Oliver Parker's teen girls run amuck comedy St. Trinian's, an indie hit in the UK, is opening stateside August 28. Much as I admire the always brave and forthright Colin Firth, the wackily playful Russell Brand and Rupert Everett in drag, this could go either way:

I always loved the original, starring Alistair Sim in drag, The Belles of St. Trinian's:

Some folks at IFC.com scoured YouTube for the best trailers so you wouldn't have to. They picked the best 50. Or did they? Here are my faves:

Number 27: The Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera:

Number 18: Woody Allen's Sleeper:

Number 17: Stanley Donen's Charade:

Number 15: Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction:

Number 10: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining:

Number 5: Orson Welles introduces Citizen Kane:

Number 2: Alfred Hitchcock introduces Psycho. This trailer terrified me as a kid.

And number one is Ridley Scott's original Alien-- with the best ad line ever written--"In space, no one can hear you scream":

What did they leave out?

So far, so good on movies made from the mystery novels of Boston-based Dennis Lehane: Clint Eastwood's Mystic River and Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. Up next: Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's latest reteaming with Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a U.S. Marshall tracking an inmate who has escaped from an insane asylum on a remote Massachusetts island. It looks like Escape from Alcatraz meets The Shining. Paramount releases the film October 2. Check it out:

Summit picked up Kathryn Bigelow's riveting, intense Iraq thriller The Hurt Locker out of Toronto, and has posted the latest trailer here. Jeremy Renner, who stars in the new TV series The Unusuals, could break out with this movie, which is set for June 26 release.

I talked to Bigelow in Toronto:

As Fast & Furious does better at the weekend b.o. than it has any right to do--the weekend was up 75-80% from last year-- Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris sees the first casualty of the recession: ambition. If all audiences want is escape, he worries, that's all the studios and TV networks will give them. "Stop the inanity!" he pleads.

Back in 1940, for example, Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights to John Steinbeck's great Depression novel The Grapes of Wrath, hired John Ford to direct, Nunnally Johnson to write and Henry Fonda to star as Tom Joad. The results: two Oscar wins (for Ford and Jane Darwell) and money in the bank.

The NYT's Dave Kehr looks some Paramount Depression era DVD releases.

We're reading The Grapes of Wrath for my book group this month. Here's the trailer:

Universal has posted a red band trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno on MySpace.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke initially posted a critical report on this trailer (as you can see from her comments), then after some discussion with Universal, gave the entry a more positive spin. Why doesn't she use a more transparent "update" mode?

The film fest at SXSW runs from March 13 to 21; I'll be on the doc jury. And I'll be blogging. Here are the screenings and panels, which include the de rigueur topics these days: The State of Distribution and The Incredible Shrinking Critic.

Conversations at the fest include Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater and Todd Haynes; indie mogul Bob Berney; IMDb founder Col Needham; and Jan Harlan, Stanley Kubrick's producer and brother-in-law, will share things Kubrick.

Here are trailers for SXSW films Alexander the Last, which will be released via IFC On-Demand at the same time it debuts at the fest, and Troll 2: more are on view at the SXSW YouTube screening room.

It's not new to post a gross-out red band trailer to sell a raunchy comedy. But still, this one for John Hamburg's I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd as a man who selects new pal Jason Segel as his best man, isn't exactly appealing. Is this any way to sell your movie? I Love You, Man opens March 20.

Writer/producer Judd Apatow (who salutes comedy on the Oscars Sunday) returns to the director's chair with Funny People, starring Adam Sandler as a stand-up comedian battling death, Seth Rogen as his weepy joke writer, and Leslie Mann as the woman Sandler loves. Trouble is, she's married to Eric Bana. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman (who is writing the music) also star. It's due July 31.

For a studio, a 30-second Super Bowl spot announces, "We're behind this movie." But is it really worth the cost? To reach 97 million viewers in the sweet male demo for $150-million-plus tentpoles like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, oh yeah! What's $3 million more?

