Trailer: Noah

The first trailer for Darren Aronofsky's retelling of the biblical tale Noah has landed, and as expected, it's loaded with CGI animals, catastrophic weather changes and epic battles, which on the surface, doesn't make it look that far removed your last cheesy Roland Emmerich disaster picture. I'm still curious though, to see what Aronofsky (Black Swan) can do on a large-scale blockbuster-level production, and let's hope the recent news of fights with the studio haven't impacted too heavily on his vision. The film stars Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe, Ray Winstone, Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson, and is due for release March 28 next year.

Trailer: Melancholia

The trailer for Lars von Trier's highly anticipated follow-up to Antichrist, the apocalyptic sci-fi romance opus Melancholia, has finally emerged online and it's actually a lot different to what I've been expecting. I'm pretty sure the project was called Planet Melancholia at one stage, and if I remember correctly, there was some press about the film being set on another planet and von Trier stating that it would look like shit. Either I've misremembered or his script/vision has drastically changed over the past year, because it's nothing of the sort: Melancholia looks beautiful and opulent and very much set on Earth (or so it seems...). And how about that wack casting? Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård, John Hurt, Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Rampling!! No sign of room-clearing shocks, but seeing that it's von Trier in melodrama mode, this ain't gonna be a walk in the park. Film Fest season couldn't come any sooner...

Death by Pixels

End of the world, pixel-style. Instead of tsunamis and earthquakes, Tetris and Space Invaders! File under: Worth 2 Minutes of Your Day.


PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Arts and animation videos.

Trailer: 2012

Maybe the only other film this year with enough bloated sensory chutzpah to topple Michael Bay's throne of obscene blockbuster excess that is Transformers 2, Roland Emmerich's upcoming 2012 looks like it's nothing less than the Disaster Film to End All Disaster Films. Which says something, since the man's pretty much the go-to-guy if you want to see civilisations levelled, having built a career out of staging glossy CGI-rendered catastrophe of biblical proportions such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. One can't help but laugh at the OTT-ness of this thing:



Also, have a look at the terrific spoof edit (I think it sums up the essence of Emmerich's cinema quite well):