I couldn’t believe they were rebooting so soon, but y’know, the trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man actually looks pretty good!:

Netflix and Warner Bros. ink a deal that makes it impossible for you to use your queue like a To See list. Why? Hollywood hates you.

Just going by the trailers, The Dark Knight Rises looks good, but I’m not so sure about The Hobbit.

The Inglourious Mr. Fox trailer:

“Everyone knows that the greatest and most iconic contribution to Cinema is Tom Selleck’s Moustache. So great is it that there isn’t a single film that would not be improved by the inclusion of Tom Selleck’s Moustache.”:

Netflix is spinning off DVD-by-mail into a totally separate business called Qwikster. “Netflix” will carry on as a streaming-only company. The two companies will not be integrated (separate queues, reviews, etc.). Hard to imagine people will ever use Qwikster as a verb. “I Qwikstered it…” Yeah, doesn’t work.

While it’s a gamble, I can see why this might be good for Netflix, but it’s certainly bad for me. Alas.

Because movies can’t take out restraining orders against their directors, it looks like George Lucas is back to tinkering with Star Wars. If true, Vader now says “noooo!” in this totally hokey way. Having long since given up Lucas, I don’t really care if it’s true or not, I’m just happy about the fun stuff it has spawned:

• Darth Vader ‘Nooo!’ Re-Edited into Classic Movies
• 20 Movie Characters Screaming NO – Supercut
• George Lucas Strikes Back

Fun Fresh Air interview with legendary stuntman Hal Needham. I have a new appreciation and respect for all kinds of stunts, but especially horse stunts. That’s on top of the appreciation and respect I already had! Definitely check out the Little Big Man stagecoach scene, and you can see the White Lightning barge jump that almost went very wrong at 7:34 of this video.

The Knuckle trailer makes me want to see it:

Pretty happy to see no sequels in the next three Pixar movies. I really want Brave (first female heroine!) to be great. Please don’t let Cars 2 be a harbinger.

I loved In Bruges (don’t look for trailers, they are all misleading), so can’t wait to see what director Martin McDonagh does with Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken in Seven Psychopaths:

A screenwriter (Colin Farrell) struggling for inspiration for his script, ‘Seven Psychopaths’ gets drawn into the dog-kidnapping scam of his oddball friends Billy (Sam Rockwell) and Hans (Christopher Walken).

When a psychopathic gangster’s (Mickey Rourke) Shih Tzu goes missing, Marty finds he has all the inspiration he needs, as long as he can live to tell the tale.

I refreshed my list of Netflix movies available on Watch Instantly that I enjoyed. (Netflix has a “Watch It Again” section that you can sort by rating. From there, a little jQuery run in Firebug can quickly extract the links of all the movies I rated 4 or 5 stars.)

So many good ones to choose from! If you made me pick one from the current incarnation of what’s available, I’d have to go for The Twilight Samurai, which is moving and wonderful and not an action movie at all (although there is some action).

I thought it might be fun to build a list of Netflix movies available on Watch Instantly that I enjoyed. Netflix has a Watch It Again section that you can sort by rating. From there, a little jQuery run in Firebug can quickly extract the links of all the movies I rated 4 or 5 stars (5-star entries are in bold). Here they are (list as of 8/13/2011):

