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To be honest, most times, I hate the “teaser trailers” that show nothing more than a new logo. But hey, this one shows the Enterprise under construction, so it almost doesn’t count as a teaser. Yes, this is the only big movie that I know about for this Christmas: a Star Trek movie that predates the original series and contains a cast never before seen on TV or film. Plus, it’s written and produced by the guys behind MI:III and Lost. It might be pretty exciting, but we’ll only know in 11 months.

Watch the Star Trek teaser trailer at the official site.

This past weekend in theaters before I Am Legend there was the exclusive preview for The Dark Knight, next summer’s sequel to Batman Begins. The trailer has now surfaced online, and it’s pretty exciting. Here’s what my friends had to say:

Josh: preview = awesome

Joe: dude yes!
yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeess!!!!!

David: uh huh
2008 is finally on its way
about stinking time

Colleen: DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who knows? It might be a decent movie. In my book, it’s going to be surprising if it beats Wall-E for best movie of 2008, but it’s a bit early to say for sure..

A couple days ago a new movie trailer surfaced online from director Wes Anderson, director of fine films such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore. (Also, if you’re a fan but not a longtime reader of my blog, don’t miss the commercial he did.) The trailer of note is for his fall release, The Darjeeling Limited. It looks like a signature Wes Anderson flick starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman. In this film, the three leads seem to be brothers who are reunited and go on an emotional journey to India together. It should be fun.

In more industry-specific news, it seems that this new release will be distributed by Fox Searchlight and not Touchstone Pictures like all of his earlier films. Also, Anderson has had an upcoming project of animated film of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which will apparently be his next release in 2009. That should be interesting.

In more homely news, a couple friends noticed the release date for The Darjeeling Limited is September 29th or somewhere around there. Many of my friends who currently live around the country will be in Indiana for the weekend, so maybe we should have an excursion to the local theater together?

My sister asked what I thought about Ratatouille, so I thought I’d give my thoughts. Overall, I wouldn’t say it was the best Pixar movie ever, but it was definitely up to the Pixar quality.

Of course, it looked amazing. Paris looked exactly like Paris. Everything had those little touches that you’d barely notice but make it that much more life-like. On one of the web featurettes they talked about how they vastly improved the movement and rendering models for humans, and it definitely showed as people were more detailed and expressive than ever. Most of the time, I thought the animation looked so realistic I almost forgot I was watching an animated movie.

I have to admit, I thought the idea of a rat cooking sounded a bit odd. And, at least at first, it was a bit awkward to watch Linguini, a boring young man who didn’t really want to have a life, to get poked and prodded by a rat into becoming the best cook in town. I’m not really sure that I enjoyed that the point is again that really PC-style “everyone is beautiful” and “everyone should be accepted for their talents, no matter what they look like,” because it’s become so clichéd.

Overall, though, it was lots of fun. I definitely enjoyed the scenes in the kitchen, especially from the perspective of a rat scurrying about. Also, I enjoyed the character of the cynical, snobby food critic and his monologue near the end which really will ring true for anyone who is a critic of one sort or another. I think you should definitely check the movie out. Seriously. It’s definitely the best of the year so far.

If you had asked me in January what one movie I was looking forward to this year, I may have thought about it for a minute, but there’s no doubt the answer would be Ratatouille. Some people have asked why that is, so here’s my reasons:

• It looks funny, exciting, and really tasty.
• It’s about a rat who becomes the greatest chef in Paris. I mean, how does that work?
• It’s a Pixar movie. Their track record of amazing (or at least very good) films includes Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars.
• It’s written and directed by Brad Bird, the guy who wrote and directed The Incredibles, one of the best movies of the last five years.
• Even the critics like it, much like many Pixar movies before this one.
• Finally, just watch this movie trailer. Use the one below or watch it in better quality:
  
  Doesn’t it look beautiful (and even on YouTube)?

I’m a Pixar fanatic because I love quality animated movies, so that’s all I really need to get me there. If you live in the neighborhood, I’m going to see it tonight (Saturday night), so give me a call if you want to join us. It should be a great time.

Movie marketing and merchandising is a rather touchy subject for one. One of the reasons I really don’t care for DreamWorks Animation is it’s marketing. For example, every time a Shrek movie comes out, you see that annoying green ogre on every box of cereal, bag of chips, and box of candy for three months before. When it finally comes, you feel like you have to go just to get him out of your head.

