The third and final trailer for the upcom­ing The Dark Knight Rises, Christo­pher Nolan’s ulti­mate install­ment in his mas­sively suc­cess­ful Bat­man fran­chise, was released late last night by Warner Bros, trig­ger­ing huge ‘Holy freakin’ crap!!!” reac­tions on Twitt­ter and other net­work­ing sites imme­di­ately. Rightly so, because this is the most awe­some trailer I’ve seen in ages and promises a spec­tac­u­lar film, to say the least.

The Dark Knight Rises  takes place eight years after the epic con­clu­sion of 2009’s The Dark Knight, where Bat­man (Chris­t­ian Bale, repris­ing his role), shunned and regarded as a dan­ger­ous enemy by the city of Gotham, must nev­er­the­less return to pro­tect its cit­i­zens from the pow­er­ful ter­ror­ist Bane (Tom Hardy).

Join­ing new­comer Hardy is Anne Hath­away, whose slinky Cat­woman is promi­nently fea­tured in this trailer, as well as Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The famil­iar faces of Mor­gan Free­man, Michael Caine, and Garry Old­man also all reap­pear. There’s also a new and improved, appar­ently flight-enabled Bat­mo­bile (Bat­jet? Batchop­per? Help me out here, geeks) which, mind you, “is no car.” Super!

For­get The Avengers com­ing out in less than four days, The Dark Knight Rises looks ter­rific and this trailer is refresh­ingly ele­gant and care­fully restrained. Nolan really should get at least nom­i­nated for an Oscar.Best super­hero film ever, best movie of the year? Maybe. What­ever it is, if you want me July 20th I’m in a movie theater.

An inter­na­tional trailer has been released for the upcom­ing Prometheus, which only serves — in all of its nearly 3-minute-long glory —  to pump me up even more for the highly-anticipated sci-fi block­buster, which will be released in the US, the UK, and other coun­tries June 1st. We get to see some glimpses at aliens!

Rid­ley Scott’s newest project has been stir­ring up excite­ment for quite a while now, with many still won­der­ing the con­nec­tion this has to 1989’s Alien (which was also directed by Scott, of course) for with Prometheus shares extremely sim­i­lar sto­ry­lines, char­ac­ters, and even visu­als — though in this video, I also got an Avatar–esque vibe from all the mas­sive space­ships descend­ing and so forth.

In Prometheus, “a team of explor­ers dis­cover a clue to the ori­gins of mankind on Earth, lead­ing them on a jour­ney to the dar­ket cor­ners of the uni­verse. There, they must fight a ter­ri­fy­ing bat­tle to save the future of the human race.” Char­l­ize Theron head­lines an intrigu­ing cast which includes Noomi Rapace (who played Lis­beth Salan­der in the Swedish The Girl With the Dragon Tat­too), Michael Fass­ben­der, Idris Elba, and Guy Pearce.

“These are images of archae­l­og­i­cal digs all around the Earth. Ancient civ­i­liza­tions that shared no contact…and yet. The same pic­togram in every last one.”

“It’s a starmap.”

“No. Not a starmap. An imi­ta­tion.”

“From whom?”

Steve Kloves, the screen­writer who adapted J.K Rowling’s beloved Harry Pot­ter nov­els and helped turn them into a mas­sively suc­cess­ful fran­chise of the sort never seen before, may have found his new project.

Yes, it’s another book adap­ta­tion, but the sim­i­lar­i­ties end there. Accord­ing to Vari­ety News, Kloves is in early talks to pen a live-action adap­ta­tion of Rud­yard Kipling’s clas­sic novel, The Jun­gle Book. The film would be pro­duced by Warner Bros., the same stu­dio behind all the Harry Pot­ter movies.

The Jun­gle Book, about a boy who grows up in the wild jun­gle reared by wolves, was most famously incar­nated on the big screen in 1967 by Dis­ney, who turned it into a hit ani­mated musi­cal com­edy. There were other live-action verisons, of course, but they aren’t exactly well-known to say the least.

Kloves, before tack­ling the Harry Pot­ter films — which occu­pied nearly a dozen years of his career — wrote 1989’s The Fab­u­lous Baker Boys, star­ring Jeff and Beau Bridges as well as Michelle Pfeif­fer, and which was nom­i­nated for mul­ti­ple Oscars but no nod for Kloves him­self. He finally got his Oscar (and a Golden Globe) nom­i­na­tion with 2000’s Won­der Boys.

This news arti­cle was also posted over at World News Today‘s film page.

The Wein­stein Co. released first images today from their upcom­ing Decem­ber 25 release Django Unchained, show­ing Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz get­ting their West­ern swag­ger on in full cos­tume and appar­ent badass atti­tude (above), as well as a look at a bearded, cigarette-chomping, hammer-wielding Leonardo DiCaprio (below).

In the epic slave drama, Foxx plays Django, a slave who turns aveng­ing gun­slinger after he meets a Ger­man bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Waltz). After buy­ing Django his free­dom — to ini­tially make him a deputy bounty hunter —  King trains him and helps track down and res­cue his beloved wife (Kerry Wash­ing­ton) who’s been sold to cruel plan­ta­tion owner Calvin Cad­die (Leonardo DiCaprio).

If that doesn’t sound like a win­ning film, you also have Samuel L. Jack­son, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Jus­ti­fied’s Wal­ton Gog­gins round­ing up a stel­lar cast — plus the fact that that just in case you some­how didn’t know, Django Unchained is writ­ten and directed by none other that Quentin Taran­tino. Sounds very promising.

Tarantino’s last film, 2009’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­terds, won the famed film­maker Oscar nom­i­na­tions for Best Pic­ture, Best Direc­tor, and Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, as well as an actual golden stat­uette. That was for one of the film’s stars, which was none other than Waltz.

Django Unchained’s early Oscar chances? I would ten­ta­tively put my money on pretty much all the noms Inglou­ri­ous Bas­terds received three years ago.

This news arti­cle was also posted over at World News Today’s film page.

 “So ya gonna walk toward that cam­era, it’s gonna look great in 3D…”

Mar­tin Scors­ese is very much in love with 3D tech­nol­ogy fol­low­ing the Oscar-winning Hugo, and he made it show dur­ing a Cin­ema­Con panel — with fel­low direc­tor Ang Lee, who’s pro­mot­ing his own 3D Decem­ber release, The Life of Pi- yes­ter­day.

Accord­ing to The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, when asked by film critic Todd McCarthy which films he would’ve liked to shoot in 3D, his reply was frank: “I would have prac­ti­cally done all my films in 3D,” Scors­ese replied. 

It’s some­what eas­ier to imag­ine some of the director’s most recent works, such as The Departed and Shut­ter Island, in 3D — but Taxi Dri­ver’s Robert de Niro cruis­ing down the dirty New York streets, bathed in red neon light and head­lights from fel­low taxis, jump­ing out at the screen at you? Hey, if any­one could make it work, it’s prob­a­bly Scorsese.

It’s pretty safe to say that 2011 was far from being Pixar’s ban­ner year. Cars 2 gar­nered large box office rev­enue but mostly mixed reviews from crit­ics, and most dis­ap­point­ingly — break­ing the ani­ma­tion giant’s streak — yielded no Oscar nom­i­na­tion at all, leav­ing them empty-handed at the end of awards season.

But that lit­tle defeat looks to be already in Pixar’s rearview mir­row, as they are bounc­ing back this year with the highly-anticipated — come on, it looks ter­rific - Brave, out June 22 in the States. And now we have a lit­tle more light on what incom­ing in the next few years too.

As Deadline.com reports, at the Cin­ema­con Con­ven­tion yes­ter­day in Las Vegas, Pixar con­firmed a date for The Good Dinosaur, which deals with what hap­pens “if the cat­a­clysmic aster­oid that for­ever changed life on Eart actu­ally missed the planet com­pletely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct?” The com­edy, to be released May 30th 2014, will be directed by Up co-director Bob Peter­son (along with Peter Sohn). I’m the guy over here in the cor­ner freak­ing out already because it sounds so good.

Pixar also announced two more projects to be pro­duced with in part­ner­ship with Dis­ney, both unti­tled for the time being. Toy Story 3’s Lee Unkrich will direct one revolv­ing around the Mex­i­can hol­i­day Dias de la Muer­tos, with no release date con­firmed yet; the other, to be released June 19, 2015, comes from Up and Mon­sters Inc. direc­tor Pete Doc­tor and will “take you to a place that every­one knows, but no one has ever seen: the world inside the human mind.”

Wow.

John Hillcoat’s upcom­ing Law­less, for­merly known as The Wettest County and based on Matt Bondurant’s mem­oir The Wettest County in the World, has released the first highly-anticipated trailer. And it looks pretty damn cool.

In a gritty and action-packed gang­ster tale, Shia Laboeuf and Tom Hardy star as two broth­ers in Depression-era Vir­ginia who become out­laws after author­i­ties threaten their boot­leg­ging business.

The film, which is pre­mier­ing in com­pe­ti­tion at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val this May, also stars the always-lovely Jes­sica Chas­tain, as well as Gary Old­man, Mia Wasikowska, and Guy Pearce. Me likey.

Fair warn­ing: This review may con­tain slight (and, hon­estly, unim­por­tant) spoil­ers for those who haven’t seen the film in ques­tion. Now keep on reading.

There’s actu­ally a promi­nent scene well into Hugo (2011) where two chil­dren are excit­edly por­ing over a book about the ear­li­est days of cin­ema. Totally and admirably engrossed, the duo read out names and gaze upon pho­tos from clas­sics such as the Lumiére broth­ers’ Arrival of a Train at the Sta­tion and Work­ers Leav­ing the Lumiére Fac­tory to George Méliès’ A Voy­age to the Moon and many more in between. And we actu­ally see these films come to life in front of our eyes, allow­ing us to expe­ri­ence the new­found won­der and awe these kids feel watch­ing the movies.

How can some­one like me, a self-professed cinephile who has a deep pas­sion for any­thing cin­ema, not appre­ci­ate any of the won­der­ful inten­tions that direc­tor Mar­tin Scors­ese has built Hugo around? This 1930s-set fan­tasy has been hyped as a children’s film; in real­ity it’s a lov­ingly con­structed, fan­tas­ti­cally detailed ode to Méliès and other film­mak­ers of his era that’s been wrapped in another sweet, fan­ci­ful yet slightly over­done film that sounds much more appeal­ing to fam­i­lies and, prob­a­bly, to stu­dio heads too.

I have to men­tion, Hugo is an often­times breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful film, there’s no deny­ing that. Telling the story of Hugo Cabret (Asa But­ter­field), a young orphan boy liv­ing in a train sta­tion try­ing to fix a bro­ken automa­ton (that will even­tu­ally lead him to Méliès’ path), the film opens with a sin­gle unbro­ken shot of a Paris sky­line and zooms into the Gare Mont­par­nasse, all the way until we see a boy star­ing into the cam­era from inside a giant clock. With plenty of help from the gor­geous con­tri­bu­tions of cin­e­matog­ra­phy Bob Richard­son and pro­duc­tion designer Dante Fer­etti — both of which won Oscars for this film — you are drawn into this fab­u­lously rich visual world which must have looked damn good in 3D on the big screen.

When we first see Méliès — trust me, Hugo is a film about the guy, so we can jump right to him — he’s a grouchy and bit­ter old man played by Ben Kings­ley, who runs a toy shop in the sta­tion and who catches Hugo steal­ing from him. Years of finan­cial decrepi­tude and the fact that after the Great War, no one wanted to see his films any­more (or now can, actu­ally, since the neg­a­tives prob­a­bly don’t exist any­more), has made him unwill­ing to remem­ber his film­mak­ing days and makes him even angrier when the inquis­i­tive Hugo, along with his own book-loving niece Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) stirs up some memories.

You don’t have to be a film fanatic who knows Méliès’ movies or the lav­ish his­tory of cin­ema to appre­ci­ate Hugo. In fact, that’s prob­a­bly how Scors­ese wanted you to expe­ri­ence this film and Méliès’ too, with an air of some­what unpar­al­leled naiveté and glo­ri­ously frag­ile inno­cence like Hugo and Isabelle on the screen in front of us. What I would have pre­ferred, though, was if this film was more straight to the point in deliv­er­ing Scorsese’s mes­sage and love for films, because all that extra whim­si­cal “magic” added on doesn’t hold any­thing on the real magic that this film tells us to celebrate.

My rat­ing: 3 1/2 Stars (Out of 5)