• 13 Assassins
• 24 (193 episodes)
• 30 Rock (80 episodes)
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
• A Clockwork Orange
• A Tale of Two Sisters
• A Very Long Engagement
• Amadeus
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil
• Apollo 13
• Audition
• Avatar: The Last Airbender (54 episodes)
• Battlestar Galactica (76 episodes)
• Before Sunrise
• Before Sunset
• Best in Show
• Big
• Black Narcissus
• Blade 2
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Bowling for Columbine
• Breaker Morant: Masterworks Edition
• Brick
• Brief Encounter
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Charade
• Children of Heaven
• Cinema Paradiso
• Clerks
• Contact
• Deep Water
• Die Hard
• Diner
• Driving Miss Daisy
• Enter the Dragon
• Far from Heaven
• Firefly: The Complete Series (14 episodes)
• Following
• Four Weddings and a Funeral
• Full Metal Jacket
• Gangs of New York
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• Glee (22 episodes)
• Gosford Park
• Great Expectations
• Heroes (77 episodes)
• Hoop Dreams
• Ip Man
• Jerry Maguire
• Ken Burns: The Civil War (9 episodes)
• La Femme Nikita
• Let the Right One In
• Like Water for Chocolate
• Lost (120 episodes)
• Man on Wire
• Manhattan
• Mansfield Park
• Marathon Man
• March of the Penguins
• Memento
• Misery
• Moulin Rouge
• Mr. Death: Fred A. Leuchter Jr.
• Nine to Five
• Oldboy
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Paper Moon
• Pitch Black
• Poltergeist
• Pulp Fiction
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Raging Bull
• Reservoir Dogs
• Rio Bravo
• RoboCop
• Searching for Bobby Fischer
• Silverado
• Sling Blade
• Speed
• Star Trek
• Starman
• Steamboat Bill, Jr.
• Syriana
• Tell No One
• The Asphalt Jungle
• The Aura
• The Battleship Potemkin
• The Bicycle Thief
• The Black Stallion
• The Crow
• The Emperor and the Assassin
• The Exorcist
• The Fighter
• The General
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Graduate
• The Hudsucker Proxy
• The Hustler
• The Lady Vanishes
• Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
• The Machinist
• The Naked Gun
• The Office (U.K.) (12 episodes)
• The Princess and the Frog
• The Red Shoes
• The Right Stuff
• The Road Home
• The Silence of the Lambs
• The Sting
• The Terminator
• The Thin Blue Line
• The Third Man
• The Train
• The Twilight Samurai
• The Usual Suspects
• Thelma & Louise
• This Film Is Not Yet Rated
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Together
• Toy Story 3
• Trainspotting
• True Lies
• Wallace & Gromit: Three Amazing Adventures (3 episodes)
• Weeds (63 episodes)
• Whale Rider
• Working Girl
• Y Tu Mamá También

Your mileage may vary!

I created a page for one of my favorite old Listology lists that I have continued to add to over the years: My Favorite Action Scenes.

This was one of my favorite Listology lists back in the day, and I’ve continued to add to it since. I’m sure I’m missing some, but these are my favorite action scenes. They aren’t all good movies (although many are), but these scenes deliver regardless. One asterisk means it was a tough choice, two means it was damn near impossible.

