Film School Rejects » Geek Alert

Geek Alert: The Art of Star Trek Comes to Life

Neil Miller — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:19:55 +0000

Just before the weekend hit, we received an awesome little package here at Reject HQ: several copies of the latest release from the folks at Titan Books, Star Trek: The Art of the Film. Shortly after finishing my second go-round with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek on Blu-ray (which I have chronicled in my in-depth review), I took a look at this new book to see what was what.

And as I soon found out, Titan Books has once again delivered a companion book that is a must-have for any fan of the film. Combining beautiful concept art from this epic space adventure with hi-res shots from the film, The Art of the Film walks us through all of the design that went into this franchise reboot. Everything is in there, from creature design — a la the “cousin of Cloverfield” monster from the ice planet Delta Vega — to the design of the bridges of both the USS Kelvin (seen below in a never-before-seen image, click to enlarge) and the USS Enterprise. Also seen below, a shot of the original outpost on Delta Vega where Kirk (Chris Pine) was to meet Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy) and Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg). As you might notice, this original design didn’t quite make it into the film.

Written by Mark Cotta Vaz with a foreword by director J.J. Abrams, the book also provides great insight into the design of the costumes — from the Starfleet cadet uniforms to the helmets of the Klingon prison guards who ultimately didn’t make it into the movie. One of the most fascinating things to read and see was the attention given to the Starfleet uniforms. The material, colors and fit were all designed with painstaking attention to detail, something that shows up clearly in the quality of the film.

Of course, one of my favorite things about this book comes at the very end. After all of the concept art, the character and costume designs, the beautiful and vibrant images of space, comes some of the sweet, but also rejected poster designs. Above anything else, this is worth the price you may pay for this book (though I would urge you to stay tuned, as we will be giving away a few copies starting tomorrow, 11/17). It hearkens back to a time when I went out and picked up the theatrical poster and makes me almost sad that I cannot hang something like this on my wall:

Star Trek: The Art of the Film is available for pre-order on Amazon and will hit store shelves on November 17, 2009. Just in time for the release of the Blu-ray and DVD. For more on that, check out my special Blu-ray report on the epic release of Star Trek.

Trick ‘r Treat Trailer Trepidation

Brian Salisbury — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:16:04 +0000

Trick ‘r Treat is a film of various, entwined Halloween-related vignettes that unfold into one small town’s ultimate nightmare. Unlike John Carpenter’s Halloween, wherein the eerie holiday serves as merely the setting, Trick ‘r Treat seeks to explore the autumnal celebration as an inevitable, and mythic catalyst for evil and terror. If you haven’t seen this trailer yet, stop reading these words and click to experience it.

I am terrified of this film, and not because the trailer is uber creepy; nor that I think I will have to sleep with the lights on until Christmas. I have been waiting to see this film for over two years. I first became cognizant of its existence in late summer 2007 when it was announced it would play Fantastic Fest III. I was living in Baton Rouge at the time and Fantastic Fest was to be only my second excursion to the land of cinematic milk and genre honey known as Austin. But then, as if fate were playing that titular, festive game with me, I was tricked out of seeing it when the film was pulled from the roster. It got a screening at Butt-Numb-a-thon that year, another Austin film fest of sorts, and then vanished like a ghost into the ether. It was enough however for every respectable, and even the hack, geek-elite critic to laud it with full fervor. It was then apparently swallowed by some immeasurable chasm in the Earth’s crust and no one had any idea whether it would ever be seen again.

Advance two years to the “treat” portion of this ordeal as it was nearly simultaneously announced that the film would be released directly to video and would be among the films slated for this year’s Fantastic Fest. The trailer we present to you, more expansive than any I had seen prior, does little to quench my desire to see it. But the truth is, with the insane roller-coaster the release of this film has maneuvered, I am terrified by my own anticipation and what it may do to color my enjoyment of it. Trick-r-Treat now faces the dilemma for me, and I expect many others who have followed its volatile journey, that it cannot fail to be completely spectacular or I will be entirely disappointed with it.

