You can see the trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/. You want Trailer 2. (Trailer 1 was the one that was attached to 'Cloverfield' earlier this year.)
As Kirk and Spock, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto respectively seem to fill their roles well, but the idea of assembling the Enterprise on Earth seems ludicrous. The ship isn't meant to land on planets, so wouldn't you want to assemble all the pieces in space and zero gravity?
One very geeky positive is the background of the shot where Amanda (Winona Ryder) is holding baby Spock while stroking the face of her Vulcan husband Sarek. Freeze-frame it and tell me those rock formations in the background aren't the same ones Williams Shatner fought the Gorn in in the orignal series' "Arena."
Early word has come from retailers that Disney is planning to bring a Robert Rodriguez double-header to Blu-ray this October, with the simultaneous bow of the cult hits 'Sin City' and 'From Dusk 'Til Dawn.'
Long-awaited by Blu-ray fans, both Rodriguez's 'From Dusk 'Til Dawn' and 'Sin City' (the latter co-directed by Frank Miller with "special guest director" Quentin Tarantino) have finally been given a retail date of October 21. (Both titles were previously-released on standard DVD in extensive special edition versions.)
As Disney has yet to formally announce either title, there are no tech specs or supplemental details as of yet. As always, we'll keep you posted.
Can it be? Is HBO's Band of Brothers finally coming to Blu-ray Disc?
According to a quick news update over at HomeMediaMagazine.com, Warner Home Video announced at the Entertainment Merchants Association conference its intention to release Band of Brothers on Blu-ray sometime this fall.
We've had plenty of Band of Brothers Blu-ray false alarms in the past that have made the coveted series high-def appearance into a storied myth. Each times hopes are raised, the lack of an official street date sends them crashing back down.
This time it looks to be real deal, especially considering the timing and huge industry-wide Blu-ray push set to begin in the third quarter. If it is, you better start saving those pennies now. If pricing for a half-season of The Sopranos is any indication, this monster won't come cheap.
At a press event Monday, Disney unveiled ambitious plans to bring BD-Live to all its future Blu-ray titles, beginning with the October debut of 'Sleeping Beauty.'
During a media kick-off held in Hollywood, California, for the studio's first Platinum Edition Blu-ray release, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment previewed the extensive BD-Live features on 'Sleeping Beauty,' and outlined an initiative to make web-based interactivity a cornerstone of its high-def strategy.
"We are making our entrance grand," said studio president Bob Chapek. "Every subsequent Disney title will have BD Live. [This may] push the studios to reach new heights that have never been before imagined."
The studio's BD-Live plans encompass all future Walt Disney and Pixar theatrical and catalog titles, including the likely fourth-quarter blu-ray release of Pixar's 'Wall•E.'
#1 FLASH, AHH-AHH, HE'LL SAVE EVERYONE OF US!
With Iron Man showing that a movie can prominently feature a man being propelled into the heavens on a rocket, and make a bajillion dollars, it's apparently okay again to show a man inside a rocket being propelled into the heavens as well. As the winners of a studio bidding war, Sony Pictures announced this week their plans to revive Flash Gordon as a feature film franchise, bringing back the football star who travels to the planet Mongo, and helps a variety of exotic races fight against the evil Ming the Merciless. Flash Gordon started off in the 1930s as the star of comic strips and a series of extremely popular serials (basically a movie broken up into parts, shown before other movies back then), and was then being remade as a flamboyantly campy Queen-soundtrack-driven adventure (and box office flop) in 1980.
1. Gray's Sports Almanac, Back To The Future II (1989)
Objects don't come more pedestrian than the dull recitation of facts and figures comprising Gray's Sports Almanac—unless, of course, you have a time-traveling DeLorean, in which case it's a ticket to untold riches. Perpetually shortsighted when it comes to maintaining the space-time continuum, Marty McFly recognizes the chance to make his fortune with a few "sure thing" bets—an egregiously greedy plan, considering that his most recent tinkering with the fabric of time already bumped him up a couple of tax brackets—but he's shot down by the ever-conscientious Doc Brown, who once again warns the myopic Marty of the dire consequences inherent in toying with the past. Multigenerational bully Biff Tannen provides a more concrete illustration: He steals the almanac, the DeLorean, and Marty's plan, then returns to 1955 to give his teenage self the chance to rewrite his life. Never has so much hung in the balance over a mere collection of sports scores—except perhaps in a Martin Scorsese movie.
From the fabulous Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Tribune:
As Galactica Sitrep noted Thursday, an internet radio show, The Doctor and Mrs. Who, reported last night that up to three “Battlestar Galactica” TV movies may get made later this year. Several sources at the show confirm that those films are indeed being discussed right now.
Executives are now doing number-crunching for these proposed films, and any deals for these movies are far from done. However, it would make sense to make more “Battlestar” TV movies while the show’s creative team and actors are still all in one place, as it were.
Ryan further notes that series mastermind Ron Moore is currently writing the series finale, that as many as three movies could be made, and if the movies do get made they'll get made this summer.
I’m guessing the plan being bandied about is to air the movies this autumn, before the final 10 episodes of the series finally hit NBC-Universal’s SciFi Channel.
I’m also guessing the TV-movies will, like “Razor” and the soon-to-shoot Cylon-genesis project “Caprica,” serve as prequels to the current season-four storylines. Moore has, in a David Chase-like manner, repeatedly rejected the notion of continuing the “Galactica” story beyond its coming series finale.
Ryan's story also tells us a new set of webisode shorts will link the first and second halves of season four.
Read all of Ryan’s story on the matter here.
For all the creativity and innovation that goes into making (some) Hollywood films, there are also a lot of ideas that get recycled time and time again. I’m not referring to stock characters or the sequalitis that hits multiplexes every summer. I’m talking about the basic building blocks of storytelling that are ingrained in the movie-going experience.
Every once in a while, though, a film comes along that takes an assumption about how American movies are supposed to be made and changes it, sometimes resulting in something truly memorable. Producers who want to make a film that breaks one of the unwritten rules of motion pictures risk a lot – studios might not want to fund the film, theaters might not show it, audiences might not respond to it. The reward for taking the chance, though, is recognition for being a really interesting experiment, or, in some cases, taking your place among the greatest films ever made.
