First trailer for Danny Boyle’s 127 HOURS is suitably ominous

The always eclectic Danny Boyle has previously taken us to post-apocalyptic London, into the mind of an extremely rich child, and (my favourite) to the sun. This time, for 127 Hours, he’s taking us somewhere darker, as this first trailer indicates.

The footage assembled to create this teaser appears to have come from the opening minutes of the film, before the 127-hour ordeal actually begins, but it’s a good way to pull the rug out from under people who have no idea who Aron Ralston is.

Expect 127 Hours on 5 November 2010 if you live in America; international dates forthcoming.

Jessica Alba in Robert Rodriguez’s next film, unfortunately it’s not SIN CITY 2

After steaming up the screen in Sin City back in 2005, and likely (if the trailers are anything to go by) delivering more of the same in the upcoming Machete, the gentlest whisper of Jessica Alba working with indie director Robert Rodriguez again is enough to whip me into a frenzy.

The film? Spy Kids 4… oh. Shit.

There’s no denying Robert Rodriguez has found success as an action/genre filmmaker (El Marichi trilogy, Sin City, Planet Terror, From Dusk Till Dawn…), but where he’s really made his coin is with the flicks for the kidzzzzz. Especially the Spy Kids series.

He can churn those films out in a pinch and they often triple their production budget at the box office, home sales, rental and TV. The kids love ‘em, the studio enjoys the payday and I’m sure Robert doesn’t mind the chance to continue practicing his craft far away from the close eye of the big-wigs and taking home a hefty pay day for his Troublemaker Studios in the process.

Smart guy.

Smart enough to have the likes of Jessica Alba star in Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World, even. Confirmed by THR today, Alba will play stepmother to the brand new Spy Kids, because the original kids are now 23 and counting. Production on Spy Kids 4 is expected to start in late in September.

Impressive videos show behind-the-scenes of Cronenberg’s A DANGEROUS METHOD

Behind-the-scenes videos of films in production rarely get as thorough as this, but these clips of Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud and Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung on the set of David Cronnenberg‘s A Dangerous Method (via Slashfilm) are remarkably impressive. They’re captured from a German TV news report; presumably about local extras appearing in the film.

At least it’s not an ‘ET Exclusive’ with all the blasé music, glowing graphics and painful voice-overs. If you (like me) can’t understand a word they’re saying, you’ll still get the drift and it’s an incredibly close look at the characters this far away from a trailer. Very rare.

Robin took a look at the set photos, probably from the same press junket, which landed online last month.

A Dangerous Method isn’t slated for release until ‘sometime’ in 2011.

New UNSTOPPABLE poster Photoshops Danzel Washington and Chris Pine

Check out this new Unstoppable poster for up-to-date extreme close-ups of Danzel Washington and Chris Pine (Star Trek).

The movie is inspired by true events about a runaway train, hence the title and the dramatic sparks the typeface sits in. No other visual clues indicating ‘train’, though– it’s the second time ’round Tony Scott has directed Danzel in a movie about trains after 2009′s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 remake with John Travolta. In fact, that had a similar poster to this one. I’ll post them both below.

Robin ripped into Unstoppable‘s cookie-cutter trailer earlier this month.

Unstoppable hits U.S. screens 12 November, 2010.

First trailer for western-flavoured Aussie film RED HILL

Ex-Home And Away fellow Ryan Kwanton went on to star in the Twilight-for-adults American TV show True Blood; now he’s returned to home soil for a feature, opposite Steve Bisley. Can has modest international clout overcome Aussie flicks’ tendency to perform poorly at the box office?

Regardless of who’s in it and how much money it will make, the trailer for Red Hill is promising. The western-ish influencees in modern times recall No Country For Old Men, but the accents and locations are pure Australiana. Between this and Tomorrow, When The War Began, 2010 is looking like the Year of the Aussie Action Film.

Red Hill is due here on 2 December 2010; no international release dates have been set yet.

Frank Miller’s GUCCI GUILTY commercial starring Evan Rachel Wood and Chris Evans

Seems Frank Miller has found the format that helps his insistent graphic-novel-style work: 30 second commercials. This one is for Gucci Guilty and stars Evan Rachel Wood (The Wrestler) and Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) and will premiere on TV during the MTV Movie Awards in September.

The style will remind you of Sin City, which Robert Rodriguez wonderfully adapted from Miller’s popular graphic novel of the same name. While we waited patiently for Sin City 2 (if that’ll ever happen), Miller tried to kill us all by using the same style in The Spirit, which was a spectacular failure.

If you can ‘return to form’ in a 30 second commercial, I guess this is it, because I found it sexy, engaging and effective. Watch it embedded below.

Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks will star in EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

comingsoon reports that Oscar-winning A-listers Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are officially attached to star in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The screenplay was written by Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth, who has adapted the story from the Jonathan Safran Foer novel of the same name.

The story centres on an intelligent and quirky 9-year-old boy named Oskar who lost his father in 9/11. Years later, Oskar discovers a key in a vase that belonged to his father that inspires him to search Manhattan for information about the key.

Production is expected to start in January 2011 in New York.

