Fringe's Next Episode gets a Movie Style Trailer

This season of Fringe has been consistently blowing my mind. And, due to Fox somehow thinking scheduling it on the uber-crowded Thursday night was a good idea, it's also been consistently slipping in the ratings. Seriously, it was cleaning up in its previous Tuesday time slot, and now it's sucking hind teat. Why not move it back?

Anyhoo, the season has been incredible. And now Fox has released this kick-ass movie style trailer to hopefully entice some new viewers. If you haven't given this show a shot, why don;t you tune in on Thursday. I think you'll be glad you did. This is one of the smartest, most thrilling pure sci-fi shows around right now.

Giant Fist Alert! Green Lantern Trailer Debuts

As I've reported before when Entertainment Weekly released a picture of Ryan Reynolds in the suit, I'm a little nervous about Green Lantern. And this recently released trailer is most definitely not reassuring me, sad to say. Take a look and see.



Look, I love the whole GL mythos. I'm a comic book geek, and this is basically superheroes meets Star Trek, which is very cool. There's a great central character; Hal Jordan, a womanizing test pilot whose fearless quality is what gets him the job as a GL, but that same quality can also make him come off as a cocky jerk at times. The concept of space cops with magic rings that can basically create anything you will them to is great and hugely visual.

So what doesn't work for me in this trailer? Well, first of all, the costumes still look silly. The effect is nice, I guess, but they look.....wrong. Off. The mask looks terrible, and the whole thing looks, well, dainty. Like he should be doing a dance recital, not facing the extremes of space travel and cosmic battle. I thought the idea of a suit created by CG was novel, but the result as far as I can see so far is that they look flimsy. Only one guy has ever pulled off a skin tight body stocking super-suit and that guy is Christopher Reeve. I don't know exactly how he did it, but he did. No one else. And Reynolds is the most fit human being on the planet right now.

Next are the effect themselves. Nothing here blew me away, with the possible exception of the giant green fist, and even that didn't look as cool as it could have. The effects all looked a little too CGI. You all know what I mean. Great CG can create a reality that feels totally authentic and yet still fantastic and unbelievable, resulting in audiences seeing things they had never thought they could see. Cheap or unimaginative CG makes everything look like a video game or a cartoon, and therefore robs the film of any suspense or feeling that these things are happening in areal world. Sad to say, and I hope I'm wrong, but this trailer feels more like the latter to me.

Finally, Blake Lively should get a an award for worst single line reading in a trailer for 2010. She was great in The Town, so I'm not writing her off yet, but man that was godawful.

What did I like? Well, Reynolds seems to have captured Hal's spirit, his attitude and his swagger. He's a guy who's incapable of not being charming, even in the truly awful movies he sometimes does. He also got across some of Hal's awe at being introduced to a larger universe, which is hard to communicate in a trailer. Also, Peter Sarsgaard looks great as Hector Hammond.

So, hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully, the effects aren't entirely finished, and I'm not getting the whole shebang. Maybe on a big screen that costume will work. I hope all that is true, because it could really be a great franchise.

And Tron: Legacy Just Keeps Looking Better and Better

I've written before about how nuts I am for Tron. Me and Mrs. Nerdlinger watched the original not so long ago, and even though it treats computers like they are magic boxes inside which anything could be going on, it's still a blast to watch.

Below you'll find the latest Tron: Legacy trailer. And holy shit, it looks incredibly beautiful to behold. Yeah, young Jeff Bridges is still a little off, but it's so damn close that it's actually spooky. Anyway, this could be the best popcorn movie of the year.

Feast Your Eyes on This:

First View of Evans in Cap Costume

Entertainment Weekly's web site has posted the first image of Chris Evans in costume as Captain America, along with a preview of their upcoming article on the film. You can spy the pic below:

While Evans is a dead ringer for Steve rogers, the costume is a little modified from the comic book version, but in my opinion in a good way. It would be nice to see the head piece, but that may be in the article itself. All in all, the suit looks a lot more practical than the comic version ever has, and the shield looks like it has real heft and the scratches make it seem like it's really deflected machine gun fire.

With the solid comic-con trailer for Thor not too long ago, combined with how Cap looks to be shaping up, the next few years could be something truly exciting for comic fans. A live-action Marvel Universe. I'm jazzed.

Galifianakis Gets Ferned

In an awesome display of bravado, a Texas entertainment reporter named Gordon Keith went to a press junket for Zach Galifianakis' new film It's Kind of a Funny Story and did his interview in the same style of Galifianakis' hugely funny and uncomfortable series of shorts called Between Two Ferns.

What's awesome is watching it slowly dawn on Zach that this is what the guy is doing, and willingly going along. Watch the vid below.

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander

The first pics of Rooney Mara in the role of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's upcoming adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo have been released. Now, for those of you who recall Mara in her small, but really solid turn in The Social Network, she looked like so:

And in the recently released pics, she looks like this:

So.....yeah. She looks pretty much exactly like the character. Here's a picture of Daniel Craig as Blomkvist, as well:

All of them look appropriate to the book. And while I have only watched the first one of the Swedish films, I have to say that I liked, but didn't love them. Noomi Rapace was very good, but I still think looked a little too old for the role. Mara's look seems to fit more with my idea of a solidly true outsider. Also, I thought some of the changes made to the story didn't make sense, or weren't as intriguing at the novel. So, I'm all for taking another stab at the story, and David Fincher is awesome, so I'll have faith he can pull it off.

The Doctor Visits the Colonies...

After decades of attempts to film an episode of Doctor Who in the US, it looks as if it is finally going to happen in this upcoming season. The classic series set a story or two in the US, but always filmed at the BBC. The show rather famously attempted to shoot on location in New Orleans in the 1980s, but never managed to make it happen. They did however, shoot in locales such as Paris, Lanzarote, Amsterdam and Spain. Then, the 1996 TV Movie filmed in Vancouver, BC, but was set in San Francisco. Since the series returned in 2005, episodes have been set in Utah and New York, but once again were filmed in the UK. The new series has gone on location in Rome, as well as other locales, but never the US.

Now the Beeb has announced that the two-part premiere of the new season will go on location in the US, for a story set in America in the 1960s. From their press release:

In the special two-parter co-produced with BBC AMERICA, key scenes will be filmed in Utah for a story set in the late '60s in which the Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves on a secret summons that takes them on an adventure from the desert in Utah - right to the Oval Office itself.

The premiere will also feature the return of Alex Kingston as River Song, and will be written by show runner Steven Moffat.