Maybe the most irritating thing about Roland Emmerich's generally unwatchable 10,000 BC was leading man Steven Strait's bizarre accent. Totally indeterminate -- he trilled his r's and drawled occasionally -- it was clearly meant to indicate in some uncertain way that what we're watching takes place a Very Long Time Ago. Hello? The movie is called 10,000 BC and the characters are already speaking English. Making them speak weird English isn't exactly adding verisimilitude. I don't know who Emmerich thought he was fooling.

I always find this sort of thing annoying, and sometimes vaguely insulting. I'm perfectly fine with characters who speak English even though they're not supposed to -- it's easier that way, and I can suspend disbelief. But if you're going to go that route, why add constant, pointless reminders of the very fact you're trying to dodge? Part of the reason I admire The Hunt for Red October is that John McTiernan said "screw it" and let Sean Connery keep his Scottish brogue as a Soviet submarine captain.*

Directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich, who's previously given us Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 B.C. offers audiences the prospect of epic action on a canvas as broad as human history; what it delivers is another matter entirely. In an age where computer-generated effects make spectacle possible, and audiences reward blood-and-thunder films like Gladiator and 300 at the box office, greenlighting 10,000 B.C. must have seemed logical. I can imagine someone pitching the film, to paraphrase Team America: World Police, by saying "It's like 300 .... plus 9,700!"

But as Emmerich's films have always demonstrated, suggesting that spectacle can make up for weak storytelling is like suggesting that having a great haircut can make up for being born without a skeleton. And, so it is in 10,000 B.C., where a variety of off-the-rack plot points and generic heroic journeys are decorated with computer-generated baubles like wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers and massed mobs, shiny hollow Christmas ornaments hung on a bare, ruined tree. Emmerich co-wrote 10,000 B.C. with Harald Klosser and put an army of technicians to work on the movie, but the end result simply feels like threads and themes and moments borrowed from other films.

You know, the more I see of Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C, the more confused I get. ComingSoon.net is now hosting six new TV spots for the prehistoric action flick, and if you are anything like me, you are going to spend half your time wondering whether this movie could be as bad as these commercials make it seem. Well, to be fair -- the shots of hunters battling saber tooth tigers and woolly mammoth bits are pretty awesome, but as soon as somebody speaks a line of dialog, it is game over.

The film stars Steven Strait as D'Leh, a mammoth hunter who is on a mission to save his tribe when his girlfriend (played by Camilla Belle) is kidnapped by a warlord. After discovering a group of warriors long thought to be extinct, D'Leh leads them to take on the oppressive warlord. Meanwhile, the new TV spots throw in plenty of Braveheart-esque moments of storming the battlements and lots of shouting and chest beating.

After you watch the first couple of trailers you might be wondering why I'm assuming that 10,000 B.C is going to be so uproariously bad. I know that it might look good, but let's consider the evidence. For starters, it's written and directed by Roland Emmerich, the man behind such gems as Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow -- not to mention that most of the so-called pre-historic extras are just way too 'modelized' to look even remotely authentic. Finally, I've been going to the movies long enough to know that when a film's release date is pushed back not once, but twice, that it is never a good sign. 10,000 BC will finally hit theaters on March 7th, 2008.

OK, so it's not like Roland Emmerich is known for making the best movies. But one thing is for sure, he does know how to make the most of his FX budgets. ComingSoon.net has the new poster for Emmerich's prehistoric adventure flick, 10,000 B.C. If nothing else, at least this latest poster is a step up from the last one . Sure, it might be similar (and borrowing heavily from 300), but at least this one definitely has a little more style to it. As Scott had pointed out last week, there is definitely the potential for some truly cheesy moments, and after that trailer you can't blame him for coming to that particular conclusion. But who knows? Maybe Emmerich is going to surprise us all with this one. But if you're considering the fact that the film's release date has already been pushed back twice, it's not likely this movie is going to be anything other than a guilty pleasure for most audiences.

