Heads up, fanboys and girls: Marvel has released a barrage of Avengers clips ahead of its September 25 Blu-ray/DVD street date, including the geek-baiting post-credits scene that had fans in a tizzy. No, not the one that boosted sales of shawarma around the nation ; the other Easter Egg, which revealed a menacing glimpse of the real orchestrator behind Loki’s invasion of Earth. The impending Blu-ray/DVD release has also given Marvel occasion to release a handful of additional clips from the film, reminding what life was like before The Dark Knight Rises came along and stole everyone’s thunder. I’d include a spoiler warning here, but if you’re reading this now and haven’t seen Avengers yet… well, I can’t help you there. The post-credits peek reveals Marvel baddie Thanos, who is believed to be the villain in the next Avengers pic. This might also be the closest we’ll come to another Hellboy sequel. (Kidding!) [via Badass Digest ]
“I didn’t just want to come here and say I made a record in Jamaica and grew some dreadlocks,” insists rapper Snoop Dogg in the trailer for Reincarnated , announced today as an official selection of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. “Rastafari called me.” Watch the trailer for Reincarnated for your first glimpse of Snoop Dogg — or rather, Snoop Lion, his newly minted reggae identity — leaving hip-hop behind to sing and smoke up a storm in his new rasta life. The doc, a co-production of Vice Films and Snoop’s own Snoopadelic Films, probably isn’t a terribly incisive or objective look at the musician’s musical shift, and it’s unclear how fleeting an alter ego “Snoop Lion” will be in the long run. But as the trailer speeds through a montage of Snoop’s past, it makes a case for why the erstwhile Calvin Broadus might have sought spiritual rebirth after a decades-long career in the rap game that has seen friends and collaborators pass on, sometimes violently. Beyond the personal loss of figures like Tupac and Nate Dogg, Snoop’s musical career has seemed to plateau in the last decade; how did the slim (with the tilted brim) rapper behind 1993’s “Doggystyle” wind up phoning in verses on Katy Perry Top 40 hits, writing rap songs about True Blood and roasting Donald Trump? Seizing the opportunity for Ali-esque cross-cultural/getting-in-touch-with-his-roots drama, Reincarnated came about when Snoop traveled to Jamaica to record with the producer Diplo. “While there,” explains the synopsis, “Snoop finds himself embraced by the Jamaican people, is positively impacted by Rastafarian culture, and becomes reincarnated as Snoop Lion.” Verdict: It all sounds so perfectly calculated. And yet, compared to Snoop’s post-fame exploits, it might also be his most sincere artistic expression in years. Reincarnated will screen at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. See more titles in the line-up here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
October’s Cloud Atlas is as dense and ambitious as it sounds from what I hear, and the newly unveiled five-minute trailer is almost as confounding as it is beautiful to look at. But regardless of how vaguely The Fountain -ish the nested story feels — jumping through time and various incarnations of cast mates (including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Jim Sturgess) as they repeat life in six different eras from the 19th century Pacific to the post-apocalyptic future — the trio of directors at the helm, including Lana Wachowski in her first post-Larry feature credit, should make things very interesting. Fittingly, Cloud Atlas explores themes like rebirth and transformation, so in a way the adaptation of David Mitchell’s award-winning novel feels like a perfect project for Lana’s debut. (She directs alongside brother Andy and Tom Tykwer.) One of the storylines involves a seafarer, a futuristic clone, and another Tom Hanks in the wild; all of them, and all of us, are connected, according to the trailer. But Tykwer and the Wachowskis know theirs is a tough movie to sell, so they put together an adorable director’s commentary to introduce their trailer: “I think it started as a joke,” the trio begin, finishing each others’ sentences. “‘Why don’t we make a movie together?’ But it became this ongoing fantasy. It had to be something we’d never seen before, but it had to remind us of the kind of movies we watched over and over, the kind of movies that made us want to watch movies. Big screen movies! Massive in scope! But relevant to a normal life, to human beings. It would have drama and comedy. Romance! But it had to be political, philosophical. Lots of action, set in the past and the future, every genre.” Verdict: Iiiiinteresting . Still a tough sell for most audiences, but interesting … gorgeous imagery, a somewhat unwieldy trailer, but Lana and Tom and Andy won me over with their giggly enthusiasm. Meanwhile, new images from the film have debuted, showing more of the cast and their divergent (but connected, somehow) stories. Click on the image below for more and leave your impressions below.