DreamWorks Animation is actually pioneering a 3D Bowl spot for Monsters vs. Aliens which requires special Intel 3D glasses (Target, Best Buy). And here's a preview of some Super Bowl ads.

Other expected movie spots are Sony's The Year One, Disney's Up, Paramount's Star Trek, Sony's Da Vinci Code prequel Angels and Demons, and Universal’s Land of the Lost and latest The Fast and the Furious sequel. The final Bowl spots will be posted online at NBC.com, Hulu.com and Superbowl.com.

UPDATE: Here's the spot for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk:

And Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell:

Finally, Harold Ramis's Jack Black/Michael Cera Sony caveman comedy The Year One looks hilarious:

The 2003 BBC six-part series State of Play (directed by Harry Potter's David Yates) was a terrific mystery thriller that pitted the Brit political and journalistic establishments against each other, not to mention the police. Nobody came out particularly clean. David Morrissey, Kelly McDonald and Bill Nighy starred.

So while I think the world of Working Title, director Kevin Macdonald and writers Tony Gilroy and Matthew Michael Carnahan, after watching the trailer below I got that sinking feeling. Not all Hollywood remakes have to be bad, but how often does a whip-smart six-part BBC series with great Brit talent wind up better as a two-hour American film? I'm relieved to see Helen Mirren in there. But how did all these people wind up in the same movie?

Writer-director Tony Gilroy, who worked on several Bourne installments before he made his directing debut with Michael Clayton, turned next to one of my fave genres, the romantic heist caper. Duplicity reunites Closer stars Clive Owen and Julia Roberts as two ex-spies who may or may not be in love. Is it more Trouble in Paradise or Prizzi's Honor? We'll find out when Universal opens it in March, 2009.

Greg Mottola (Superbad) jumps back into the teen comedy circuit, only with big hair and shorter shorts. Set in the summer of 1987, Adventureland tells the tale of a college student (Jesse Eisenberg) who's forced to work at the local amusement park. Kristen Stewart (Twilight) and Ryan Reynolds star.

Fox Searchlight will send out its first trailer for The Wrestler today. Their mission: to make filmgoers want to see a movie that looks very male--Mickey Rourke plays a down-on-his-luck, aging wrestler facing the end of his career who suddenly needs to reach out to his daughter, poignantly played by Evan Rachel Wood, and a stripper pal, Marisa Tomei. Communicating with women is not his strong suit.

Indie-financed for $6 million by French company Wild Bunch (the same outfit that backed Che), The Wrestler debuted at the Toronto Film Fest, where Fox Searchlight scooped it up. It went on to play well at the New York and AFI Film fests and opens in theaters at the end of December to qualify for the Oscars.

Director Darren Aronofsky, recovering from The Fountain, initially wanted to cast Rourke but was convinced to raise foreign coin with Nic Cage; to his credit he realized that he just had to have Rourke. He told the actor, who has been dealing with anger management issues for years, to act professionally, cut out the night life and do what he was told. Rourke listened to him and gives a sensitive, nuanced performance. Expect to see some great Rourke stories in the press as he does the rounds. The Academy actors often respond to a comeback like this, but Rourke is not your typical actor.

About 12 years ago, Rourke found himself lying alone in a big giant house with "no career," he recalls, "my entourage had left with everything they could take, including my best leather pants. My ex-wife said to me, 'you need help.' Something happened that night. It was thunderstorming. The doctor came over and I had a gun. They took every gun I had out of the house. I was howling. There was blood everywhere. The dogs were covered with blood. It was mine, I had cut my finger off. I left the house in the thuunder and lightning and took my six dogs to sleep on the beach. I couldn't stay in the house anymore."

