Here it is finally, the Cold Souls trailer. It's reminds me a lot of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It has a limited US release date of August 7th. Probably not close to here.

I've just heard about this particular film very recently, and it seems very interesting. Very interesting indeed. What I gather from the trailer is that the movie takes a look into how cinema can, and does, have a very profound effect on our lives. Perhaps unknown effects? I don't know. I'll have to watch and see, I guess. The film has a website where you can buy the dvd. Enjoy!

A pretty funny trailer was shown in New York earlier this month for Michael Moore's new untitled film. It's brief and doesn't give any insight into the film other than the fact that it's about the economic crisis in some way.

You may be familiar with augmented reality. It's the technology used to digitally paint those yellow first down markers on the field during a NFL telecast. It's a pretty interesting technology. The fact that you can digitally superimpose anything into a real world setting immediately makes me think of all the videogame application possibilities. Imagine using physical objects to change the trajectory of your Lemmings, throwing balls at a ghost, or walking through a creepy dungeon. Or, my favorite, what if you could put goggles on that would make you feel as if you were in a haunted house? It would project ghost and monsters, kind of like that shark in Back to the Future II only with goggles and better graphics.
Right now developers are designing for cell phones, which is particularly exciting to me because the possible integration of GPS technology. Imagine going to a specific place and holding your camera phone up and seeing something amazing, like a ghost or a UFO. This is all probably really hard to understand from my descriptions, and probably far down the pipeline, but it still beats the pants off of Natal, check out this cool NVIDIA tegra developer demo and the Roku's Reward demo afterward.


The future is going to be awesome.

Paul Giamatti's new psychological comedy Cold Souls has a new poster. Directed by Sophie Barthes, the movie is said to be the exploration of a man in search of his soul. The official synopsis from sundance is as follows:

In response to shiny, bigger, better American consumerism comes Cold Souls, a metaphysical tragicomedy in which souls can be extracted and traded as commodities. Balancing on a tightrope between deadpan humor and pathos, and between reality and fantasy, the film presents Paul Giamatti as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of Uncle Vanya. Paralyzed with anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by deep-freezing souls. Giamatti enlists their services, intending to reinstate his soul once he survives the performance. But complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking “mule,” transporting product to and from Russia, “borrows” Giamatti's stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, soap-opera actress. Rendered soulless, he is left with no choice but to follow the trail back to bleak St. Petersburg. He comes to value that happiness isn’t merely the absence of pain, but the integration of the full range of emotion into life.Sophie Barthes’s debut feature is strikingly original, not only for its haunting concept but for its poetic execution. Inspired production design and lyrical cinematography create a melancholic, heightened world. Perfectly cast, Giamatti and a gifted ensemble maneuver seamlessly through shifting ontological landscapes without ever betraying the surrealism. With this dazzling accomplishment, Barthes establishes herself as an auteur to reckon with.

You'll never going to believe it, but apparently the latest cinematic offering from Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing) isn't a good movie.

It's been reported that G.I. Joe has scored lower with test audiences than any other film in Paramount decade-spanning history.

nymag.com has the scoop...

Something tells me that G.I. Joe is a shoe in for a Golden Raspberry Award.

Disney's new movie the Princess and the Frog features the first African American princess in three quarters of a century. In her article about the controversy surrounding the new, yet traditionally animated, feature, Michelle Miller points out that we've already had a Native American Pocahontas, an Arab Jasmine and a Chinese Mulan. The controversy surrounds the lack of an African American male lead and some of the back story of the main character, as well as her name itself, Tiana. The film, originally titled The Frog princess, has been under deep scrutiny for a while now. Things like the original title or the Tiana's original name, Maddy, which has a tendency to sound a bit too much like mammy, have spurred controversy and debate on forums net-wide. Some people maintain that others are just overreacting, but I think that the current outcry, if we can call it that, about this movie is less about being pc than a symbol of people hoping for the best for this Disney first. I think people really just want to see Disney succeed on this one. More to come, I'm sure.



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Are you tired of tan too much and as a result looking like crispy bacon? Try Will Ferrell's new sunscreen! Or, I should say funscreen. Nope this is not a joke this is 100% real. Apparently it's for a charity called cancer for college. These 6oz. bottles will cost you 12 bucks a pop, but remember it's for a good cause. I can only hope for celebrity themed products like a Conan Obrien strength hair gel or a Clint Eastwood walker.