• 13 Assassins (2010) … the last 45 (!) minutes of the movie
• 15 Minutes (2001) … escape from burning apartment
• 28 Weeks Later (2007) … opening sequence *
• The Abyss (1989) … waiting for the crane to come down from the surface, and then what happens when it does
• Aliens (1986) … locked in with the face-huggers.
• Avatar (2009) … the whole finish
• The Battleship Potemkin (1925) … the Odessa Steps sequence.
• Behind the Sun (2001) … the chase through the woods
• Ben Hur (1959) … the chariot race
• The Boondock Saints (1999) … the toilet *
• The Bourne Identity (2002) … the car chase *
• The Bourne Supremacy (2004) … the car chase *
• The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) … fight with Desh **
• Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) … trying to trap the beast.
• Brute Force (1947) … breakout, especially on the drainpipe side
• Casino Royale (2006) … foot chase
• Chicken Run (2000) … in the pie machine (with plenty of Raiders references)
• Children of Men (2006) … escaping in the car that won’t start **
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) … shrine fight between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi
• Dawn of the Dead (2004) … retrieving the dog
• Death Proof (2007) … ship’s mast and all car stuff thereafter
• District 9 (2009) … wearing the suit
• District B13 (2004) … opening foot chase **
• District 13: Ultimatum (2009) … tomaso in drag *
• Duplicity (2009) … executive tarmac brawl
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980) … battle on Hoth
• Equilibrium (2002) … “not without incident” to the end.
• Fearless (2006) … fight on the high platform **
• Fist of Legend (1994) … climactic fight *
• The Four Musketeers (1974) … the convent/cathedral **
• Goldeneye (1995) … tank chase scene
• Hard Boiled (1992) … hospital scene
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire … dragon chase
• Hero (2002) … duel with Sky *
• Jurassic Park (1993) … kitchen scene
• I Am Legend (2007) … the dogs and the ray of sunshine
• Ip Man … “i want to fight 10 men”
• Inception (2010) … rotating-gravity fight scene
• The Incredibles (2004) … Elastigirl and the doors **
• Ink (2009) … the kidnapping
• The Iron Giant (1999) … From the diving catch to the end
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) … Go Go Yubari fight (ball and chain)
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) … fight with Elle
• King Kong (2005) … the bugs ** (or the stampede, or the t-rexes, or the finale – hot damn)
• Kung Fu Hustle (2004) … two masters vs. the beast **
• Kung Fu Panda (2008) … fighting over the dumplings **
• Legend of Drunken Master (1994) … the axe gang fight
• Let the Right One In (2008) … the pool
• The Little Mermaid (1989) … the kitchen
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) … escape from the mines of moria
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) … Eowyn and the Witch King *
• The Matrix (1999) … opening sequence **
• The Matrix Reloaded (2003) … the highway chase
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) … car chase (especially the golf club)
• Next (2007) … walking out of the casino
• Oldboy (2003) … hammer time
• Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) … Banderas and Hayek escaping from the hotel room
• Ong-bak (2003) … climactic sequence, possibly highlighted by saw fight **
• Our Hospitality (1923) … the rapids/waterfall scene
• Over the Hedge (2006) … caffeine
• The Princess Bride (1987) … duel between Inigo and the man in black
• Prodigal Son (1983) … attack on sleeping opera company
• The Professional (1994) … police invasion of Leon’s apartment
• Project A (1983) … the bicycle chase through the narrow alleys (what follows with the flagpole and the clock-tower is great too)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) … opening sequence
• Red River (1948) … the stampede
• Rumble in the Bronx (1995) … fight at gang headquarters
• Safety Last! (1923) … the climb
• Sanjuro (1962) … final duel
• Saving Private Ryan (1998) … storming the beach (a rare unfrivilous entry here)
• Shanghai Knights (2003) … singin’ in the rain
• Sin City (2005) … Marv’s apartment escape
• Spider-man 2 (2004) … the train
• So Close (2002) … sword fight (best part of generally good closing sequence)
• Sorcerer (1977) … the trucks over the rope bridges
• Stagecoach (1939) … the chase scene
• Stardust (2007) … voodoo sword fight
• Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith (2005) … Palpatine vs. Mace Windu
• Strangers on a Train (1951) … the merry-go-round scene
• The Sword of Doom (1966) … the fight in the snow
• Terminator 2 (1991) … hospital breakout
• Thirst (2009) … sunrise
• Three Days of the Condor (1975) … fight with the mailman
• The Three Musketeers (1973) … stealing food
• Throne of Blood (1957) … Washizu’s bitter end
• Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) … car chase via remote control from the backseat
• Troy (2004) … Achilles vs. Hector
• The Twilight Samurai (2002) … steel vs. wood
• The Untouchables (1987) … shootout in Chicago’s Union Station
• X2: X-Men United (2003) … raid on the school **
• Zatoichi (2003) … confronting the gang, highlight being showdown with the bodyguard

A few stragglers; these I need to rewatch before I can pick:

• Die Hard (1988)
• The Fugitive (1993)
• Lethal Weapon (1987)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
• Speed (1994)

Watch at marvel at the Detective Dee trailer. Filled equally with OMG and WTF moments. Kicking the deer in the head is both:

The trailer for A Lonely Place to Die looks good:

… and here’s a rave review to go with it.

Ooh, could be good:

The In Time trailer has certainly piqued my interest (although it pretty much shows you the whole movie in 4 minutes). I wonder if Andrew Niccol can pull off another Gattaca? That would be grand.