Twelve years of intense psychotherapy followed. "I'm down to a phone call every Saturday," he says. "I didn't want to change. I was ashamed, I was proud of the armor I had built up. It was a street macho thing, from where I came from. But it's a weakness. If you take it too far, it scares people. It's a strength if you're living on the street, where I spent too many years. Even after I made it as an actor, I was surrounding myself with a group of people from that world. I didn't want to live in a state of shame and anger. I still have nightmares to this day. I'm thankful to get this second chance. When you were as bad as I was, out-of-control and unprofessional and scary--I didn't realize the degree to which I frightened people in the business."

Here's the latest trailer for Henry Selick's stop-motion Coraline, from the novel by Neil Gaiman.

We've been teased. But here's the first full trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was originally supposed to be opening this weekend, but was pushed back to July 17, 2009. (Twilight took its slot.)

Paramount has launched its first trailer for Star Trek, which opens May 8, 2009:

As someone who actually grew up with the first Star Trek TV series and faithfully watched all of its subsequent incarnations, I confess that this origin story feels a tad young to me. I'm hearing that Chris Pine is terrific as Kirk--you see how he becomes the Captain of the Starship Enterprise--and Simon Pegg got a laugh out of me in this fast-moving trailer. This feels sort of like the new Bond movie Quantum of Solace--at what point do you leave out so much of the original DNA that you've gone too far to reinvent something? Of course the point is to create a new movie out of the old so that a younger generation can appreciate it. I get it. I will keep an open mind. (BTW, the excellent opening for Quantum is based on the success of Casino Royale. Next weekend will tell the tale of how it actually plays.)

But I have to say that while I admired the Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman script for Transformers (their rep insists that any claims on the Internet to have read the Star Trek script are bogus) and adore the TV work of J.J. Abrams (his Mission Impossible installment played like an episode of Alias on steroids), if this movie leaves generations of Star Trek fans feeling left out, that could be a problem. UPDATE: Here's Sci-Fi Wire's interview with Chris Pine. And EW's Trek cover story. The trailer played well to younger folks in my office. Wired is worried about early reaction to Trek footage in Europe. New York has seen some material and L.A. has its preview Wednesday.

UPDATE: Star Trek will be a test for Brad Grey's Paramount. Launched under the aegis of Grey and ousted production chief Gail Berman, the movie is now being shepherded into the marketplace by Grey's lieutenants Rob Moore, John Lesher, and Brad Weston. 2009 will be a year when Paramount will live or die on its own slate, with tentpoles Star Trek, Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, plus fall films from Peter Jackson (The Lovely Bones, developed and produced by DreamWorks), and Martin Scorsese (Ashecliffe, based on Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island, stars Leonardo DiCaprio). There's only one 2009 DreamWorks Animation movie (Monsters and Aliens) and no Marvel films until 2010. Paramount will start shooting Nickelodeon's M. Night Shyamalan family adventure The Last Airbender in March, but the pic isn't scheduled for release until 2010.

German-born Roland Emmerich is a director of great visual and technological skill who can be brilliant (Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow) or awful (10,000 B.C., Godzilla). Having found his greatest success with end-of-the-world scenarios, he's going back to the well with 2012, due next summer. The teaser trailer for 2012, which Sony won in a bidding war, gives me a chill:

I can't get enough of this movie. UPDATE: This trailer is more specific about who the Watchmen are--superbeings vigilantes--- and what they think their role is: to save the world, maybe?

The next round of screenings of Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as the suburban married couple created by Richard Yates in his powerful 1961 novel, start this weekend; reviews should hit the web on the 15th late Monday. Here's an exclusive preview of the new trailer. Paramount Vantage marketers are not hiding the movie's subject: the disintegration of a troubled marriage.

True confession. I am into vampires.

Raised on Hammer Dracula films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, when I was nine I dressed up as a Chinese vampire on Halloween. F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu is a fave. I devoured Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, as well as the classic movie starring Bela Lugosi. ("I don't drink...wine.") I read all of Anne Rice's Lestat novels. Interview with a Vampire the movie was pretty good; so was Francis Coppola's Dracula. I even went to see Underworld, though not the sequel, and suffered manfully through Van Helsing. (A third Underworld, Rise of the Lycans, pitting vampire leader Bill Nighy vs. werewolf Michael Sheen, is due in January.)