It’s really not fair at all that a small film must shoulder this much hype, and I hope that most people do not have the kind of time to chart horror projects the way I do, but the simple fact is that Trick ‘r Treat’s daunting voyage to release is the stuff of legends. As such, the film will incur a backlash of horror geek angst if it fails to deliver in even the smallest of areas. When I see this film at Fantastic Fest, I am going to try with all my might to not expect one of the greatest horror films ever made. I am going to fight against my expectations and all the hype in order to give Trick ‘r Treat a fair shake. Until that day, less than two weeks hence, I will keep drooling over the trailer. Sigh.

Hulu May Soon Bring Movies to Your iPhone

Neil Miller — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:58:08 +0000

One of the first things that I do in the morning is dig around in a sea of RSS feeds and Twitter updates, looking for all of the news that will eventually be made interesting once I add my now trademarked brand of witticism. And normally I save reading about things not related to movies — like tech stuff and NHL playoffs news — until after I’ve sifted through all of the movie news of the day. But today is different, sort of. I was stopped in my tracks by a tweet from Kellvin from Latino Review. It struck me because as an avid iPhone user, there are a few services that I wish would cross over into the mobile realm, not the least of which is the video streaming site Hulu.

Now, according to an article over at Business Insider, Hulu is in the midst of putting together an iPhone app that will bring their library of streaming video right to your phone. Described as a “badass” app, the Hulu app would stream video in a similar fashion to the main website. The only major hurdle that I can see, and it appears as if BI’s Dan Frommer is thinking the same thing, is that the Hulu service runs on a streaming architecture, which wouldn’t necessarily allow for a show or movie to be downloaded and viewed later, say if you were going to be on a train or a plane. Should the app allow you to save for later, that would be fantastic. There is a possibility that a Hulu app, in my opinion, could absolutely corner the market on iPhone video, as we’ve yet to see anything truly impressive from the likes of Joost, CBS TV or i.TV.

According to the Business Insider article the Hulu app is currently in development and should be hitting the App Store in the next few months. Would you use a Hulu app for your iPhone?

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/rejects

Exclusive: Awesome Star Trek Desktop Wallpapers!

Neil Miller — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:34:06 +0000

Earlier today a little viral care package showed up on the doorstep here at Reject HQ. We’re not exactly sure who it came from, but we have our suspicions — it came from somewhere that no man has ever gone before. But enough with the jokes, enclosed in Star Trek themed the care package was a credit card sized USB device. And as you can see from the image above, it is a small card with a little baby Spock on it. Cute, right?

The story gets better. We popped the USB device into our main control center and came to find out that not only is this card one of only 100 such cards, but that it also contained three sets of desktop wallpapers from the upcoming Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams. On top of that, the desktop wallpapers are awesome, as you can see below. So instead of being greedy with these gifts, we thought that we’d share them with all of you. Below you will find a series of links where you can download each wallpaper at whatever resolution you so desire.

Star Trek is in theaters May 8, 2009. For more on the film, check out StarTrekMovie.com.

Download: 1024×768 | 1280×1024 | 1680×1050 | 1920×1200

As these cards continue to get out into the wild, other websites have begun to publish more of these awesome wallpapers. We will do our best to keep a list below, so stay tuned:

TrekMovie.com – Wallpapers #3, #6 and #7

Remember The Alamo: Star Trek’s Big Night in Austin

Neil Miller — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:49:55 +0000

There’s no doubt in my mind that if you’re a reader of this site, you’ve heard all about Monday night’s super secret world premiere of Star Trek that occurred here in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse. At this point it is likely that you’ve already read reviews from both myself and Cole Abaius, among others. But I felt that today would be a good day to go back and take one more look at the event which has quickly become the geek event of 2009.

