One recent trend in action movies—one that we’ll be seeing in full force this weekend with the release of Captain America: The First Avenger—is to transport the viewer to a different time and place. Period action films are all the rage, and in the last ten years or so, no major historical event has gone unrepresented in the genre. Here are some of our favorites:
Comic-Con: It’s not just
for comic books anymore. No, now it seems as if this annual event that
self-proclaimed geeks of all kinds call home is a major venue for movie studios
to unveil big news, debut trailers and drop hint after hint regarding the
largest upcoming projects. After taking a gander at the line-up for this year’s
panels, we will take a look at a few of our most anticipated (pipe dreams as
they may be) reveals of Comic-Con 2011.
This week on Episode 15, Steven, Simon, Kieran and Max discuss the onslaught of recent movie trailers including The Dark Knight Rises teaser and then discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 as well as the franchise on the whole.
Could it have been
anything else? Our featured trailer this week is of course the now officially
released teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan’s mammothly anticipated follow-up
to his billion dollar smash. The fun doesn’t stop there, however, as we also
have Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of the beloved novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, simply called Hugo, and the latest from Aardman Animation, creators of the
“Wallace and Gromit” films, The Pirates!
Band of Misfits. Finally we’ll touch on two other big releases with the
star-studded Contagion and the remake
of the John Carpenter classic The Thing
which my fellow writers Julian and Steven have chatted about here and here
respectively. There is only one thing you need to know right now: you’re
reading Trailer Tracker.
$168 million in its first weekend. $92.1 million in its first day. $43.5 million in its first public screenings. These are incredible numbers, but allow me to cast a small memory charm on you for a moment. The success of “Harry Potter” goes well, well beyond the current and long-term success of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.“
Welcome
to Box Office Wizard, Player Affinity’s premiere movie box office
prediction contest. The final “Harry Potter” film comes out this weekend
and there’s a frenzy in the air, so if you can’t get in the mood to be a
box-office wizard now, you might as well go sit in a box … in your
office. Just read through this post and tell us your top
five box office predicted finishers for this weekend. Finish out 2011 on
top and you will win something COOL.
One
of cinema’s best-executed franchises comes to a close tomorrow after
just over 10 years, so we’ve been counting down our favorite “Potter”
films all week. This concludes with our current favorite (we’ll see
after tomorrow), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.
When it was first announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
would be split into two parts, it was met with cynicism; a way to milk
as much money out of the series as possible. But it turned out to be a
smart move critically as well as commercially. We at Player Affinity
collectively thought it was the best Harry Potter film so far
as the series moves out of Hogwarts to the dark world of Voldermort’s
takeover. Here are our thoughts on the first half of the seventh
chapter:
It’s a clash of the colons
this week on Player Affinity with our featured trailer slinking its way in with
the sequel to the Christmas hit, Sherlock
Holmes: A Game of Shadows reuniting Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as the
oddball sleuths. After last weeks War
Horse, Steven Spielberg has unleashed his second movie clip of this year’s
upcoming holiday season in the motion capture adventure The Adventures of Tin Tin: The Secret of the Unicron. Then, before The Dark Knight Rises finally whets our
salivating palates, the animated origin tale Batman: Year One makes its way to home video, followed with a cringe-worthy
offering with the latest Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill (this time with the comedian sporting a wig and a
false bosom). Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a bunch of movie news;
it’s Trailer Tracker.
One
of cinema’s best-executed franchises comes to a close after ten years
in theaters this Friday and our countdown nears completion with number 2
on our list: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Widely touted as one of (if not the)
best entry in the series, “Prisoner of Azkaban” sees Harry enter his
third year at Hogwarts, and the escape and threat of Sirius Black – a wizard linked to Voldemort and the death of Harry’s parents – looming over his every move. Regardless of opinion, nobody can deny that Alfonso Cuarón’s direction would be a game changer of tone and atmosphere for the franchise.
The countdown continues today with our third favorite “Potter” film so far, which would be none other than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which sees Harry discovering a prophecy that has dire consequences for the rest of the series. This was the last time the series would change directorial hands as director David Yates joined, creating the dark tone that the series has since been renowned for.