I rushed through the first two Stephenie Meyer young adult Twilight vampire romances, and witnessed the femme takeover of Comic-Con at the Twilight conference in Hall H, when thousands screamed en masse for Rob Pattinson. Here's my pre-Comic-Con interview with Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke (the full interview is on the jump). The movie junket is coming up. A cadre of women in my office are begging to screen the movie ASAP. This is not normal.

Even though Twilight doesn’t open until November 21, moviegoers are already buying advance tickets for the film via Fandangotwilighttickets.com. According to the results of a Fandango survey of 5000 moviegoers interested in Twilight:

92% of respondents say they’ll see Twilight on opening weekend; 85% say they plan to see the film more than once; 56% are planning to see the movie with a group of friends; 97% have read the novel by Stephenie Meyer; 86% would be interested in visiting the locations where the movie was filmed; 95% of the respondents to the survey are female; 42% of respondents are 25 or older; 58% are younger than 25.

HBO's True Blood also plays around with similar romantic ideas, but does so with a more mature, sexy edge. I can't get enough of this bloody stuff. What's the appeal? Brian Lowry sinks his teeth into the vampire trend. The WSJ parses the movie power of the vampire. Here's the Twilight trailer:

This trailer for Let the Right One In, a well-reviewed Scandinavian vampire romance that is currently in theaters, also creeps me out:

Fox continues to assemble its marketing materials for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. The official trailer debuted on Yahoo Movies today.

This teaser was prepared for Slumdog Millionaire's recent screening at the London Film Festival. Check out the fluid, high-speed camera work. This could not be done with a steadicam operator. The camera man is running with a hard drive in his backpack, holding the lightweight SI 2K gyro with a camera lens in his hand, which shoots a high-res digital image. Boyle shot about 70% of the film this way.

I love this headline at Filmdrunk.com: "Clint Eastwood is really pissed and old." That about describes this Gran Torino trailer:

Ed Zwick's Defiance is a Holocaust movie of a different stripe: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell play three Jewish brothers who dare to fight back against the Nazis, running a rebel base deep inside the Belarussian forest. The movie looks like Oscar bait; I won't know until I see the pic.

Here's the new Paramount Vantage trailer:

The new Twilight trailer hits hard as an action thriller---the Romeo + Juliet vampire/human romance between Rob Pattinson and Kristin Stewart is still front and center, but this one also targets the male action demo. Summit wants the whole pie on this one. They spent extra bucks for reshoots. And they want to score when the pic opens November 21.

Twilight

Here's an exclusive preview of the full-length Revolutionary Road trailer, currently playing in theaters with The Duchess and Ghost Town. A two-minute version debuted Sunday night on Mad Men (a perfect hook-up of subject and period and potential audience).

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner is a fan of the original Richard Yates novel about a couple trapped in 50s suburbia, which he credits as a guiding source for the show. The trailer gets four encore Mad Men airings throughout the week.

Revolutionary Road opens in NY and LA on December 26, with a national rollout in January.

[posted by Stuart Oldham]

The assassination of Adolf Hitler isn't exactly a plot that rings "Happy Holidays." Still, Tom Cruise and MGM's World War II drama is determined to catch Oscar's eye, if not Santa's.

Valkyrie opens nationwide December 26th.

[Posted by Stuart Oldham]
Although it may carry the same undertones as "Click," Adam Sandler's latest family comedy has the almighty Disney backing its release (not to mention "Hairspray" director Adam Shankman). Check out the trailer below.

"Bedtime Stories" opens nationwide Christmas day.

Here's the new trailer for screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directing debut Synecdoche, New York, which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton and Tilda Swinton Emily Watson. The movie has to be seen to be believed; this trailer is honest about the pic's concerns. It doesn't gussy up the material to make it more accessible. As you can see, the movie is simultaneously hilarious and grim.

