James Bond Will Return In the Year Two Thousand & Fourteen

This week is CinemaCon and since we're not there (Alas we have day jobs!), you won't be seeing us giving our commentary on footage like The Dark Knight Rises and Oh my God awesome it was (Batman On Film is your friend), how the 48 frames-per-second decision left many speechless over The Hobbit, and not in a good way (Badass Digest did a nice write up) or how wonderfully retro the 8-bit centric Wreck-It Ralph sounds (Coming Soon, bitches yo!) Point is I'm not big into cutting and pasting shit other people saw and described. Nothing wrong that but not my cup of coffee. Cut to me doing just that, of course.

Anyway last night was Sony's turn to wow exhibitors and there doesn't seem to be anyone in the crowd who didn't flip for the forthcoming James Bond movie Skyfall. Via Coming Soon, before a frame was shown Sony let it be known when the end credits close out with the traditional "James Bond Will Return" text, 2014 is when to expect just that.

Guess this means Eon is getting back into the swing of things with the standard two-year gap between films. To think there was a dark period where it looked like Quantum of Solace was Daniel Craig's swan-song from the tuxedo and martinis, shaken not stirred. Assuming this means it will be indeed be Craig walking through that gun-barrel the year after next?

First Look at Django Unchained

Two staples of a Quentin Tarantino film; the dialogue and his ability to mime other films, at times replicating the look of characters like their costumes if not shot-for-shot recreating moments from films that have influenced him.

While the former can't be accounted for (The script's not hard to get your hands on though) Entertainment Weekly has the first look at his latest Django Unchained, featuring Jamie Foxx as the title character, Christoph Waltz as his German bounty hunter pal and Leonardo DiCaprio as the antagonist, a plantation owner who stands between our hero being reunited with his wife.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation - International Trailer

Comingsoon.Net has gotten a new International trailer for the cool looking G.I. Joe sequel, there's some new footage in here including some nicely framed villain shots of Cobra Commander and Storm Shadow.

Lawless Trailer

Shia LaBeef and Tom "ZOMG he's amazing as t3h Bane" Hardy, star in this depression era deep south bootleggers tale from the director of 'The Proposition', a western I found very ordinary and at times unpleasant.

Hardy and the Beef are brothers and are at war with a psychotic looking Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman over the moonshine trade. This actually looks brilliant with strong performances, stunning cinematography and a really dusty old south look to it as well as some hard hitting action.

Yahoo! Movies

New Trailer for Pixar's "Brave"

Whoa!  Is that a girl taking the lead role in a Pixar film?  It had to happen eventually, and it looks like it's going to be worth the wait, judging from this latest trailer for Pixar's Brave.  This will be Pixar's thirteenth feature film, but I'm not going to worry about it being the unlucky one, since Cars 2 seemed take all of that heat last summer. 

Brave is the story of Merida, a mischeivous Scottish princess who, according to the official synopsis: "defies an age-old custom sacred to the unruly and uproarious lords of the land," and winds up unleashing all kinds of hell on her kingdom, which is ultimately left up to her to fix, and maybe learn a few lessons along the way:

I have a feeling the tagline "In every age, family is king", is basically Pixar-speak for "we are going to make you cry".  Invoking their last three tear-jerkers (Toy Story 3, Up, and Wall*E) in the trailer didn't help, either.

Brave opens in theaters on June 22.

K&O Swinging With Spider-Man for Amazing Sequel

Amid increasing rumblings of low internal tracking, audience indifference and not-so-hot buzz on the finished product (and how it deviates heavily away from canon), Sony is staying the course for an Amazing Spider-Man sequel. No shocker there. It would have to flop miserably for them to throw in the towel and even our box-office predictions of its impending under-performance nobody sees that happening.

James Vanderbilt penned early drafts, and it's now being handed over to Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Those guys launched Transformers and rebooted Star Trek. Strange they'd be brought on in a pure writing capacity for a sequel to someone else's material. Yeah, I know they did for that Mission: Impossible III and The Legend of Zorro, but they were in a different place then career-wise.

They insist filming on The Sensational Spider-Man, or whatever they call it, starts up in "the first quarter of 2013." And while I don't doubt Sony will keep the character on their home turf indefinitely, I suspect they won't be as quick to get that follow-up before cameras after July 3rd and instead reassess the property at that point.

G.I. Joe International Poster

The cool new trailer has just arrived for what looks like a greatly improved G.I. Joe sequel, the action looks bigger, the feel is classic Joe and production values look considerably higher.

Below is an international poster that has Storm Shadow front and center.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation Trailer Surprisingly Not as Stupid as Expected

The first G.I. Joe movie was stupid. It knew it, its cast knew it and that was its charm. A living breathing cartoon not to take seriously. Mass destruction, guys walking around with names like Destro and Heavy Duty and no one batting an eye, underwater hideouts for the villains. Shit to appeal to little boys. If you weren't into that, fine but for those of us who were, it was bliss.

This time out for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, director Jon Chu and Dwayne Johnson (who this makes no bones of contention to say is the star here) swear this is a different beast, going as far to use the worn-out "reboot" phrase. While it isn't a reinvention of what Stephen Sommers did three years ago, helmer and actor weren't too far off. Same over-the-top set-pieces, gadgets, characters, etc. but this feels different.

And yet the same smile on my face when the trailer is over.

New Clip from The Avengers

The Avengers is just around the corner and our t.v.'s are full of advertisements letting us know how awesomely epic the film promises to be. While the general audience is getting teased, die-hard fans are fighting off the urge to look at each new clip that pops up online giving a short look into scenes from the movie.

Mark Ruffalo recently attended the Graham Norton Show and revealed a clip with him as Bruce Banner trying to be recruited by Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. Nothing major is shown here, so don't be afraid to peek if you really can't hold back. The end has a clever glimpse of Banner's potential anger issues popping up throughout the movie.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you the date, but for May 4th the question remains; will The Avengers take the top spot for the weekend or will LOL, starring Miley Cyrus, cause trouble for the first big movie of the summer?

Over an hour of IMAX footage for The Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan has made no secrets about his dislike for the 3D format that has been taking over cinemas the past few years. His arguments have been backed by facts that the we already perceive them in a three dimensional scope and the use of the forced gimmick causes the picture to lose aspects of its bright quality. He's also been quite vocal about IMAX giving the viewer a truly immersive experience that is absent from the other various formats. Without sounding too much like an internet dubbed "Nolanite", from my personal experience I am in agreement in the statements he's made.

The first time I watched The Dark Knight in my local IMAX dome theatre it really was a new and interesting experience. Fast forward to the Dark Knight Rises prologue released in December. When the scene of a plane flying over an open field showed up on the huge dome screen, I literally felt like I was falling forward out of my seat and had to hold onto my wife's arm until I settled in to what I was seeing. This is how I can really understand Nolan wanting to help bring IMAX to the audience more often for future films.

The Wall Street Journal has posted a lengthy article with some great points on studio's trying to bring IMAX back in a big way. They reveal that Nolan has over an hour's worth worth of footage in the giant format which is record for a Hollywood feature film. In the article he addresses concerns the studio had with shooting so much footage with the bigger cameras;

"There was a huge irony that we were told it would be too difficult to shoot a Hollywood movie on IMAX when we had this gigantic camera department, grips, electric, hundreds of people working for us. These were cameras that had been to the top of Mount Everest, to the bottom of the ocean and into outer space, but people thought we couldn't make a feature film. It was absurd."

Seems like a good way to shut up the guys that were probably begging him to use the 3D format for his final Batman film. I believe the movie will benefit more from being in IMAX anyway. Click the link above to read the full article.