This is the first trailer for Salt (this one’s in English, though a Russian-dubbed one was making the rounds yesterday).  It made the “Black List” (the list of the best unproduced screenplays as voted on by Hollywood types) back in 2007, when it was called Edwin A. Salt, and was set to star Tom Cruise in a film by Michael Mann. Mann later dropped out and Hancock director Peter Berg joined the project.  Then Cruise dropped out and they hired Quiet American director Phillip Noyce, and re-wrote Cruise’s part for Angelina Jolie, whose character is now named Evelyn A. Salt, which is a shame because everyone knows only c-nty Women Studies professors are named “Evelyn.”

Finally we get a trailer, featuring Jolie opposite Liev Shrieber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, in what looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill thriller, in which the main character may or may not be a Russian spy.  It seems like a perfect fit for Cruise, I wonder why he dropped out.  I can think of only one explanation — there must’ve been gay people in there.  So come on, fess up, who was it?  Was it you, Liev?  Chuy? Tom Cruise needs to know so he can avoid you.

In the new trailer for 2012 (the world is ending, just like the Mayans predicted!  With asteroids!  …Uh, or floods!  Wait, no, fire!  Ooh! Ooh! And tidal waves!) director Roland Emmerich blows up:

• The Capitol building
• The Washington Monument
• The Sistine Chapel
• The USS John Kennedy
• The… Lincoln Memorial?
• That big Jesus statue in Brazil (Cristo Redentor?)
• A Winnebago
• The Eiffel Tower?
• An entire train
• Air Force One

I heard Michael Bay and Stephen Sommers watched this together and started making out halfway through.

SOMMERS: Ah wish ah could quit you.
BAY: (*explosion sound*)*

I also enjoy how every “event-sized” movie has to have a building explode onto the camera during the trailer. It’s like CGI bukkake.
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Folks, it’s that time of year again – when the movie studios wisely follow three months of releases completely bereft of anything worth watching by packing everything that looks decent into a two-month window within which you’ll have no way of seeing everything you wanted to. Opening this weekend (click on the title to go to the trailer):

Iron Man
Don’t know much about this one.  Have you guys heard anything?

Made of Honor
McGagme

Redbelt
In the past, David Mamet’s made some worthy contributions to cinema such as Wag the Dog, and Chuy is a fine actor, but this looks stupid.  Why do they always have to make fight movies about more than people hitting each other in the face?  I like people hitting each other in the face.

Son of Rambow
"In 1980′s Britain, young Will Proudfoot is raised in isolation among The Brethren, a puritanical religious sect in which music and TV are strictly forbidden. When Will encounters his first movie, a pirated copy of "Rambo: First Blood," his imagination is blown wide open. Now, Will sets out to join forces with the seemingly diabolical school bully, Lee Carter, to make their own action epic."  Sounds almost like a Michael Bay origin story, doesn’t it?

The trailer for Redbelt, David Mamet’s ode to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (it’s like a Brazilian wax but with more arm locks) starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (Chuy, for brevity’s sake) and Tim Allen, is now online.  It opens in April.

Watch the trailer here

You know, one thing I always liked about the rise of MMA and the UFC was that it cut through all the kung fu-karate eastern mysticism bullshit and proved that fighting wasn’t about who could quote the most cryptic passages from The Art of War. So I’m a little curious as to how David Mamet (who wrote The Untouchables, Wag the Dog, and Glengarry Glen Ross among other things) spent months studying Jiu-Jitsu and MMA and still wrote a movie that looks basically like The Karate Kid.  A reluctant martial arts master forced to compete by circumstance?  Oh my God, it’s so fresh, so innovative!  This could only happen in the world of mixed martial arts! 

Not to mention, fucking Tim Allen’s in it.  What’s his entrance music, “Here Comes Santa Claus(e)”? 

Shock, disbelief, hysteria, peturpitudenousness – these are just some of the words that describe my reaction to today’s news that Hollywood may use the words "based on a true story" loosely. A new report implies movies may bend the truth, "glamorizing" or "romanticizing" events that were in reality far less cinematic.

Specifically at issue is Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, which purports to tell the true story of Harlem druglord Frank Lucas.  On Wednesday, several DEA agents who investigated the Lucas case sued NBC Universal for defamation.  (Also at issue is whether Lucas ever smuggled heroin in caskets, though I hardly see why that matters) 

Lucas is shown to turn informant, specifically against corrupt police officers. A legend at the end of the movie claims three-fourths of New York’s Drug Enforcement Agency were convicted thanks to Lucas’ cooperation.
"(Lucas) was my informant for years," [former DEA Agent Jack] Toal says. "He never mentioned any crooked DEA agent or cop."
A DEA spokesman in Washington, Garrison Courtney, confirmed that no agents were ever charged with wrongdoing in the case.  

Three-fourths, none – hey, tomato tomahto.  I’ll tell you this though, the DEA is guilty of totally harshing my mellow on numerous occasions.  And Denzell of giving me a bad case of jungle fever. Wait, is that racist? Whatever, it sounds better than Finding An African-American Man Attractivitis.