Think back a bit. Try to remember all the Pixar movies that you've seen. Got it? Alright, out of all those movies how many featured a story centered around a female lead? Well, in case you can't figure it out, the answer's a big fat zero. Dawn Taylor at Cinematical blogged about an interesting article written on NPR.org written by Linda Holmes which asked Pixar the difficult and, as Taylor pointed out, unpopular demand, Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess." The article aptly titled Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees is an open letter to the Pixar people to create a girl-centric movie which doesn't immediately fall into some stereotype. It's a good read and it makes quite a bit of sense to me. I mean, Disney has pretty much got that princess thing covered, do we really need to see more? How about a real girl, like Ellie? Anyway, cheers to Holmes for throwing the gauntlet down.

One of the hallmarks of popular game series Katamari Damacy is its playful and often perverse sense of humor. A Perfect example of this is on display in the recent Japanese trailer for the upcoming PS3 release of Katamari Tribute (due out in the U.S. this fall under the title Katamari Forever).



Western companies take note: This is how you sell games.

Who wouldn't want to see a Marcus Fenix puppet chainsaw a puppet Locust in the commercial for Gears of War 3?

Or how about a future Left 4 Dead 2 TV spot with a bunch of these guys swarming the screen.

So what do you get when you pair visionary pop-theater director Julie Taymor (The Lion King, Frida, Across the Universe) with Bono and the Edge from U2?

Spider-Man! On Broadway!

I remember hearing a while back that a Spider-Man musical was in the works but had no idea that it was this far along.

Julie Taymor has such an amazing knack for crafting vibrant and imaginative visual images. I cant wait to see her take on comic books. As for the music, I'm anxious to see how well Bono and Edge adapt their songwriting skills to Broadway.

Here is a video I found at /Film of the two rock stars discussing the project.


Most popular Broadway musicals eventually find their way to the silver screen. Maybe Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark will sing and dance its way into theaters in coming years.

If you are anything like me then, the whole time line issue/scenario from the Terminator franchise probably baffled you. I'm assuming that there are multiple time lines since that is seemingly the only way to explain things in this universe. How else could John Connor send the man who would be his father back though time. Someone at io9 was crazy enough to sort through all of this. If you view the end of each line as the beginning of the next one, i.e. the ending of a is the beginning of b, it starts to make sense.

Blueberry Garden, the winner of 'best independent game' at the 2009 Independent Games Festival, is now available for purchase for a measly $5. If your computer is nice enough to run this gorgeous title, skip that Whopper and Fries tonight so you can afford it.

I love U2. That being said, when I heard The Edge was one of the guitarists being followed and interviewed for a music/guitar documentary I was sold immediately. Plus, its got Jimmy Page and Jack White in it, as well. I gotta be honest, this trailer's got me hyped. Check out the trailer now, and the film itself on August 14th.

"This above all: to thine own self be true,....." - Polonius (from the play, Hamlet)

The above quote states what I believe to be the overall moral message of Sam Raimi's, "Drag Me To Hell". Here we have a character, a young woman, who has ambivalent feelings towards herself and where she comes from. Christine's a good person, but feels she has to appease other people, her boss, boyfriend, etc, rather than herself in order to be happy and get ahead in life. This behavior is, ultimately, her downfall. Christine feels the pressure one day and goes against her moral barometer, she denies a sick woman an extension on her mortgage, she "shames" the old lady, and it is this reason she must now suffer a curse. A very deadly curse. In three days time, a demon will come to take her soul and body to hell where she'll suffer for an eternity. The main focus of the film is, of course, her trying to rid herself of this curse by any means necessary. Will she succeed? Go and see it to find out!
I am in no way an avid fan of the horror genre like some, I think most of them suck, but I did enjoy this one. You might even say that I enjoyed it more than the directors previous horror films, "Evil Dead", "Evil Dead 2", and "Army of Darkness". One of the successes of this movie is that I actually sympathized and cared about the main character, Christine. And for a film to have any real impact it's important to feel for a character in crisis. Plus, like all of the Sam Raimi movies I've seen over the years, it was very entertaining. I can't deny this. It's loud, very crude, cringe worthy in some parts, obnoxious, and there are a lot of boo scares. You know? Boo scares? They're very popular nowadays.
However, in a horror film, personally, for me, boo scares aren't enough to make a film truly frightening. Something more is required.
This film, basically, just screams in your face in order to try and scare you, but I was never spooked. I personally prefer, and this is rare to find in most modern horror cinema, something a little more creepy, something with a little more subtly that builds up to a truly horrifying experience. This is one flaw I've found in all the Raimi horror movies. There's a lot of shock, but no fear.
Maybe I'm asking for too much though. Sam Raimi is the man behind the hugely successful "Spiderman" franchise, and he's been in the game a long time, so it's safe to say he's got a lot of pull in what projects he chooses to participate in and how they're executed. Apparently Raimi had a different vision of how this movie should be and went forward with that vision. He didn't want the same things I did. I respect that. He's being true to himself as a storyteller and filmmaker, I guess. Polonius would be proud.