FRED Entertainment

Director: Alex Gibney
Cast:Ken Lay
Release: April 22, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Inside story of one of history’s greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America’s 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything. Based on the best-selling book “The Smartest Guys in the Room” by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind and featuring insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, Gibney reveals the almost unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The film comes to a harrowing dénouement as we hear Enron traders’ own voices as they wring hundreds of millions of dollars in profits out of the California energy crisis. As a result, we come to understand how the avarice of Enron’s traders and their bosses had a shocking and profound domino effect that may shape the face of our economy for years to come.

Enron, that unholy machination of a mega corporation, that barreled though the economy like an amped up Ron Mexico on his way to touchdown, or STD, ingloriousness, was publicly taken down with a panache no one had ever seen before. This is a story that needed to be told, from start to finish, and I sure as hell want to see how the corporation rose to prominence, crested and then crashed into the national economy.

This trailer sets things up nicely with a snippet from an interview with a guy in a very proper suit and tie, laying out the financials. It had taken Enron 16 years to build their financial empire and then, from their apex, lost it all in 24 days.

“The greatest innovation in the new economy was greed”¦”

From here, and in the kind of documentary style that many have come accustomed to, interviews from people on the inside and analysts who knew about the situation, we get some real key things about what really caused this company’s downfall. It didn’t help that the traders of electricity, which I still don’t understand how one can really trade futures in something intangible like power, are caught on tape laughing about they’re stealing money from old grandmothers. The tenor of how which this story is going to be told is set.

What I especially like about this trailer is that we get some real great evidence presented that shows you the kind of gentlemen who will, ostensibly, be visiting some sort of federal “pound me in the ass” prison in their near future. Jeffrey Skilling, at one of the federal hearings looking into this matter, is shown being asked the question of whether he converted, cashed-out, stock worth 66 million dollars. Skilling affects one of the least effective “what, me worry?” poker faces as he responds, “Uh”¦I don’t know.”

Words from another Enron guy, you’ve probably seen his mug on the TV a bit, Ken Lay, is looking all serious as he says that Enron deals with everyone with absolute integrity; obviously, it’s an old interview.

What’s also remarkable about this trailer is that, at a real quick clip, it pushes you through Enron 101. You had former nerds who were all of a sudden really rich and powerful; they wouldn’t let their importance in the market be diminished so they did whatever they had to do to retain that power; they had California in their own stranglehold; they used the rolling blackouts to increase their profits; and they even have an Enron trader on tape saying that for every day that the blackouts continue they are able to skim a million or two, who’s counting, into the coffers of the corporate execs.

The blistering sound bites from the many involved with this company come fast but you begin to see the tangled mess this turned into when deregulation was allowed to happen. Whether deregulation was ultimately a good thing or a bad thing I don’t know but I like how this kind of documentary seems to be more prevalent nowadays; the kind that uses some of the most recent video, audio, documents, etc”¦ to establish continuity and liven up the whole documentary experience. I’m sure the chances this documentary would fare much better, though, on the small screen, rather than the big one if only for the reason that we all know big business is screwing us so why spend the money to confirm it?

Director: Hans Weingartner
Cast: Daniel Brühl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg, Burghart Klaußner, Peer Martiny
Release: July 22, 2005
Synopsis: Jan, Peter and Jule are living out their rebellious youth. They are united by their passion to change the state of the world. Jan and Peter become “The Edukators,” mysterious perpetrators who non-violently warn the local rich their “days of plenty are numbered.” Complications follow when vulnerable Jule ends up falling for both young men. Reckless choices result in danger. An operation gone wrong and what was never intended to be a kidnapping brings the three young idealists face-to-face with the values of the generation in power.

Usually I’m all for foreign films as they sometimes inform my experience as a world citizen in ways that, not intentionally, American cinema sometimes lacks.

However, this isn’t one of them.

When you first watch this trailer you wonder what the hell is happening. Some really rich people, a nice nuclear family, arrive home to find all their possessions have been rearranged in the home. Now, I’m not talking a Queer Eye transformation but some people broke into this family’s home and put everything that was in its place into a radical new one. A note taped to a mountain of furniture says that their days of “plenty” are numbered. Ok, even though I don’t know what days of plenty mean, I get it, and the quick card that comes after this note saying “You’ve been Edukated” only makes me think that Ashton Kutcher is going to jump out with his hat all askew on his head and acting like an obnoxious twit.

Instead, we see that some punk kids are the ones behind this. In fact, it’s those kinds of roustabouts who are out, not protesting, but throwing chairs through the windows of any nearby Starbucks at any G8 meeting in the world. I am sure there is a fine line with peaceful protest and violent opposition and these people seem to be the latter and with nothing else on their mind but general mayhem and wanton destruction to property.

In fact, what I see happen in the next few scenes are moments of these “protestors” shouting the words “capitalist pigs” as the po-pos drag some of these youth away in what looks like a pretty heady moment of a fairly violent altercation. It’s these varieties of global pin heads that make trying to protest the system of unfair imbalances of the world that much more difficult. I really don’t want, and don’t have, any sort of empathy for these kinds of people and that’s what makes watching this trailer that much more difficult.

When next I see that some chick wants to get involved with them I feel sorry for her, not happy that someone else is joining the “resistance.” When they are attempting to “edukate” some rich fellow’s home the guy comes back early. The homeowner grabs the chick, who is clad in the clichéd outfit of black clothes and black stocking cap, but the gimp boyfriend who convinced her to go along with this whole thing sneaks up on the apprehending suburbanite and knocks him out.

The people end up kidnapping him and take him to one of their socialist log cabins.

After they take his gag off and let him sit down at their communist table the “edukation” continues as they try to tell him that amassing nice things with the money he’s earned is a bad thing, a wrong thing. He’s very casual as he says he’s the wrong scapegoat for their misery.

He’s right but we don’t really get anything else here that would say that the people who’ve kidnapped him really evolve in any meaningful way. Things just seem to go on with no real clear direction of where I should be going and I don’t like it. Should I be sympathizing with the plight of these “revolutionaries”? No, obviously not, but I can’t say for sure with the trailer I’ve been given. It leaves me confused and a confused customer is not likely to pay to see your film.

Director: Iain Softley
Cast: Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Joy Bryant
Release: August 12, 2005
Synopsis: Set largely in the dark atmospheric backwoods just outside of New Orleans, The Skeleton Key stars Hudson as Caroline, a live-in nurse hired to care for an elderly woman’s (Rowlands) ailing husband (Hurt) in their home…a foreboding and decrepit mansion in the Louisiana delta. Intrigued by the enigmatic couple, their mysterious and secretive ways and their rambling house, Caroline beings to explore the old mansion. Armed with a skeleton key that unlocks every door, she discovers a hidden attic room that holds a deadly and terrifying secret. Peter Sarsgaard portrays Luke, the local attorney working on the couple’s estate, and Joy Bryant plays Jill, Caroline’s best friend.

This looks like ass.

The opening is good, though, I have to give it that. Even throaty Voiceover Guy sounds like he huffed on a few extra packs of Camel non-filters to get that mysterious and creepy pitch just right as he talks about where our story takes place. And, sure enough, when you’re talking about anything weird, odd, and just way off the norm, you’re talking about the South. Louisiana, to be exactly right.

We’re told that there are people who still use witchcraft, sacrifice, conjures, and spells as their religion and we even see some really “creepy” images of hand-drawn circles, burnt out candles, chicken legs and anything else you could associate with witchcraft. You know, things you’d find in the bedroom of your average, coming-of-age, Cure or CROW fan circa 15 or 16 years-old.

I know what the trailer makers are trying to do is to be all Joe Flaherty SCTV Count Floyd “Ooo”¦it’s spooky!” and it works to a certain extent. I’m even pumped up when I see it’s written by the original guy who did the American version of THE RING; hey, say what you will but there was a reason why the 2nd RING, as god awful as it was, was made and this will really show whether Ehren Kruger really just got lucky or if crappiness is just his style. For further examples of said awfulness, and potential train-wreckage for this film, see his work on REINDEER GAMES and SCREAM 2.

Now we get Kate Hudson into the mix. She’s going to Louisiana to take care of some old coot that was rendered paralyzed by a stroke. The house is really old and in the old manse style that populated so many Southern yarns in literature at the turn of the century and, of course, the home is in some disrepair which adds to its “spookiness.” So, she’s there to be a home health aide to this sickly man and, judging by the tight violin music, when her patient suddenly grabs her arm in a Kung-Fu pebble sort of way, that should have been the universal sign for drop everything and leave quickly.

Instead, what seems to happen is that Kate then employs witchcraft or, at the very least, starts to dabble in it. Huh? If you’re working somewhere and you suddenly feel compelled to begin taking Wiccan steps to ensure your safety against “evil” that might be around you it’s either time to take a 3 day break on a Carnival cruise line and stay rip roaringly drunk or it’s time to see someone and have a chat about other professional avenues in your life.

What really chaps my hide about this trailer is that we go from things getting slightly weird to things getting out of all sorts of control in less than fifteen seconds. First some woman tells Kate to get the hell out of the house, Kate then finds some really effed up witchcraft swag in her employers’ attic, the wife of her patient isn’t all there and is dangerously close to looking like she herself is in a permanent psychotic state, and we see some really odd clip of Kate using a compact mirror like she’s trying to determine whether the old guy she’s taking care of is a vampire, to which the guy flips out when he sees his visage.

There’s some really crazy things going on in this movie and I can tell you it’s not intentional. I just can’t see why I would even want to get close to this unless there was some kind of lesbianiac séance to awake the healing powers of female love to protect her. Even then I would be hard pressed.

