One thing I've noticed about most epic sci-fi/fantasy stories is that they're essentially about war, albeit disguised and softened with weird monsters, robots and other creatures with funny names. There's usually a bad guy (with a really sinister sounding name) who wants to take over the world or something similar, and a reluctant hero -- plucked from his comfortable, yet mundane home -- who has to stop him. The trick is to make it all fun. Because let's face it, we humans love war. If we didn't there wouldn't be so many movies and books about war, as well as -- you know -- real wars. (More specifically, I think, we love watching them, rather than fighting in them.) The Lord of the Rings trilogy worked so well because Peter Jackson projected his own twisted glee into every frame; he loved making those movies and it showed. The characters felt an anxious anticipation toward the battle, like a buildup, and the battles themselves were explosive releases. The new film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the second in an unfortunately ongoing series, treats war as if it were already played out, rather than happening before our eyes. It's a dead dog dull bore of a movie, but that won't stop it from making a fortune. (See also Jette's review.)

It's been two-and-a-half years since we watched the Pevensie children come to life on the big screen in Disney's splashy adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but for the characters, only a year has passed between those adventures and the ones in the new movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Well, time is funny like that when you're dealing with the magical land of Narnia, as the storyline of this movie amply illustrates.

The structure of events in the movie is actually an improvement on the C.S. Lewis book, opening with a captivating chase scene as young Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) attempts to escape from his Uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellito). Miraz has been scheming to steal Caspian's throne and now wants him dead. But Caspian's tutor gives him a magical horn, the horn of Queen Susan, to summon help in time of need. When Caspian blows the horn, suddenly Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter are pulled out of a London Tube station (which was the first scene in the book) and into a world of wild, wooded ruins that turns out to be Narnia, thousands of years after they've left. However, Caspian thought he was summoning kings and queens, not British children, and how can these kids help him regain the throne and help Old Narnia? And where is Aslan the Lion in the middle of all this?

Cinematical has just received this creepy (but oddly adorable) exclusive teaser poster for Igor (click on the image to enlarge), an animated film coming to us via The Weinstein Co. this September. Igor features the voice talent of John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Coolidge, Molly Shannon, Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall ... it gets better ... and James Lipton -- playing himself! Talk about a voice cast sent from the comedy Gods! Igor is the story of a mad scientist's hunchbacked lab assistant whose greatest dream is to win the coveted first place award at the annual Evil Science Fair. This one looks like all kinds of fun -- I mean, look at that poster. Look at that face. How do you not love that face? How do you not want to take Igor home with you, cuddle up on the couch, watch a monster movie marathon and -- if time allows -- destroy the world? I know I do ...

Igor arrives in theaters on September 19.

So for starters, the newest photos from Valkyrie manage to make Tom Cruise look a lot more dashing. Good thing, too, because the only other photo release prompted a flurry of cheap shots aimed at everybody's favorite tabloid whipping boy. Empire now has three new studio stills from Bryan Singer's historical drama about the infamous July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler. Joining Cruise are Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Izzard and Terrence Stamp. There are also some extra shots in the newsstand edition of Empire this month, along with an interview with Singer.

Cruise stars as German Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. In 1944, Stauffenberg along with other high-ranking officers in the Nazi party attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Stauffenberg and his crew attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb planted in a briefcase. Obviously they failed, and the key players were rounded up almost immediately. By 1945, most of the men involved had committed suicide or had been executed in a variety of nasty ways.

The release dates, they are a-changing! Universal just moved the release of the action flick Wanted, which stars Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy, from March to June 27th, 2008. That June release date was also held by Pixar's new one, WALL-E, and the Tom Cruise "Hitler assassination plot" flick -- Valkyrie. According to Coming Soon, Valkyrie has officially budged (though I think it would have absolutely crushed Wanted and it's courting a different audience than Wall-E). United Artists will now release the film on October 3rd of 2008 -- a date also held by less intense competition -- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Guy Ritchie's Gerald Butler drama RocknRolla.

Valkyrie is directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Nathan Alexander. Tom Cruise has become everyone's favorite punching bag lately, and reaction to the trailer, particularly Cruise's lack of a German accent, was pretty hostile. (Although probably not as hostile as it would have been had he...attempted a German accent!) But the plot sounds awesome, Singer is a great director (Superman Returns aside), and it's got a hell of a cast -- including Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Fry, Eddie lzzard, Terence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, and Black Book's stunning Carice Van Houton. How bad could it be? It's got to be better than Wanted -- have you seen the trailer for that thing? Haven't I seen that movie, oh, a thousand times already?

There are a few animated movies on the way that I've been dying to see. One is Jackboots on Whitehall, which is challenging every last bit of my anxious patience, and the other is Anthony Leondis' Igor. Luckily enough, at least for the latter film, a release date has finally been set. Unfortunately -- it's almost a year from now -- October 24, 2008. But still, the film is on its way, and we're sure to see much more about it soon since The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the Weinstein Co. and Exodus Film Group have teamed up with CKE Restaurants for some greasy movie marketing.