The latest Changeling trailer has gone up. The Clint Eastwood drama stars Angelina Jolie in a true story about a woman in the 1920s who fought L.A. City Hall. Changeling debuted to solid reviews at Cannes in May, didn't show at Toronto and will screen at the upcoming New York Film Festival.

Clint has another movie coming up in December, Gran Torino, in which he plays a curmudgeonly Korean War veteran who attempts to reform a Korean kid who tries to steal his vintage car. It continues to amaze me that when most directors are hard-pressed to deliver one movie a year, this guy keeps coming up with two. The question is, which movie will be the one that goes all the way to the Oscars?

The trailer for John Patrick Shanley's film adaptation of the Broadway play Doubt goes up on Apple Friday.

The play is a dynamic, provocative piece. Judging from my exclusive preview of the trailer, in the movie, three strong actors form a triangle in a titanic power struggle. Representing the force of the old ways is Meryl Streep as the older nun who sees a popular, younger, hipper, kinder form of Catholic authority--priest Philip Seymour Hoffman--threatening her power. Her accolyte is sweet, trusting younger nun Amy Adams. Streep and Hoffman each try to persuade Adams to take their side. Viola Davis, another explosive actor, plays the mother of the little boy at the center of the drama unfolding at Madison St. Nicholas School. These actors are laying it down: yelling, cajoling, screaming, fighting for their lives:

Miramax is releasing this meaty picture December 12. It's a slam dunk for Oscar consideration with performances like these. I'll have to see the movie to know for sure how far it will go. The question mark is director Shanley, who won an Oscar for writing Moonstruck, but didn't fare so well on his first directing gig, 1990's Joe Versus The Volcano. We can assume that Shanley is more in control of his own material here.

Doubt is in the Zone, with the talent on board: producer Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men) helped Shanley assemble an Oscar-friendly support team: cinematographer Roger Deakins (Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James), editor Dylan Tichenor (There Will Be Blood), costume designer Ann Roth (The English Patient), and production designer David Gropman (Cider House Rules). As for the music: here's new news: it's Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings).

UPDATE: Someone who has seen Doubt writes:

"It's a knockout. I had read the play and the movie took it way beyond. Meryl Streep is definitely on the best actress list. Shanley's direction is very 'on.'"

My informant has also seen Frost/Nixon:

"It was just as good -- it will be head-to-head between these two powerhouse smart, adult play adaptations. Frank Langella will get a best actor nomination for portraying Nixon, and Michael Sheen might very well get a best supporting as Frost. In each case, I think the screenplays will be nominated -- J.P. Shanley and Peter Morgan, both for adaptations of their own plays."

While it wasn't ready to hit the fall fest circuit, Gus Van Sant's Milk, starring Sean Penn as gay San Francisco mayor Harvey Milk, has a trailer.

This poster has not been approved stateside. Kevin Smith strikes back. When he is good he is very very good. We'll see the whole movie in Toronto:

It's taken six years to turn Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 bestseller The Secret Life of Bees into a movie. Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Joe Pichirallo, who followed the project from Fox Searchlight to Focus Features (where David Gordon Green was attached) to Will Smith's Overbrook production company and back to Fox Searchlight again, doggedly kept the project alive when it seemed like nobody wanted to do it.

Of course The Secret Life of Bees breaks all the conventions of what's deemed commercial these days: it's period (60s South Carolina) and it's about smart, cultured African-American women (not a low-brow urban comedy), although the lead is a white teenager (Dakota Fanning). The film could easily turn into yet another well-intentioned, inspirational heart-tugger (like Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters or Akeelah and the Bee) that earns rave reviews but still fails to build into a crossover hit.

So why did Fox Searchlight finally step up? First, because the book was a huge bestseller, there's a core femme demo to count on. Second, the women at the Fox specialty division loved the project and were willing to roll up their sleeves and push it. When marketing chief Nancy Utley throws her weight behind a pic, it usually gets made.

Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love and Basketball) adapted the book and directed the movie, which stars Fanning as 14-year-old girl who seeks more info about the mystery of her mother's death. She leaves her father (Paul Bettany) and turns up with her babysitter (Jennifer Hudson) at the home of a family of three sisters with a honey business: Queen Latifah. Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) and singer Alicia Keys, who delivers a song for the closing credits. It's 1964, during the Civil Rights movement.

Searchlight will be targeting two under-served audiences: African-Americans and women. One reason movies aimed at women are so risky is that they depend so much on execution. Searchlight is fanning the flames in Toronto, where The Secret Life of Bees will debut on September 5 in advance of its October 17 opening on 1200 or so screens. Here's the new trailer:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]

Looks like a change of tone, pace and style with DreamWorks Animation's latest, Monsters vs. Aliens. When earth is invaded by a bunch of indestructable E.T.s, the President and his top advisers hide out in the situation room trying to hatch a defense plan. Their best idea: Unleash the monsters they've captured over the years. Sounds like a recipe for Mars Attacks-style zaniness, with a nod to such '50s classics as Godzilla and Attack of the 50-Foot-Woman. While it lasts (or until DWA can post the official version), MovieTrailerTalk.com has a leaked teaser online.

{Posted by David S. Cohen}

Are stories about the struggle against racism in sports in the 1950s and 60s turning into the male equivalent of chick flicks? And can't today's crusading fimmakers find something current to make movies about?

U's trailer for The Express caught my eye and hit on a pet peeve.

When I was a script reader, I'd tell the companies I read for "Don't send me chick flicks, you know, 'How to Make an American Quilt During a Weekend at the Lake With Boys on the Side.' It's not that I hate them, but I don't watch them, I don't really get them, and I don't think I'd know a good one if I read one.'"

But hey, I'm a guy, I get sports movies. I also trace some of my earliest memories to the days of the civil rights movement in Illinois and Kentucky, so I enjoy stories about that time. But I'm getting tired of movies that put the two together.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]

It's about time: Just as hand-drawn animation is going out of style, Disney finally gives us an African-American princess. But I have no clue what to make of this trailer. Others can have a field day with the P.C. issues raised. Me, I just don't see the charm of this scene, meant to set the tone for the movie: A toon princess has second thoughts about kissing a frog. Doesn't that violate all the unwritten rules of the Disney universe, as parodied so well in last year's Enchanted? Now that animation has gone post-modern, does that mean it can't go back?

(Hat tip to Zap2It's Dan Fienberg for unearthing the trailer.)

Judging from Comic-Con, vampires and werewolves of all shapes and sizes are on the rise.

Besides the romantic vampire phenom Twilight and the sexy HBO-targeted True Blood, a host of other vampire movies were on display at the Con.

Greek production designer and creature maven Patrick Tatopoulos has taken over the Underworld franchise, heading into prequel territory to provide equal time for the werewolves in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, starring a well-buffed, long-maned Michael Sheen (The Queen) as a werewolf in love with a sword-wielding, horse-riding, warrior vampire, Rhona Mitra (Doomsday), the daughter of vampire overlord Bill Nighy. "The last two stories were through the eyes of the vampires, in the air," said Tatopoulos. "This is about earth, a love story and quest for freedom."

"I'm a vampire, I'm a zombie and a squid," said Nighy. "How many people do you know can make that claim?"

Some of the fans actually booed a trailer showing Noah Wyle as a gentle librarian who falls for a sexy vampire in Jonathan Frake's The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice, basically a Something Wildish romantic comedy for TNT. The sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe looked pretty warmed over, too. “You’ll never grow old, you’ll never die and you’ll never know fear again,” one vampire tells a new recruit. Also not something I will ever see is Quarantine, a 2009 Screen Gems horror flick that traps a bunch of terrified people inside a tenement which has been infected by rabid vampire/werewolf attackers. It's done Cloverfield-style, and we're looking at the videotape. Or not.