10,000 B.C stars Steven Strait as D'Leh, a young hunter and favored son of a tribe on the brink of extinction. Our hero is on a mission to save his girlfriend (Camilla Belle) from a warlord, all the while battling Mammoths and other prehistoric beasties. ComingSoon also has a pretty impressive photo you can check out of a face off between our fearless mammoth hunter and a sabre-toothed tiger. Like I said, you can't fault Emmerich when it comes to the spectacle of movie making. But for those of you out there (myself included) who had the misfortune of sitting through The Day after Tomorrow, then you know just how lame an Emmerich film can get. So keep your fingers crossed until March 7th, 2008 when 10,000 B.C. hits theaters.

The Covenant revolves around a coven of hard-bodied Harry Potters in a Northeastern prep school. They are descendants of those famously accused witches of Salem, who were apparently the real deal after all. It's pointed out to us that these boys are actually more like witch-kids than witch-men, because they haven't yet reached a crucial birthday in the life of a male witch. At age 18, they will "ascend," which means they'll receive some kind of cosmic endorsement of their witchy virility and gain extra powers. They're already incapable of dying -- we see one of them smash his car head-on into a Mack truck, only to have the car and driver re-assemble in mid-air. But, horror of horrors, they can still grow old. The main witch, Caleb (Steven Strait) takes his new girlfriend Sarah (Laura Ramsey) to meet his father, a bedridden invalid who looks like Hugh Hefner after an hour in the tub. "He's 44 years old," Caleb whispers to Sarah, causing her to bite back a scream.

Age is a constant theme in The Covenant: The main characters discuss "turning 18" throughout the film, usually before or after one of the scenes in which they peel off their clothes and flex finely-chiseled abs. At times, I felt like I was watching a Barely Legal video. When one member of the coven turns 18 on the exact same day his disapproving-of-witchhood parents meet a grisly death, Caleb must figure out whether or not they have a poison apple in the bunch, and if so, how best to go about voting him out of the group. What results is a proudly mediocre mash-up of The Craft and Making the Band. It would all be straight-to-video flotsam if not for the strangely endearing quirks of director Renny Harlin, who's coming off a touch-and-go decade since he was forced to walk the plank over Cutthroat Island. Only Renny would include a scene where two witches are standing toe to toe, about to do battle, and one refers to the other as a "weeyatch."

When we first reported on Priest back in January, all of the behind-the-scenes folks were already in place, including producer Sam Raimi, first-time screenwriter Cory Goodman, and director Andrew Douglas. All that was missing was the on-screen talent, and The Hollywood Reporter revealed this morning that the movie now has its stars (or will have them shortly). The Phantom of the Opera/Spartan king Gerard Butler is in negotiations to play the title character, while Steven Strait is expected to play his partner, a lawman.

Not to be confused with the angst-filled Linus Roache flick of the same name, Priest is based on a Korean comic book series, and tells the story of "a warrior priest (Butler) who disobeys church law by teaming with a young sheriff (Strait) and a priestess to track down a band of renegade vampires who have kidnapped the priest's niece." The odd thing about all of this is that no one mentions that the priest is dead, something that seemed very central to the story in the review I read back when the news of the deal first came out. Anyone familiar with the comic series want to help us out? Please?

The movie is expected to start shooting in Mexico this fall, and will be distributed by Sony.

As Karina reported last fall, Warner Brothers thinks it's a brilliant idea to have Roland Emmerich direct an epic about "three stages in the development of primitive man." Huh? Sorry, I dozed off for a second there. Entitled 10,000 B.C., the movie "centers on a young tribal mammoth hunter at the dawn of modern man as he embarks on an epic journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his dying tribe." Though Emmerich originally insisted that his cast was going to be filled with total unknowns via open calls, he's instead cast Camilla Belle and Steven Strait, a pair of kids who Warner's fervently hopes are about to explode into megastardom.

After playing small roles in about a billion things (including Poison Ivy II and an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger), Belle recently starred in the When a Stranger Calls remake. Strait, an ex-model (gee, that's a great start) who has made very few screen appearances, is currently filming Renny Harlin's The Covenant, in which he co-stars. Talented or not, rest assured that both of them will look damn good in torn animal skins. Really, isn't that all that matters?