Director: Jun-hwan Jeong
Cast: Shin Ha-Gyun, Baek Yun-Shik, Hwang Jung-Min, Lee Jae-Yong, Lee Ju-Hyeon, Ki Ju-Bong
Release: April 20, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Lee Byeong-Gu (Shin Ha-Gyun, JSA) is a sensitive, blue collar sad sack hopped up on conspiracy theories and sci-fi films whose life has been derailed by one bad break after another. Yet he knows there’s no such thing as bad luck. The only thing that could have made such a mess of his life are…aliens. Nasty, disgusting aliens who have infiltrated human society. Sly aliens who are planning to destroy our planet at the next lunar eclipse. The one alien possessing the Royal Genetic Code needed to contact the Crown Prince and stop the destruction just happens to be his old boss, CEO of Yuje Chemicals, Kang Man-Shik (Baek Yun-Shik).

Prognosis: Positive. Resist the urge to stop this trailer a few seconds into it.

It will be the oddest thing you see today, I swear it. (This’ll be a good thing)

It’s hard not to roll your eyes when the first images we get of this Asian import are of some dude with a construction helmet on his head with assorted accoutrements and gizmos stuck on it and who is also wearing a trash bag as a coat. Its silliness is only rivaled by its sheer visual stupidity, I know.

It seems our new friend, who is either a danger to himself, society, others or all of the above, thinks his boss is an alien. The yellow cards that state this claim look like they were designed by someone who just discovered the joys of making fonts as big as the screen.

The bag man in question walks up to the boss in question and asks if he’s from his hometown. The bossman, who is awfully calm for a man being questioned by a trash bag wearing weirdo, says that no, he grew up in Seoul. “Not Andromeda?” our fruit loop asks.

“He may be right,” the next card says. What?

I realize that it’s about here where you would go off and clip your toenails but stick with it as the next scenes just assault you with some of the oddest situations that I have ever seen come out of Korean cinema.

First, we see that our garbage man knocks out his boss with some sort of gas. Then, in a series of chronological events, boss guy is taken to some kind of abandoned industrial park, he’s strapped down to a chair, his head is shaved, we see trash guy has a similarly dressed associate with him, and the card that flashes at us states that this film, “is not horror.”

Well, who would think that? Before I get to the “who would” of my question we see that boss guy has his right leg extended on some kind of ottoman, as a real punky version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” jams in the background, and his crazy abductor wields an ax that is being slammed into the dude’s leg. What the hell is going on?

I still don’t have a clue but I know I can’t look away.

The next card says that this isn’t science fiction. No shit? Really? I can’t see how that would be as all my favorite sci-fi movies have forceful amputations of body parts with garden tools in them.

Next, an ethereal and more mellow singing of “Rainbow” lilts softly as animated math equations take over the narrative storytelling of this trailer. Streams of impossibly definable X’s and Y’s and =’s confound me even more than what comes at me in the follow scenes.

The punk “Rainbow” comes back as we get a wholly different set of people fighting at a bee hive. What? Some guy, in a really funny/odd/crazy moment, tosses a jar of what looks like honey on a potential assailant causing bees to gather in a cloud right above his drippy head. What does our honey boy, wielding a pistol, do to defend himself? Shoots at the bee swarm. With every shot that goes off you see a single bee drop. It’s completely surreal.

“This is something you’ve never seen before”

I can’t even tell you what I think of the quick clips that follow in this movie’s desperate attempt to make a cohesive reason why I should see this film. The fact that it was an official selection at Toronto and a multitude of other film festivals in the past year really starts to scramble my synapses as I wonder why, now, garbage man is having a kung-fu battle in the middle of the street where the laws of physics don’t seem to be a concern for anyone involved.

The one thing that makes me even think of investigating further into this film is the recommendation of some fairly good press outlets which include a glowing proverbial thumbs up from Film Threat. I can’t imagine anything stranger I’ve seen in the last few months as odd as this movie but it did make for an interesting couple of minutes.

Director: Sean Anders
Cast: John Angelo, Greg Behrendt, Sean Anders
Release: April 15, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Shawn is the founder of the Mesa Frozen Entree Enthusiasts Club. He has inspired this group of fanatical collectors to attempt to host the world’s first Frozen Entree Enthusiasts Convention. Shawn also sings for a local punk band that has recently converted to Christian Rock as they find the Christian fans much easier to shock and impress. Milo Binder, a local Christian rock promoter and owner of an anti-abortion themed Christian cafe, assisted the band’s conversion. As Shawn pursues the convention and Christian fame, Al (the bass player) pursues Shelly. Shelly is a mousy virgin who’s infatuation with Shawn may be more than AL can overcome. NBT is a dark, edgy warts-and-all comedy that leaves nothing sacred.

Not literally, as I could maybe accommodate a small production of Waiting For Godot, and someone would have to bring the tree, but this film was constructed with Phoenix hands and I feel like I can share the positive vibes I get from this ad with the rest of you.

The premise is strange but the trailer sells this lo-fi budgeted comedy with smashing aplomb; let me explain. At the beginning, we’re introduced to a collector. The guy isn’t just your normal collector, mind you, as the object of his desire is frozen dinner entrees. It’s the coveted collectible of all the hoarders at the center of this film as are the freezers that populate these people’s homes which are used to store them. Some people have long boxes, others, GE deep freezers. One of the guys who boasts a collection of some 900 different varieties is absurd but, when you watch it, it really is amusing.

We next meet a concert promoter. The man, who talks to the camera in a documentary style, clad with a fetus eraser tip on his pencil, says he has been a part of the Christian rock scene for the past 10 years. Quickly, we cut to a performer in a local club where he says that the next song they’re going to play is about”¦well”¦Jesus.

I laugh.

In a Lou Pearlman, Backstreet Boys style machination, we are introduced to the man who creates a Christian rock band and tells the members how they’re going to be successful. It is, in this order, man has problem, man finds Jesus, Jesus fixes problem. Repeat.

The obnoxiousness of the band’s lyrical content and performance on the live stage is readily apparent as is the meeting of the losers who all gather to talk about Swanson’s newest frozen dinner entrees that is near release to the general public. Is this what it looks like to people when I tell people how excited I am of an impending Jim Mahfood release?

We next get introduced to our other players and find out a little bit more about each one. In particular, we are presented Shelly. Shelly works at the William Jefferson Clinton Abstinence Center. The Center is a hotline where people can call up and get talked down from having premarital relations, with themselves. Her conversation with someone who is in mid master-coitus stokes the laugh track inside of me.

The quick clips that follow show all sorts of odd things: refrigerated display cases, a la baseball cards, that herald new offerings of frozen dinners for sale, a guy who spills a copious amount of shampoo into his palm while showering right before treating himself like “an amusement park,” a dog humps the hell out of a disaffected guy’s leg who drinks a beer in his underwear, and there is even a moment between friends which show how mean some of our very friends can intentionally be.

Without any way to see exactly how any of this could be very entertaining I can see why it would be hard to get excited about this kind of a movie. I do know, however, that having to sit through an inordinate amount of trailers submitted by first time moviemakers, which fail to do anything, that this one really shines above a lot of them for being able to excite me.

Director: Tony Scott
Cast:Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Mena Suvari, Delroy Lindo, Lucy Liu, Christopher Walken
Release: August 12, 2005
Synopsis: Based on the true story of Domino Harvey, the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, a former Ford model, who rejected her life in Beverly Hills to become a bounty hunter.

When you’re talking about true stories and Tony Scott is the man directing a film based on one you might be well inclined to think, if nothing else, it’ll be pretty to look at. The truth will most likely bend as far as a Chinese acrobat performing the triple-lindy but, again, the visuals will no doubt be in high ocular overload. Watching MAN ON FIRE last year secured my faith in a man who has shown remarkable prowess as someone who is good behind the lens and adept enough to deliver a visual story if nothing else.

That said, though, I don’t know how well I believe Keira Knightly as a bounty hunter. Sure, Boba Fett takes all the glory for the galaxy’s root-tootinest gun slinger, until Lucas gave him one of the weakest ass exits if ever there was one, but Keira? Like RuPaul said, “Girl, you better work”¦” Further, I assert that there’s something oddly too feminine about a bounty hunter looking like she does. The root of my concern stems from watching too much DOG The Bounty Hunter on A&E. Have you seen that woman, Beth Smith? That girl could crack me like a walnut and have me begging for sweet mercy where if Keira was the bounty hunter I would WANT her to crack me like a walnut. See the difference?

Keira introduces herself by means of a voiceover, the action on the screen muddled by cinematography and the blaze of twin machine guns, rattling off ammunition into some space that Keira is screaming into, and it is all good. She’s hot with an automatic, I’ll give her that, and the trailer doesn’t let us sit idly by for a moment.

“I am a bounty hunter”¦”

She says that what she is about to say determines whether or not she goes to prison. So, we already know she’s been caught, that there is no real risk to her person throughout this entire movie and that she’s going to be alive by the end. That sucks to know because maybe I would’ve wanted her to go out like a Vasquez in ALIENS. Maybe I wanted her to go out with bullets shredding her innards like a beef jerky machine but for the sake of being able to see her last throughout this movie that’s alright and I realize I’m thinking way too much for an action movie.

What’s really screwy, though, is that we see her pre-Alias transformation and, of course, she has long hair to juxtapose with her current short bob and she has a real bad attitude to go along with it. The vibe is like that of Bridget Fonda before that hit squad turned her into a hottie assassin in POINT OF NO RETURN. Then, next scene, she’s all experienced with the weaponry.

We go from point A all the way to point Zeta on the Greek alphabet without so much as an explanation. All is forgiven, I guess, as she looks pretty good holding the firearms, unbelievable as it is.

Next we get some more jarring video of people getting all sorts of crazy with their guns and Christopher Walken pops up as a network executive. What one has to do with the other I still have no clue.

“Did you just say Blacktino?”

