Every year, right in the middle of that grotesquely smug, garrulously sycophantic tradition known as movie award season, come the Razzies, gleefully pointing their finger right at the bottom of the Hollywood barrel to soothe the blackest hearts among us. But the Razzies aren't just here to make bitter people feel better — at this point, with 33 years in the game, they're a tradition-bound counterbalance that, through both their diligently chosen nominees and snubs, offer their own particular honorifics. In other words: The Razzie Nominations for 2013 were announced last night (and are posted below) — who's looking good?!
Note: This will be our last Trailers of the Week of 2012. We thank you for tuning in for more than 50 trailer roundups with us this year, and can't wait to get back to overanalyzing (Dan) and always being afraid of everything (Rembert) in 2013. — Dan and Rem
Pacific Rim (July 12)
Silver: If I ever had to be placed into a medically induced coma because my cine-geek meter went into overdrive, I truly believe that Pacific Rim would be what I’d dream about. And this got me thinking, Rem: We’ve been buddies for a while now, but how well do you really know me? Let’s find out.
I’m most excited about this movie because …
A. It contains giant fracking monsters fighting giant fracking robots
B. It’s the first Guillermo del Toro move since 2008
C. By casting Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman, and Charlie Day, it's clear that Guillermo and I like and watch the same TV shows
D. All of the above
My favorite part of this trailer …
A. Glimpses at all of the original del Toro creature/robot designs
B. Giant frackin' robot-rocket-propelled punch
C. Idris Elba’s reboot of Bill Pullman’s “Today is our Independence Day” speech
D. All of the above
Upon release of this trailer my wife …
A. Was annoyed with me because I couldn’t stop exuding random guttural pleasure sounds or screaming “Yes!” and “Oh, hell yeah!”
B. Was annoyed with me because I watched the trailer eight times in 30 minuntes — on my iPhone, my iPad, my MacBook, and in ginormous and glorious HD via my Apple TV
C. Told me I was nuts for looking to see if tickets were already available for pre-sale
D. None of the above. She was doing all of the above right alongside me because she’s as big of a geek as I am.
Very, VERY excited! We just hope he doesn't squeeze it so hard we have to send Liam Neeson up there to retrieve it from captivity. He leaves a body count.
This new clip for Taken 2 doesn't offer anything we don't already know about the sequel — gloriously, and with a righteous lack of shame, the powers that be (Olivier Megaton has stepped in for Pierre Morel in the director's chair, but Luc Besson is still executive producing and co-writing) have gone and made the exact same movie again. Good. Great. As it should be. Much more important is the little bit before the clip starts, when our dude Liam Neeson looks straight into the camera and threatens to kidnap and torture us all if we don't keep watching. He's already spoofing himself! The second movie hasn't even come out yet, and he's already spoofing himself! No one is having more fun doing anything right now than Liam Neeson is as he's getting taken and saving people from getting taken.
Perhaps, but Liam Neeson is no ordinary human, and this Alaska-set battle between man and nature is no ordinary B-movie. I love everything about The Grey; the solemnity and silliness, the characters' lack of first names, the beard icicles. Forget the fact that there are no wolves in the part of Alaska where the movie takes place. Focus on how Neeson elevates what could have been camp into his own King Lear.
Did you know that 20th Century Fox has already gone and made Taken 2? It’s not surprising that they would, of course: Taken was rad, and made a ton of money on a small budget, and had an easily repeatable concept. (In fact, Neeson already quasi-repeated it with last year’s Unknown, in which his wife, January Jones, forgets he exists and he has to fight a bunch of people.) But, somehow, the fact that this sequel was actually in the works totally slipped past me. Until this week, that is, which was truly a landmark one for the Taken franchise. Most immediately relevant, we have EW giving us the inside dirt on what all goes down in Taken 2, complete with action shots — Liam Neeson shooting a gun! Liam Neeson breaking some dude’s neck! Liam Neeson staring pensively at fire! — from the movie. Also, it’s out October 5, and brings back Maggie Grace as Neeson’s daughter and Famke Janssen as his ex-wife. Let’s let our dude Liam explain the rest:
After Christian Bale and Michael Fassbender passed on Christian Bale's Noah movie, it's Russell Crowe's turn to theoretically survive a world population-ending flood.
This young century has brought us many wonders, ranging from the iPhone to replacing bread with meat, but chief among them has been the explosion of parody films. What was once a trickle of Scary Movies and Loaded Weapons has blossomed in the 2000s into a gushing river of spoofs, the most recent of which include Superhero Movie (superhero movies), Vampires Suck (Twilight movies) and Up In the Air (critically acclaimed movies). Now the stakes have been raised yet again by the brilliant Peter Berg and his 2012 blockbuster Battleship. The trailer for the $200 million film, released today, reveals it to be nothing less than an elaborate, note-perfect parody of Michael Bay and his Transformers trilogy.
