lucky you Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Almost two months after the domestic trailer for Iron Man popped up online, the international teaser has hit YouTube. This sucker is filled with all sorts of action and educational facts about changing trailers for international audiences. Apparently, they don't want beginning exposition, Robert Downey Jr.'s snark, and a build up to the explosions -- they want the big bang and Iron Man action right off the bat. Unfortunately, Black Sabbath doesn't get international love, which is a damned shame -- what's Iron Man without "Iron Man?" And finally, Gwyneth Paltrow gets more play overseas.

If you're an Iron Man fan, or a Paltrow fiend for that matter, you'll want to check this out. It's got a lot of the same scenes, but it focuses much more on the post-suit story instead of the lead-up to its creation. Tony Stark wants "to protect the people that I have put in harm's way!" Pepper Pots, meanwhile, is worried that he'll kill himself. It's the typical struggle between the desire to do good at the risk of oneself, and those that worry about the fearless hero. Sounds good to me.

Even still, the rest of the flick could be junk and I'd still see it. There's little Downey Jr. does that isn't, at the very least, decent. (Although I have no idea why he took a role in Lucky You; I've seen many people's faces contort in pain over memories of watching that.) But I still have one request -- they should make an "Iron Man" music video with RDJ as Ozzy for the DVD. That would be the perfect heroic cherry to this sundae.

[via Coming Soon]

Last week, our old pal bubba8193 triumphed against evilone1414 and rose to the top of the leaderboard, perfectly predicting the following box office top five:

Spider-Man 3
What It's About: Just when everything's going gangbusters for Peter Parker -- the city loves Spider-Man, he's got a hot girlfriend -- an alien black goo gloms onto him, turns his suit black and makes him think he's a badass. Meanwhile, three villains mobilize against him: Flint Marko, Uncle Ben's actual murderer, who escapes from prison and is molecularized into Sandman; Eddie Brock, a rival photographer who also gets infected with the goo and turns into the toothy, maniacal Venom; and Peter's old friend Harry Osborn, aka New Goblin, who's still intent on avenging his father's death.
Why It Might Do Well: Might do well? Really the question here is: Will it break the domestic record for biggest box-office opening ever? The figure to aim for is $135.6 million, the amount earned by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest last July. Spider-Man 3 faces much less competition than Pirates did, and it's opening on a record 4,252 screens; on the other hand, some of the earliest buzz from the blogosphere has been mixed. But Spidey is review-proof -- and at any rate, most agree that the action in this film is better than ever.
Why It Might Not Do Well: There could be a nationwide blackout. Aliens could land on Earth and insist that all theaters be dedicated to showing their home movies. The possibilities are endless, really.
Prediction: $138 million

Lucky You
What It's About: Eric Bana plays Huck, a professional gambler who can't seem to hold onto anything -- love, money or his relationship with his father (Robert Duvall), a legendary poker player. Huck's attempts to get a seat at the World Series of Poker coincide with his meeting a cute, poker-ignorant singer Billie (Drew Barrymore) and warily reuniting with his estranged dad.
Why It Might Do Well: People who have no interest in seeing Spider-Man may head for this film, which was directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential). And those who love Eric Bana, poker and Vegas (I'm guilty and I'm proud) will find plenty to enjoy here.
Why It Might Not Do Well: There's a lot of poker in it. A looooot of poker, which the generally weak reviews have noted. And while Barrymore can headline a hit movie, she's just a sidenote to this story; Bana isn't a big enough star yet to drive crowds to the theaters. Oh, and also, um ... Spider-Man 3.
Prediction: $8 million

Those who go to Lucky You expecting a Drew Barrymore performance that is, at long last, devoid of her half human/half sunflower kitsch will be disappointed. The role is more or less straight drama, but much like Bruce Willis has a writer on standby whose job is to inject "Bruceness" into the scripts he likes, someone seems to have shoehorned in a number of cutesy Shirley Temple-style comedy moments for Drew, and downgraded the maturity level of her character to late teens, as opposed to thirty-something. At one point, sitting beside her boyfriend Huck (Eric Bana) at the poker table, she tells him that it was only right that he lost a hand, since he won the last one -- the other guy should have a turn to win. Huck is a semi-pro whose lifelong attempt to chisel a living out of cards has left him broke, and the film opens with him pawning a family heirloom for a couple hundred bucks. You get a feeling from the start that Matt Damon and Ed Norton dream of this guy.

Hopes rise early on with a funny cameo from Robert Downey Jr. as a friend of Huck who runs some kind of one-man telephone scam. He keeps several cell-phones in front of him on a table and is continually picking them up and putting them back down like three-card monte. Once he makes it clear that he has no money to lend, Huck moves on and we meet some of his less colorful friends, including a compulsive (male) gambler who agreed to get breast implants if he lost a bet, and did just that. Charles Martin Smith is an interesting choice for a mobbed-up loan shark, but the film sort of lets his character die on the vine after one sharply-written early scene with Huck. It also becomes weirdly obvious early on that the film was intended to be titled Lucky Town, since that title makes more sense and since we hear an extended sampling of Bruce Springsteen's Lucky Town. Lucky You sounds more like a lost Matthau-Lemmon comedy from the early 70s.

Like everyone else at about this time, the folks in the Warner Bros. release department are doing a bit of re-jiggering of their fall and winter schedule, moving several big-ish films back and picking up a Warner Independent Pictures release for a wide open in early 2007. The details are as follows:

• We Are Marshall, the based-on-a-true-story flick about a tragic plane crash and the recovery of a devastated team and community (Nice, huh? I should write tag lines!) has been pushed back a month, from late November to December 22. Mmm ... Christmas audiences.
• Lucky You, which I hope is a whole lot better than the trailer (there it looks like Tilt, except with Eric Bana instead of Michael Madsen), has been moved from September 8 to the end of the November. While that IS closer to Oscar time, I would be stunned if the move was actually to increase the film's profile. That said, though, it was directed by Curtis Hanson, so maybe it's a stunning work being screwed by a terrible trailer. Yeah, you're right -- probably not.
  
• The best bit of news is that the AWFUL-looking The Reaping (aka lesson #349 that signing an Oscar-winning star does not mean your movie be good) has been pulled from its November 8 release date and ... not rescheduled. I'm guessing someone at WB actually saw the final edit for the first time, and has buried the only print in his back yard.
• The Astronaut Farmer, originally scheduled to be released by the studio's independent arm, has been stolen by Warner's proper because of its star-filled cast (Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen and Bruce Willis), and will be given a wide release on January 12, 2007.
  

As I approach 30, I've come to accept the fact I will most likely live out the rest of my life without ever truly understanding women. Also, how is it one sock always manages to disappear after doing laundry? To me, those two are life's greatest mysteries. I don't care where we came from or whether or not God actually exists. Women and missing socks -- that's all I need to understand. Explain them and I'm set for life.

The following films all examine the unique relationships shared between men and women. Boys and girls. Him and her. The dude and his lady. Sometimes a woman can enter a man's life and completely ruin things, turn it upside down and shatter his foundation. However, the presence of a women, so delicate and warm, can also turn into life's most precious reward ... until a sock goes missing. Then it's war. Welcome to this week's Trailer Park: