A few days ago I posted a sneak peek at the upcom­ing reimag­in­ing of the Preda­tor mythos and while most peo­ple seemed to like the over­all con­cept some of my lis­ten­ers felt that they went beyond typ­i­cal sto­ry­telling and did not rep­re­sent the fran­chise accu­rately. Here is the offi­cial trailer which give a bit more footage than the sneak peak along with a poster. Feel free to share your thoughts in the com­ments below or in the forum.

The Preda­tor films have been a guilty plea­sure of mine for a long time, from the bat­tles with Schwarzeneg­ger and Glover, to the two films bat­tling the Aliens. The Preda­tors them­selves have always had a unique pre­sen­ta­tion to movie fans because they really are anti-heroes and there are times you actu­ally end up root­ing for them.When Robert Rodriguez announced his intent to reboot the fran­chise there was a part of me that was con­cerned because of the cast­ing that was involved, but as I researched the film more, I enjoyed the con­cept Rodriguez was using. In this new inter­pre­ta­tion human “Preda­tors”  and cold blooded killers are taken to a planet which serves as a Preda­tor hunt­ing ground and, of course, it becomes sur­vival of the fittest. I feel that the Preda­tor books as well as the films always focused on the hunt­ing of the strongest prey, and this film con­tin­ues to enforce that.  Here is your sneak peek at the Robert Rodriguez’s Predators.

Iron Man 2 is due in the­atres in two months, and this new trailer makes me appre­ci­ate the work that Jon Favreau has put into this fran­chise. Of course the big sell is the onscreen debut of War Machine — now played by Don Chea­dle, who replaced Ter­rence Howard.  We can’t for­get  the Black Widow as well, who looks like she will make things inter­est­ing for Mr. Stark.

Mickey Rourke and the always awe­some Sam Rock­well are your vil­lains from what we’ve seen so far. Rourke will play Whiplash (who may or may not also become Crim­son Dynamo) and Rock­well is crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind and busi­ness­man Justin Hammer.

Iron Man 2 looks like it has the right spark to start the new sum­mer block­buster sea­son and quite frankly I wouldn’t have it any other way.

.…and it’s not the Rid­dler, at least not yet. On the heels of The Dark Knight, Warner Premiere, Warner Brothers’ direct to video pro­duc­tion branch plans to show you an even more dis­turb­ing Gotham this sum­mer. “Bat­man: Under The Red Hood” plans to bring to life one of the dark­est chap­ters in the detective’s his­tory as he has to deal with a loss more tragic than the one that made him first don the cape and cowl. The cre­ators have assured us that this one will be more vio­lent than Christo­pher Nolan’s last block­buster by describ­ing the open­ing scene. Taken straight from the pages of the clas­sic story “A Death In The Fam­ily,” fans will be treated to the Joker lit­er­ally beat­ing (Jason Todd) Robin to death. The irony here is that some might think this scene is too much for a PG-13 movie but it was actu­ally the fans that voted to have Todd killed back in the ‘80s when DC gave them the choice. Bat­man has lit­tle time to grieve as a new vig­i­lante arises in Gotham; one with a name he is already too famil­iar with — Red Hood. The big prob­lem is that Red Hood is ready and will­ing to cross the line that Bat­man never will. Any­one that has kept up with the last few DC ani­mated movies knows that these sto­ries have been enjoy­able and well writ­ten. I look for­ward to this one espe­cially after hear­ing about the cast: Bruce Green­wood is Bat­man, Jensen Ack­les is Red Hood, and none other than Neil Patrick Har­ris will voice the fea­ture film debut of Nightwing! Looks to be a good sum­mer this year in and out of the­atres. I’ll leave you with the fol­low­ing quote by Bat­man on the Joker:

“All I’ve ever wanted to do was kill him…A day doesn’t go by where I don’t think about sub­ject­ing him to every hor­ren­dous tor­ture he’s dealt out to oth­ers and then.…end him.”

Wow.

Sources: www.batmanredhood.com and www.imdb.com for voice tal­ent (Andrea Romano is the voice director)

Before you read Josh’s review I’d like to give you a bit of back story. This review is writ­ten in response to Slick’s recent review of Avatar.Slick and Josh have very dif­fer­ent opin­ions and while both are in fact accu­rate assess­ments it’s seems that the read­ers deserve both view­points. Check them both out and share you thoughts in the com­ments below –Rich

(con­tinue reading…)