X-Men's Wolverine is a kind of mutant superhero werewolf, right?

Hugh Jackman brought down the house when he popped into the Con, surprising the denizens of Hall H with a remarkable amount of energy for someone who had been on a plane from Australia, having just wrapped the X-Men spin-off, Origins Wolverine. It's his first visit with an X-Men movie, he said. Impulsively, Jackman jumped into the audience and greeted Wolverine comics creator Len Wein. "I have to shake your hand, buddy," he said. Without your pen I wouldn't have a career."

The movie is due May 1, 2009, based on a script by David Benioff. "The movie is big, it's action packed," Jackman said. "If I can describe the Wolverine movie in two words: It's badass." He added, "You're going to see a lot of berserker rage."

Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman and Jim Gianapulos were in the house as they screened some footage of Jackman and Liev Schreiber pitted against one another in training as they learn to control their powers. Gambit (Friday Night Light's Taylor Kitsch) was also unveiled. After the panel, Jackman flew off across the Pacific again, this time to Japan, for a vacation.

Yes, having Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London) do prosthetic make-up for The Wolfman is a good thing. CG will be used for the transitions, Baker admitted at the Hall H panel: “Something magical happens when you get an actor in good makeup, when he sees himself in the mirror, and says, ‘I’m the Wolfman.' This is an old-school gothic horror movie.”

“Everybody talks about how boring the makeup process is,” said Benicio del Toro, whose manager Rick Yorn sold Universal on this period remake of the Lon Chaney, Jr. classic, a fave of his client. “I loved watching him build the makeup for four hours. It’s about becoming. It’s exciting. The tough part is taking it off. That gets desperate.”

Even if del Toro is a genuine fan who argued for staying true to the original, the actor (as directed by last-minute helmer Joe Johnston) looks uncomfortable in 19th century tweeds as the estranged American son of Brit noble Anthony Hopkins and pursuer of corseted beauty Emily Blunt.

“I was running and screaming,” Blunt said. “I liked the whole idea of being a damsel in distress.”

“And I was chasing her,” said del Toro.

[Photo Jackman and Len Wein courtesy LA Times]

Click here for more photos from Comic-con

Posted by Peter Debruge
We interrupt this Comic-Con mania to bring you a sneak peek at Oliver Stone's "W." Could this be the most in-your-face political satire since Dr. Strangelove? See for yourself (click here if the video doesn't load):

According to Ain't It Cool News' Drew McWeeny (who found it first), the trailer wasn't supposed to break until Access Hollywood on Monday night. But the quality of this upload is so sharp, it's gotta be an inside job.

In case the powers that be yank it down before you get a chance to see the teaser, it opens with Josh Brolin as GWB doing a drunken table dance at a bar, while James Cromwell (as GHWB) sternly lectures him, "If I remember correctly, you didn't like the sporting goods job. Working in the investment firm wasn't for you either, or the oil rig job. You didn't exactly finish up with flying colors in the Air National Guard, junior. What are you cut out for? Partying? Chasing tail? Driving drunk? What do you think you are, a Kennedy? You're a Bush -- act like one!"

The montage featured beneath daddy's disappointed voiceover features college drinking games (or fraternity initiation perhaps), womanizing, a stint in the slammer, gambling and drunk driving -- and those are just the antics the MPAA allows studios to feature in a green-band trailer.

"What drove George W. Bush from here..." ("You want an ass-whipping?" the older Bush threatens when things get rowdy between father and son around the house) "...to here?" the trailer speculates, cutting to a shot of a salt-and-pepper-haired Brolin with his feet up on the desk of the Oval Office.

And as if the irony weren't thick enough already, it closes with a montage of the cast playing W's inner circle accompanied by the song "What a Wonderful World."

Shots of the ensemble after the jump...

