Movie Make-out

Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman star in Bottle Shock, a indie comedy based on the “Judgment of Paris” tastings that put California wines on “the map,” as it were. Pullman plays “a former real estate attorney (who) sacrificed everything to realize his dream of creating the perfect hand-crafted chardonnay. His business, however, is struggling, and he’s not only trying to overcome differences with his slacker son (Chris Pine — Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek reboot — in a terrible wig), but is also fighting off the creditors. Meanwhile in Paris, unwitting British wine shop owner Steven Spurrier (Rickman) hopes to revive his own failing business by sponsoring a competition which will pit the traditional French powerhouse against the California upstarts. Little did Steven and Jim realize that they were both on course to change the history of wine forever.”

Rickman is fantastic as always, and although the story looks utterly predictable (it’s pretty much all in the trailer), the tone is breezy and charming, sort of like Sideways meets Little Miss Sunshine. (Although I didn’t really like either of those movies nearly as much as anyone else, so that’s not incredibly high praise.) You can taste Bottle Shock in theaters on August 6. Hopefully you won’t want to spit it out.

Most of you saw this in front of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but for those of you fortunate enough to have skipped that disappointment, or who want to watch it again, the trailer for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is online courtesy Apple, which also has it in high definition. It’s a gorgeous, haunting trailer, showcasing some beautiful art direction, an eerie piece of music from “The Carnival of Animals – The Aquarium” by Camille Saint-Saens (possibly not from the film, since Alexandre Desplat is credited with the film’s score), a stunning Cate Blanchett, and… well, a kind of ridiculous accent by Pitt, but I think I can handle it.

Eric Roth’s script was based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, apparently inspired by a remark of Mark Twain’s “to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end.”

The adaptation stars Brad Pitt as a man who was born old and ages backwards, with all the hardships that would entail. Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton co-star. Benjamin Button arrives in theaters on December 19, 2008.

A “promo reel”/trailer for Ong Bak 2 has hit the net thanks to Twitch. It looks like a sequel in name only — no real connection to the original other than its phenomenal star, Tony Jaa, who also makes his directorial debut with this.

The story looks about as non-existent as in both Ong Bak and The Protector — it’s about “a young man saved from execution by a group of global martial artists as a boy” who attempts to combine all of their martial arts styles into “one master martial art.” Or something. But plot isn’t really the point with his movies, now, is it?

Ong Bak 2 comes out in Thailand this year and will hopefully make it here sometime next year.

A trailer for the upcoming Matthew Broderick flick Diminished Capacity, is up thanks to Moviefone. It kind of looks like a feelgood indie comedy-by-numbers; I’m mostly posting this because Broderick plays a newspaper cartoonist and it’s partly set in Chicago, my town! But it’s pretty well shot and the cast is solid (Alan Alda, Virginia Madsen, Dylan Baker, and Louis C.K. co-star). Diminished Capacity hits theaters on July 4th.

An alternate trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has been leaked onto the YouTubes, and so far Warner Bros. doesn’t seem to mind. It doesn’t contain very much new footage, and I think the official one is a bit stronger, but if you’re jonesing for this film like almost everyone I know, you’ll welcome the extra buzz.

Related post: Trailer Watch: The Dark Knight

A trailer for Mirrors, the new supernatural horror flick from the director of The Hills Have Eyes remake Alexandre Aja is up at Yahoo! Video. The film stars Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Erica Gluck and Amy Smart, and focuses on an ex-cop who must protect his family from… something… that is using mirrors (and apparently other reflective surfaces) as gateways into their home. Boy, am I tired of this supernatural horror stuff, but it looks creepy enough, if this genre is your bag.

Spike Lee’s next joint, Miracle at St. Anna, an adaptation of has a trailer up at Yahoo! Movies. Adapted by James McBride from his own novel, the film stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It looks pretty exciting and beautifully shot, but the statue head should way a hell of a lot more than it looks like it does.

Aaand, finally, Green Street Hooligans director Lexi Alexander’s Punisher: War Zone has a teaser trailer up. I don’t like the “comic booky” primaries used throughout the trailer, and only a few shots gave me any impression that the action was going to be terribly interesting. Consider me not teased. For better or for worse, the film is out on December 5th.

No, I’m not talking about Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, but actually Ghost in the Shell “2.0″… It’s okay, say it with me: “Wha—?”

I’m a couple of days behind on this, I guess, but Variety’s Kaiju Shakedown blog reports that “Mamoru Oshii’s ground-breaking Ghost in the Shell is getting new visual effects, a new dub and a re-recorded soundtrack and will be re-released in [Japanese] theaters on July 12 under the title Ghost in the Shell 2.0.” The grainy-ass YouTube video doesn’t really look any different to me, but I’m guessing they’re updating the CGI elements of the movie, which do admittedly look a bit dated, and audio buffs will be happy about the new 6.1 surround sound audio. Unfortunately, there are no plans to send this to America, but I’m sure it’ll make it’s way onto the film’s next DVD edition.

Mamoru Oshi’s next meditative anime masterpiece, Sky Crawlers, hits Japanese theaters on August 2. No US release date has been set.

Related post: Ghost in the Shell gets the live-action treatment — in 3-D