Aug 6 2009 'Ong Bak 2' Trailer: Ong Bak vs. a Crocodile
I've featured a couple other Ong Bak 2 previews here before, but I'm pretty sure this is the first one in English, and, more importantly, the first where you see that star/director Tony Jaa fights a crocodile. Call me a man of simple tastes, but any man who fights either crocodile or alligator on-screen has earned not only my ticket money but my undying devotion. At least until around 2012, when man/crocodile fights will become standard reality show entertainment.
Enjoy watching Tony Jaa kill some dudes/animals:
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Jul 23 2009 'Ninja Assassin' Trailer: Trailer for a Movie About a Ninja Assassin
Ah, the ninja. Once a childhood hero and even career aspiration, now a black-hooded figure so diluted by internet prevalence that he stands shameful and neutered beside the pirate and the zombie, his nunchaku dangling limply beside him.
With Ninja Assassin, V for Vendetta director James McTeigue makes his case for us to reopen our hearts to the ninja; to let him show us that, despite being completely watered down with pop culture, the ninja is still pretty awesome. And judging by this trailer, with it enormous quantities of throwing stars, he might have just done it.
The prayer we collectively made in 5th grade (to be allowed into the secret world of ninja assassins) has been answered:
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Jun 23 2009 'Last Airbender' Teaser: There Must Be More Impressive Applications for Airbending
Welp, the teaser trailer for Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan's live-action NickToon adaptation has been released, and my feelings are a bit mixed. On the one hand, I'm relieved Shyamalan appears to have avoided the camp and silliness that plagued fellow martial arts cartoon-turned-movie Dragonball. Or, in other words, at least it looks like an actual movie.
But on the other hand, I feel when there's a lead character with the power to manipulate the wind (or bend air, if you will), there has to be a cooler way to show that off than just showing him extinguishing candles. Putting out candles is the most rudimentary thing you can do with air manipulation. That's a skill only threatening to birthday cakes and romantic evenings in a bathtub with only the company of a romance novel. This is it?:
May 28 2009 New 'The Last Airbender' Photo: Nice Coat, Slumdog
Thanks to Flex at MovieGod for passing along this new photo of Dev Patel in The Last Airbender. Strange how quickly a promising young actor can go from being in the Best Picture of the Year to playing some kind of samurai street pimp of the Himalayas in an M. Night Shyamalan film based on a NickToon.
May 22 2009 'The Last Airbender' Photos: It's the Kid with the Arrow on his Head
USA Today has posted some shots from The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan's adaptation of that Nickelodeon cartoon that looked like a fake anime starring a bald kid. Above is the first look at unknown Noah Ringer as Aang, the aforementioned bald kid.
Now I'm no Avatard (Trishna87, who sent this in, claimed that's a term), but I'd say this kid at least does a pretty good job capturing the look of "bald kid in a fairly expensive, store-bought Avatar: The Last Airbender Halloween costume." In terms of accuracy, that's marginally more successful than Dragonball!
Below the cut, Slumdog Millionaire as Prince Zuko, who is apparently another character in this world.
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Feb 17 2009 'Dragonball' Has Stopped Putting Effort Into Anything
Stacking various, similarly-tinted panels of arbitrarily mismatched heights is going to be a very popular technique in poster design soon. These guys are ahead of the curve on this one. Next week Watchmen will probably catch up with a poster with a banner-ad size strip of Rorschach that's tinted green, then below that a sliver of Dr. Manhattan that's tinted a slightly different shade of green, then a wide red panel of Nite Owl, and so on, until it too forms a crappy rainbow spectrum of characters under a meaningless tagline. The floating heads style of poster design has been made redundant.