This iconic image from Star Trek ‘s “Amok Time” (Season 2, Episode 1) represents a moment of great internal conflict. When two of our heroes are battling to the death, for whom do we cheer? Luckily, in this case, Bones was on hand with a neuroparalyzer, allowing Kirk to feign death until the mind-altering effect of pon farr drained away from Spock, thus ending the koon-ut-kal-if-fee ritual. But who will be on hand with the hydrospray this week in San Diego? Whoooooo? The 2012 edition of nerd prom brings not one but two feature length documentaries that ought to be of interest to convention-going, costume-wearin’, social anxiety-havin’ fans – specifically, two documentaries about Star Trek enthusiasts. From Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s son, Rod Roddenberry, comes the long-in-development Trek Nation . The film is a mixture of talking head interviews from Trek notables (and others like George Lucas), behind-the-scenes footage and gawking at fans who create their own Andorian antennae. Its hook is the “son in search of his father” schtick, making it something of an interplanetary My Architect . Trek Nation will have a fan screening Thursday night, and “Roddenberry Presents” has a panel on Saturday. There is also an official Roddenberry booth on the showroom floor. Trek Nation trailer: In the other corner is Captain Kirk himself. William Shatner, whose directorial skill is very much of a piece with his Elton John covers, is presenting his latest work, Get A Life . Whereas poor Rod Roddenberry has been schlepping bits of footage of Trek Nation to Cons for years, Shatner’s first person film about “encountering the fans” is another of his dashed-off productions made with the EPIX cable network. (Note: EPIX isn’t really a network, it’s more like Hulu except you watch it on your TV and not your laptop. I don’t really know how to describe EPIX and it isn’t available in New York, which is why no one I know watches EPIX.) Get a Life trailer: Last year Shatner delivered an EPIX production called The Captains . While ostensibly a string of interviews with all who sat in Star Trek ‘s center seat, it ended up being a remarkable piece of outsider art. The sequence of Shatner and Avery Brooks scat-singing about death and “listening to the Universe” just a few months before the Deep Space Nine star got hit with a DUI is like something from Cassavetes’ Love Streams . But, you know, awful. Avery Brooks/William Shatner mash-up: Get A Life will show footage at a panel on Saturday. Mr. Shatner will share the stage with Roger Corman and Kevin Smith. Of the two films, I’m sure Trek Nation is the more polished and the more positive. Get A Life (whose title is a riff of Shatner’s old Saturday Night Live sketch admonishing obsessed fans) is no doubt the more entertaining. The joke is, of course, that both of these films are far too late. Obsessed fandom is hardly news anymore. (I mean, there was a documentary ABOUT Comic-Con that came out this year.) While one could argue that Star Trek fans dwarf all other fans, we shouldn’t forget that there was a theatrically released film in 1997 called Trekkies . It was successful enough that in 2003 there was a Trekkies 2 . What this means, of course, is that it is only a matter of time until a documentary is made about people obsessed with Star Trek documentaries. I’ll be furiously refreshing Kickstarter and will inform you as soon as I hear anything. Saturday Night Live “Get a Life” sketch:
It may seem like an unlikely pairing, the academic and author Douglas Brinkley teaming up with one of the world’s biggest movie stars to edit a little-known unpublished novel by the late folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie titled House of Earth . But that is in fact in the works. Johnny Depp is partnering with Brinkley whose writings eventually informed documentaries including Spike Lee’s Hurricane Katrina work When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts as well as the 2004 doc Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry . Brinkley stumbled upon the work, which Guthrie finished in 1947, while researching an article about Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone. Brinkley happened upon the manuscript and told the New York Times he did not know of its existence. He cited two biographies about the late folk singer, who would have turned 100 this coming Saturday (July 14th), but neither mention Guthrie’s manuscript, which he completed in 1947. The story revolves around a West Texas couple are confronted by banks and lumber companies as they work to build adobe homes as protection against harsh weather. Brinkley and Depp wrote an essay for the New York Times Book Review about Guthrie’s work, describing it as a “portrait” of life in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Pitched somewhere between rural realism and proletarian protest, somewhat static in terms of narrative drive, “House of Earth” nonetheless offers a searing portrait of the Panhandle and its marginalized Great Depression residents. Guthrie successfully mixes Steinbeck’s narrative verve with D. H. Lawrence’s openness to erotic exploration… Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and eventually traveled with migrant workers to California during during the era and was frequently linked to left-wing groups at the time. His guitar often had the slogan “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Exactly how the Douglas Brinkley/Johnny Depp tie-in has been left vague, though one can’t help but think there is a possible movie in the works longterm. The two have known each other since the mid ’90s through Hunter S. Thompson. The two partnered in writing the liner notes on a soundtrack for Alex Gibney’s recent doc Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson . Brinkley said House of Earth will be released in the Spring of 2013 by a “major New York publisher.” Check out the Gonzo trailer with a brief intro by Depp: [Source: NYT ]
Don’t try to conceal how wildly ecstatic you are over the forthcoming Birdemic 2: The Resurrection , “filmmaker” James Nguyen’s sequel to his micro-budget 2010 “classic” Birdemic: Shock and Terror . Weep, already. Don’t hold back — especially now that there is a teaser trailer. Nguyen’s no-mage to The Birds has acquired a slightly more contemporary spirit, invoking the post-credits scene from The Avengers despite apparently setting to rest Nguyen’s insistence that his sequel would be in 3-D . Like I said, weep, already . Anyway, these 30 seconds may be light on screeching avian terror, but they do quietly portend the barely watchable joys to come. [ Bleeding Cool via Filmdrunk ]
Oh, what a coincidence! Here comes the trailer for Tom Cruise ‘s Jack Reacher (formerly One Shot ), the action film based on a novel by Lee Child that stars the soon-to-be-divorcé as an ex-army cop who apparently drives around town in muscle cars getting into fights. The kind of angry, controlled rage-machine who gets into brawls, specializes in strategically breaking bones, asks questions later, etc. The badass clothing doesn’t quite fit on Cruise, but you know. He’s Tom Cruise . Plot is incidental to this first tease of a trailer, which sets up the eponymous loner-hero in mythic terms. “There’s this guy,” bandaged beaten up hospital guy says. “He doesn’t care about proof. He doesn’t care about the law. He only cares about what’s right.” Then comes that reedy Cruise voice to ruin it all: “You think I’m a hero? I am not a hero. And if you’re smart, that scares you.” Well, I guess I’m not smart. Because, yeah. Yawn . I’m not one of those folks hung up on how wrong Cruise is for the role, physically speaking, though Reacher’s dimensions (posted helpfully at Child’s website ) do make you wonder which actors out there might have fit the bill a little better: Measurements: 6’5″, 220-250 lbs., 50″ chest Hair: Dirty-blond Eyes: Ice blue Clothing: 3XLT coat, 95 cm. pants’ inseam It’s not even that Cruise isn’t the physical ideal for Reacher. The wandering ex-military bruiser with no regard for the law doesn’t really sit well on him. But we shall see; with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie ( The Usual Suspects , The Way of the Gun ) behind the camera, Josh Olson ( A History of Violence ) on scripting duties, and Werner Herzog playing baddie , there’s enough promise left in this thing. Still, while a lot of folks are getting a Drive vibe from this, I get more of a Gone in 60 Seconds feel — the middle-aged action hero wearing leather jackets, racing around in classic cars, lounging around with hot ladies in their underwear. It already feels like the mid-life crisis wish-fulfillment movie of the year for older dudes. Verdict: Unless the next batch of trailers really wow me, I’m only hanging in for the Herzog. [via Yahoo! ]