First of all, there is the hype. And boy is there some hype coming out of this event. In fact, we now know what would happen if you take a large group of Star Trek fans — the kind who would gladly show up for a screening of a 26-year old film on a Monday night at 10pm — and surprise them with a screening of one of the most anticipated movies of the year. They loved it, almost unconditionally. And yes, it has something to do with the experience of having Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, in attendance. But while I am okay with accepting the fact that the experience is driving the hype around this film, I would also urge you not to completely write it off as a bunch of fanboy gooing. In an editorial over on Cinematical, my compadré Eric D. Snider makes a good point, “Given those circumstances, how could the response fail to be deliriously enthusiastic? Even non-Trekkers such as myself hear it and think: Wow, that sounds really cool.” And he’s right, the circumstances of the screening definitely lent to some positivity. Though I would contend — having met one too many hardcore Trek fans in my day — that had the new movie really sucked, it would have caused a damn riot. Aware of this fact were Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the film’s screenwriters. They commented beforehand that they were glad to be showing footage to some real fans, so that they would either totally love it, or kill them and save them further embarrassment. Which seems fair, if you ask me.

But they did love it — the loved it up like crazy. Quint over at Ain’t It Cool News gushed over the characters, saying “I like the way this new universe turns some old Trek landmarks on their heads, while keeping true to what’s really important to each character.” While Moises Chuillan over at Hollywood Elsewhere praised the visuals, saying “Star Trek has never been this visually dynamic. The camera work is full of lens flares, reflections, and focus effects that really sell the atmosphere. You also have a more nuts/bolts/gaskets/pipes styled Enterprise, where the ship feels like a labyrinthine submarine merged with an aircraft carrier. The mixture of practical and CG alien and creature effects are also fantastic, with all kinds of new stuff never seen before in the franchise.” I think you get the point — experience or not, the movie was good.

I suppose the biggest bits of praise should be thrown in a direction other than the filmmakers though, toward the folks in Paramount’s marketing department and Tim League, owner of the Alamo Drafthouse (pictured above). The fact that they had the foresight to put together such an unprecedented event and execute it in such a brilliant way — with the reel for Khan burning up and Leonard Nimoy appearing with a film canister on stage moments later — is a stroke of genius. But to those of us here in Austin, that is just the way it is with Mr. League and the Drafthouse — it is always a unique and fun experience. It is experiences like this that have me psyched for my first run at Fantastic Fest in September. For those not familiar, Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi and action — or whatever Tim League thinks is “really fuckin’ cool.” And it all works because at the heart of it all, League is the ultimate showman, dedicated to connecting real fans with really awesome films. We got a first-hand look at this during this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival and of course, it was reinforced on Monday night with the Star Trek event.

That said, it goes without saying that you should get your ass down to Austin for Fantastic Fest in September. There truly is no other film experience like it — because there’s nothing like seeing a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse — and there’s no better master of ceremonies than Tim League. And if you need proof, well, I think the world saw that this week.

To get more acquainted with how these things go down, check out the video below from Monday night’s surprise Star Trek event:

Also, I would urge all of you to head over to the Alamo Drafthouse Blog and throw that in your RSS feed reader. That way, if you don’t live in Austin, you can see some of the reasons why this is such an awesome place to live — it may also help explain the large gaps in posting here on FSR, as we are constantly disregarding work in order to hit up a Drafthouse event or two. To say that I love the Drafthouse like a fat kid loves cake would be a cliché, but mostly just an understatement. Its a large part of the reason why we uprooted Film School Rejects and moved our base of operations to Austin — and all it took was one trip down here to South by Southwest in ‘08 for me to fall head over heels in love. It is, without question, the world’s greatest movie theater.

But enough gushing about the Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest, if you’ve been there then you know how wonderful it is. And now thanks to all of the press coverage that the Star Trek event has brought in — including a nice little write-up on the New York Times’ site — hopefully the world will continue to take notice.

One more thing. For those who have written in and asked about it, G4’s Attack of the Show called me up yesterday and asked if I would come on and talk a little bit about the experience and the movie. And while I’m generally not a fan of seeing myself on television, I thought it might be fun to share it with everyone. So you can check out my ugly mug talking to Kevin Peirera during their “In the Loop” segment below.

Photos courtesy of David Hill at AustinWeddingPhotographer.com. More can be found over on the Alamo Drafthouse Flickr page.

Star Trek: Hot Green Chicks Want You to Party Hard and Prosper

Neil Miller — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:55:11 +0000

A few days ago the folks at Paramount Pictures announced that the premiere for J.J. Abrams‘ highly anticipated Star Trek film will take place at the world famous Sidney Opera House on April 7th, kicking off a world tour that includes Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Spain and Britain. And as my good friend Pete at Slashfilm points out in an epic rant about film criticism, this means that we will begin seeing reviews online more than a month in advance of the film. And while we will be covering the buzz as it builds, it is also important that we take a step back and recognize that for Star Trek fans, the party is just beginning. It has been almost 7 years since the last Trek film, Nemesis, was beaten at the box office in its opening weekend by Maid in Manhattan. And with this CGI-infused, hipster version of the film, Paramount and J.J. Abrams are looking to recapture a little bit of Trek’s namesake and at the very least, make an assload of money.

So to get an early start on the fun, the folks behind the flick began the tour this week in Los Angeles with a special celebration at LAX. The party included some booze, some Trek posters and as you might expect, hot green women serving up the fun. Check out some of these fine ladies in the images below and head over to Cobra Snake to see the entire gallery from the event. Now if only we could convince Paramount to hook us up with some of these green gals, we’d be in geek heaven.

Star Trek hits theaters on May 8, 2009.

Watch This: Transformers 2 Game Trailer

Neil Miller — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:57:24 +0000

IGN has debuted the first teaser trailer for the upcoming video game companion to this summer’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. And while it doesn’t show us anything incredibly new or revelatory, it does give fans another taste of what is to come. That, and it includes voice over from Optimus Prime himself, Peter Cullen. And ever since Mr. Cullen was kind enough to intro an episode of Fat Guys at the Movies, we’ve been in his debt. So we are happy to embed the trailer below. That, and I have a feeling most of you will take a little bit of interest in it.

The video game currently does not have an official release date, though we expect it to drop sometime before the film comes out on June 26, 2009.

Source: IGN [via /Film]

Awesome Deal: Amazon Goes 50% Off Over 200 Blu-ray Titles!

Neil Miller — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:09:56 +0000

It is time to break out all of those gift cards and that $20 you got from grandma and pick up some content for that sweet new Blu-ray player you opened yesterday morning, folks. At least my hope is that you all got a Blu-ray player — my expectation is that the readership in my Blu-ray Report weekly column will double this coming week. It’s an aggressive goal, I know, but where else are you going to go for great Blu-ray reviews?

Reviews aside, today is all about good deals. And it appears once again as if Amazon has the goods in the Blu-ray department. This morning they launched a 50% off sale on over 200 Blu-ray titles. And while these sales normally include older releases, Amazon is dealing on some of the best Blu-ray’s from the past few months. Here are a few specific highlights:

WALL-E (One of the Best BD releases of the year, if not ever) – $24.49
Lost: Season 4 – $49.99
A Clockwork Orange – $13.99
John Carpenter’s The Thing – $16.49

I have not yet had the chance to look through all of the titles, but just in skimming over the first 60-70 I’ve noticed that there are a ton of titles priced under $15. All of those are a great deal. For the full listing of Blu-ray titles on sale, just head over to Amazon.com’s Blu-ray Store.

Geek Alert: Wolverine Trailer Due December 12

Neil Miller — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:25:01 +0000

One of the highlights of this past year’s Comic-Con festivities was a surprise visit by Hugh Jackman, who was nice enough to drop in after the presentation for The Day the Earth Stood Still and show the already salivating crowds some jaw-dropping footage from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The footage blew the roof off of Hall H and we fully expected the trailer to follow shortly. Since then we’ve seen absolutely nothing from the film, which is still deep in post production.

The wait is almost over though, as our friends over at Coming Soon have confirmed that Fox intends to attach the first trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the December 12th release of The Day the Earth Stood Still. According to their report, the trailer will debut exclusively in theaters that weekend and not make its way online — at least not officially — sometime later.

Jackman’s performance in the film is being praised all over the press by former Fox executive Jeff Katz, who had the following to say to MTV’s Splash Page:

“To me and [Hugh] Jackman, our mantra for Wolverine has really been one term: ‘bad-ass.’ As long as Wolverine is consistently bad-ass, people are generally going to go with you. That’s what they want from that character. Iron Man comes out and it does a tremendous business, Batman comes out and it does a tremendous business, and the inclination in the movie biz a lot of the time is, ‘Well, that thing just worked, so we have to chase that. But as comics people know, Batman is not Iron Man is not Superman is not Wolverine – they’re all different.”