Pixar and Disney do marketing, but it’s much less a barrage of the senses from all sides. Also, it’s tasteful. Today I was a the Mall of America, and a couple months ago they added large video screens to the tops of the mall directory stands in the middle of the halls. For a while they promoted the Phase II Expansion, but recently they’ve been running content from CBS Outdoor, including ads and some CBS network content. Well, anyways, today they were running almost non-stop the Ratatouille full trailer. I like that. It’s not plastering the ads everywhere, but it’s hitting you softly with actual real content that will show you what the movie is about.

Which is better? A movie that’s desperate for your attention or a movie that just is offered for your viewing pleasure? Often, you’ll find that the overhyped have little substance but the well-marketed actually are enjoyable and meaningful, I think.

UPDATE: Well, apprently nobody got this post, so I’m going to try again with a bit more context. It’s probably still not as fun if you have to explain it. First of all, my boss seems to love almost every action movie (except maybe the ones I like the most). He often asks me what I think of the new movie that came out the past weekend because, undoubtedly, he’s already seen it. So, when he came up to me this morning, I wasn’t too surprised he had seen Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the latest action-superhero B-list movie. As you may be able to tell from the conversation below, he was rather surprised that I was not excited about the movie, and maybe even a bit more surprised that I unashamedly gave him a hard time for even thinking I’d like the movie. See, I told you it’d be boring if I had to explain it.

My Boss: So, Dan, did you see the Fantastic Four movie?
Me: (indignantly) No!
My Boss: Dan, I’m surprised you’d respond in that way.
Me: (somewhat condescendingly) That’s too bad.
My Boss: Haha, nice.

My Boss: (as I was walking away) Yeah, well, it was mediocre.

I wrote a post on inReview.net about this summer’s movies. Check it out:

Summer is fast approaching as the last couple days have been in the 70s even here in Minnesota. No doubt, as there is every summer, there will be lots of fluff to keep us entertained, not the least of which is the end of the movie hat trick. With new episodes of Pirate of the Carribean, Shrek, and Spider-Man, Hollywood hopes to bring everybody (and their friends) back for another million or so. Plus, I’ll outline the others not to miss this summer. Here’s my thoughts on this summer’s movies.

Read the entire article.

To be honest, last year I went to some blockbusters just to get into an air-conditioned building (well, and to hang out with friends). We’ll see what actually happens in this summer’s movie watching.

So, well, this week was quite the exciting week for movies and, well, Lisa asked.

On Sunday I received the DVDs of A Mighty Wind, Waiting For Guffman, and Best In Show for my birthday and we watched A Mighty Wind that night. These are a bunch of fake documentaries where the actors are playing realistic yet still over-the-top characters. A Mighty Wind is a documentary that shows a folk reunion concert of these 60s folk artists. Really funny music and really funny characters ensue.

Friday night the guys went to see Children of Men at Coffman on the U of M campus. The video quality was, at best, painful – but the movie itself was amazing. It was an amazingly thought-provoking movie, although it definitely wasn’t easy to watch.

Last night after most went to bed I watched Robin Hood: Men In tights. It was the first time that I had seen it in years, and well, Mel Brooks always has some great (but sometimes crude) jokes.

This evening we went to see TMNT, the new animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. It was pretty good. I thought the animation was pretty nice and it had a pretty good amount of action. It definitely wasn’t the best movie of the week, though.

The guys over at The Digital Bits have been covering the wide world of DVD for a whole decade now. I’ve always enjoyed that they find out the advance word on DVDs. Plus, their in-depth reviews tell me all that I want to know – if the video and audio quality is good and how many special features are on the disc.

This week they announced their yearly awards for the DVD format, The Bitsys. This year, of course, they also branch out to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray related awards. It looks like there’s great stuff here: I want to see the beautiful new copy of Seven Samurai from Criterion. Bill Hunt has talked up the extended cut of Kingdom of Heaven a lot too – apparently it’s a well-made movie that suffered from excessive cutting for theaters. Of course, they rightfully moan about George Lucas and Star Wars as well. Plus, for the kid at heart in you, there’s even an award category for “Best DVD – Retro Saturday Morning”. I mean, who doesn’t want The Animaniacs on DVD?