It looks like Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA has learned well from his masters — they being the Hong Kong grindhouse filmmakers of yesteryear whose slicing, dicing martial arts exports clearly influenced more than just the rapper-actor’s musical side, not to mention the reigning icon of modern exploitation cinema culture, Quentin Tarantino . Watch Russell Crowe , Lucy Liu , Pam Grier , Jamie Chung , and RZA himself chop, stab, kick, and fight their way through the bloody first redband trailer for The Man with the Iron Fists ! RZA stars in the film as the eponymous man with the iron fists, a small-town blacksmith in feudal China (the kind of fantasy “feudal China” where RZA can play a local and everyone speaks English) who jumps into action in defense of his village, though the trailer smartly glosses over anything resembling a plot and cuts right to the selling point: This cast, equipped with a plethora of weapons, fighting each other as if in a gloriously lush contemporary Shaw Brothers flick. In addition to earning a “Presented by Quentin Tarantino” credit, RZA’s kung fu actioner is co-written by Eli Roth, who also produced. But QT and Roth aren’t the only veterans RZA surrounded himself with for his feature directing debut: He’s got Corey Yuen onboard as fight choreographer and Chi Ying Chan ( Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame ) as DP, along with a host of supporting cast members plucked from the worlds of action and Chinese film, including Dave Bautista, Cung Le, Daniel Wu, Rick Yune, and Gordon Liu. CG blood squibs too-frequently come off as a silly workaround, so it’ll remain to be seen just how these fight sequences play within the film. But the glimpses we see here promise inventive framing and action choreography, not to mention some painful-looking bladed weapons and a studied eye for the genre. Verdict: Where can I sign up for Lucy Liu’s school of killing for girls?? O-Ren Ishii lives on! Synopsis: Quentin Tarantino presents The Man With the Iron Fists, an action-adventure inspired by kung-fu classics as interpreted by his longtime collaborators RZA and Eli Roth. Making his debut as a big-screen director and leading man, RZA—alongside a stellar international cast led by Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu—tells the epic story of warriors, assassins and a lone outsider hero in nineteenth-century China who must unite to destroy the clan traitor who would destroy them all. Since his arrival in China’s Jungle Village, the town’s blacksmith (RZA) has been forced by radical tribal factions to create elaborate tools of destruction. When the clans’ brewing war boils over, the stranger channels an ancient energy to transform himself into a human weapon. As he fights alongside iconic heroes and against soulless villains, one man must harness this power to become savior of his adopted people. Blending astonishing martial-arts sequences from some of the masters of this world with the signature vision he brings as the leader of the Wu-Tang Clan and as one of hip-hop’s most dominant figures of the past two decades, RZA embarks upon his most ambitious, stylized and thrilling project to date. On top of this, we’ve got the first few images from the film. This one’s quite eye-popping, indeed. Oh, and have you seen the poster for Man with the Iron Fists ? I can’t not get excited about this. [Trailer debut at IGN ]
Acclaimed, Pulitzer-honored science fiction/fantasy author Ray Bradbury has died at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, following one of the most fruitful creative writing careers of the 20th century. The man behind such genre classics as Fahrenheit 451 , The Martian Chronicles , Something Wicked This Way Comes leaves behind a stunning legacy spanning works adapted for television, film, and the stage. It’s difficult to quantify the impact that Bradbury had on the worlds of science fiction, literature, and the numerous film and television adaptations that sprang from his seven decades of writing, not to mention the generations of sci-fi and fantasy lovers weaned on his tales. The man had an asteroid and a moon crater named in his honor, for goodness sake, had dozens of his stories adapted for stage, film, and television, and never went to college. For a child growing up with Bradbury’s stories, the world was filled much more with wonder. For an adult, his tales prompted deeper introspection. It Came From Outer Space : Icarus Montgolfier Wright : Something Wicked This Way Comes : Bradbury on his Fahrenheit 451 : Folks will have their own cherished Bradbury moments, but I’ll leave you with one of my favorite of his real life stories. Writing in 2001, Bradbury shared the childhood incident that inspired him to become a writer in the first place: A chance meeting with a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico in 1932 following the death of Bradbury’s uncle. Mr. Electrico was a fantastic creator of marvels. He sat in his electric chair every night and was electrocuted in front of all the people, young and old, of Waukegan, Illinois. When the electricity surged through his body he raised a sword and knighted all