We get more clowns out of this car of characters and, from what I see, there isn’t a whole lot connecting anyone to anything. We get people popping up on the screen to only really point out that they exist somewhere in the narrative but we’re not really clued in to how they shoehorn into Domino’s past, present or future. I’m nearly feeling trapped by these multiple personalities with nothing to ground any of them.

The end of this trailer is just a lot of quick clips that leave you breathless and cockeyed from the exposure of film going in and out as many times as it does. Keira’s voiceover letting us know again and again that her name is, indeed, Domino Harvey, and that she is a bounty hunter, skirts the line between repetition and annoyance.

Director: Patrick Read Johnson
Cast: John Francis Daley, Steve Coulter, Christopher Lloyd, Kenneth Mitchell, Colleen Camp, Emmi Chen
Release: Sometime in 2005
Synopsis: Pat Johnson has things get in the way of him seeing Star Wars.

I knew nothing about this film’s existence but then, stumbling into it like a urinal at Oktoberfest, I saw the trailer and thought that it was a great trailer for being so under the radar. You’ve got nerds, nerd love, geek infatuation with popular cinema and a little independent ingenuity behind it all.

Things kick off like any good movie paying homage to a great time in cinematic history, 1977, with the playing of the theme to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Things usually are ironic in scope when that tune is inserted into a flick and this is no different. What sets this trailer apart, though, is that instead of telling you, explicitly, this is a movie from 1977, although the title is enough of a giveaway, we’re offered scenes from that year that set things in their proper context. We get a game of Pong, some Six Million Dollar Man, a clip from JAWS, and even Farrah Fawcett.

We’re introduced to our protagonist as he works on a large scale model, definitely a nerd in whatever decade we’re talking about, as a friend off camera asks who the hell Steven Spielberg is. Our man is nearly infuriated at query.

What happens next is that we get a slew of quick clips, usually reserved for the send off of every other trailer that I see, but it’s effective insofar as it gets me acquainted, real quick, to this nerdy guy’s life. He loves movies, he’s a moviemaker himself, he likes, no surprise, Steven Spielberg, enjoys making homage flicks like JAWS and there’s some obsessive behavior going on with his envisioning of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and even his version of PLANET OF THE APES.

What draws me in closer is that there is a real spirit to this flick and to the filmic persona of a man who is trying to recreate CLOSE ENCOUNTERS with aliens who can’t see out of their masks and fall off the ramp leading to the fabricated spaceship. He convinces a young boy, possibly his brother, to be a victim of a shark attack. The kid holds his own fake intestines out for his mother to see in the bathroom and, judging by her expression, she seems all too familiar with this kind of behavior.

The movie picks up more steam as it nears its end with the opening images of STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE, an obvious benchmark in the hapless lives of geeks everywhere. Christopher Lloyd even pops up in a moment of amazing surprises with regard to the level of quality this movie might possess should it ever screen beyond festivals.

Obviously, with no way of knowing anything more than what this trailer tells us there isn’t a way to really determine how thoroughly good this movie may be. From what I can tell, though, this does look like a great entry into a festival where its goodness or badness can really be tested.

And you know, even for a movie like this, you just have to be rooting for the little guy, even the nerdy ones.

Director: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
Cast: Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay, Rob Jenkins, Lisa Cunningham
Release: July 1, 2005
Synopsis: Peaceful, rustic Berkeley is a charming fishing community where life is sweet and the people friendly. All that is about to change. After losing her childhood farm to the bank, local beauty Rene decides to leave town and head for the big city. Suddenly, an avalanche of meteorites races through the sky, bombarding the town and bringing an otherworldly infection. Departing is going to be much more difficult than she had planned. The living dead are awakened and Rene is now caught in a nightmare of zombies hungry for human flesh. She manages to find salvation in a small isolated farm house owned by the town loony, Marion. There she is met with four other desperate survivors. Together they battle their way through a plague of walking dead and discover that there is more transpiring than just an infection.

What we have here is a fairly well made trailer for a movie that only metes out the information in slow drizzles. It’s intriguing to try and figure out what the hell is actually going on in this thing.

“In the town of Berkeley”¦Where life was simple”¦”

Essentially, yes, with the choral singing and the kids with their fishin’ sticks, and the old grandmas looking for yarn at the ye olde store. Life seems quaint and cheery. Only in the movies could life be so idyllic and we, as an audience, gullible enough that one exists. That is, until, you hear the booming noise over your head in the sky.

Large meteors streak against yellow clouds. The music stops. The atmosphere literally turns dark and evil.

We get a small girl aping the scary factor, which is fine, of the dead pre-teen of THE RING and that crazy bastard child that took a bite out of Sarah Polley’s husband in DAWN OF THE DEAD. I like it when kids are involved with the whole zombie ethos. It just makes the decision to blow their heads off with a pump-action shotgun, you know so they don’t bite anyone else and become zombies “˜cause you’ve got to protect yourself in these kinds of situations, that much more tenuous.

The screen goes black.

People start screaming, the obligatory news guy (who, even in the face of a plague, as they call it in this trailer) seems calm and disaffected with the panic that’s ensuing everywhere else, people douse themselves with water for some unknown reason, and some dude, who looks like Rob Zombie playing the part of the heavy, is out to tell everyone exactly what’s up with this situation.

It seems like this is going to be another sort of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as all the players who are still alive exist together in a house as a zombie horde closes in on them.

“Those things you saw out there? Those are only the beginning.”

I don’t care if it comes close to Romero’s original idea of zombies + house + people defending the castle = profit. It looks visually pretty close to what I demand of my scare flicks: screaming chicks, big guns, attitude, near nudity if possible (I did see a bra ever so briefly), good looking zombies and a strong female lead to school all the foolios who think they’re better than she is (because it’s important for women to have strong action heroes too”¦) if at all attainable.

I’m putting this one on the radar. If I haven’t seen the best bits in this trailer I am definitely making the time to see this one, otherwise, I am waiting for DVD.

Director: Jorge Furtado
Cast: Lázaro Ramos, Leandra Leal, Luana Piovani, Pedro Cardoso
Release: April 22, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: André, relatively poor, falls in love with Silvia, a neighbor whom he spy’s with a telescope. Falling more and more in love with her, he begins to follow her around the city and realizes she works in a clothing shop. He works in a Xerox place and makes a copy of a brand new 50 real bill in order to buy a dress from her store. This becomes a vice and he begins to photocopy more and more money, until it gets out of control. However, things begin to go wrong when he decides that photocopying is not the only way to make money.

The premise is real simple: you have a dude who works in a copy store (man, I love that Pop Copy sketch on Chappelle’s Show), he has a couple of friends who he hangs out with, he likes to spy on chicks with a pair of binoculars across the way from his own apartment building (MEN AT WORK, anyone? Man do I love that movie in ways I should be embarrassed for admitting), and he eventually sees one he likes and wants to get to know better. He seems fairly normal beyond just being a guy who makes copies for people”¦and who likes spying on unsuspecting women. In fact, this seems like a pretty normal movie except that our protagonist is the one narrating this trailer, a rarity I like to see more often as it intimately informs the action on the screen, but we do have a love story where the words “didn’t even know I exist” are uttered. I really hate that line when I hear it anywhere else outside a Lizzie McGuire or Even Stevens episode but I let it slide here because it’s all in the translation.

What gets me here, and what people will take notice of, is that the guy is a cartoonist. He animates like Savage Steve Holland did in BETTER OFF DEAD and ONE CRAZY SUMMER. The artwork is nice to look at but it helps to define things as well and that’s a plus. What’s more is that our protagonist gets the idea that he’s a damn good copier. He thinks he’s the 1984 Mary Lou Retton gold medal champ at making copies so good that he could probably make counterfeit money and not get caught. He goes for it.

“You know what I say? Money is only paper that people believe is worth something.”

From here the riches, pun intended, natch, start to spoil him. With a CCR’s “Travelin’ Band” playing in the background and with some nice video and audio effects that create the appearance of a copier as we go from one scene to another this story is easily told in the actions of the people we see on the screen. It’s an absolute delight to see a foreign language film glide so easily along the lines of understandability to an American audience.

This movie won some awards, although this information is really helpful to people if you put it at the beginning of a trailer as it helps them make an empty value decision that only helps a movie out immensely, but what’s really nice is how this kid starts to spend lavishly because you can just feel the eventual outcome of this situation coming to a head quicker than an approaching tsunami.

The decadence is too much to last too long without something bad happening and this film doesn’t look like it’s going to disappoint on that level. With guns, officers in bulletproof vests and shotguns, lots of running, an apartment explosion and even the possibility of some hooker action I am all in for this ride.

Director: Timour Bekmambetov
Cast: Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Menshov, Maria Poroshina, Galina Tyunina, Victor Verzhbitsky, Dima Martynov
Release: July 29, 2005
Synopsis: Set in contemporary Moscow, NIGHT WATCH (NOCHNOJ DOZOR) revolves around the conflict and balance maintained between the forces of light and darkness — the result of a medieval truce between the opposing sides. As night falls, the dark forces battle the super-human “Others” of the Night Watch, whose mission is to patrol and protect. But there is constant fear that an ancient prophecy will come true: that a powerful “Other” will rise up, be tempted by one of the sides, and tip the balance plunging the world into a renewed war between the dark and light, the results of which would be catastrophic.

I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of looking at a Russian made film in this space before and what a shame that is. You’d think with the kind of money that the new oligarchic infrastructure is infusing into that once crumbling house of cards we’d be getting all sorts of crazy ass movies like IVAV AND ERIK GO TO RED CASTLE, REVENGE OF THE BOLSHEVIKS or even something where we could get a nice car chase through the center of Red Square in Moscow or a Russian mafia original using real Mafioso’s who no doubt still loiter along the Russian promenades.