The Ides of March Trailer. Looks great, and what a cast!

I love this: The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything:

That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.

It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

This 10-minute action scene from Bollywood movie Endhiran may be the best—or at least the most jam-packed—action scene in the world, ever. Sure, the CGI is weak in spots, but just some crazy stuff. Be sure to stick around to when the robots start attacking in various formations. Looks like this is actually the finale of the movie though, so it’s a big ‘ol spoiler.

Roger Ebert, posts a letter from Walter Murch, “the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema,” why 3D doesn’t work and never will:

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the “convergence/focus” issue. A couple of the other issues — darkness and “smallness” — are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen — say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

I hate 3D. Loved Avatar, but everything else so far was just darker, more expensive, and gained nothing from the 3Dification. If my local theater gave me a choice, I would never opt for 3d.

Good (if unsurprisingly bottom-heavy) map of which movie sequels were better than the original.

Twitch has the trailer for Silver Tongues, which sounds interesting:

Two lovers play a dark and dangerous game of deceit. Donning different personalities, they travel from town to town using their talent for performance to shatter the lives of strangers unlucky enough to cross their path. But how far can a person go, when all they know are lies? How much can they change before they break? Manipulation builds upon manipulation, and soon the audience themselves become unwitting collaborators in the characters cruel deceptions. As this amoral game spiral out of control, the audience is forced to question who will be the ultimate victim

… and looks promising:

Check out the trailer for Rubber, a movie about a killer tire. Not a hoax.

Queuing it!

Roger Ebert posted his best documentaries of 2010 rundown. Definitely some titles on there I need to check out. Here are the Netflix links, if this makes it easier for anybody:

• 45365
• A Small Act
• The Art of the Steal
• Best Worst Movie
• Collapse
• Cropsey
• Exit Through the Gift Shop
• Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
• Last Train Home
• Restrepo
• Tabloid
• Waiting for "Superman"
• Winnebago Man

I couldn’t find Scrappers or Vincent: A Life In Color.

Kees van Dijkhuizen finished his Cinema 2010. A darker take on 2010 than Filmography 2010, but also excellent.

The Hanna trailer is very promising. Interesting turn for director Joe Wright, when you look at his filmography.

Just wanted to single out Filmography 2010 as my favorite link from the recent backlog. So good. I just read this interview with Gen Ip, the woman behind the video, and she mentioned being influenced by Kees van Dijkhuizen (e.g. Cinema 2009, keep your eyes peeled for his 2010 version soon) and Matt Shapiro (e.g. 2010: The Cinescape).

Two trailers for you. Start the betting on which will be the crappier big dumb robot movie of 2011: Real Steel or Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Tough to bet against Michael Bay in a crappiness contest.

Very cool, Inception squeezed down to four minutes and 27 seconds, Inception in Real-Time. Spoilers, obviously.

Oh yes, Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in Cowboys & Aliens. Ford is due. What’s it been? 13 years since his last good action movie?

Fun new entry on Andy Baio’s supercuts list, You Look Like Shit.

Check out the Wrecked trailer with Adrian Brody. Splice, Predators, and now this. I’m liking his choice of genre picture projects.

This will only be handy for the feed-savvy, but there’s a great Yahoo! Pipe you can subscribe to, Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh to Netflix. So highly rated RT movies go into the feed and show up in your feed reader, and when you click through, it takes you to the Netflix listing for that movie so you can queue it.

Put together Geoffrey Rush, ninjas, and cowboys and what do you get? The Warrior’s Way trailer.

The Coen Brothers remake of True Grit with Jeff Bridges, Josh, Brolin, and Matt Damon has a trailer. Can’t wait. Sometimes the Coen’s disappoint me mightily, but I’m betting this will not be one of those times.

The Black Swan trailer, oh my. Looks terrific.

Check out the trailer for The Perfect Host with David Hyde Pierce. I love a good table-turner.