the kids sitting in the front row below his platform. I had been to see Mr. Electrico the night before. When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, “Live forever!” I thought that was a wonderful idea, but how did you do it? The next day, being driven home by my father, fresh from the funeral, I looked down at those carnival tents and thought to myself, “The answer is there. He said ‘Live forever,’ and I must go find out how to do that.” I told my father to stop the car. He didn’t want to, but I insisted. He stopped the car and let me out, furious with me for not returning home to partake in the wake being held for my uncle. With the car gone, and my father in a rage, I ran down the hill. What was I doing? I was running away from death, running toward life. When I reached the carnival grounds, by God, sitting there, almost as if he were waiting for me, was Mr. Electrico. I grew, suddenly, very shy. I couldn’t possibly ask, How do you live forever? But luckily I had a magic trick in my pocket. I pulled it out, held it toward Mr. Electrico and asked him if he’d show me how to do the trick. He showed me how and then looked into my face and said, “Would you like to see some of those peculiar people in that tent over there?” I said, “Yes.” He took me over to the sideshow tent and hit it with his cane and shouted, “Clean up your language!” at whoever was inside. Then, he pulled up the tent flap and took me in to meet the Illustrated Man, the Fat Lady, the Skeleton Man, the acrobats, and all the strange people in the sideshows. He then walked me down by the shore and we sat on a sand dune. He talked about his small philosophies and let me talk about my large ones. At a certain point he finally leaned forward and said, “You know, we’ve met before.” I replied, “No, sir, I’ve never met you before.” He said, “Yes, you were my best friend in the great war in France in 1918 and you were wounded and died in my arms at the battle of the Ardennes Forrest. But now, here today, I see his soul shining out of your eyes. Here you are, with a new face, a new name, but the soul shining from your face is the soul of my dear dead friend. Welcome back to the world.” Why did he say that? I don’t know. Was there something in my eagerness, my passion for life, my being ready for some sort of new activity? I don’t know the answer to that. All I know is that he said, “Live forever” and gave me a future and in doing so, gave me a past many years before, when his friend died in France. Leaving the carnival grounds that day I stood by the carousel and watched the horses go round and round to the music of “Beautiful Ohio.” Standing there, the tears poured down my face, for I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico. I went home and the next day traveled to Arizona with my folks. When we arrived there a few days later I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago. I have long since lost track of Mr. Electrico, but I wish that he existed somewhere in the world so that I could run to him, embrace him, and thank him for changing my life and helping me become a writer. Live forever, indeed! Read the full entry here and leave your own Bradbury celebrations below.
At long last — since Quentin Tarantino fans have been dying for a glimpse since the first peek at that hand-scrawled script suggested that yes, this was really happening — comes the first trailer for Django Unchained , Tarantino’s December 2012 spaghetti western about a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) shooting his way across the South. Because nothing says Christmas like slavery and vengeance! UPDATE: Sorry folks, the trailer is set to officially debut on Fandango later today. Check back for updated video… Foxx plays Django, a slave taken under the wing of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz, looking delightful). Together they journey from plantation to plantation shooting bad guys on their way to rescuing Django’s wife (Kerry Washington) from the evil, oily Leonardo DiCaprio. Between the contained ferocity in Foxx’s eyes, the character actors that line the cast, Tarantino’s use of classic genre zooms and camera moves, that swaggering sense of humor, and the promise of seeing Django get the ultimate historical-revisionist retribution in his quest for “life, love, and the pursuit of vengeance,” the trailer packs quite a punch. And that’s even before Foxx’s Django sidles up to the OG Django , Franco Nero, and explains to him how his name is pronounced. Oh, references! Verdict: Might be a bit too genre for mainstream audiences, but my inner exploitation nerd can’t wait. Django Unchained hits theaters December 25.