This trailer, though, looks just great as we get our protagonist, a young boy, having fun in the local swimming pool. I can’t say for sure that it is a swimming pool, as that might be reactor water he’s wading in, this being Russia and all, but it’s all very peaceful. The camera cuts away to a little girl swinging by herself against a backdrop of a dark sky and housing projects.

Our kid shows up again, doe eyed and innocent, and he walks slowly to his front door where he no doubt heard a knocking. It’s quiet and he slowly steps to his peephole to see who’s there. There’s no one.

The surprise that follows scared the living shiat out of me and it’s a red herring at that. Sneaky bastards.

Here’s where things get weird. The screen gets black and when it comes up again we see some dude’s face. Only, what happens next is that it gets all veiny, like he’s turning into a zombie or like he just had a tongue session with a young Rogue, and it cuts away. Quickly we see some blonde, some older MILF-ish lady, with her hair blowing straight up into the air in a wave of follicles. Then we get a lot of bats flapping around. The word huh doesn’t even begin my confusion but, and I have to be honest, I’m intrigued to know why all this weird stuff is going down. I’m not upset, I am hungry for information.

Next, we get some people dressed up like Vikings. They’re sort of like those gimps who dress up here in the States doing battle recreations of civil war era fights where the results are always the same, except in this flick they’re going hand-to-hand on a small stone bridge. And here’s something that’s interesting: this movie has Voiceover Guy. It’s an actual American voice that’s narrating this thing. Again, this is something I don’t hear everyday and it’s really interesting to have this kind of verbal backing.

It helps, too, because from what he’s saying and what I am seeing, it’s sort of like an Eastern Bloc version of UNDERWORLD. Expect here, in this movie, you have people who possess some pretty odd superpowers in addition to kung-fu. At one point one of the factions, the rulers of the night no less, put their hands up to a kid’s head only for the child’s melon to go completely invisible with the exception of all the kid’s red subcutaneous veins in his head. Sweet!

There are a lot of sunglasses worn in this movie, more than in all the THE MATRIX movies combined it seems, but there’s no mention of vampires or any of that goth wannabe hippie Anne Rice crap. There’s lot of rundown buildings in this thing too but I bet you dollars to doughnuts that those are real places and not just cleverly decorated soundstages with the way their economic situation has been plodding along since Communism took a header.

Not only that but the scenes that are given up in this trailer just rock the block. At one point you have a woman walking in her nightgown down a busy Russian highway. Cars bump her out of the way, as they go by at full speed, and she seems disassociated with anything relating to pain. It’s a nice effect to look at and wonder how they did it.

Also, the music used, by M87 near the end? It’s haunting as it is emotionally perfect for what this film seems to be about. It looks like a violent movie, a fun movie, but has that tinge of Russian stoicism that I thought was forever lost after the release of RED HEAT; that opening fight in the snow still induces shrinkage in me. There is so much more going on in this thing I just have to implore someone to see it and report back quickly. It’s not for everyone but it’s packed with gorgeous imagery and it’s on my Geek Watch 2005 list of anticipated movies.

You just can’t go wrong with this trailer. In fact, let me say, for the record this is perhaps the best trailer I’ve seen for a movie so far in 2005.

Director: Nora Ephron
Cast:Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell
Release: June 24, 2005
Synopsis: An all-star cast led by Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell cast their spell on the movie version of one of TV’s most memorable and guiling shows, “Bewitched”. Will Ferrell plays an actor taking on the role of Darren in a new version of the classic television show, while Nicole plays the actress hired to play Samantha in the show…except that she’s really a witch!

Sans the coconut macaroon part.

I’m not seeing exactly why I would want to see this movie, even after Nicole Kidman’s entrance into the movie’s trailer. Ferrell is looking at all kinds of unknown actresses for this new show of his, focusing on the nose wiggle of course, and it’s only when Will sees Kidman wiggle it inside a bookstore that his senses are overwhelmed and thrown off kilter, taking a pratfall over stacks of books. Ahh, good ol’ Will.

What’s odd about the scene immediately following this is when Will tells Nicole she would be great as an actress, assuring her that if he can act surely she could to which a waitress quips, “Amen.” Ha-ha, very amusing. I get it, Will’s a terrible actor. What’s genuinely funny, though, and what makes that lame ass line better is Will’s follow-up that includes the word “humus” that’s sharply annunciated and works to great comedic effect, pedestrian as it is.

From here we get Kidman’s display of power. She likes her broom, although she drives a VW bug, and how appropriate it is that the incarnation of pagan evil drives a machine that was fully realized by German Nazis, and she even tosses out comedic quips with the speed of your average sitcom actress. Michael Caine seems awfully reticent in his role here, and probably with good reason, but things progress just the way something like this should. I’m not saying that’s bad but there is an understanding by all involved as to what this movie is and it’s perfectly executed. Even the music’s harmless.

Ferrell ends up having so much success from the show he announces to the world that the show is going to be “retooled” to focus only on him. So, a witch scored fights back. It’s all very WITCHES OF EASTWICK but without the pasty belly of Jack Nicholson or the horse-ish cranium of Cher getting in the way as Nicole takes her “revenge.”

So, keeping with this theme, much like the Steve Carrell news reading scene made so infamous in BRUCE ALMIGHTY, one my father would have the world believe was comic genius, Will has a spell cast upon him which makes him speak Shakespearian, Valley Girl, and then back to a high brow monologue, about a dog while at a dinner party. It’s good. I mean, there’s not much more you can do with something like this besides playing it for up for scary screams but that’s obviously not what you’re going to get here.

And then, near the end of the trailer, we see that Will realizes that Nicole is a witch and tries to get everyone to believe him which doesn’t work and, of course, makes him look crazy. He even goes on a paranoid rant about the old Darren/Dick replacement that I am sure some segment of the population will find amusing.

I don’t know what I could honestly expect out of a movie like this but it’s clear that this one isn’t going to tear the roof off people’s expectations. Instead, it looks like it’s going to play right into them.

Director:Nimród Antal
Cast: Sándor Csányi, Zoltán Mucsi, Csaba Pindroch
Release: April 1, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A tale about a strange young man, Bulcsú, his fellow inspectors, who are all without exception likeable characters, a rival ticket inspection team, and racing along the tracks… And a tale about love.

If you see the description of the film then, great, you have an idea of whether or not you would pay to see this movie but I dare you, in true CHRISTMAS STORY fashion, to watch this trailer and tell me what is going on in this movie.

I have no idea.

What I do know is that there seems to be a wonderful blending of noir and genuinely affective emotional connections between some downtrodden and forgotten people but let’s see if I can’t describe this trailer with some insight in to what’s being communicated in this piece of advertising.

A techno beat slowly drives beneath the action as we get our protagonist, sleeping on a subway station floor. Is he homeless? Hung-over from a night of wild debauchery and whoring? Dunno, but an owl lives down there with him. Huh?

Next, we are reassured, and thankfully so, that this movie won some awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Chicago Int’l Film Festival. This establishes some credibility right away. It’s perfectly placed and, in hindsight, helps to reassure me.

Next, we get some blonde bimbo with a bouffant haircut, a cigarette teetering on her lips, who decides to single-handedly pop open a bottle of well shook champagne. What is doing and why is she there? Exactly, kids, I don’t know.

Our protagonist chases some thug through the subway, some more awards this movie has received are flashed in front of us, and then, in a really show stopping moment, we seem to have a WARRIORS moment as dudes with matching face paint square off against some other dudes who aren’t so”¦facially”¦painted. Seeing how this is a foreign flick I think I can almost assume this has less to do with gang violence than it does with soccer hooligan fanaticism. People over there love to paint their face in obnoxious ways just as the Raider Nation’s uncivilized ilk think it’s cool to have skulls hanging on their shoulders, wearing helmets with spikes drilled on them and acting like barbarians. I get it.

A more upbeat song starts spinning as we get a cavalcade of people. There is a chick dressed up from head-to-toe in a pink fuzzy bear outfit, some dude strikes a kung-fu attack position, the same pink bear lady leads someone somewhere using a road flare (huh?), there’s the owl again (symbol alert!), and we get a plethora of domestic critics from the States who, again, assure us that this is a movie that is supposed to rock everyone’s world. For reals.

There are people partying, some hot chicks are seen here and there, some old lady screams at a pack of our characters in German with no subtitles to see what she’s saying (probably, “Don’t see that Bewitched movie that has that woman driving a Nazi approved mode of transport! Eich bin ein Berliner!”), some more quotes from the press, there’s a Chun-Li BLOODSPORT moment where a woman blows some white powder into a dude’s face, and there is a lot of sliding on the subway floor. Crazy Germans.

Director: Steven Soderbergh, Wong Kar-Wai, Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Alan Arkin, Ele Yeats, Gong Li, Chang Chen, Christoph Buchholz, Regina Nemni, Luisa Ranieri
Release: April 8, 2005
Synopsis: EROS is a three-part anthology film about eroticism and desire by a trio of world cinema’s outstanding directors, Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. The film also serves as an homage by two younger directors, Wong and Soderbergh, to Antonioni who has informed and inspired their work. The Italian master has extensively examined this terrain in such classics as L’AVVENTURA, BLOWUP and THE PASSENGER.

THE DANGEROUS THREAD OF THINGS: The story of a ménage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (Co-written by Tonino Guerra.

View Trailer:
* Medium (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Negative. Michelangelo Antonioni?

Never heard of him, but I sure have heard of Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar Wei and that would pretty much seal any deal for me.

The idea of this film being directed by three guys appeals to me right from the word go because when you have a common premise and it’s being looked at through the lens, pun intended, of three different people you have a Rashomon-like story and I am always in the mood for something like this.

