Ah well, it looks like this year 2008 is finally coming to an end, and what better way to sum it all up than to see the trailers of movies that have been long anticipated to release in 2009!?

Star Trek

First up of course, is Star Trek. I blogged about this one way, way back in July 2006, and at least we finally have a trailer to watch, if not the movie.

Watchmen

Then, it’s another biggie, Watchmen.

Wolverine

And finally, Wolverine. Finally Gambit makes an appearance! Gambit is my second most favorite XMen, the first being Wolverine of course.

All trailers are courtesy of Trailer Addict, they really know their trailers (and more so, their movies, of course).

Batman: The Dark Knight is the best darn movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Top notch acting, direction, action, gadgetry, effects, storyline, everything just works!

And as expected, in Batman movies that have The Joker in them, the overshadowing of Batman’s character is almost inevitable. Christian Bale does manage to hold his own, but Heath Ledger’s Joker is the performance of a lifetime, sadly also his last.

Update: I just noticed that The Dark Knight has managed to top the IMDB Top 250 movies of all time, beating even The Shawshank Redemption. And it’s been what …. 3 weeks since it released? Amazing!

Alive
“I want to feel passion,
 I want to feel pain.
 I want to weep at the
sound of your name.
Come make me laugh,
come make me cry…
just make
me feel alive.”

Should Spider-man 3 have been called Mary Jane Watson 1, instead?
I think so. It quickly became the epitome of everything that should not be done in a super hero movie. And it’s a long, long movie that spreads out the (few) action scenes in between long, drawn out emotional sequences that pretty much have no place in a super-hero movie. Really.

Tobey Maguire’s Spider-man
Spiderman bawls and cries his heart out, throughout the movie. I mean, c’mon! Spidey is a super-hero, not someone who keeps sniffling throughout the length of the movie. Tobey sucks as Spider-man, sucks even more as Venom, sucks worse when he bawls in the over-melodramatic emotional scenes in the movie, and worse of all goes running to Harry Osborn for help in the over-contrived climax, who (surprisingly!) true-to-character refuses him outright and then rescues him in the end, of course – what more could go wrong, in this movie?

Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson
Mary Jane Watson got way too much screen time. Kirsten Dunst is a total misfit for the role of MJ, I felt this in the first movie, the second only strengthened this belief, but Spiderman-3 left me feeling that the movie was mistitled! Kirsten is a walking talking contradiction: throughout the first movie she was her usual bubbly, freckled self, throughout the second she was mopey and kept bringing the pace of the movie down. In the third part of the series, Kirsten has outdone herself, at times drawing a collective yawn from the whole watching crowd, while the movie insists on revolving around her and what she feels.

The thing about MJ is that she’s everything that Kirsten is not and cannot portray – the original Mary Jane character is a feisty red-head with green eyes, and has a temper that has Spider-man constantly heckled. Kirsten is mopey, keeps her feelings to herself and looks nothing like MJ is supposed to.

The Super-Villains
The super villains in this third part of the series are a worse let down (hard as that may be) to both the previous movies’ villains. Venom’s screen time is paltry, all gone in favor of the long drawn out romantic and over-emotional scenes, and the interlude in between, when Peter Parker uses the symbiote’s agility, while not in costume. None of the evilness that is the Venom character really came out in the movie, probably because the movie hardly gives any time to Venom, and rather concentrates on MJ and Spiderman.

Sandman is a confused (but well-fitting, surprisingly) character who keeps tilting between being a good guy, then a not-so good guy, then a bad guy when he teams up with Venom, of all the things possible, in an attempt to defeat Spider-man. In the end, in a weird turn-around that looks wholly unplanned and last minute, Sandman actually apologizes to Spider-man for murdering his uncle, Ben Parker, that too, by mistake!

Miscellania

• MJ sings an entire song in the movie, and then promptly gets fired from her theater job for having an awful voice. Good for her!
• The wicked Peter Parker (under influence of the symbiote) is actually not that bad as a character, the dance sequence in the bar that MJ takes up a job, later is nice.
• J Jonah Jameson has some genuinely funny moments.
• Spider-man finally throws the web bullets that were present in all the Spider-man games that came out.
• The sequence in which Flint Marko is transformed to Sandman was well done, but ended up feeling contrived like the rest of the movie.
• The New Goblin character (Harry Osborn) dies, courtesy Venom.
• Sandman befriends Spider-man and goes away weeping, while Spider-man keeps up his usual sniffling bit.
• Spider-man exploits Venom’s weakness to sound waves to kill it using one of the New Goblin’s bombs.
• There’s so much forcefully stuffed into this movie, it feels like all the characters refused to commit to a part 4 and so were all stuffed together into one long, painful movie.

