In just a few short months, Bryan Cranston will end his Emmy-winning turn as chemistry teacher/meth maker Walter White in the AMC series Breaking Bad. Its seems, though, that the eagerly-awaited finale to the series will not end Cranston’s career as an on-screen criminal.
The first trailer for a movie titled Cold Comes The Night was released this week, showcasing Cranston in another threatening role. Cranston will play a half-blind Russian gangster who is searching for a pile of money taken by a crooked cop. He takes a hotel owner and her daughter hostage to get the money. The hotel owner is played by Alice Eve, who was introduced to Star Trek fans earlier this summer as Dr. Carol Wallace in Star Trek Into Darkness.
Sure, the Russian accent sounds a bit silly and it’s not entirely clear from this preview how the Cranston character’s blindness will play a role. However, after the huge success of Breaking Bad, Cranston now likely has a wide variety of projects to choose from. Thriller fans will have to trust that the actor has chosen well with Cold Comes The Night.
Fall movie-goers are used to Halloween horror flicks, including torture porn and zombies. This fall, however, the scariest flick may not have a monster of any sort.
Gravity is set to release the first weekend in October, and promises to play on the existential human fears of isolation, hopelessness, and looming death. The movie stars Oscar-winners George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as Astronauts stranded in space suits after debris destroys much of their space shuttle. Bullock is the rookie and Clooney is the veteran who is on his last mission to space. Cut off from Earth and with oxygen reserves running out, the astronauts will have to figure out a way to stay together and survive. The movie was written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men.
Warner Bros. this week released a new trailer for Gravity. It shows off some impressive special effects in an early sequence where a disaster sets the movie’s events in motion.
Last year, The Hunger Games hit theaters and became the next young adult novel series to make it big at the box office. The movie’s success (one of the top-20 highest-grossing movies of all time) also had the effect of propelling actress Jennifer Lawrence into the Hollywood spotlight.
This fall, the second movie in the series, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, will hit theaters. The sequel is the second of four planned movies, with the final novel, Mockingjay, being split into two movies.
This week, the cast of The Hunger Games movies was at San Diego Comic-Con to promote the sequel and talk about their lives in the aftermath of the first movie’s success. As is customary at comic-con, panel attendees were the first to see the official trailer for Catching Fire.
The trailer shows Lawrence’s character, Katniss Everdeen, as she prepares to re-enter the Hunger Games arena to fight for her life:
One of this year’s most anticipated comedies is This is the End, a movie in which celebrities play caricatures of themselves during the apoclypse. The movie is partially written by Seth Rogen, who also wrote the hit comedy Superbad. This is the End will be Rogen’s directorial debut.
In addition to Rogen, the cast includes pretty much everyone you would expect Rogen to hang out with in Hollywood. James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride seem to round out the main cast, while a large number of cameos are sure to fill the movie.
Sony this week released a red band trailer for the movie, giving moviegoers a glimpse of the apocalyptic mayhem at the beginning of the flick. The trailer also spoils a few of the early cameos, such as when Michael Cera slaps Rihanna on the ass and gets smacked in retaliation, or when a certain British actress shows up to rob the survivors. Also, a few celebrity deaths are spoiled, but some of the bigger cameos are sure to remain under wraps for the premiere.
Ever since J.J. Abrams successfully rebooted the Star Trek movie franchise back in 2009, speculation has been increasing as to where the new Star Trek‘s story will head. With the entirety of The Original Series and six movies to pull material from, the second movie could conceivably go just about anywhere.
Today, trekkies and trekkers alike got their first real peek at Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel due out next summer. The teaser trailer features plenty of smash-cuts, near-reveals, and Inception-inspired horns, but doesn’t give much away. It’s narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the villain, the identity of whom fueled much of the speculation surrounding the movie. More on that in a spoilery section below the trailer.
The common rumor is that Cumberbatch will be playing Khan Noonien Singh, the villain from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. However, Star Trek II is really about Captain Kirk and the choices he’s made, good and bad, and how poor choices can sometimes have effects years later. The new Star Trek Kirk simply hasn’t made enough of those choices for the Khan story to be meaningful. The filmmakers would have to cram the discovery of the Botany Bay and Khan’s exile to Ceti Alpha V into the first half of the movie, then fast-forward over the entire original series to make Khan’s revenge credible. No, it simply doesn’t fit.
My guess is that Cumberbatch will play Gary Mitchell, the villain of The Original Series pilot and third episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. In it, Helmsman Mitchell is transformed into a powerful psychic being through an encounter with the galactic barrier and has to be put down by Kirk. This story would fit well into the new Enterprise crew’s early years, and the final shot of Cumberbatch in the trailer clearly shows him wearing a vandalized Starfleet uniform, implying his former service.
Also, the reveal of Alice Eve’s character in the trailer shows just how much she resembles The Original Series’ Elizabeth Dehner, Mitchell’s eventual semi-partner in crime:
While we’re right smack dab in the middle of the summer movie season–one tent-pole release down (The Avengers) and two to go, (The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises). Nevertheless, with the second release of an albeit shorter trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained has one perhaps looking past the summer with anticipation of the Christmas movie season.