My wife’s devoted to anything Sandra Bullock does (go figure) and she thinks Tom Hanks is adorable, so they’ve already got her as a shoe-in ticket buyer… well, that’s me actually. Anyway.. This really is some powerful billing and, based on the names alone, I’d expect it to push any other movie aside the weekend it opens. Given recent success from Bullock and past success of Hanks, could this be one of those drama-filled, performance driven projects the Academy loves?

New poster for De Niro, Norton, Jovovich drama STONE

Ahead of its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, JoBlo got an exclusive look at the new poster for Stone starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and a very raunchy Milla Jovovich. Re-teaming De Niro and Norton is enough to get me excited, but thankfully the trailer, released last month, was equally impressive.

It can be irritating getting excited over a movie that is only getting a limited released in the U.S. because it was an independent production, but here I am falling head over heels again for a film I’ll have to wait months to see in Australia.

Stone opens to limited screens in the U.S. from 8 October.

New pictures of old spies: RED images

Red has an impressive cast. If Bruce Willis or Helen Mirren don’t hook you, then odds are that John Malkovich and / or Morgan Freeman will. These are big actors — larger than life, you could say — and it’s about time they got to wear costumes and wield props to suit their stature.

All I know about Red is that it’s based on a comic book and the three-letter title stands for “Retired — Extremely Dangerous.” So I guess Red is the answer to all those Bourne and Bond films where the young folks get all the espionage-y action: time for the middle-agers to take a swing.

We get Red on 28 October 2010; UK gets it on 22 October; US gets it bright and early on 15 October.

images courtesy of Collider

(Click to embiggen)

Ouch: SCOTT PILGRIM’s box office fails to top even game-to-film duds

Reactions to Scott Pilgrim Vs The World have been generally positive. While I had mixed reactions myself, my overall impression was positive (full schizophrenic review here). With an army of internet-centric fans on his side, surely Pilgrim could gather enough loonies to make his money back. Right?

Wrong. Scott Pilgrim grossed a paltry $10 million in its opening weekend — half of that on opening night alone — to end up in fifth place for the weekend. Despite months of internet hype, fanboy evangelism, and a pair of likeable leads, the film flopped. Hard. Analysts predict that it won’t even make its $60 million budget back, which is bad news for Edgar Wright fans, as it’ll damage his money-earning reputation in the industry for the foreseeable future.

To add insult to injury, early-90s abomination Super Mario Bros., with Bob Hoskins, earned more on its opening weekend than Scott Pilgrim did. Heck, even Street Fighter, Hitman, Doom, and Max Payne outdid the Canadian superdweeb in their respective openings.

Video game adaptations are notoriously bad, and often flop (see: Max Payne, Hitman, Alone In The Dark, etc.), but Scott Pilgrim is actually rather good. In fact, it’s the only film on the following list that I’d recommend watching. It deserves to make its budget back at least, and we all thought, given the built-in audience, that it would.

I guess it’s hard to predict which films will sell like hotcakes, and which ones will Bob-omb (do ho ho!).

Also of interest, NPR looks at critics’ tendency to review Scott Pilgrim‘s audience rather than the film itself. I’ll admit I did a bit of that in my review, but I think I got away with it with use of irony (as in, look at these idiots! Oh no, I’m one of them). Full, embarrassing box office table below:

New EXPENDABLES poster makes body-counting a competitive sport

The Expendables has been out for over a week now. It dominated the US box office last weekend, taking $35 million and beating the stuffing out of Julia Roberts vehicle Eat Pray Love in the process. Perhaps in an effort to celebrate the film’s general awesomeness, or maybe to help drive sales even more, the following poster has been produced, though its officialness is dubious at best.

Also dubious is Arnie‘s absence from the body count. I’m sure he could easily double — possibly quadruple* — the gang’s cumulative total (*slight exaggeration). Nevertheless, the body count (as in, dead body count) is entertaining and informative, so cast an eye over it if you’d like.

It’s kind of embarrassing that Couture and Crews only have 2 kills to their name, each — not that I’d say that to their faces, of course. And what would the gang’s  Expendables kill count do to the total, I wonder?

The Expendables is currently in cinemas. Read what Jason thought about it here.

SKYLINE poster is filled with bodies, blue things

Following on from the money-shot in the film’s first teaser, Skyline‘s first poster focuses on the massive-spaceships-vacuuming-up-hapless-souls aspect of its story, hoping to get some jaws dropping in the process.

In my opinion, too many alien invasion movies is never enough; the idea itself is compelling and ominous to be endlessly entertaining. Stephen Hawking’s pessimistic assertion that any life more advanced than us will inevitably destroy us one way or another is (thankfully) yet to be tested, so a little vicarious what-iffery couldn’t hurt in the meantime.

Of course, the fact that the film is directed by the Brothers Strouse bodes ill for the project, but we’ll wait and see. After all, there is some perverse pleasure to be had in watching America get alternately blown up / invaded / flooded in Roland Emmerich‘s disaster films, so maybe Skyline will be entertaining in the same way.

Skyline is due in the States on 12 November 2010.