A Conclusion
Do you really need one? I’d say give it a pass. Die hard Spider-man fans beware! This movie can cause a temporary, alternating sensation of nausea, sleepyness, and might cause an urge to hurt someone / something in the most dedicated fan.

Fight Club, one of my favorite movies is always a good watch, even after all these times of watching it over and over again. There’s always a dialog or a particular scene that you just can’t remember seeing.

When IMDB put Fight Club in one of it’s top 10 quotes from movies I just couldn’t resist the temptation. I actually went through the whole thing, there are a few repeats, but most of the movie’s best dialogs are here.

I do wish they compiled all the “I am Jack’s…” dialogues together, though; now that would be something.

Read it. For sure.

The I am Jack’s….. lines, in no particular order, of course:

• I am Jack’s smirking revenge.
• I am Jack’s cold sweat.
• I am Jack’s raging bile duct.
• I am Jack’s colon.
• I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.
• I am Jack’s wasted life.
• I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection.
• I am Jack’s broken heart.

Other favorites:

• Narrator: When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep… and you’re never really awake.
• Narrator: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
• Tyler Durden: The first rule of Fight Club is – you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is – you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. Third rule of Fight Club, someone yells Stop!, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes. Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.

All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places,
Worn out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere,
Going nowhere,
Their tears are filling up their glasses,
No expression,
No expression,
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
No tomorrow,
No tomorrow,
And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It’s a very very,
Mad world,
Mad world,
Children waiting for the day they feel good,
Happy birthday,
Happy birthday,
And I feel the way that every child should,
Sit and listen,
Sit and listen,
Went to school and I was very nervous,
No one knew me,
No one knew me,
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson,
Look right through me,
Look right through me,
And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It’s a very very,
Mad world,
Mad world,
Enlarging your world,
Mad world

–
I originally found this haunting song when I saw Donnie Darko, a movie that is best left unexplained – I must recommend it be watched when you are quite sure that you want to screw up your head for a day, or two, or more.

When I first saw the movie, I didn’t quite catch on to the song, although I do remember looking for it.

Then, in a recent gameplay trailer for Gears of War, the XBox 360 game, I heard it again and did some research and voila!

It’s a sad song, very thought provoking. Makes quite a few people wanna drip a tear or two.

Originally by Tears for Fears, this rendition by Gary Jules for the movie is much slower and disturbing. Watch the video, tell me what you think.

The Spider-Man movie merchandise has really matured. Finally, after all this waiting, one of the most central villains is coming to the movie version.

Yes, Spider-Man 3 will most likely be centered around Venom, the arch-nemesis of Spider-man. Venom is the name given to Eddie Brock’s villanous merging with an alien symbiont which gives him extraordinary powers.

Can’t wait. Venom is my favorite Spidey super-villain character.

StarTrek.com just announced the eleventh movie in the franchise. The movie is slated for a 2008 release.

The StarTrek store also has a free set of 3 wallpapers and 3 IM avatars.

What I like about the wallpapers is that they emphasize on the nature of the colors of the StarTrek Federation uniform. One wallpaper’s blue for science and another’s got the color for StarTrek command posts.

The first wallpaper has shades of both colors and IMHO is the best.

And if I’ve not convinced you that I’m a self-confessed StarTrek fan, I don’t know what will.

Dante	Randal	Kevin

I found Dante and Randal on MySpace. I found Kevin too. 2 Clerks and a Director/Actor who doesn’t seem to speak much.

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about then you haven’t watched one of the movies in my must watch list.

Clerks.

Go see it now. And then head straight to the chaotic, All-your-base-belong-to-us world of MySpace and check out their profiles, add them as “friends”

And if you still don’t get what I’m talking about then you need to check these links.

And visit the official site. I just can’t wait to watch the movie.

I’ve always considered Kevin Smith to be one of my favorite movie directors / writers / comics artists and when I came across this public interview on YouTube, I just couldn’t resist posting it.

One word of caution, though. The video does contain what some would consider to be “foul” language (as is typical with Smith), so please put on your headphones if you’re gonna listen to this in your office cubicle or something.

Kevin Smith is one of the most irreverent people in hollywood and his devil-may-care, straight up, common-man attitude is what I like about him the most.

In this interview he describes his outrageous experiences where he was hired by Warner bros. to write a movie script for Superman Lives way back in 1996 or so. He describes how the producer wanted him to write in a part for a Brainiac sidekick and also giant spiders and Superman fighting polar bears around the Fortress of Solitude! The video is quite funny, do watch it. It’s a bit longish, at 19 minutes plus, I suggest you let it buffer completely before you play.

One more thing I liked about this particular video is the way Smith brings out how a movie scriptwriter’s original draft gets distorted in the hollywood producer’s warped wants instead of sticking to the script. Sort of goes along with my short discourse on movie making in my Terminator 2 Ultimate edition post.