Dan Fierman scores a rare Bill Murray interview. The explanation of how he came to do Garfield is worth it by itself. Lots of good stuff. Straight shooter.

Violence. Spoilers. Genius. Kubrick vs Scorsese. (via kottke)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has a trailer. Can’t wait!

Roger Ebert: Why I Hate 3-D (and You Should Too). Amen, brother!

Wow, how did I not know this, apparently you can start up a DVD and then hit Stop, Stop again, and Play to skip past all that annoying crap (FBI warnings, trailers, “you wouldn’t steal a car…”, etc.) and go right to the movie. I’m sure it won’t work in all cases, but it did work on the first three titles from our little collection that I tried at random.

Enter the Void sports some wild opening credits. You can watch it here, but I’d vote on clicking through for the HD version:

Micmacs, the new movie from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children) has a trailer.

Ji-woon Kim, of creepy A Tale of Two Sisters fame, does Sergio Leone? Sign me up, The Good, The Bad, The Weird definitely gets a spot in the queue.

I had to post this today rather than yesterday so you wouldn’t think I was pulling your leg. The Expendables cast—most testosterone-laden ever?—includes Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Danny Trejo (order is from IMDb, so maybe that reflects screen time?). Really! I offer the trailer as proof:

(via twitch)

I feel like I’ve been living under a rock, but apparently there is this comic book called Scott Pilgrim that is popular enough that it is being made into a movie with Michael Cera (here’s the trailer) and a video game. The basic plot:

Scott Pilgrim is 23 years old, living in the big city with his gay roommate, just trying to get by in this crazy world. He’s in a band. He’s lazy. He likes video games.

Scott Pilgrim likes the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers, but to win her heart, he has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Seven! Evil! Ex! Boyfriends! Lucas has muscles! Todd plays bass with his psychic powers! The Twins are twins! Matthew Patel is an Indian guy! AND MORE!

The trailer for Predators is up. It will be nice to put all that vs. Aliens nonsense behind us. Good cast, good director. Guardedly optimistic.

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer is deservedly making the rounds, but just in case you haven’t seen it yet:

Casting coup, Ian McShane will play Blackbeard in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I mean, that’s a franchise that has gone steadily downhill and I can’t imagine Rob Marshall at the helm will do anything but continue the slide, but still:

Perfect! I suppose an R rating is too much to hope for?

Pretty safe to say Kick-Ass isn’t going for a PG-13 rating! (nsfw):

(via twitch)

I don’t really think this is why people pirate DVDs, but this is still a great graphic illustrating one way that the movie studios punish their paying customers. So true.

(I think people generally pirate movies because they want them for free rather than paying for them. I think people rip movies they legitimately own for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.)

Everybody is talking about the Esquire feature on Roger Ebert. I haven’t had time to do more than skim a bit, but I’ve printed it out for the bedside. Sure to be excellent.

Update: Ebert’s reaction to the piece.

If Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl. QT’s is the one I’d most want to watch.

Harvey Weinstein tells Errol Morris he’s boring. I’d excerpt it, but I think that would detract from a full read-through. I guess there’s no harm in putting up the opening paragraph: “Dear Errol: Heard your NPR interview and you were boring. You couldn’t have dragged me to see THE THIN BLUE LINE if my life depended on it.”

I loved Avatar, but this Pocahontas comparison is perfectly done, so apt.

Ooh, check the Shutter Island trailer! Martin Scorsese directs a horror movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, and Max von Sydow.

Alma is a terrific short film by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas, available on Vimeo for a limited time (I don’t know how long, catch it now). (via waxy)

Big trailer day! New ones up for Iron Man 2 (can’t wait, despite almost guaranteed sequelitis), Clash of the Titans (really, remake? and check the terrible beard on Liam Neeson), and Alice in Wonderland (ahh, not a straight retelling, very interesting). (via twitch)

Great piece on the societal and cinematic origins of holding your gun sideways. Among others:

During the first half of the 20^th century, soldiers used the side grip for the express purpose of endangering throngs of people. Some automatic weapons from this era—like the Mauser C96 or the grease gun—fired so quickly or with such dramatic recoil that soldiers found it impossible to aim anything but the first shot. Soldiers began tilting the weapons, so that the recoil sent the gun reeling in a horizontal rather than vertical arc, enabling them to spray bullets into an onrushing enemy battalion instead of over their heads.

