Another great-looking Iron Man trailer. Interesting to see another suit of armour revealed (I guess Tony decides he needs an emergency more portable suit) and we see a little more of Black Widow (but not much). Most interestingly we see Whiplash’s involvement in the main plot and Hammer recruiting him.
Line of the trailer is either “Oops” or “Agreed”. Probably the later 
This film can’t come soon enough 
I’ve always viewed an A-Team remake as a fairly bad idea. It always struck me as the kind of action, adventure show that you probably wouldn’t get away with making these days.
However, with some very good casting choices, and now this trailer, I’ll be darned if its not looking like they’ve pulled it off. Obviously trailers tend to reflect the best of the film, but I’m really looking forward to this now. They’ve really sold me with the parachuting tank scene
The official Iron Man 2 trailer is now up on Apple’s site or around the net.
Looks superb. Seems to have exactly the same tone as the first film and the cast once again looks amazing. And, of course, there’s War Machine
Also interesting to note that Tony’s clearly in a new suit at the end of the film. There’s a Silver Centurion-style triangular unibeam visible on it as opposed to the round one (the arc reactor) we saw on the Mark 3 in the first film.
Next summer can’t come fast enough
So, I’ve now seen the film twice. Yes, I do love my giant transforming robots.
I’ve seen both the normal and Imax version, and enjoyed it a lot. In fact, the two things that annoyed me first time around (the twins and the length) grated a lot less on a second viewing. Aside from the fact that I found the twins annoying as the film went on (but very funny at the beginning), that’s all I’m saying about them.
All in all, I thought the film did exactly what a good sequel should, which was just taking what worked from the first film and do it twice as good. The plot is pretty much identical to the first, but there’s some more focus on the actual Transformers this time. There’s some nice scenes between Megatron and Starscream which flesh them out, and Optimus gets some great moments. The forest fight stands out as a high point of the film, where Prime takes on most of the Decepticons single-handed.
The returning cast did a good job as well, but interestingly for me, this time the film was stolen by John Turturro’s Agent Simmons. In the first film, I wasn’t really bothered about his character, but in this sequel I thought he was hysterical. Shia LaBeouf turns in his usual great performance, again getting to show off his comic timing perfectly whenever Sam starts getting flustered, as in the first film
In terms of the Transformers themselves, Jetfire probably stole the film for me. The idea of a cantankerous old Transformer was really well played out here, and very funny.
There’s not really a huge amount to say here. If you enjoyed the first one, you’re on pretty safe ground with the sequel. Its great fun.
The much-hyped CGI Arnie has now turned up in the latest trailer for Terminator: Salvation.
I must admit, when I heard this news my reaction was a mixture of “that’s so cool” and worry that sometimes films use CGI that isn’t quite up to their ambitions. From the brief shots in this trailer though, it looks really good, and from a mythos point of view its really exciting to see the T-800 again as he appeared in the first movie, and presumably restored to his full threat value, as subsequent movies have always pitched the T-800 as the underdog.
I’m seeing the film tonight, so I’ll be very excited to see this on the big screen and see how it holds up.
Stan Bush has released this new version of The Touch, dubbed Sam’s theme. After his song Til All Are One didn’t make it onto the soundtrack for the Transformers movie 2 years ago, he’s opted to redo The Touch in a style more fitting with the first film’s soundtrack.
Obviously the original is still the best, but I kinda like this version. I could pretty easily see it playing over the end credits for Revenge of the Fallen
You can view it here.
I just got back from seeing the new Star Trek movie tonight (special advance preview showing ahead of its release next week), and thought I’d throw out a brief review. I’ll keep it spoiler free as the film’s not out yet though.
Its excellent.
J.J. Abrams has gathered an outstanding cast, and put together a film that, while it features a completely new take on classic Trek, it still feels familiar. Thanks largely to a cast who capture their roles perfectly. Zachary Quinto is note-perfect as Spock, and Karl Urban probably stole the film for me as McCoy. However, its very much Chris Pine’s film. And after watching him as Kirk, I really think this guy has a great career ahead of him. He brings Kirks cocky swagger to life perfectly, and inbues the role with a lot of comedy as well. There’s a dash of Harrison Ford as Han Solo or Indiana Jones to this Kirk, and it works brilliantly.
The film moves along at a cracking pace, with some top notch battle scenes which thankfully still felt like Star Trek battles, ie more naval warfare with slow moving ships as opposed to something more Star Wars-like with the ships zipping around everywhere.
If I had any complaints about the film, it really comes down to the Enterprise itself. As I mentioned previously I wasn’t keen on the redesign, and I have to say seeing the ship in action didn’t change my opinion at all. There are several beauty shots throughout the film, but for me they backfired as I was just reminded of how much I dislike the changes. The stardrive section just doesn’t work and would’ve been better left resembling the original movie-refit. Fortunately where this film succeeds and has its focus, is the characters.
Its all fanboy niggles at the end of the day though. This is an excellent film, and one that’ll hopefully breathe new life into the franchise. The interesting thing about the showing I was in, was that it didn’t feel like there were a lot of Trekkies in the audience, and at the end of the film, everyone seemed to have enjoyed it, which I take as a very positive sign. For the film to work, it needs to capture the general audience a lot more than the Trekkies, who’ll go see it anyway.
Comics fans have been waiting on this film with baited breath for years. The Watchmen adaptation had been called “unfilmable” by many, and had passed through the hands of many different directors and screenwriters before landing on the desk of 300 director Zack Snyder.
I must admit, I was definitely one of those in the camp of dreading a film version of Watchmen. The story is so dense, and bluntly, we’ve seen what studios can do to wreck films before (Spider-Man 3′s villain overload for example). Snyder himself has admitted that when he first took the project, the script he was handed was PG-13 rated, and designed for a sequel.
Snyder wisely binned it, insisted on an R/18 certificate script and has proceeded to do what I thought would be impossible. A faithful adaptation of the story. The job he’s done here is nothing short of superb. The cuts and changes made to bring the story to the screen felt perfectly judged to me (even the much-talked about change to the ending). To be honest, while this isn’t a short film, coming in at about 2hours 45 minutes, to me the length felt just right. Any shorter and I doubt they’d have done the story justice. However, any longer and I feel it would’ve been bloated and dragged. While the extra detail works in the trade, on screen I just think it would bog it down.
Special mention must go to the cast. The Comedian and Rorschach especially feel like they’ve been ripped straight from the pages of the comic. Visually they’re absolutely spot-on. In fact it really must be said that Jackie Earle Haley probably steals the film as Rorschach. He does an outstanding job as the character. Meanwhile Patrick Wilson captures the character of Daniel (Nite Owl) well and his growing relationship with Malin Akerman’s Laurie (Silk Spectre) is played well and I found it quite believable, forming the emotional heart of the piece while Rorschach is dealing with the murder/mystery and John goes into self-imposed exile.
Its not a perfect adaptation. Some decisions didn’t quite work for me (Dan and Laurie killing the thugs in the alley for example lept out as ill-judged, and Doctor Manhatten wasn’t really shown as gradually getting more distant from humanity, he just kind of started out that way), however these were minor things compared to how right the rest of it felt.
Despite my initial fears for this film, I left the cinema very happy indeed. I still have a slight fear as to how well the film will perform. I’m not sure how the general cinema-going public will react to the film, as its definitely not the usual superhero fare they might be expecting. But at least for the rest of us, we’ve got a movie version of Watchmen we can be happy with.