I know that FOUR ROOMS doesn’t get a lot of the love out there but it should. You had multiple narratives swirling around one main one and I thought it was a delight. Well, I could’ve done without Madonna’s little witch bit in the beginning, thus the reason why it probably isn’t as referenced as much as it could’ve been, but something like this gets me excited.

One of the more interesting things about these three short vignettes that wrap around the theme of love and sex is that the English portion of the program only stars Alan Arkin and Robert Downey Jr. Other than that, that’s about as American as you’re gonna get. The rest of the movie is set in other parts of our global village.

I like, first of all, the red restricted trailer banner. Seeing it only puts me on the offensive, and gets me eager, to find what it is about this trailer that’s so offensive to the MPAA. I don’t get a very good hint with Arkin and Downey talking in the opening seconds of this thing. It’s, in fact, very muted and very quiet. They’re just talking.

After Downey says his piece we get everyone else’s name in this project, blocking my view of all the stocking-pulling-upping going on in this thing, along with the very slow walks that some nice legs are doing across the screen, I get a little more whetted for our other participants to start showing what they have to offer. The background music is a mellow techno beat which actually fits in perfectly with the accompanying scene of our man Antonioni’s part of the film that stars a woman with swollen mammaries. I swear I wasn’t looking to be a perv but when you have a giddy brunette in a tank top, galloping down a flight of stairs, who obviously doesn’t have a predilection for an under wire, that’s just like trying to keep a dog from devouring a Milk Bone that’s been accidentally dropped on the floor.

We come back to Downey, who we understand is obviously a patient of Arkin’s in a psychological therapist capacity, quickly killing the femme buzz I was gettin’ on, as he tells us what he sees when he has “the dream.” This prompt sends cut scenes at me at too fast a rate to even try and pin down. From what I can see there are lot of people running away from one another, dudes and chicks are throwing out their “O” face, many more are rolling around in bed like it’s a steamrolling championship, and, get this, the last image we’re left with is a shot of a woman’s bust in a dress. No head, no legs, just full on bust action.

Now, I like to be tempted in my advertising if it’s done slutty enough but this trailer leaves me confused, doubtful and only the slightest bit interested in what’s going on in this film. All I know about it is that Downey has a recurring dream and that there’s a woman who wears a tight tank top; not the best way to leave someone who is trying to figure out whether to spend an hour’s wages on your little art film.

Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy
Release: August 5, 2005
Synopsis: Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) hates to fly, but the terror that awaits her on the night flight to Miami has nothing to do with a fear of flying. Moments after takeoff, Lisa’s seatmate, Jackson (Cillian Murphy), menacingly reveals the real reason he’s on board: He is an operative in a plot to kill a rich and powerful businessman”¦and Lisa is the key to its success. If she refuses to cooperate, her own father will be killed by an assassin awaiting a call from Jackson. Trapped within the confines of a jet at 30,000 feet, Lisa has nowhere to run and no way to summon help without endangering her father, her fellow passengers and her own life. As the miles tick by, Lisa knows she is running out of time as she desperately looks for a way to thwart her ruthless captor and stop a terrible murder.

Growing up watching NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET I was convinced of Craven’s abilities as a superb horror storyteller. I was freaked out of my mind watching the original NIGHTMARE when I was a wee lad, the perfect Friday night movie after a hard week in middle school, but then I started to grow up and saw the proverbial Icarus flying too high to the sun.

I don’t know if it was UVA or the UVB that damaged the man’s cerebral cortex and allowed him to make THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN (what in the hell was that one all about? He has yet to formally apologize for that hideous entry.), and the SCREAM trilogy. The latter I am taking him to recent task for because of their pitch to America in the advertising that they were somehow real “horror” movies. They weren’t. You know that, I know that, but their obvious fiscal success proves us all wrong. They were disappointing because it wasn’t really horror but essentially a teen thriller. Horror is reserved for wanton destruction of life, really good blood squibs that pop and burst on cue, and, at the very least, something that makes you worry about the fate for the protagonist if for only a moment.

This new film could be a step in the right direction if nothing else but, unfortunately, it’s got nothing to do with body transformations or mass mutilation.

Cillian Murphy, who really did a bang-up job in 28 DAYS LATER, is back as a smooth talking ladies man evidenced by the opening montage of this trailer.

At first I think of this movie’s title “RED EYE” and its main set, an airplane. Without hesitation I think of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE where that freakish gremlin beast starts to rip out parts of the wing while it’s up in the air. I seriously still have issues with staring outside my window on any flight that’s in the air after dark and I credit that to the way the story was told, shot and executed.

Unfortunately for me, Cillian is just trying to chat up a young lovely in the airport terminal. If you had no clue this was a Wes Craven picture you would think you were watching a new romantic comedy. Everything points to it. Their chance encounter, the way they share drinks in the airport bar and even the way it seems like kismet when they have their seats next to each other on the plane. Then, it becomes all the more clearer.

“Sometimes fate isn’t what it seems”¦”

Now, these two talk a little more on the plane and as soon as our woman asks Cillian what he does professionally, his eyes get red (Just like the title of the movie! Woo!), and we know this isn’t going to go according to formula. I like the mystery it throws up for us to ponder. I, too, wonder what the hell is going down and before I actually read the synopsis of the film after having seen the trailer, I would’ve never guessed that’s what this film’s all about. I was expecting some sort of transmutation of some sort or even some sort of growth in the man’s canines but the desperate hand scratching at the side window of the plane is a really nice touch.

I’m finally able to say I’m actually interested in one of Wes’ productions. This is, perhaps, the first time I have been in many years so I hope this one actually delivers on the promise of thrills this film may have.

It’s not horror, but it is a start.

Director: Robert Brinkmann
Cast: Stephen Tobolowsky
Release: February, 2005 (SWSX Film Festival)
Synopsis: In Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party filmmakers Robert Brinkmann and Andrew Putschoegl follow Stephen on his birthday and document a performance he gives for the cameras and a group of friends, during which he tells stories about his experiences in Hollywood. Instead of his regular role as a supporting actor, Stephen takes the stage in Birthday Party and shows that he has the charisma to hold the audience’s attention without the help of a script.

One of the things I am always amazed at is how well movies can come together when you have exactly the right kinds of people in them to accentuate the performances of others. Without a man like Stephen Tobolowsky, the guy who plays some of the most key parts in films without you even being aware of it, you just have other nameless, faceless people taking up the space that should be filled by guys like this. Sure, others like Clint Howard, Leon Rippy, and others like them don’t receive the kind of appreciation they deserve but this movie looks like a comedic delight.

Things start off on the right foot as well with the trailer.

“Once in a generation comes an actor”¦Who has been in more movies than Tom Cruise”¦Is linked to more movie stars than Kevin Bacon”¦And is taller than Danny Devito and Verne Troyer”¦combined.”

Immediately you know two things: one, this movie isn’t taking itself too seriously and two, the man in question, Stephen Tobolowsky, has been in a lot of damn flicks.

When we first get the opening scenes of this documentary you see Stephen, clad in a classic coonskin cap, in someplace that’s obviously very cold and snowy. He’s talking to people on the street, holding a real old school Bob Barker style silver microphone, and is asking them if they’ve ever heard of the man they’re talking to. I would like to think if I was one of the people asked I could at least call him out as Ned Ryerson and have a good giggle as I bear hug the guy, lifting him off the ground.

He’s been in a lot of movies I haven’t seen but no one knows who the guy is when they’re asked point blank with him standing right in front of them.

What’s even funnier is when he says, “If you had to take a guess of who he is”¦”

The responses come as varied as some say a politician, launcher of a new magazine, playwright, chocolate maker, serial killer and even a porn star. He appreciates the latter one.

Once someone finally fingers him as the man asking the questions the screen goes black and a fury of the original graphics for the movies he’s been in go flashing by one after another.

“If you celebrate only one birthday this year make sure it’s Stephen Tobolowsky’s.”

I am enthralled with the premise of this film and really cannot imagine why anyone thought to make this movie but I am glad they did as Stephen deserves a little credit.

Director: Michael Bay
Cast:Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Steve Buscemi, Sean Bean, Michael Clarke Duncan
Release: July 22, 2005
Synopsis: Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly utopian but contained facility in the mid 21st century. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to the “The Island” – reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything about his existence is a lie. He and all of the other inhabitants of the facility are actually human clones whose only purpose is to provide “spare parts” for their original human counterparts. Realizing it is only a matter of time before he is “harvested,” Lincoln makes a daring escape with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson). Relentlessly pursued by the forces of the sinister institute that once housed them, Lincoln and Jordan engage in a race for their lives to literally meet their makers.

Letting that name sit there like that almost feels like setting up a bulls-eye for people to take a shot at. It would be easy to tear the name apart. With half-baked crap like ARMAGEDDON and the laughable hysteria fest that was PEARL HARBOR (Did the former really deserve a Criterion release and, the latter, really warrant its multiple disc DVD double-dippings?) it wouldn’t be hard. It’s akin, I believe, of smacking the stack of books being precipitously carried by a high school freshman though a crowded hallway.

However, he does fill a niche. We all have friends who don’t share our love for well-written movies like LOST IN TRANSLATION or even the sweet Asian action flick TIME AND TIDE but they do respond to shit that blows up. And lots of it. Que sera sera, right? Whatever makes the world go “˜round I think they would say but we know they’re right.

This trailer looks to continue that hallowed man’s tradition of making big explosions, running roughshod over common-sense like it was an ATV in a wet field of sod as it does doughnuts but, as I watched the trailer, there seems to be something else going on.

I like the opening.

It’s very soothing with the sea crashing in the background.

“What if there were a place where you could live forever?”

The glassy sea waves curling over on top of the ocean’s face just induce a spring-time itch in me to go directly to the nearest tropical locale with a pina colada in tow. As Scarlett Johansson comes into delicate focus, I realize what else needs to be in tow with me.