(via tmn)

Letters of Note has a letter from J.D. Salinger refusing to sell the rights for a movie adaptation of Catcher in the Rye.

I’m looking forward to the origami documentary, Between the Folds, hitting Netflix in January. Here’s the trailer:

44 Inch Chest — Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tom Wilkinson? — sign me up:

Also, “pervasive strong language” + Ian McShane = Hooray!

(via twitch)

Check the cinematic destruction of NYNY set to Rhapsody in Blue.

Wow, very impressive, here’s the “Trinity Help” scene from The Matrix, done in stop-motion with only Legos (although I’d really recommend clicking through and watching the bigger version instead):

The side-by-side comparison is also great. Finally, here’s the LegoMatrix site.

(via kottke)

This xkcd strip charting movie narratives wants to be a poster. More specifically, it wants to be a poster on my wall. Be sure to click it for the close-up view. Here’s a taste:

I am not sure what to make of the trailer for the new Zhang Yimou movie, Amazing Tales: Three Guns. First, he’s remaking Blood Simple! Second, it’s looking part slapstick (looks ALL slapstick, and bad, at the beginning – hang in there), part kung fu, part thriller; more Stephen Chow (Kung fu Hustle) than Zhang Yimou:

I think I’m excited.

I knew I was premature to judge the earlier Avatar trailer. The new one looks much better:

Never bet against (or doubt, apparently) James Cameron. I might have to find my first 3-D theater for this one.

You can certainly sign me up for period action/horror featuring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving. Watch Trailer 1 if you’re over, say, 25. Trailer 2 if you’re under. Oh hell, watch ‘em both.

It is foolish to bet against James Cameron, but the Avatar trailer looks bad. Hopefully it’s not his Waterworld.

The Metropia trailer looks like it uses moods and themes that play the uncanny valley to its advantage. (via twitch)

Tough call, the trailer for The Crazies makes it look like excellent zombie horror, but it’s easy to cut a good horror trailer. The main thing I want to point out is that Timothy Olyphant is the new Michael Biehn.

The best trailer in front of Inglourious Basterds was for Youth in Revolt. Also, while it wasn’t long enough to contend, the Inception teaser (Christopher Nolan) is enticing.

Various directors have their say on widescreen vs. pan and scan. I really thought this was a dead issue until learning that HBO pushes for it. Bastards. (via kottke)

Here’s the trailer for The Cove, a documentary that looks to be equal parts thrilling and profoundly depressing. (via kottke)

Goddammit, I thought we were done with this shit.

The new Ricky Gervais movie, The Invention of Lying has a trailer. Great premise: everybody tells the absolute truth all the time until Gervais’ character discovers lying. (via kottke)

It’s worth checking out the Last Ride trailer over at Twitch for its own sake, but especially if you’ve only seen Hugo Weaving play computer programs or elves to date.

The official trailer for The Road is up (in HD!). Looks grim. Perfect.

The Guy Ritchie / Robert Downey Jr. / Jude Law Sherlock Holmes movie now has a cool HD trailer. Can’t wait. I didn’t know Mark Strong was in this, that’s definitely a bonus.

If you are like me and hadn’t heard of District 9 before, you might find that the trailer holds some surprises.

Ocean’s Eleven with Kermit in the Clooney role. Had the Muppets made Ocean’s Twelve it might have been watchable.

