Sunday, May 18, 2008

Trailer Watch!

Alright, so not all of these are all that recent, but they caught my eye only recently. I'm ignoring the new trailers for those obscure art house films coming out, namely 'The Dark Knight' and 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', as I suspect there isn't much interest in them.

The links below are to the direct 'mov' file download, but the trailers can probably be found in lower quality on Youtube as well.


The X-Files: I Want to Believe: The X-Files is back! The trailer isn't exactly awe inspiring, and our intrepid heroes are starting to show their age, but it's Mulder and Scully, back in action in a standalone (i.e. non mythology) sci-fi thriller! The trailer features a tantalizing taste of that classic theme to get fans' pulses racing! 'I Want to Believe' sounds a bit clunky as far as names go, but I guess it's a line that's fairly representative of the show.



Star Wars: Clone Wars: Star Wars is the franchise that just can't be killed. George Lucas is back with yet another offering in the prequel franchise designed purely to make money and sell toys and little else. This time it's a prequel to the last prequel, and like the last few films it is computer animated (low blow, I know, but let's face it, this seems like a natural progression from the CGI infested 'Revenge of the Sith')! Looks mildly interesting, if a little too 'made for TV'; I wonder how it'll fare when it comes out in cinemas...



The Happening: M. Night Shyamalan made such an impact with 'The Sixth Sense'; 'Unbreakable' was pretty terrific too, but it's been a steady slide downhill since then as far as I'm concerned. This trailer invokes his two biggest successes, 'Sixth Sense' and 'Signs', and still puts his name front and centre despite the fact that the guy wrote and directed the decidedly poor 'Lady in the Water'. The lamely titled 'The Happening' looks interesting and is stylistically pure Night, but the early word on the supernatural thriller has been devastating.



Tropic Thunder: This is easily the best trailer of the bunch - it's a red band (i.e. R rated) trailer that is absolutely hilarious. Written and directed by Ben Stiller, the film stars Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black as actors shooting a war film who end up in the middle of a real war but continue to assume that it's all make believe. And yes, that is Downey Jr. in blackface as a method actor who has surgery to make himself appear African American! That gag at the end with the kid is simply brilliant! I can only hope that the final film is even half as funny, but based on this trailer 'Tropic Thunder' has shot up towards the top of my most anticpated films list!

4 comments:

Dili said...

Well for someone thats been reading your blog for about a year since I first saw you commenting on Darwins, I must sheepishly admit this is probably my first time commenting here :) Hi!

Well I though the Xfiles was an "obscure art house film" too :) Checked out the Batman:Gotham Knight trailer or Woody Allens Vicki Cristina Barcelona ? And I loved Kung Fu Panda.

Antimatter said...

Hi! :)

Well, the X-Files is definitely coming in under the radar this time round. I hope it's a good one, because if it flops I imagine that'll be the end of it - for Mulder and Scully at any rate (in their present incarnations). The existence of this film seems like an X-File in itself!

I've got Batman GK and Kung Fu Panda in my download queue... I haven't seen much of Woody Allen's work, - need to get around to it! - but this looks... heh heh, interesting! :)

Anonymous said...

I hope that with The Happening, we can finally see something great from M. Night Shyamalan again. I still have such a high expectation that his next movie will be as great as The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. I guess I still believe in him.

Antimatter said...

Lots of people have said this, and I agree with it - Night is a terrific director but a not so great writer. He seems to be able to get great performances and generate a lot of tension & atmosphere in his films (except Lady in the Water).He needs to direct someone else's scripts! :)