CKE owns Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, and over 3,000 locations are going to participate in the usual throng of movie/food linkage. Igor will take part in Cool Kids Combos and "four custom-designed Igor premiums," as well as displays and an online campaign. But that's just the first step. Soon we'll also see the throng of action figures and play sets, plus nine Igor books. Basically, the crazy helper should be everywhere. To refresh your memory, Igor is a feature film based on a short, where a mad scientist's (Dr. Schadenfreude) assistant, Igor, aims to win the Evil Science Fair. The idea on it's own is brilliance, but the film boasts one heck of a voice lineup that includes John Cusack as Igor, Steve Buscemi as a lab rat named Scamper, Jennifer Coolidge as the village vixen named Jaclyn, Eddie Izzard as Schadenfreude, and John Cleese as a doc named Glickenstein.

It didn't start off too smoothly, but it looks like Valkyrie, the thriller about Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg's attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler during World War II, has found it's groove. As things got going, Stauffenberg's offspring were complaining about Tom Cruise playing Claus, there were issues in securing locations, and even extras hurt on set. For the last little while, however, things seem to be going smoothly, and now MGM has released a featurette for the film over at apple.com.

It's a pretty slick clip, not one of those grainy, behind-the-scenes glimpses shot on a hand-held. Writer Christopher McQuarrie talks about the man at the center of the story, and how the film is split up. He says that the first half of the movie will focus on who the players are, while the second half will focus solely on the "July 20 Plot" to take Hitler's life. Kenneth Branagh is a one-man PR machine through much of it, and even describes how the script made his palms sweaty with excitement. Either he's overly exuberant, or that bodes well for the film, since they have to work against what we already know -- that the attempt failed.

The featurette shows all the main players in the film, although I really would've liked to see something on Stephen Fry or David Bamber, and they've done quite a job on Eddie Izzard. Apparently, everyone is "pitch perfect" in their roles, and they show the side-by-side of von Stauffenberg and Cruise, which is pretty spot-on, but it would've been nice to see the others. All in all, it's looking to be a slick thriller -- and with that cast, it would be a shame if it wasn't.

Slow bit by slow bit, the Weinstein Co.'s CG monster movie Igor is getting closer to the screens, but it's not without its share of excitement. Back in March, John Cusack replaced Christian Slater in the title role -- a move still good for the movie, but I can't help but mourn for Slater's participation -- I think his voice would've been great for a wacky scientist. Now we've got another main actor hitting the dust. Jeremy Piven is now out as Igor's nemesis, Schadenfreude, and flamboyant actor Eddie Izzard is in -- it's a pretty big shift in style, but I'm sure it will work just fine. The Hollywood Reporter tried to contact Piven's rep for word on why he left the project, but have yet to hear back.

Unsurprisingly, this change comes with some other news -- the film's producer, Exodus Film Group, has signed a deal for a series of comic books based on the film. This will include adaptations of the movie as well as prequels and sequels. Each series -- the film, prequel and sequel are set to come out starting in May or June of 2008, with the sets published in book form before the film's October 2008 release. If you want to catch up on the project, you can check out my post here, which gives a list of links dating back to 2005.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a fun little flick. It's not flawless and it sure isn't brilliant, but it offers a clever spin on some age-old rom-com conventions, delivers a colorful zing of flashy super-heroics, and showcases a pretty fantastic cast of comedic actors, all of whom are clearly having some fun here. Basically, if last summer's Sky High tickled your inner comic geek while offering a few unexpected chuckles along the way, there's no good reason you shouldn't find something to like in My Super Ex-Girlfriend. If you're looking for a light little confection for you and the boyfriend, you'll find unisexual chuckles aplenty. And if there's one faction of movie fans who should absolutely not miss this movie, it's those loyal members of the Uma Thurman Fan Club. Because she's pretty damn great in this movie -- even if she won't get much credit for the performance.

Imagine a comedic take on Fatal Attraction, only the jilted woman is a little less psychotic and a lot more superhuman. By day she's Jenny Johnson, a semi-frumpy Normal Jane who works in an art gallery. By night (mostly) she's G-Girl, the high-flying, sonic-booming super-heroine who's always there to save the day night!. But hey, even the most harried gal with two hectic careers needs a little romance, right? And that's where Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) comes in.

Who better to write a history of comedy than John Cleese? The actor/writer always comes first and foremost to my mind when I think of British humor, and he's up there with the greatest screen comedians of all time. Unfortunately, he doesn't think he's appropriately funny these days, when television is targeted at, "American teenage kids," and he says he'll never do better than Fawlty Towers. So, he's giving up on writing scripts and is instead concentrating on a book about stage and screen comedy, from silent cinema to modern favorites like Ricky Gervais and  Eddie Izzard. 

Though he singled out Gervais and Izzard while telling The London Times about his book, which will serve as a text for classes he plans to teach, I'm not thinking that his concentration will be primarily on British comedy, though he does seem to have some problems with current American trends -- I wonder if he will be celebrating actors such as Ben Stiller or TV shows like Friends. Cleese is, of course, the man who brought us some of the silliest routines ever to appear on film, but I think even he finds new comedy to be pretty dumb. He told the paper, "I very much want to teach young talent some rules of the game."

Other icons he will focus on in the book include Americans Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, The Marx Brothers and Bill Hicks along with Brits like Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Alan Ayckbourn and Michael Frayn. Whether or not he'll teach the genius of his own work, particularly Monty Python and A Fish Called Wanda was not revealed. Perhaps he'll be too modest to venture there on his own, but students will most certainly request some insights into that territory. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the book and I hope that The Times' claim that Cleese is retiring to teach the class does not mean he will never appear on screen again.