Based on the trailer, I have high hopes for Moon:

Sam Rockwell rocks. (via kottke)

Kamni Khan posts an ode to actual, physical books. Among other thoughts, Khan imagines if the books in The Reader were replaced by a Kindle:

Would Michael use it in the tub? It’s not waterproof, so there’s a high probability of damaging it. Would Hanna throw it to the floor in a rage of passion, right before another lovemaking encounter? Highly unlikely! The breakable Kindle, as we all know, comes at a hefty retail price. Hanna wouldn’t ask Michael where he got a particular book; the answer would always be Amazon.com.

Twitch embeds the trailer for Park Chan-Wook’s (Oldboy) upcoming vampire movie Thirst. If it delivers I can see myself running a fun Halloween double feature with Let the Right One In one of these years.

I really liked Let the Right One In, even with the crappy subtitles. So you should see it, but wait for the fixed DVDs to hit the shelves. I wonder if Netflix will update their collection?

The trailer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is up. The trailer, at least, does a nice job capturing the feel of the book. I hope the movie lives up to it!

New trailers recently dropped for Star Trek and Terminator Salvation. Terminator wins the trailer battle, and nice move going the Battlestar Galactica route, but it’s damn near impossible to think McG will do a better job than Abrams.

Twitch has the trailer for “hard boiled action-noir” The Perfect Sleep. Or you can head over to the movie’s official site and dig through the Flash interface for the larger version (worth it, great cinematography).

A $150, 4-minute short film directed by Miguel Arteta, written by Miranda July, and starring John C. Reilly: Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody? (via tmn)

Congrats to Kate Winslet on the long overdue win, and more importantly for making this Extras clip even greater in the process.

Twitch has the trailer for Thai movie Fireball. Oh my. “Full contact basketball to the death.” That has the potential to be gleefully bad.

3D printers, “machines that use inkjet print-heads to spray layer after layer of a UV curable liquid that hardens into a solid”, were used for some of the model making in Coraline. So Coraline ended up having 200,000 facial expressions at her disposal, while Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas only had around 800. Here’s a featurette on the subject on YouTube (also embedded in the article).

Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Inglourious Basterds has a trailer. I have misgivings, but QT rarely lets me down.

I happened to remember the expression, “I’m your huckleberry” out of the blue today. Val Kilmer put the expression back on the map doing his Doc Holliday in Tombstone years ago. It didn’t occur to me then to wonder what it meant, but thanks to Google now I know:

“Huckleberry” was commonly used in the 1800’s in conjunction with “persimmon” as a small unit of measure. “I’m a huckleberry over your persimmon” meant “I’m just a bit better than you.” As a result, “huckleberry” came to denote idiomatically two things. First, it denoted a small unit of measure, a “tad,” as it were, and a person who was a huckleberry could be a small, unimportant person—usually expressed ironically in mock self-depreciation. The second and more common usage came to mean, in the words of the “Dictionary of American Slang: Second Supplemented Edition” (Crowell, 1975):

“A man; specif., the exact kind of man needed for a particular purpose.

What a great expression.

Anthony Lane’s review of Taken is quite a bit of fun:

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from “California Dreamin’,” it’s that seventeen-year-old daughters get into scrapes. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from “24” it’s that anybody named Kim, with a father schooled in dirty work by the U.S. government, will have a large echo chamber where her brain is meant to be. Kim and a friend leave for a vacation in Europe, where, ignoring the advice of her father, they are abducted with such consummate speed that it might have been simpler if he had FedExed them directly to the kidnappers.

I saw on Neil Gaiman’s weblog that the Coraline Web Trailer is the first trailer he has really liked. I can see why.

instantwatcher.com provides an excellent, minimalist directory of all the Netflix movies that are available for streaming. I’ve been a Netflix subscriber forever, but until now I didn’t realize how many great movies (drama, 4.0 rating or better) were available.

I’ve posted about Parkour luminary David Belle before. He’s back for more action in Banlieue 13: Ultimatum. Twitch has the trailer. The stunt work is incredible, and man, can that last shot be real? I’ve seen Belle jump between buildings before (again, see old posts), but that looks impossible.

(One of my favorite scenes from Banlieue 13 was where Belle somehow shoots feet first through the tiniest of windows above a door. Ah, here it is. At around 0:23 of this video.)