Master Your Destiny Poster [DBtheMovie]
Feb 16 2009 Balrog Hates Backing Into Spots
Happy Presidents Day! Your present is a new batch of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li production stills! I point them out not because they look any better than the rest of the mundane crap we've seen from this movie but, rather, because they're so ridiculously mundane to the point of it being a joke. It's like even the marketing team is trying to keep expectations abysmally low. What is this, Michael Clarke Duncan parallel parking? That's almost as enticing as this shot of Bison sampling various fluids while staring directly at the camera. Or this one of Vega showing us his bare fist instead of the giant metal claw on his other hand. If this production releases any more photos, I'll be shocked if they're anything better than driver's license photos.
Feb 5 2009 Another 'Dragonball: Evolution' Trailer--Now with More Fireballs
Seriously, everyone is constantly shooting fireballs. This thing is a big fireball party. Everyone is loving fireballs. Except maybe the girl--it appears she doesn't have the ability to shoot fireballs, so she shoots guns: science's fireballs. And there's an SUV version of the Back to the Future car, because that's something:
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Feb 3 2009 See Actual Dragon of 'Dragonball: Evolution'
In Japan, where Dragonball: Evolution is considered pertinent news, a news program aired some brand new footage from the movie. There's an actual dragon! And you thought the name was figurative.
Judging by the music, the Japanese seem to be viewing the film as equivalent to a tropical getaway awarded at the end of a game show:
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Jan 28 2009 'Street Fighter' Promo -- Also: Buy This Talisman Thing
Coming Soon has posted a new Japanese promo for Street Fighter that seems to also double as a keychain amulet commercial. If your fierce dedication to the fighting game franchise has somehow created a faint interest in this film, consider this brief montage another shot at disenfranchising yourself enough to stop caring. You'll end up really wanting the talisman they show at the end though--that thing is beautiful as hell.
Jan 21 2009 'Street Fighter' Poster Guy Read That 'Cool Scroll Effect' Tutorial
What are they waiting for on the poster where the Street Fighter characters are literally jumping out of the arcade console to the delighted surprise of a pair of 14-year-old video game players? They have to know that's what we want. Or at least what I want.
Jan 20 2009 'Chocolate' Trailer: Is This a Better 'Ong-Bak 2' Than 'Ong-Bak 2'?
Director Prachya Pinkaew and martial arts choreographer Panna Rittikrai, the duo that worked out how Tony Jaa violently destroyed people in Ong-Bak, have a new film coming out in the U.S. on Valentine's Day! I know you'll all be busy kissing, but if you can take a short break to watch one movie in which an autistic girl kicks a bunch of dudes to death, make it this one. Here's the new domestic trailer:
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Jan 14 2009 Jackie Chan to Train Jaden Smith to Sand Floors, Paint Fences, Etc.
Big update in regards to how ten-year-old Jaden Smith (Will Smith's son that we're being force-fed as an actor) plans to defend himself against bullies by learning karate: Jackie Chan will teach him karate. From Entertainment Weekly:
Jaden Smith has found himself a mentor. Jackie Chan will take on Pat Morita's Mr. Miyagi role in Sony Pictures' remake of The Karate Kid. The movie stars 10-year old Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness), who is the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and will be directed by Harold Zwart (The Pink Panther 2). Will's production company, Overbrook, will produce, and Jada has been rumored for the role of Jaden's mother in the film.
This was probably the easiest casting prediction ever, but since I'm never right about anything, let me just note that in November I said:
Let's start the speculation on who will play the "eccentric mentor." The Chinese setting makes Jackie Chan an early prospect, but I could just as easily see Steve Carell or Samuel L. Jackson letting the kid out of the duffel bag to attack.
But wow, adding the director of Agent Cody Banks and wife of Will Smith? I didn't see that coming. If Smith wants to make it a double-awful with double-nepotism, let's just go for the triple--bring in the screenwriter who did Most Valuable Primate and cast some long-estranged uncle of Will Smith (or Mike Myers playing a long-estranged uncle of Will Smith). Or could we use CGI to bring back some deceased relatives of Will Smith who he'd like to see one last time, dead-eyed in the audience of a martial arts tournament? It doesn't even matter anymore.
