a fresh way." (Hopalong had comics, serials, a series, and was the first image to be slapped on a lunchbox.

Of course this would appeal to cross-platform thinkers, but can we really call Hopalong well-loved today? His fans are at least pushing 50, if not 80 or 90. Nevertheless, I'm intrigued by this newfound love of cowboys. I guess after pirates, cowboys are the natural progression. And I can't feel too irked about this all -- I'll save it for the Stooges. How about you?

The long wait is finally over, and one of this fall's most talked-about films hits theaters this weekend. Twilight reviews have been all over the board -- with some folks hating the fact that it's a watered-down, lovey-dovey vampire flick, while others feel its fans should be perfectly happy with it. Here are some comments from our readers so far:

"I'm am thoroughly outraged I wasted my money and time last night watching it. If I wasn't with my friends (and had my own car with me) I would have just left after the first 10 minutes. Very bad movie translation for what is a wonderful book." -- Melissa

"Instead of being let down, I got much, MUCH more than I expected. I absolutely loved the movie. It was awesome! I felt that it still held true to the book, without screaming Smeyer in your face." -- Tricia

"Robert Pattison is definitely a front-running contender for "most awkward acting of the year award." His acting made me cringe away in a stiffled laughter throughout the movie." -- Kelly

"Considering this is an attempt to cram a thick book raging with details onto the screen, I give it props. I was impressed!" -- Aly

After all the hoopla, we want to hear from you fans and non-fans: How was Twilight? How could it have been better? And what would you change about the sequel? Sound off below ...

Goodness knows the world wasn't asking for the equivalent of National Lampoon's Bring It On (alternate title: Take It Off), but if we had to be subjected to the forthcoming cheer romp that is Fired Up!, why has it taken nine years to cash in on the trend? I can't otherwise understand how else this comedy -- the trailer for which we've included after the jump -- has gotten off the ground.

See, it's about a pair of high school football players (played by 31-year-old Eric Christian Olsen and 28-year-old Nicholas D'Agosto) who opt out on their team training in order to tag along with the all-female cheerleading squad to their cheer camp/competition. Besides, with 300 ready-and-waiting young women at their alleged disposal, what are the odds that one of our guys will instead want to hook up with the cutie (Sarah Roemer) calling their bluff? And what chance could there possibly be that she already has a dick-ish boyfriend who can't help but make them look like more sensible guys in comparison? Might hilarity ensue?!

What does last year's most talked-about teen flick have in common with this year's most talked-about pre-teen flick? Here's a hint: A director and an actress. Yes, Juno director Jason Reitman has finally chosen the female lead for his follow-up flick Up in the Air -- based on Walter Kim's (Thumbsucker) 2001 novel -- and he's chosen none other than Anna Kendrick. Who? Oh wait, I forgot to put this next to her name: Twilight actress Anna Kendrick.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Kendrick, who played one of Bella's friends in the poetic vamp tale, beat out other actresses like Emily Blunt and Juno herself, Ellen Page. Go figure! In the film, Kendrick will play "a young woman who finds herself pulled into the orbit of a "career transition counselor" (i.e. professional firer) careening through the airless world of business travel." Oh, and that "career transition counselor" will be played by George Clooney. I haven't seen Twilight, but Kendrick was excellent in the small indie Rocket Science, and from what I remember she's got a sort of Emma Stone thing going on. Ya know, cute, girl-next-door-but-intelligent kinda personality. I dig her. Paramount will shovel it into theaters, but there's currently no word on a release date.

This is a very cool little tool, especially for those of you movie nerds stuck in cubicles all day long with nothing but the latest hipster wannabee music to listen to. A good friend of mine just sent over a link to this site called Listen To A Movie, which boasts right on its main page that it's "For The Cubicle Workers Of The World." Essentially, it's exactly as it sounds: There's literally hundreds of films that you can just listen to. Not only that, but some of them even give you the option to also listen to that film's commentary! Does it get any better?