Things get a little kooky as she’s seen kissing Ewan McGregor one minute and then we find ourselves surrounded by a freaky set of shiny steel hypodermic needles. This would be the point where someone, even voiceover guy, would be chiming in with some idea what is going on. It’s odd that we’re left to guess what’s up. It’s almost disconcerting.

We next get some dude walking down a cave-like hallway, while another dude is getting off a helicopter (I am a fan of the way Bay likes to shoot helicopters, with their blades ever so gently turning in slo-mo. Very tell-tale. I think he could trademark that shot), there’s a shot of a city, there’s Scarlett looking like a real temptress as she saunters down a white walled hall, but this is all prelude as it leads up to the science fiction stuff.

It looks like it’s a mix between THE MATRIX (with dozens and dozens of people all lined up on slabs instead of in cocoons, technology really at the root of all evil, just like in LOOKER from 1981), RUN (Patrick Dempsey was the 80’s, friends, and don’t let Carrot Top from I Love the 80’s tell you different), and a smidge of THX 1138 with the way it draws some storytelling elements of a future where people are being experimented on. The last comment is only really validated when Michael Clarke Duncan is hauling some ass as he’s booking like a man running from the cops with muscle stimulator pads stuck to his boobs.

Steve Buscemi pops in to tell our fleeing, whatever the hell they are, people that the lives they thought they led really didn’t happen and some groovy looking floating speed bikes whip quickly across the screen. Next, a whole bunch of people who look like the kids in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM run for their lives into the bright light, not knowing what’s really going on and some car rips another one in half a la Bay’s memorable chase in Frisco from the ROCK. Lastly, Duncan is dragged back to his captors as he’s crying out like a little girl knowing full well the gimp is probably awake and ready for some fun.

I have zero idea what the hell is going on in this movie but I can tell you it does poke at the more base sensory synapses in my mind.

Director: Ken Kwapis
Cast: Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel
Release: June 3, 2005
Synopsis: The movie is based on the young adult book, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Anne Brashares. As four best friends spend their first summer apart from one another, they share a magical pair of jeans. Despite being of various shapes and sizes, each one of them fits perfectly into the pants. To keep in touch they pass these pants to each other as well as the adventures they are going through while apart.

First of all, big big fan of the xylophone music that opens this trailer up. It reminds me of the moments after Clarence almost gets his face shot off in TRUE ROMANCE (a movie you won’t find me offering my girl until we get to the lesson on Gary Oldman’s oeuvre which will come when she’s around 23), and for what this film is, an exploration into the lives of four girls, it fits perfectly.

So, the voiceover of one of the ladies lets us know these four girls will be spending their first summer apart. Boo-Hoo. It’s called life, girls, welcome to it. Anyway, we’re told that a mysterious pair of pants that the girls find in a thrift store will be the one thing that keeps them together whilst apart. Three of them are svelte enough that the jeans fit each one of them with ample ease while one, who looks healthy but is certainly not a size 4, comments on the jeans not exactly being this great sign from the Lord or something but I can’t help noticing that they’re showing one of the girls in her underwear as this is going on. She’s standing there nearly all of her B&P showing and I can’t help but feel like a skeevey perv. Isn’t there a law about this somewhere?

About the time when I wonder if I’m going to go to jail for watching this trailer, we get to the meat of the story. The girls will pass the jeans to each other all summer, all over the world. The first girl, Lena, is in Greece, some regional specific music plays in the background just so you know, and she is wearing the jeans when she tumbles into the sea. She narrates over her letter to her other friends about how this may not have been a good thing. Does anyone else smell a plot straight out of the Brady Bunch? I love that Hawaii episode.

Then we come back to another friend who is working in a Wal-Mart-like store, she’s utterly resplendent in her gauche looking vest, and wants to shoot a film. She gets a lippy assistant who reminds me of an annoying younger sister, in a good way, and you just see how little girls will eat this stuff up like Quaker Apple and Cinnamon oatmeal.

Our underwear model from the beginning of the trailer is in Mexico and plays soccer. No jeans were on display in her introduction but she seems to be the lusty sexpot of this feature.

Girlfriend Carmen is darker skinned, played by America Ferrera who was just kick ass in REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES (growing up in Illinois and exposed to the ladies there I can attest that is a true statement), but she’s spending quality time with her dad who is, and I am going on record here, one of the best movie villains in history, Bradley Whitford; homeboy was just plain ol’ mean to the Tri-Lambs in REVENGE OF THE NERDS 2: NERDS IN PARADISE.

Carmen is probably having a bad day after she learns her divorced dad not only met someone new but he’s getting married to her in relatively quick order. There are some issues with her weight that are raised by her future stepmother that come up after trying on a bridesmaid dress for her dad’s wedding. This is a seriously good topic of exposure to girl’s who are growing up with impossible images to live up to in their glamour magazines but the real plus here is that there are real emotional issues here with regard to her father moving on with a family that doesn’t jive with the one she knew growing up.

The filmmaking chick’s assistant collapses and has to get carted away in an ambulance, with Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” jingling in the background, the girl in Greece finds a dude she likes, much to the outbursting distain from family members there (probably because he’s an older dude and she’s literally fresh off the adolescence farm team), Carmen’s throwing big rocks at a window pane where, just beyond it, her father eats dinner with his new Aryan looking family, but the girls come together by the end for one large group hug.

I know, I know, but what I like about this movie, the way it’s being sold, is completely smart for the audience it’s intended to reach. You have a soundtrack that young women can dig, you give them a little bit of funny, a while lot of drama and end it all with their ephemeral “sisters” vibe still intact. These movies serve a purpose in much the same way tent pole pictures help dudes calibrate their manhood every summer when the explosions get bigger, badder and bloodier. Even young women need some Hollywood lovin’ too.

Director: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha
Cast: Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Ray Romano, John Leguizamo
Release: March 31, 2006
Synopsis: Sequel to the animated hit about talking animals in the prehistoric age.

Now, the animation was good, the ending was predictable. However, for me my money would rest on that crazy ass squirrel being the big draw throughout that entire flick that most parents would say kept them entertained. I know it’s not quite a squirrel but even though it didn’t say one word the whole film I was enthralled with the sub-plot of him trying to get into that nut and I think I was perhaps more interested in that than I was in the actual film.

If I was a heartless, soulless movie executive trying to make a quick buck I would’ve had a direct-to-video release of nothing but that squirrel doing his thing. To me anyway it hearkened back to the Weasel in those Foghorn Leghorn cartoons I watched as a kid. That Weasel was tenacious, insane and you could sense his deep rooted desire for a chicken even though he never said a word. That’s why, here, it was very smart to lead off the sequel for the first movie, which came out 3 years ago and doesn’t qualify as a quick cash in, with my man the squirrel.

We open with a large glacier wall. It’s fractured in some spots but its mammoth size is apparent as we hear the sounds of ice splintering, on the verge of breaking off. The camera sweeps back and forth around the corners of this thing until we come to our star, our little squirrel skitch-skitching up the vertical edifice, trying quickly to get to the top.

His desperate climb, clinging upside down to the glacier, is compounded by his desire to lick the ice. It gets stuck, hilarity ensues, but he loosens it before finally getting to a plateau. His bug eyes get wider as he sees the object of his desire: an acorn. It’s stuck in a glacial wall but he runs straight up, grabs a hold of it and starts to pull backward with all his might. What I think is going to happen, that he’ll pull it out only to freefall off the side of the mountain, doesn’t. Instead, after he pulls the acorn out he opens a spout of water that comes gushing out. He stops it only for it, as we all know from watching cartoons, only sets off another spout. He manages to stop them both, in his nutty-eyed own way, but it starts a swelling spigot that doesn’t stop. And, by the time he puts his mouth over the hole and fills up with water, it’s just a matter of time before he spins out like a deflating balloon and is jettisoned from his mountainside.

The end really is funny only because I like that sort of thing and because I know that even though computer animation doesn’t always ensure repeat business I can say with some belief that I think they’ll get mine if it’s anything like the first one.

But, damn, 2006?

Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson, Michael Angarano, Heath Ledger, Nikki Reed
Release: June 3, 2005
Synopsis: In Venice, California, in the mid ’70s, the sport of surfing brought together a group of teenagers from a rough neighborhood. Riding the waves at the Pacific Ocean Park pier, a graveyard of a former amusement park, the boys from “Dogtown” joined the Zephyr skate team (or Z-Boys). Known for their aggressive style, awe-inspiring moves and hard street attitude, the Z-Boys spent mornings surfing and afternoons skateboarding. Taking the death-defying moves of surfing and applying them to skateboarding, the Z-Boys became overnight sensations — local legends — and revolutionized the art of skateboarding, transforming youth culture forever.

I’m not so sure about him, but the original documentary DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, was perhaps one of the most interesting examinations into a cultural phenomenon of the 20th century. Thus, when the opening shots of this movie, which really appear washed out and dank, show some dudes skulking around the docks of an abandoned amusement park, Heath Ledger making his way through a maze of wooden stilts to get to some choice waves, I am at once trying to understand why the documentary needed to be remade in the first place and whether I believe that Heath was a good choice for the role as someone who was really an outsider just looking for some endless summer.

Now, and I know this is a small detail, but when we see the Columbia Tri-Star logo, with the sounds of a whirling movie projector whiling away in the background as the “film” dissolves away, I have to give props right away for a most creative way in implying the events we’re looking at happened in the past. It’s the thought that counts here with regard to setting the scenes up. The card that explains we’re looking at Venice Beach, 1975, really puts the events that follow into context and establishes the frame in which we see what’s happening before us.

What’s great/crappy about the first third of the trailer is that it just goes over the same events as they happened from the documentary. I know that this film will reach out to a larger audience, and the look of the film is really trying to capture that, but I’m just itching to see something that will convince me this isn’t just a paperback version of a hardcover story I’ve already read.

It goes on this way for a while, events transpiring as I understood them in the docu, but there does come some moments that are nice attempts to make things fresh and add something to the story that just interviewing and photographs couldn’t capture.

The assembling of the first real threat to laid-back boarders everywhere is shown with quick and dirty ferocity and I appreciate the care that’s taken to not make these guys’ stories works of Hollywood fiction but, rather, something in-between reality and flat out crap.

There’s a point where I cringe as Green Day’s “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” plays as some maudlin speech given by one of the Z-Boys characterize their crew as important, the melodrama dripping from the forced moment and I am equally sure I don’t like the words “They Risked It All” and other cards that try to encapsulate these guys’ lives. So far as I knew it, these kids liked to surf and they wanted to do something that would extend that year-round and all-around. Did they have 9 to 5 gigs they ditched in order to see if this “skating” thing was going to work out? No, they didn’t and the documentary showed how they were just all looking out for number one and trying to have a good time doing it. So, it’s not that they were risking it all but, rather, just seeing what they could get away with.

I am really comforted, though, that Stacey Peralta is credited as the one who wrote the screenplay. If nothing else this should help keep the inaccuracies to a minimum.

Director: Steve Box, Nick Park
Cast: Peter Sallis, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Peter Kay, John Thomson
Release: October 7, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: It’s ‘vege-mania’ in Wallace and Gromit’s neighborhood, and our two enterprising chums are cashing in with their humane pest-control outfit, “Anti-Pesto.” With only days to go before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition, business is booming, but Wallace & Gromit are finding out that running a “humane” pest control outfit has its drawbacks as their West Wallaby Street home fills to the brim with captive rabbits. Suddenly, a huge, mysterious, veg-ravaging “beast” begins attacking the town’s sacred vegetable plots at night, and the competition hostess, Lady Tottington, commissions Anti-Pesto to catch it and save the day. Lying in wait, however, is Lady Tottington’s snobby suitor, Victor Quartermaine, who’d rather shoot the beast and secure the position of local hero-not to mention Lady Tottingon’s hand in marriage. With the fate of the competition in the balance, Lady Tottington is eventually forced to allow Victor to hunt down the vegetable chomping marauder. Little does she know that Victor’s real intent could have dire consequences for her …and our two heroes.

You can’t help but remain slack jawed during THE WRONG TROUSERS if for nothing else than that one bit with the toy train getaway. It goes by so fast that I am still amazed at how long it must have taken to complete the entire scene. Here, though, I am delighted to see that Nick Park is doing this first feature-length adventure with the two of these guys all these years later.

This teaser trailer could have easily started the name pimping early with how this film is being brought to you by the same guy who did CHICKEN RUN, another fabulous entry from Aardman Studios, but it doesn’t.

In fact, it launches into the story quite fast and I am nearly taken off-guard as we try to piece together the idea that this human/dog combo are now bringing security systems to the fine people of England. They’re the equivalent of a two person ADT crew, except Wallace is a bit daft and the dog can’t do much more than look after Wallace and be the brains of the operation at the same time.

I like the idea, though, that instead of the po-pos coming to nab whoever tried to break into a person’s home Wallace and Gromit spring into action themselves to catch the perpetrator themselves. The world that Park has created is one where you would believe that this could very well happen; it’s engrossing and feels completely feasible.

As this trailer progresses I end up feeling that props have to be given to Park who takes a small stereotype of people who live in England, that their teeth are jacked up so bad that you don’t know whether to laugh or to start thinking what kind of beer bottles could reasonably be opened with them, and magnifies it to an amusing level. An English woman calls in distress about a yard full of rabbits that seem to be literally consuming her yard, this plot revolving around some sort of deranged bunny, and the toothy expression that is smeared over her mug is worth the price of the preview alone.

I am also a big fan of the demonic lawn gnome, his angelic doppelganger being that twit in all those lame Travelocity commercials, and it seems to serve a nefarious purpose to the plot although I am not sure how. There’s a subsequent scene of people from the town, all gathered around to yell about what could be invading their gardens, saying how they’re eager to get whatever it is that’s eating all their veggies. It’s cheeky fun.

And the end, with the 50’s style spooky organ music, that tries to instill a sense of dread into the presentation of the monstrous bunny who’s out to eat all their goodies, only gets a send up when the local constable shouts at the old bag who’s working the organ to quit it. It’s childish, breaks the 4th wall of narrative structure, but it’s innocent and everything you’d expect from a Wallace and Gromit feature.

I would say that I hope Nick Park hasn’t lost what made his first three ½ hour adventures such enjoyable, and amazing, displays of clay animation, but I just have to believe that someone who has to physically move a character nary an inch again and again for days, months and years on end to get just a minute’s worth of action has to believe in the product they’re selling.

Director: William Bindley
Cast: Jake Lloyd, Mary McCormack, James Caviezel, Bruce Dern, Reed Diamond
Release: April 22, 2005
Synopsis: A story about a man’s personal struggle to victory in the 1971 Madison, Indiana hydro-plane regatta.

Look, I know what this movie is all about.

After you see the trailer you can see this seems like a very by-the-numbers film that will be manipulative, sappy, sugary and will no doubt have our hero giving it one more try to win it all. I almost feel like Chet in WEIRD SCIENCE when he makes those gacking noises after he tells his brother that he loves him as I think about how false this story’s actually going to go off, knowing full well that people will eat it up like ice cream in the middle of a Louisiana summer. I mean, when I saw the original premiere of this movie, way back in January of 2001, I began to see why a studio might hold back on this film for as long as they have.

These films, though, like it or not, satisfy a need inside the movie going community. People like these kinds of yarns because it gives them hope that there is something to believe in even if the story being told is slightly, nay, sharply, fabricated in order to fit a certain movie studio’s vision and marketing plan.

The beginning of this trailer is really effective, though. The noise from a speed boat racing by the screen fills the sonic landscape. Then it all goes silent.

“At 180 miles an hour”¦”

Jesus steers his boat next to another and comes in real close.

“Your pulse races”¦”

Water sprays everywhere.

“And everything can change”¦”

Uh-oh.

“In a heartbeat”¦”

The boat flips and disintegrates on top of the water.

Jim comes back to racing, years later but not a whole lot brighter, with that old sounding country plucking music to show how he’s dedicated to just helping others achieve their boating goals and is focused on perfecting the art of speed boating while on dry dock.

Of course, you have the inquisitive kid who will, no doubt, be used to plug at the motivational strings of our protagonist in an unfair manner, but there’s, get this, a town on the verge of disappearing off the map. The trailer actually makes it seem like the town will fold like a bad hand of poker if the townspeople don’t come up with the $10,000 they owe old man Caruthers. I made the last part up, but you get the idea.

“This boat is all that this town’s got and I ain’t going to turn my back on that.”

Ooo boy. Jim, who goes by the same name in the movie, I take it is going to save the town from complete ruin. Call me stupid and a Yankee and someone who don’ no nuthin’ “˜bout the Speedvision channel but I didn’t think there’s that much money to be made in a single race that could save a town from complete ruin. I could be wrong.

To break up all this talk of the town defaulting on itself the wackiness ensues, just like it did in ONE CRAZY SUMMER (geez, Jeremy Piven, Demi Moore, John Cusack, Joe Flaherty, Curtis “Booger” Armstrong, Bob “Bobcat” Goldthwait, what an awesome cast that was) when they steal that preppie’s Ferrari engine, as the local hillbillies help Jim out by stealing the engine of a WWII fighter jet to put into the boat; that’ll git “˜em, Jimbo!

We even get some clip of the race itself. Of course our man is lagging behind everyone but don’t let that get you sad or thinking he’s gonna lose because he has some old school NOS in his tank that’s most likely going to help him get across the finish line first or have him finish second where he will learn the real value of friendship. Gack.

People are going to flock to this one if an inspirational tale of Hollywood endings is what they’re looking for in a weekend trip to the movies as sordid as the story is.

Director: Scott Caan
Cast: Scott Caan, Jeff Goldblum, Shawn Hatosy, Kelly Lynch, Selma Blair
Release: March 25, 2005
Synopsis: Rusty (Hatosy) starts to pursue a path to a more meaningful life, thanks to his connection to Bob (Goldblum), the boyfriend of his mother, Mary (Lynch). His new take on life causes friction with his best friend, Dallas (Cann), and both men find their friendship pushed to its breaking point, causing them to make life-changing decisions.

I know I was slightly against Scott Caan in that PG boob fest called INTO THE BLUE a few weeks ago but he was, I concede, really good in the cast of BOILER ROOM and OCEAN’S ELEVEN. I have to give him credit and the guy deserves as much.

Now, as this trailer opens some guy protests too much to the person he’s with in a dark car, both looking like nothing more than your basic, criminal, element, about leaving said car in order to rob someone. I’m pulled into what’s happening even though I am not quite sure I’m following what’s happening. One of the guys says an unnamed man who we don’t know yet only needs a driver and a $1000 bucks to do what he needs to get done. What this is or what it has to do with him has yet to be seen and I’m starting to lose interest.

What happens next borders on schizophrenia.

The premise gets me so pumped, with that little red rated “R” label, and all I get for my excited goodness is a pack of quick clips that almost tell me something about the people in the movie but stops just short of making any sense.

Literally, the camera blasts past all of the people who I assume have something to do with this story, giving me only images instead of information, which is not a good sign if you are looking to get people to go see your film and by the time I see fly guy Jeff Goldblum, and get excited, I am almost ready to leave this movie behind for something else that may make more sense. It’s frustrating, almost like sitting behind a pillar in an arena to see a Clay Aiken show; you’re really excited you decided to take a chance but how are you supposed to really enjoy it when you have a concrete pole in your field of vision?