The second teaser debuted last night during the BET Music Awards–seeing D’Angelo in the house is always a good thing–and while it’s shorter than the initial trailer, it doesn’t fail to stoke the fires of anticipation that much more. There are few new scenes as well, including the introduction of Samuel L. Jackson’s character, which is never a bad thing.
Yes, I know, you’re shocked that a Tarantino movie features Sam Jackson. Deal with it, because he looks pretty cool:
Django and Schultz’s search ultimately leads them to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the proprietor of “Candyland,” an infamous plantation where slaves are groomed by trainer Ace Woody (Kurt Russell) to battle each other for sport. Exploring the compound under false pretenses, Django and Schultz arouse the suspicion of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s trusted house slave.
Django Unchained is scheduled to hit the theaters on Christmas Day of this year (2012), which sounds like the perfect way to spend a Christmas evening.
James Bond fans are blessed. Since the mid 60’s they have never had to wait more than a handfull of years for the next Bond film. Despite what their opinions of each Bond are, they always line up to see a Bond movie, hoping it will be one of the good ones. Or, if not good, at least not Moonraker.
Sony Pictures has released a teaser trailer for the next James Bond film, Skyfall. Watching the trailer, it’s clear that Skyfall will continue the previous two movies’ tone in which James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, stands brooding and confident rather than suave. This particular movie appears to take its cue from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and looks to be darker than any previous Bond film. Take a look:
Though Skyfall looks exciting, there seems to be an element of James Bond movies that the Daniel Craig Bond movies are missing. Take a look below at the trailer for an early Bond film, Thunderball, and see the difference. The focus was on action and women with different hair colors, which was evidently the best way to tell Bond girls apart in the 60’s. Though Skyfall is certain to have both of these, there is a certain playfulness about a James Bond movie that has been lost. I’m not sure that brooding is a James Bond trait.
Ok Hollywood, it’s starting to get out of control. Teaser trailers announcing when full trailers are going to be available. Don’t get me wrong, Total Recall is a perfect movie for doing something so ridiculous. The original sci-fi classic is all about messing with peoples’ heads, so why not mess with potential movie-goers by teasing a trailer release?
You can watch the teaser below, and if you care enough, can read my thoughts on the trailer even further down…
Overall, there’s not much to love or hate about the trailer. I thought they created an accurate rendition of the chair everyone must sit in to experience Total Recall. The set pieces look fairly standard for a futuristic sci-fi flick. The trailer could have used more Bryan Cranston, who plays the movie’s villain, but I guess we’ll just have to wait for the full thing on April 1st.
Here’s the synopsis of the movie as well –
Total Recall is an action thriller about reality and memory, inspired anew by the famous short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick. Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he’s got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life – real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police – controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), the leader of the free world – Quaid teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) to find the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy) and stop Cohaagen. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate.
There’s a new Spider-Man movie coming out next summer, and in a move that’s seemingly to stem the hype the upcoming Batman movie is getting, Sony and Columbia Pictures have released their trailer to the Internet. It’s not a bad looking preview, all things considered, and because of that, Twitter users are responding in volumes. This also demonstrates just how effective Twitter can be when it comes to generating buzz, even for a movie that’s a little under a year away.
While I’m not necessarily a fan of origin stories, especially when Sam Raimi nailed it so well in the 2002 version, the new trailer looks better than I gave the idea credit for, but then again, that’s the nature of making a good preview:
Unlike the upcoming Batman movie’s teaser trailer, Twitter is reacting to the new Spider-Man very well. Granted, it’s not like Twitter hates the Dark Knight, it’s just that the teaser did exactly that: It didn’t reveal much about Chris Nolan’s latest excursion into Gotham City. The Spider-Man trailer, on the other hand, shows views quite a bit of what they can expect next summer, and while I’m normally against movie gimmicks, the first-person perspective of Spidey swinging through New York City was better than I first thought.
As indicated, the new trailer has thrust the “Spiderman” keyword to Twitter trend status, although, quite a few are wondering why Eduardo Saverin is in it:
@MattBinder Matt BinderNot sure if the new Andrew Garfield movie is a Spiderman reboot or a Social Network reboot where Eduardo Saverin gets sweet revenge.2 hours ago via Favstar.FM · powered by @socialditto
@timoni timoni westThe whole time I’m watching the new Spiderman I’m just gonna be like “Don’t you need to catch the Caltrain back to Palo Alto, Spidey?”2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Meanwhile, some people feel the need to correct those who spell “Spider-Man” wrong:
@Brelston Brett ElstonSpiderman is trending. I will take this opportunity to tell you all it’s SPIDER-MAN. As opposed to Batman, Superman. #wellicare2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Not everyone is a fan of the idea of a remake, either:
@luckyshirt luckyshirtThe Spiderman reboot is happening too soon.
It’s like remaking this morning’s breakfast, but making the eggs a little sadder.4 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@FilmLandEmpire Laurent de AlbertiWell… I am actually, very, very impressed by Spiderman trailer. Seems darker in tone, maybe more character focused?3 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Apparently, the implication of that last tweet was that Raimi’s versions of Spider-Man was not character focus. Apparently, that Twitter user had their eyes closed during Spider-Man 2. Nevertheless, the hype is clearly building for what may be another record-breaking Spider-Man movie. Couple that with the incredibly successful Dark Knight franchise, a record-breaker in and of itself, and it looks like next summer may see two movies battling it out to see which one can break the most box office records.