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Now that the Watchmen trailer has hit the web, giving us a tantalizing look at the film's visual effects and overall style, here's a tidbit about how those wicked-cool Dr. Manhattan effects were created. Billy Crudup appears in the trailer as Jon Osterman, who becomes a superbeing after a laboratory accident. (Shades of Bruce Banner!) For his post-accident scenes as Dr. Manhattan, Crudup is replaced in the film with a motion-capture CG version of himself. During filming on set, Crudup acted opposite his co-stars, wearing a suit covered in blue LEDs, so he would give off an otherworldly glow in real life, just as Dr. Manhattan does in the movie.

Posted by Peter Debruge
The Body of Lies trailer just hit the web, and it's hard to make much of the movie at this point. I mean, for all the quotable one-liners William Monahan gave us in The Departed, they simply can't seem to find a catch phrase suitable for the trailer (benefit of the doubt: for all we know, the best lines could very well be punctuated with expletives).

One thing we can conclude is that makeup artists have no trouble aging 44-year-old Russell Crowe (but we knew that already from The Insider), but no matter how hard they try, they simply can't make Leonardo DiCaprio look his age (33). This one's directed by Ridley Scott, and from the limited taste we get here, the look leans pretty heavily toward kid brother Tony's 2001 thriller Spy Game. This project marks the first lead cinematographer credit in 26 years for longtime second unit d.p. Alexander Witt (Gladiator, Casino Royale).

What do the movies Wanted and Eagle Eye have in common? They're fish-out-of-water scenarios that posit that an everyday schmuck --James McAvoy in one, Shia LaBeouf in the other--gets caught up in something exciting and scary involving a lot of action and danger and guns. It's the oldest trick in the book.

But the commercial recipe here is also to take a star with cred with the young male demo that opens movies (In Wanted's case, it's actually Angelina Jolie) and add them to the thriller genre mix with an older star (Wanted's Morgan Freeman, Eagle Eye's Billy Bob Thornton).

DreamWorks took this story idea by Steven Spielberg, got it written by John Glenn & Travis Adam Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, and when Spielberg didn't want to direct, added their Disturbia star-on-the-rise LaBeouf to the mix with his director, D. J. Caruso.

Here's the trailer for Eagle Eye, due in September.

DreamWorks should only dream that Eagle Eye does as well as Wanted--a great match of strong narrative and fab visual style that raises it above the ordinary--otherwise it's just another formula thriller.

Diane English's long-awaited remake of The Women looks quite close to the 1939 original, with Eva Mendes in the Joan Crawford role. And there are absolutely no men in it. And Candice Bergen is in it too, natch.

For those of you who can't wait for new Sarah Connor Chronicles, James Cameron's Avatar, or the currently filming Terminator sequel starring Christian Bale, I offer you King of Kong meets The Terminator, or King of Kong 2:

Peter Bart reports that Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise have begun the long-planned reshoots on Valkyrie. Here's the trailer:

In the wake of the Sex and the City boxoffice juggernaut, a lot of people are going to be speculating about which upcoming chick flicks are going to ride a new wave of interest in women's pics.

Truth is, most romantic comedies are not Big Event pics like Sex and the City--which is an escapist sexy entertaining movie that celebrates what it is to be a woman. How often does that come our way?

In fact, the movie version of the HBO series (which still draws decent numbers in reruns, years later) serves as an unwelcome reminder of how little the formula pablum served up by the studios satisfies the demanding femme demo. In other words, Sex and the City got made because it was a hit HBO show, not because it fit into any of the usual Hollywood notions of what women want. And thus it is an anomaly.

Which is not to say that I'm bitching about the trailer below, for He's Just Not That Into You, which at least boasts a strong ensemble cast led by Jennifer Anniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson. So you tell me: will this one be boffo at the b.o.?

Trying their very hardest to make Brideshead Revisited look livelier than its 26-year-old PBS counterpart, Miramax has assembled a pulse-quickening trailer for the latest adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel, this one starring Matthew Goode in the Jeremy Irons part. Hold on to your teacups!

Apple has the trailer in all its hi-def glory, but YouTube makes it easy to watch here: