Sony Pictures posted this trailer for After Earth, a new science fiction film starring Will and Jaden Smith. I love both of those actors, and the trailer looks interesting, although they may have to stretch the timeline for the premiss a bit to get that state of affairs by 2066. I do have two things that concern me about it though. First, it is being filmed on the new Sony F65 4K digital camera. The concern with that is the camera is brand new, with only 400 made in the entire world so far, and this movie is going to be their training class for the technology. The results could go either way, but my own experience is new technology generally comes with a learning curve, so I would expect the second or third film after this one will be the one where it really is used to good effect. My other concern is that M. Night Shyamalan is involved, and I have never managed to stay awake more than a third of the way through any movie of his I have ever tried to see. Perhaps this one will hold my attention a bit better than the others.
Just in case somebody managed to miss the news, The Hobbit hits the big screen this weekend! I don’t need to mention this is based on an amazing book of the same name written by J.R.R. Tolkien, nor that it is the prequil to Lord Of The Rings, both as a book and series of movies. In fact, I didn’t need to even do this blog entry at all, everybody already knows all of this… but just in case somebody missed it, now you know. See you in the theater!
The latest teaser trailer from this franchise is just as amazing as you knew it would be, and I am so ready for Star Trek Into Darkness. And Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain has so nailed Picard’s voice, channeling him for a whole new layer of New Universe twistedness.
There are several choices this weekend, although none of them are the action/adventure I tend to look forward to at this time of year. Bad Kids Go to Hell is The Breakfast Club meets The Ring, and there is something about the trailer that makes me think that was exactly how it was pitched to get the funding to make it. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, this is a comedy/thriller.
Dino Time is a time travel jaunt into the world of T-Rex and friends, and the kids who make the ride don’t have much time to figure out how to get home again. The animation looks quite good in this joint US/Korean production, with CJ Entertainment doing the art and story, and the US supplying some quality voice talent. I have found at least one source that believes the release date will be January 1st and another from a few days ago listed as Unknown, but most everybody else is pointing to this Friday.
The only genre I could find this week was Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, the fourth outing for this franchise. I thought the original film had a unique premise and was quite well done, but every entry since seems to be a formula driven way to take home a pay check for the core cast and crew. This is probably a good weekend to see something you may have missed in recent weeks, like Wreck It Ralph or Rise of the Guardians, both of which have now been short listed for an Oscar nomination.
21 animated films in different categories have been submitted for Oscar consideration, according to an article in the Hollywood Reporter. The offerings include computer generated, hand drawn, and stop motion productions from a variety of sources, which pretty much covers your choices of how to create animations. The Short Animated Films category alone had 56 works being looked at, which was narrowed down to a short list 10 films long, and will probably be trimmed further to result in 3 to 5 actual nominees in that category. I haven’t seen many of them at all, except for John Kahrs’ Paperman which impressed me no end. It was the short piece just before Wreck-It Ralph in the theaters, which is itself under consideration. Other contenders include Studio Ghibli’s Up on Poppy Hill, Disney’s Brave, and Peter Ramsey’s Rise of the Guardians. The number of quality animation pieces just keeps growing year after year, and there are some wonderful films in the race this time around; I can’t wait to see who gets to take home the statues.