Once you click on a movie title, it gives you the cast, the year it came out, its IMDB rating and its user rating. Additionally, the ratings, year and genre are also listed next to the title on the main page -- and you can search by any one of these categories as well. It doesn't look like they have any 2008 films yet, but a bunch of flicks from 2007 are on there, like Knocked Up, Transformers and Wild Hogs. Pretty neat tool if you ask me, so try it out and let us know what you think.

[Thanks Aaron and Dana!]

Who doesn't love a good pop quiz? Vampires, that's who! (Actually the answer was "students," but stay with me here.) So as a way to welcome the highly-anticipated vamp-themed Twilight into plasmaplexes, we thought it would be transfusing to introduce a nifty new gizmo. For us, anyway: A movie quiz. Click on in and dazzle to a dozen vexing questions about Cinema de Vampire. And then feel free to share your thoughts on everything from Nosferatu to the Twilight kids and every ghoul in between.

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game vampires and their totally awesome human girlfriends love to play together on date night! Last week we asked you to give us your best captions for a wacky photo from the flick Sukiyaki Western Django, which is currently out on DVD. With only one person to award the grand prize, our crack team of caption judges spent hours (screw that, days!) searching for the right mix of humor, heart and heroics. Here, then, is our winner -- congratulations to you, sir!




1. "Despite producing some of the most innovative music of the 1980's, Japanese Country-Style Gangsta Hip-Hop was short-lived." -- Kurt P.

See full image and all captions





This week, well, we're celebrating a film that needs no introduction. It opens in theaters today, it was adapted from a very popular book, it stars one of the hottest guys in the history of the galaxy (Pattinson? Try Hottinson!) ... and it has something to do with vampires. Yup, it's time to sharpen those teeth and take a real nice bite out of the photo below from the film Twilight. Here's where it gets tasty: One very lucky grand prize winner will hop, skip, walk and dance away with one Autographed Twilight poster, one Movie tie-in paperback, one Movie Companion book and one Twilight Soundtrack. All I know is one lucky fan is about to win the Twilight lottery. Sound off below ...



Read the official rules for this contest

I bet you were sitting around today wondering what the director of Superbad was up to, right? That was you, right? Well, good news is Greg Mottola has been finishing up a new film called Adventureland, and based on this hilarious new trailer (which just premiered over at Rotten Tomatoes), it's got an '80s Dazed and Confused vibe written all over it ... and me likey Dazed and Confused very much.

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig (the new comedic love of my life), Ryan Reynolds and Kristen Stewart (OMG, what's Bella doing in another film?!), Adventureland takes place in 1987and follows an awkward kid straight out of school who takes a gig at an amusement park, falls in love, meets a bunch of maniacs and walks away with some pretty valuable life lessons. I had the pleasure of conversing with Jesse Eisenberg earlier this week during the NY premiere of The Living Wake (one of the funniest films of this year, no doubt) at the Big Apple Film Festival, and he's a very cool dude ... AND a big fan of Cinematical, no less. Check out the trailer below; I'm really looking forward to this one. You?

Adventureland hits theaters on March 27th.

If the crazies were to come back and lead to wide-spread bouts of insanity, who would you want to save you? You might say Ben Affleck, since he was "the bomb in Phantoms, yo." Or maybe Joseph Whipp's Sheriff Burke from Scream. But what about the sequel's baddy? (And if that spoils it for you, you were never really intent on seeing Scream 2.)

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Timothy Olyphant has signed on toplay sheriff in the remake of George Romero's The Crazies, which Scott blogged about earlier this year. The under-the-radar film focuses on the people of a small Kansas town "who are beset by death and insanity after a plane crash lets loose a secret biological weapon into the water supply." I'd say he's a pretty good man for the job, and after the crappy luck he had on Dreamcatcher, he's due for a good fight.

And is it wrong for me to really, really wish that Josh Brolin directs that fun, camp interest to this project instead?