Katz also hinted at the possibility of future Wolverine films. “I can’t speak to what’s been discussed in the interim since I’ve been gone, but Mr. Jackman certainly has a desire to go to Japan.” To a lot of die hard Wolverine fans, that quote holds quite a bit of weight. As in, a few pounds of awesome to go along with gallon of sweetness.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine hits theaters on May 1, 2009.

Twilight Fanatics Begin to Line Up in Large Numbers

Joe Ngo — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:32:56 +0000

One of the most anticipated films of the Holiday movie season, Twilight, opens up this Friday, and the fanatics are already beginning to line up for the premiere on Tuesday. A crowd of about 300 has gathered outside of Mann’s Village Theatre, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars as they head into the premiere. One of the signs outside even reads “Not moving until Twilight“. Similar crowds braved the elements in downtown Toronto, San Fransisco and Chicago for meets and greets with the stars. Chaos ensued when the event in San Francisco only had enough bracelets for 1000 (3000 showed up).

With the hype that this film is bringing comes wild uncertainty at the Box Office. Will these large crowds translate into box office gold? Predictions for the opening weekend range from $35-60 Million (Personally, I think it will do better than that, somewhere in the 70+ Million range). The stars are starting to align for the movie well in advance, with MovieTickets.com reporting that 389 shows are already sold out as of 12 pm today, with 140 of those happening in the past weekend alone. (85% of the movie ticketing site’s sales have been for Twilight) It’s already hit #20 on the list for the most pre-sales for a movie ever, and that number will only continue to grow.

The numbers are staggering in terms of what anticipation for this film has brought. The official website has recorded over 11 million views since October, the trailer has been viewed over 12 million times on Myspace. Even the stars of the film, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Steward, are ranking high on the Star Meter over at IMDB, higher than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie respectively. The servers at MTV.com crashed when the initial casting photos were released… that’s just incredible.

Entertainment Weekly is releasing an additional cover featuring the film, a rare occurrence, as the first cover was the best selling one for the magazine so far this year.

Suffice to say that Twilight has drawn a following that no one could have imagined. The four novels by Stephanie Meyer have been flying off the bookshelves, and it looks to translate to the theaters as the crowds are lining up in droves. Having worked in theaters for a long time, I can equate the type of sales this is generating to Harry Potter and Star Wars. That’s an impressive feat for a film that is appealing to a younger, mainly female crowd. If you braved the theaters for Sex and the City opening weekend, be prepared for that… on a much younger scale. I don’t envy the parents of the girls who head to the theaters to find the shows to be all sold out.

Hundreds of thousands of people are giving in to the Twilight hype, will you join them?

Sources: Deadline Hollywood Daily; MovieTickets.com

When Can You Watch the Watchmen and Star Trek Trailers?

Neil Miller — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:22:55 +0000

We’ve been receiving tons of question about where and when you might be able to see the trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. Just about everyone knows that it will be in theaters this weekend, but as these things usually go people want to know when it is going to be online. So for all of you Trekkies and interested parties alike out there, here is a list of when and where the Star Trek trailer will be officially appearing:

Nov. 14th – Trailer in theatres ONLY with Quantum of Solace
Nov. 17th – Trailer on Entertainment Tonight (Check local listings)
Nov. 17th – Trailer goes up on Apple.com at 10:00am (PST)

Of course we anticipate it to make an appearance online sometime over the weekend, but if you are a conasieur of all things high-resolution like myself, the launch on Apple.com is an important one.

Also, fans have been clamoring for the second of three trailer for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, which will also be in theaters this weekend with Quantum of Solace — just two more reasons for you to go see a movie that is already worth seeing. According to Yahoo, they will have the premiere of the second Watchmen trailer Thursday night (as in, tonight) at 5p PST/8p EST.

As always, we will have both trailers for you as soon as they become available, so be sure to stop back in here for trailers and commentary.

Film School Rejects » Geek Alert

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