Tag Archives: trailer

Trailer: Atlas Shrugged, Part 2

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Nearly every film fan that I know is excited about the fact that the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is going to be available for viewing today.  Everyone, that is, but me.  To me, Lincoln sounds like yet another big-budget, self-conscious prestige film that was primarily made to win awards (and considering just how weak this year has been so far, it may very well do that).  Lincoln sounds like a film that people will respect but never actually enjoy. 

Add to that, this is an election year and I know I’m not looking forward to having to listen to all the toadsuckers comparing their particular candidate to Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln.  Seriously, it’s going to get tedious.

(That said, I seriously hope that I’m wrong because I’m a lover of both film and history.  It’s not the film’s subject matter that concerns me as much as it’s the deafening hype that surrounds the film and demands that I love it before I even see it.)

As soon as the trailer for Lincoln is available on YouTube, either myself or another Shattered Lens will undoubtedly share it on this site.  For now, however, I’m going to share another recently released trailer for another film about politics. 

If Atlas Shrugged, Part 2 is anything like the first film in the trilogy, it’ll be the type of trashy, low-budget fun that always manages to annoy the usual gang of complacent critical elitists.  If nothing else, it should be interesting to see just how overwrought the reaction (both pro and con) will be to this particular film. 

Trailer: Resident Evil 6 “No Hope Left” Cinematic Live-Action

Posted on by Arleigh

I haven’t been as big a fan of Capcom’s Resident Evilsurvival horror game franchise (weird considering that zombie fiction and entertainment is like catnip to me), but the upcoming and latest entry in the series has me excited. Resident Evil 6 looks to return the series to its zombie roots after spending the last two titles veering away from it.

While the gameplay still looks to be just something upgraded and tweaked from games past the story itself looks like something that I would find interesting as it moves the danger from being localized to something more global in scope. I’m really hoping that this title brings me back to the franchise which was great in the beginning then began to lose steam and ideas in it’s latest offerings.

This latest trailer takes a page out of the Halofranchise’s marketing book by making it live-action. It might be only 90 seconds but getting a glimpse of how a world reacts to the onset of a zombie apocalypse makes for a nice, brief piece of entertainment.

Resident Evil 6 is set for an October 6 release for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC.

Trailer: Branded (Official)

Posted on by Arleigh

Lisa Marie mentioned a particular film trailer that she sawfor a film coming out soon that reminded her of a classic John Carpenter scifi film. This film was Brandedand from looking at it’s official trailer one does see some major similarities between this Russian/American scifi production with the Carpenter subversive scifi film.

The premise looks and sounds interesting but I must admit that the CG aliens/monsters/overlords look to be very subpar in comparison to most CG-effects work nowadays. Another note of interest is that it stars Leelee Sobieski who was once seen by Hollywood as a rising superstar when she first hit the scene over a decade ago. I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything of note until this trailer came along.

Now I won’t say that this film is a straight rip-off of Carpenter’s They Livebut if it includes an extended scene between two men fighting it out in an alley then I shall declare shenanigans.

Branded is set for a September 7, 2012 release date.

Trailer: Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Official)

Posted on by Arleigh

Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike followed-up his 2010 critically-acclaimed jidaigeki film 13 Assassins with another foray into classical Japanese filmmaking with his reimagining of the 1962 classic by Masaki Kobayashi. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai is not a straight out and out remake of the Kobayashi classic, but Miike’s film follow similar ideas and themes.

Miike’s latest first premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and is just now making it’s way to North America. The film is now available for viewing On Demand with Tribeca Film as it’s North American distributor. There’s one caveat about seeing the film On Demand and that’s not being able to see it how Miike filmed it and that’s in 3D which made it the first to make such a premiere at Cannes.

Here’s to hoping this film make’s it’s way into the late film festivals in Northern California so I get a chance to see it on the big-screen. Barring that I don’t mind watching it in the comfort of my new condo in 1080p HD.

Trailer: Dexter Season 7

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of the previous season of Dexter.  Colin Hanks made for a boring villain, the secret behind the character played by Edward James Olmos was obvious from his second appearance, and, for the first time, Michael C. Hall seemed to bored with the title role.  Yes, the sixth season of Dexter was a huge disappointment but it did end on a good note, with Deb discovering that her brother is a murderer. 

(Of course, in the Dexter novels, Deb discovered the truth about her brother a long time ago.  Plus, Rita’s still alive…)

The question is how will the show handle this change in Dexter and Deb’s relationship.  (And will the show continue to explore the idea of Deb being in love with Dexter or will that be one of those plot points that will be quickly forgotten before it can do permanent damage?)  Season 6 did not leave me with much hope for the future of Dexter but I’m still going to gife the new season of Dexter a chance and hope for the best.

This just-released trailer for the seventh season of Dexter gives us a hint of how the show’s new season might play out.

