Weekend Preview: Lying Toys Whip Zombies

September is finally over and it is quite clear from the movie releases: all four movies are actually being viewed as quality cinema. It almost makes me want to shed a tear. Your weekend preview is right after the jump.

Clip: 2012

I missed it, but apparently last night between 10:50 and 11pm Roland Emmerich sank California. In a massive advertising block, for its disaster film 2012, Emmerich’s latest attempt to destroy the world, Columbia bought ad space on nearly 450 television stations in North America last night for a two-minute trailer that hit 90% of the viewing audience. It is CGI at its best/worst as the path of destruction from the end of the world (or at least California) tops even Michael Bay for over the top insanity, and I don’t say that lightly. If you thought The Day After Tomorrow was ridiculous, you haven’t seen anything yet. The full five minute scene leading into the trailer after the jump.

Kelly, Kim and Slattery Join The Adjustment Bureau

Philip K. Dick may have the highest batting average in Hollywood. So many successful writers see their work torn to shreds by the movie machine, but Dick’s work has not only produced only one bad movie (2003’s incredibly forgettable Paycheck), but it has been the backbone for some of the greatest science-fiction films of the last three decades, including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. While it is hard to imagine that anyone could keep a streak like his going, Dick’s next adaptation, The Adjustment Bureau, is trying its hardest, most recently casting Michael Kelly (Generation Kill), Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) and John Slattery (Mad Men), according to THR.

You’re On The List…Platinum Dunes

That’s right: this is an entry dedicated to an entire production company, so buckle up.

Earlier this week, the trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered. For those that don’t know, this is a remake of the Wes Craven classic starring the incredibly talented Jackie Earle Haley (who will be spared in this thrashing). Not one minute into the four minute trailer did a title card appear, reading “From Producer Michael Bay.” For those that do not know, whenever this title card is present in the trailer for a horror film, this means that Platinum Dunes is behind it. These films include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher and Friday the 13th. If you haven’t already noticed the pattern, these are all remakes of classic horror films from the 1970s and 1980s. To put it gently, the four films average a score of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. To put it bluntly, they are all God-awful.

Trailer: Up in the Air

Movie Rule #62391: If you have “Passenger” by Iggy Pop in your film’s trailer, it better deliver. I’ve burned before (The Weather Man) and I refuse to be burned again.

Although it feels like just yesterday that the teaser trailer was released, we now have the theatrical trailer for Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and a slew of comedic stars. While it is still hard to get a read on the comedy/drama balance that the film strikes (not too uncommon with Reitman’s films), this new trailer is certainly a lot brighter than the last, which told us that everything in our lives is simply weighing us down (a real uplifting message.) The film got incredible buzz coming out of the Telluride Film Festival and is sporting a big fat 100% over at Rotten Tomatoes. If you didn’t know already, this is a film to watch for. Check it out after the jump.

‘The Hobbit’ Staying Put At MGM

As reported last week, MGM was facing dire concerns on funding its production slate basically waiting on a forbearance to pay off some its debt. New CEO Steve Cooper was able to negotiate enough support with lenders to delay interest payments until December which allows the studio to move forward with its participation on The Hobbit. 

EA’s Spore Picked Up By Fox

It may be hard to believe, considering that there have been so many of them, but there has never been a good movie made from a videogame (don’t tell Uwe Boll). Many people question why this is, as today’s videogames contain many cinematical elements and plot structures. The reason is actually quite simple: when you adapt a book or a television show, you are changing the format in a positive way: you are either adding a visual element or lengthening the running time. With video games, studios are actually taking something away from the experience: interaction. You might as well spend two hours watching your friend play on his Playstation. Hence why Spore as a movie probably won’t work.

Trailer: The Crazies

Many may not know this, but when he wasn’t directing super-successful zombie movies during the 1970s and 1980s, George A. Romero displayed range as a horror director, making films such as the constantly-satirized Monkey Shines, Knightriders, Creepshow and his low-budget affair from 1973 – The Crazies.

Just as every other horror film finds its way into being remade, so has the Romero classic about a weaponized virus in a small town’s water supply that causes people to go insane. The new film stars Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell as an engaged couple who slowly watch the inhabitants of their small town go crazy.

The trailer moves along quite nicely with some interesting editing and a scene involving a combine harvester, but things go immediately downhill at the 1:42 mark when “Mad World” by Gary Jules begins to play. There are some songs so ingrained to particular films (every Simon and Garfunkel song in The Graduate come to mind) that they simply cannot be used elsewhere with the exception of parody, and not enough time has passed for “Mad World” to be used effectively outside of  Donnie Darko.

Check out the trailer after the jump, but I can almost guarantee that we are going to get a lot more out of the red band than we do out of this.

Watch It!: Predator Rap

To keep the theme that I just came up with out of thin air, today’s Watch It! comes to us from Mouthmaster Murf and DJ Mayhem with their incredible verse re-telling of the film Predator.

Intermixing lines of dialogue, a sick beat and mic skills, the entire tale of Dutch in the jungle is retold with incredible accuracy. It is fairly hard not to simply let your jaw hang at the guy’s skill. Trust me when I say that this video is a must watch. The video was apparently nine months in the making, so be sure to show your respect.

Retro Review: Predator

With the big news regarding Robert Rodriguez’s Predators coming out on Wednesday, we figured it was a good a time as any to go back and see how the original film, John McTiernan’s Predator from 1987, stood up against time and its sequels.

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If the genre of science-fiction has an enemy, its name is technology. While some of the greatest movies of the genre were filmed during the 1970s and 1980s, watching them today is almost laughable. Computers have advanced so far in the past twenty years that movies like The Lawnmower Man or The Abyss look almost cartoonish in retrospect.

Today’s films are no different. As more and more CGI is used, no matter how lifelike it looks today, a few years down the line it will look rudimentary and hacky. Someday, Transformers will look like Clash of the Titans. The only way to combat the inevitable is to be subtle and not let special effects take over the film. It is for this exact reason that John McTiernan’s Predator remains a solid action film to this day.