I do get that one of our almost felons moved from Texas and went to live with Goldblum who doesn’t seem all that thrilled or hopeful at the prospects that this kid has. Scott Caan seems to exist in some hyper zone of activity that borders on a tweaker who’s amped up on Ritalin, ephedrine and Jolt Cola but since he is the man who is also directing this film I have to give him credit for shooting this thing in a way that seems very pulpy, in a noir crime sort of way, and for taking some chances with the narrative.

There does seem like an exorbitant amount of fighting that’s going on in this movie but Scott’s proven himself more than capable in front of the camera to really carry that tuff guy sort of visage about himself. I do hope, though, that the quote that’s dropped from Variety, about how this is supposed to be a great debut from Caan is, in reality, very supportive of the movie on the whole.

From what I’ve seen, though, it seems like someone needs medication in order to understand exactly why people are getting the crap knocked out of each other and why there doesn’t seem like a whole lot else going on besides hoods being hoods. And that wouldn’t even be such a bad thing if I wasn’t already confused as to who the hell is doing whatever the hell and not making much sense while doing it.

Director: Joshua Sternfeld
Cast:Anthony LaPaglia, Aaron Stanford, Mark Webber, Allison Janney
Release: April 8th, 2005
Synopsis: In this suburban drama, a widower (played by Anthony LaPaglia) confronts his older son’s (played by Aaron Stanford) decision to leave home and his younger son’s self-destructive behavior.

Now, I’ll have to preface this review of the trailer with the following opinions :

I. Anthony LaPaglia is an actor’s actor. The man is understated but yet brings any production to a slightly higher level. True, he’s never starred in anything that’s garnered tons of dough at the box office but his style is genuinely affective and completely has bought my respect.

II. I don’t like Allison Janney. I don’t. I am not a fan of West Wing because of her. Plus, she has that prey look to her. For those not in the know, I classify some women on whether they look like predators or prey depending on where their ocular cavities sit on their face. Women who have their eyes sitting comfortably in the middle of their faces are predators, see: J. Lo, Hillary Duff, the woman who inspired Hall & Oates’ “Maneater,” while women like Janney and, for reference sake, Rebecca Gayhart, look like they can see 360 degrees to be on the lookout for anything sneaking up on them.

That totally degrading and ignorant remark said, I really do like the prospects of this film.

I appreciate the laid back plunka plunka of the guitar that eases us into this trailer, the seconds long display of all the film festivals this movie was selected for almost goes beyond acceptable but we get right into things.

Anthony’s wife is dead because of an accident and he’s really despondent. He’s built his life around the notion of having her in it and now his direction is unclear. This is all done, set-up, established, within the first twenty seconds of the trailer. Bravo. I’m telling you it’s such a rare thing to have something set up so early and I am a big fan of that.

He has two sons and they’re obviously conflicted in a Timothy Hutton, ORDINARY PEOPLE, sort of way, but they seem genuinely lost in a fog in their own listlessness. Our main man Ron Livingston, a flat out great actor, plays a teacher but we’re not given much on him. What we do know, however, is that both sons are trying to work their way though life and are not having a good go at it.

We get some friction in the family, even some possible father on son cage fighting after a bombastic display of rage in the family garage, but things seem to cool down with the addition of Allison. She actually works here in this setting. It’s so full of me to say that, I know, but as quickly as she comes on screen I believe the things that start between her an Anthony are genuine. It feels real in a way that many Hollywood filmic romances are not.

After the dad declares that he’s having dinner with the older lass, the boys giggling at this prospect, the dad seems to have to go it alone and that’s really where things end with the narrative.

We’re introduced to everyone via cards and silent smiles or real reflective moments to show how “deep” these people are with bits and pieces of other moments strung together to create the happy ending this film may have.

It’s a slower kind of film, no doubt, but every once in a while I do declare I appreciate something that might be able to honestly explain how people can go on after losing someone they love. Hopefully this story, at the very least, ends up being a well-made movie.

Director:Jon Favreau
Cast: Tim Robbins, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Jonah Bobo, Josh Hutcherson
Release: November 23, 2005
Synopsis: ZATHURA is the story of two young brothers who are drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is magically hurtled through space. The story is based on the book Zathura by children’s author Chris Van Allsburg.

Was a sequel to JUMANGI really necessary? I have little to no idea about where this movie is coming from but if I was to be sitting in a theater where this trailer played I would bet there would be some confusion about whether this is a stand-alone movie or just a cleverly disguised second installment to the first film starring Robin Williams.

The thing starts off generically enough with Tim Robbins, beatnik and bird-flipper-offer extraordinaire, living in his all-too generic looking suburban house with a lawn that looks torn right from the pages of the Brady Bunch How-To guide. Here he plays one of those standoffish kind of fathers who actually tells his two young sons, who don’t know anything more than baseball cards and how to wipe their butts without leaving dingleberries, that they’re coming upon a day when they’re going to have to grow up all at once. The foreshadowing is deafening, and the obvious distant father character is too much of a common staple in today’s film, but, whatever, right? Right, so, these young boys are left alone inside this quaint little manse of suburbia.

The boys, who really are up to no good, ever, get involved in a little rabble rousing around the house where one of the young lads finds a game. Now, like Jumanji, this one comes alive. One of the cards warns of a meteor shower and, sho’ “˜nuff, little meteors start puncturing holes in the ceiling. The kids have no idea what’s happening but here starts the idea: the boys are now playing for their lives.

Sigh.

This film is being marketed, no doubt, to the kiddies and the idea that the trailer gives us, after the initial set-up, is that they are adrift in the middle of a solar system and have no discernable way of getting home. Now, I’ll admit, this is a slight departure from Jumanji insofar as that the action that is taking place is taking place in a completely different realm of reality.

I do know, however, that this film has a lot of comparisons that it’s going to have to contend with, how could another game come to life where hell breaks loose happen to some other kid, and with really no other discernable major star present in the trailer it’s going to have to fight for that box office dollar if they’re going to try and convince parents why they should take their brood to see this. I can’t see why they would other than the excuse that there’s nothing else playing at the local Cineplex.

Director: George Lucas
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Oz, Ian McDiarmid, Jimmy Smits, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew
Release: May 19, 2005
Synopsis: After three long years of relentless fighting, the Clone Wars are nearly at an end. The Jedi Council dispatches Obi-Wan Kenobi to bring General Grievous, the deadly leader of the Separatist droid army, to justice. Meanwhile, back on Coruscant, Chancellor Palpatine has grown in power. His sweeping political changes transform the war-weary Republic into the mighty Galactic Empire. To his closest ally, Anakin Skywalker, he reveals the true nature of power and the promised secrets of the Force in an attempt to lure him to the dark side.

The first visual impressions one gets as a bright planet comes into view, planes flanking what will eventually become the main spaceship that Luke will eventually crouch down beneath to see his father’s face, is that this could be good. If nothing else, Lucas spent time on the effects and, damn, does it show.

The Emperor as he will eventually be known as gives a brief soliloquy about a kind of power that will never be taught by a Jedi and, no, it’s not the power of Barry White and a couple glasses of Chivas Regal. Yeah, it’s cool in a way because this is the beginning of the end for Anakin but the dialogue, and its delivery, scares me in a way that makes me think that, again, people were too busy cleansing Lucas’ balloon knot to not mention that he could’ve made even more money by getting a few fresh scribes on the script.

You can feel the friction between Obi-Wan and Anakin getting to the point where there’ll be fisticuffs later but I do have to credit Lucas, whether intentional or not, with interposing the strife between Jedi and the dark side with some sweet ass battle sequences. Crap is blowing up, smoke is billowing, lasers are teeow-teeowing (even though there is no air in space, but who gives a crap, right?) and storm troopers are flailing and flinging all over the place.

Samuel L. Jackson is prepping his own exit when he says he doesn’t trust Anakin anymore, with good reason, and is even the one who tells him to his face that he isn’t granting passage?, bastile?, Camille?, Pasties?, Camille? What’s homeboy saying? Who knows! I don’t know and don’t care. The music is starting to tense up.

The Emperor speaks again about embracing the dark side, how Anakin can become more powerful than any Jedi if he does. Sweet. This is the kind of dialogue I need. Keep it nice and simple, Gramps.

Now, here is one of my favorite bits of the trailer: Samuel goes to arrest the Emperor. The Emperor strikes an angry pose in his chair. Lightsabers are all unsheathed and ready to take that sack of wrinkles down. When the Emperor sneers and leaps out of his chair, getting wicked with his own “˜saber, I am caught way off guard. I just thought he only had the power of lighting. Like that one guy from the Misfits of Science TV show? You know, the guy with the bolts of electricity? Guess not.

The Emperor, though, lets out a primal gurgle and moves like the wind. I’m floored in amazement.

The drum beats that come in next with their quick clips of things that happen, of ships going vertical, all hell breaking loose, hey, there’s Victor Sifuentes of LA Law, there’s the lava pits where Anakin will eventually lose his ability to get his mack-on with his lady, Obi looks like he’s getting into a fight with a large robot (Darth Sidious?), hey, a Wookie, and a real big building is smoking like a chimney as we get a voiceover from the Emperor.

And then we get his visage. We get to take a look at the Emperor as we come to know him with that pasty complexion, vampiric eyes, and menacing presence. It’s not only him, but Anakin walking with the stormtroopers underneath his control, walking slowly behind him, evokes some nice anticipatory feelings.

We get some Yoda-isms about how Anakin has come to this state, with complete mayhem going on all around him, everyone is fighting and the whole trailer crescendos without knowing whether or not this will be the movie that will make up for the previous two.

I hope so. I really do.