Trailer: Zero Dark Thirty

Posted on by Arleigh

After the success Kathryn Bigelow had with her award-winning film The Hurt Locker it was just part of the norm that people began to wonder what she would do to follow-up the film which gave her the Oscar for Best Director. There was talk of her making an action thriller about the Tri-Border Region in South America that many intelligence agencies consider a major haven for global organized crime and terrorist groups of all kinds. This particular idea bounced around for months then nothing came of it. Then news came about around late-Spring to early Summer 2011 that Bigelow and The Hurt Locker writer and collaborator Mark Boal came upon the idea that would be Bigelow’s follow-up.

The film that the two decided upon would be an action thriller detailing the global manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but this decision became even more important once news broke out on May 2, 2011 that the hunt for America’s Most Wanted criminal was finally over and that Operation Neptune Spear was a success with the death of Bin Laden.

Zero Dark Thirtyis the title of Bigelow’s film about the details and backstory which led up to this special operations mission on May 2, 2011. The first trailer for the film has been released by Sony and it’s short on details other than some voice overs over satellite imagery. I’m sure there’ll be more trailers that will open up what this film will truly be about leading up to it’s December release date (just in time for awards season).

It’s going to be interesting how Bigelow will do with this follow-up to The Hurt Locker. If her history is anything to go by then it shouldn’t disappoint even if some of her detractors will be chomping at the bit to see it fail and further see her Best Director Oscar win as a fluke done to keep the award from her ex-husband James Cameron.

Zero Dark Thirty is scheduled for a December 19, 2012 release date…just two days from the end of the world.

Trailer: Skyfall

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Dark Agent Rises.

That’s what some people are already calling the upcoming James Bond film, Skyfall.  Based on the just-released official trailer, you can see why.

Despite the fact that the trailer seems to highlight everything that annoys me about Daniel Craig’s interpretation of James Bond as being a humorless thug (and yes, I know that’s the way he was presented in the original novels but dammit, I don’t care!), I still have to admit that Skyfall looks like it’ll be a more memorable film than Quantum of Solace.  Javier Bardem seems like a perfect choice to play a Bond villain, though I want to slap whoever did that to his hair.

Skyfall will open in the U.S. on my birthday, November 9th.

Trailer: Cloud Atlas (Extended Trailer)

Posted on by Arleigh

We’ve been getting quite a bit of hype for the fall and holiday releases of 2012 but for some reason one film that should’ve been on more people’s radar seem to have gone unnoticed until this week when an extended trailer for the film was released to the public. It’s the film adaptation of David Mitchell’s epic sci-fi novel Cloud Atlas.

The film is directed by Lana Wachowski (formerly Larry Wachowski), Andy Wachowski and German-filmmaker Tom Tykwer. It’s a film that has a cast which includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess and Susan Sarandon for starters. The story looks to stay faithful to the original novel source which interweaves six different stories spanning time from the 19th-century all the way to a post-apocalyptic far future.

It’s going to be interesting whether the Wachowskis and Tykwer will be able to keep these six stories from becoming too confusing for the general audience to follow. Most important of all will be if these filmmakers will be able to create an entertaining film out of a novel heavy on themes and ideas. One thing the trailer sure points out is that the Wachowskis haven’t lost their touch when it comes to the visual side of filmmaking.

Cloud Atlasis set for an October 26, 2012 release date.

Trailer: The Dark Room

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

No offense to anyone who read or writes for this site but if I have to choose between watching The Dark Knight and the Room, I’m going to choose the Room every time.  It’s not that I don’t think that Christopher Nolan’s Batman films make for a good trilogy.  I enjoyed all three of the Dark Knight films.  It’s just that The Room is a film that I can watch over and over and over again.  This is largely because The Room is only 90 minutes long whereas the Dark Knight trilogy is closer to 8 hours.

Anyway, for those of you who simply cannot accept The Room’s superiority to the Dark Knight, check out this trailer for The Dark Room.

Trailer: Life of Pi

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of the upcoming films that everyone’s been predicting will be a major Oscar contender is Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.  To a certain extent, I thought some of that hype might be because everyone knows that, even though Lee was named best director,  Crash totally stole the award for best picture from Brokeback Mountain.

(Seriously, even my cousins from South Texas — the majority of whom wear cowboy hats and take the term “real man” quite seriously — have commented to me that Brokeback Mountain was a better film than Crash.  And you know what?  I agree with them but I also think that Capote was a better film than both of them.)

However, I’ve just seen the trailer for Life of Pi was I have to admit that I was blown away and, by the end of it, I was nearly moved to tears.  In many ways, this trailer feels less like an advertisement for a movie and more like a touching and powerful short film that could easily stand alone as a work of art.  After seeing this trailer — despite the fact that, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m just a little bit terrified of the water (or, more specifically, drowning in the water) — I can say that Life of Pi is a film that I’m very much looking forward to seeing.