New Trailers Friday

Science Fiction, CGI Soldiers, and the Sands of Time

You must forgive the infrequent nature of my posting this week.  With the relative dearth of new movies to see and my actual job's workload going from fraggle to doozer, it has been hard to find the time to sit and write.  But thanks to reliable New Trailer Friday and a veritable cornucopia of interesting films on the horizon, I can attempt to atone for my bloggish abeyance by giving you not one, not two, but three new trailers this week.  What more could you want? (...what do you mean a review of Uncharted 2?)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Jerry Bruckheimer continues to reward Disney after his most recent successful series, Pirates of the Carribean, by finally releasing a trailer for the much anticipated (well, maybe just anticipated) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and adaptation of the hit 2003 video game remake of the same name.  The trailer gives me immediate vibes of the Egyptian/Middle Eastern flare of The Mummy though clearly with a stronger, more classically fantasy bent.  And like the Pirates franchise, this film appears to have the over-the-top effects dial permanently cranked to 11.  I've never been a huge fan of the choice to make dramatic actor Jake Gyllenhaal the snarky, acrobatic, action-hero prince, especially when the closest he's ever been to action was running from poorly rendered snow wolves in The Day After Tomorrow.  They've clearly taken Gyllenhaal to the gym, and since they've made him about a foot taller, he looks the part, but still, acrobatic Persian action-adventure is long way to go from gay cowboy romance, for any actor.  

Please don't make that joke...

Avatar Trailer 1

A while back I featured the teaser for James Cameron's CG sci-fi spectacular, and despite my continued belief that the it was exactly what you need from a teaser, enough to insight interest without giving away plot, most people seemed to take the teaser as nothing more than a chance to lambaste the overconfident director's boasts about the technical merit of his own work.  Hopefully you all have that out of your system and are willing to give the trailer, and the film, a proper look.  The theatrical trailer reveals much more about the characters, motivations, and frankly a little too much about the plot, but it still looks as gorgeous and epically Cameron-sci-fi as ever.  This is still one of the movies I'm most excited to see this year, and hopefully after this newest trailer, you will be, too.

Gentlemen Broncos

This isn't a new trailer, but the film has just hit limited release and I could not be more excited.  From director Jared Hess, best known for his sleeper hit Napolean Dynamite, Broncos is a story of a young outcast who longs to be a science fiction writer like his idol, the legendary sci-fi author Ronald Chevalier, played by Flight of the Concords' Jemaine Clement.  That is until Chevalier steals one of the boy's science fiction stories, makes the character an effeminate weirdo, and wins an award for the plagarized material.  The film features Hess's classic sense of behind-the-beat comic timing and homegrown, construction paper art direction, which nearly every indie movie from Juno to Be Kind Rewind has since stolen.  To top it off, the film includes interludes of the stolen science fiction story acted out by Sam Rockwell, who's comedic prowess in Galaxy Quest, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Moon has made him one of my favorite actors.  I'm concerned that this film, like Hess's less successful Jack Black vehicle Nacho Libre, will lack in humor what it has in over abundance of charm, but the concept and talent alone are worth a watch.  

Oh, and Jemaine Clement's accent? Priceless!  

I mean...Pricel-ainous...