The scene where Jackie Chan lets Jaden Smith out of a duffel bag to attack will probably be pretty solid though.
Jan 9 2009 'High Kick Girl' Teaser Delivers Promised Actions and Genders
Japan already has several films titled Very Briefly Flashes Panties Girl, so for their latest exploration of the concept/fetish, they decided to go with the title High Kick Girl. Here's the extremely short teaser trailer (via Cinematical):
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Jan 7 2009 'Street Fighter the Chun-Li' Trailer Gets Domestic
Since everyone was loving that Japanese version of the Street Fighter trailer from last week, here's the higher quality English edition from IGN. Now you can truly hear the powerful narration describing the delicate balance between two primary forces in our universe. Good and evil? Light and dark? So you'd think! No, it's beauty and terror. Those two are constantly at odds. The simultaneous existence of both Heidi Klum and Osama bin Laden is all that has kept our world from either plummeting into pure and utter terror or exploding in a makeup-filled rainbow of absolute beauty. That is why we must fight in streets to maintain that fragile equilibrium.
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Jan 5 2009 'Street Fighter' Still Fighting For Us, With Posters
Let's start off the new year the right way: with another Street Fighter poster. If it's street fighting, why is Michael Clarke Duncan so prominently holding a gun? Is the bottom guy Iron Man? Have you ever tried simultaneously jump-kicking and jump-punching someone? Can I use this logo for my multicultural dojo? 2009 is going to be great.
The New Street Fighter Poster [Coming Soon]
Dec 29 2008 Welp, This Is What 'Street Fighter' Looks Like
Are you ready for some intense street fighting action? How about some fairly lame street fighting action of a quality that will have you continually asking when Steven Seagal is going to show up? Because that's what I have for you with the teaser trailer for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. The voice-over is all Japanese, but I'm pretty sure it's just someone repeatedly saying, "What were you expecting?"
And Bison has a goatee:
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Dec 18 2008 Maggie Q Doing Video Game Movies
Maggie Q has joined the cast of King of Fighters, marking the second time this year an attractive half-Asian gal has been tragically linked to an ill-conceived film adaptation of a fighting game. From Variety:
Action star Maggie Q ("Live Free or Die Hard") has joined the cast of "King of Fighters," an English-language, live-action adaptation of a bestselling Japanese vidgame now lensing in Vancouver.Helmed by Hong Kong's Gordon Chan, pic also stars Sean Faris, Ray Park, Will Yun Lee and David Leitch, who doubles as action choreographer.
Q, who began her movie career in Hong Kong, is the first film star to feature in a vidgame by Electronic Arts. She fronts "Need for Speed: Undercover," the latest version of EA's street racing game.
She's going to be in a Need for Speed movie too? That's miserable. That's taking the failure rate of a video game movie and multiplying it by the failure rate of a Fast/Furious movie. If she continues down this path, she's only a movie or two away from finding herself on a DVD cover, her waist held firmly by the hand of Mr. Stephen Baldwin (his other hand has a gun in it).
CORRECTION: Whoops! As sully pointed out in the comments, I misread the last paragraph. She's in the actual video game, not a movie version. So she's doing great.
Dec 17 2008 This 'Black Dynamite' Christmas Greeting is Not Safe for Workplaces
From Twitch, here's a holiday greeting brought to you by the film, Black Dynamite. As the titles hints at, Black Dynamite loves "ho" puns, as you will see:
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Dec 12 2008 'Goemon' Trailer: It's Like if Anime Were Semi-REALITY
Kaz Kiriya, the director of Casshern--which I've never seen, but I hear is nice to look at--has a new film coming out in a language you probably don't speak. It's called Goemon, and it looks like a well-made cut scene from a video game about awesome ninja battles.
As people in the comments of Twitch noted, if you're going to make an adaptation of Dragonball (you shouldn't), this is basically how it should look (but maybe with a higher effects budget):
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