Neil Gaiman strikes just the right tone in his promotional monologue for Coraline on buttons. Our family is split on this one. Two of us can’t wait, and the other two are totally creeped out. (via twitch)

Twitch has the Japanese Watchmen trailer and it looks tons better than any of the US trailers I’ve seen. I’m curious to see how this one survives the adaptation. I expect nothing better than a guilty pleasure, but I can hope.

First it has to get out of legal limbo, of course.

I’ve never used Ask Metafilter before, even though I paid them the $5 lifetime registration fee* over a year ago. Yesterday, finally, I asked my first question, “What was the first movie to feature an altered studio/production logo?“, and it’s been getting great replies. Being able to tap into the hive mind when you haven’t managed to attract a hive mind of your very own is incredibly cool. Terrific community they have over there.

* (Genius move on their part, not as a moneymaker, but because it turns out trolls are deterred by an incredibly small barrier to entry. By way of illustration, check out the Metafilter comments vs. YouTube comments side-by-side.)

Smashing Magazine: 30 Unforgettable Movie Opening Sequences. Having Lord of War, Thank You For Smoking, and Delicatessen on there makes me happy.

Twitch has some details on an upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. Directed by Guy Ritchie, who hasn’t exactly been on fire since lighting it up with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, but Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes is killer, and Jude Law as Watson ain’t bad either.

Twitch has a fine lookin’ trailer for The Broken. Great cast.

Just Like the Movies is a short film (~20 minutes) by Michal Kosakowski which uses pre-9/11 movie clips to convey the events and feel of the day, accompanied by solo piano. (more details, via kottke)

Nothing but raves for Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In. Here’s the trailer. It comes out this Friday, unfortunately only in very limited release. Netflix has a stub for it though, so you can always queue it now for when it comes to DVD.

Neil Gaiman’s Coraline gets the Henry Selick treatment. Could be a very, very nice pairing of author and director.

Interesting take on Jim Carrey’s body of work:

Jim Carrey will loom large in our shattered posterity, I believe, because his filmography amounts to a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self. Who knows how the self became such a problem, or when we began to feel the falseness in our nature? “There’s another man within me, that’s angry with me,” wrote Sir Thomas Browne in Religio Medici, three and a half centuries before the scene in Liar Liar where the hero stuffs his own head into the toilet bowl.

The Truman Show was released 10 years ago. I’m due for a rewatch.

Roger Ebert, accused of not reviewing Ben Stein’s movie Expelled because he (Ebert) believes in evolution, responds by crushing Stein like a bug. Love his take on “Premise” Media.

The trailer for the new Pixar movie is, umm, Up. Can't wait.

My Dad just brought this cool George Kennedy perspective on Paul Newman to my attention. Here’s that scene from Cool Hand Luke on YouTube.

Paul Newman, great actor and even better person, has died at 83. Greencine has a wonderful collection of tributes and thoughts. Crushed. I’m going to go watch Nobody’s Fool.

Roger Ebert: The Balcony is Closed.

Just got back from watching Cars, and leading it was a trailer for Barnyard (the "trailer 2" trailer is the one I saw). I'll be the first to admit I know next-to-nothing about animal husbandry, but last time I checked there was no such thing as a boy cow. Well, there are, but they're called bulls and they don't have udders. But hey, if you're going to make a boy cow with udders, I applaud going all the way and rendering them prominently. Nevermind that the overall effect makes it seem like the thing, whatever it is, not only has four of the things that a male cow might actually have between its legs, but that (s)he shaves its nether region. Where it finds the time to keep such a complex and multi-pronged set of genitalia clean-shaven is another mystery.

I will allow for the remote possibility that our hero(ine)'s condition is central to the plot, and the trailer masterfully concealed the twist. Heck, maybe it's a remake of... No, that would be giving too much away.

twofifty.org lets you track your progress against the IMDb Top 250. Nice simple AJAX interface, and stinkin' badges to boot. Here's mine: