Everybody knows that the world is going to be ending sooner rather than later. Heck, the end of days is getting so close that we’ve been counting down our must-see apocalypse films. But until I watched the trailer for the upcoming comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, it didn’t occur to me how much fun those last few days we all spend on Earth are going to be. I mean, other than when faced with impending asteroid-related doom, when else is a guy like Steve Carell going to get a chance at a girl like Keira Knightley?

Stress-induced romantic hook-ups aren’t the only perks of the world ending, either. There’s slacking off at work, taking part in some cathartic looting, and who knows how many other base pleasures to partake in. Heck, this movie sees Patton Oswalt turning into some sort of hedonistic little Satyr, Gillian Jacobs kissing everyone on the mouth, and Connie Britton hosting dinner parties for her single friends. Not only are these all great ideas for how to spend your last days, they’re also glimpses at a movie that seems to have a stellar supporting cast. Check out how the end times might look with the first trailer for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World after the break.

The thing that I think has me most intrigued to give this film a longer look is how much dark humor they’re able to pack into one little trailer. I mean, this thing’s look at what the end of the world is going to be like is pitch black satire. That line at the beginning about “all your classic rock favorites” killed me. I’m not too familiar with the work of write and first-time director Lorene Scafaria yet, but this trailer has convinced me that I need to be.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World opens on June 22nd. [Yahoo! Movies]

Listen, everybody knows that eventually a world-beating threat is going to come out of its hiding place on the dark side of the moon and try to take over Earth. That’s just obvious. What the upcoming SXSW midnight movie Iron Sky does is present our eventual moon-birthed doom with an interesting twist. It asks the question, what if the hulking space armada that eventually threatens the well-being of free folk everywhere is actually the Nazis regrouped and back for a second go-around at world domination? Crap, why didn’t I think of this before? Of course this is what the Nazis have been up to!

Energia Productions have been teasing this movie for quite a while now, but now that it’s ready to hit the festival circuit, they’ve hit us with a full-length trailer that, more than any thing else, proves how far you can stretch a $10m budget if you’re absolutely, batshit crazy. This movie seems to have all sorts of spaceship stuff, all sorts of battle sequences, myriad cities being destroyed; and it’s all presented alongside that patented, iconic production design that only the Nazis can pull off.

Give the new Iron Sky trailer a look to see just how warped in the head our Nazi overlords are, and what sort of over-the-top tech they’ll be using to blow us all to smithereens. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?

I mean really, is there anybody who has ever made evil look as good as the Nazis? Their soldiers are all shiny black leather and death. Their giant moon base is in the shape of a swastika. That’s attention to detail that even Steve Jobs would have been impressed by. You know, if Steve Jobs was a mass murderer instead of a guy who made gadgets.

Iron Sky will have its North American premiere at next month’s SXSW Film Festival.

“There was never just one.” Well, that’s a nifty way to explain why Matt Damon isn’t in the latest installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Legacy. Damon’s out, and Jeremy Renner is in as another victim and/or participant in shady Project Treadstone. This first stylized trailer (complete with Inception-esque “brannngsss” and “brrahhhhmmms”) introduces us to Renner’s character – a bruiser from Reno who is on the run after showing some impressive stuff to all those government heavies who’ve gone through this already with Jason Bourne. Don’t you think Joan Allen‘s Pam Landy is just exhausted by now?

Join the program and check out the trailer for The Bourne Legacy after the break.

The film’s cast is rounded out with Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, and Oscar Isaac, who are joined by Bourne vets Albert Finney, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, and Scott Glenn (all reprising their roles).

The Bourne Legacy opens on August 3rd. [Apple]

The new trailer for Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man reboot has just hit the web… and it doesn’t look bad at all! The film stars Andrew Garfield as the titular and angst-filled hero and Emma Stone as the love interest alongside Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary, Rhys Ifans, C. Thomas Howell and Campbell Scott (and yes, probably Stan Lee). It claims to tell the “untold story” but appears to be an origin tale, so who knows what Webb and friends have up their sleeve. (Beside the web shooter I mean.)

Check out the new trailer below.

This time out Sony is revealing quite a bit more of the action, and it’s looking pretty good. The CGI still has a cartoony or glossy look about it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. The color palette maybe? It doesn’t look bad by any means. We also get a glimpse of Spidey’s villains including Ifans as The Lizard and Leary as Girlfriend’s Dad. Both appear to be formidable foes.

It’s hard to gauge how the 3D will play solely by this trailer… so I won’t attempt a guess. I’m usually pretty indifferent to the technology anyway.

The Amazing Spider-Man opens July 3rd.

It will be perhaps my greatest cinematic accomplishment of the summer if I can somehow manage to walk out of a viewing of Sarah Polley‘s Take This Waltz without feeling an abject loathing for Michelle Williams. Even now, watching the film’s longest trailer to date, I am filled with a deep, hissing hatred for her character, Margot. That is actually a good thing – it shows just how effective even a monologue- and music-heavy piece of marketing for the film can be, setting the stage for a big, gorgeous, moving film.

Polley’s latest film stars Williams and Seth Rogen as seemingly happy married couple Margot and Lou. But when Margot meets a handsome new dude (Luke Kirby) who, oops!, just so happens to live next door to the pair, all bets are off and Margot struggles against her deep and unresolved desires for Kirby’s Daniel. Surprise – she doesn’t succeed, “succumbing to the moments” that this monologue skirts around.

Think about the meaning of wedding vows and check out the trailer for Take This Waltz after the break.

While the film’s official synopsis doesn’t tell us much more beyond what we already know, it’s important to note the way in which this familiar knowledge is presented – which is to say, sympathetic to Margot and her desires:

“When Margot, 28, meets Daniel, their chemistry is intense and immediate. But Margot suppresses her sudden attraction: she is happily married to Lou, a celebrated cookbook writer. When Margot learns that Daniel lives across the street from them, the certainty about her domestic life shatters. She and Daniel steal moments throughout the steaming Toronto summer, their eroticism heightened by their restraint. Margot finally gives in to desire and in doing so, discovers some unsettling truths about herself. Swelteringly hot, bright and colorful like a bowl of fruit, Take This Waltz leads us, laughing, through the familiar but uncharted question of what long-term relationships do to love, sex, and our images of ourselves.”

Take This Waltz is currently slated for a limited release on June 29th. [/Film]

Director Peter Berg is making his bid for A-level status (box office-wise) this summer with an adaptation of the Hasbro game Battleship. That, by the way, is a complete misuse of the term ‘adaptation’ seeing as the game has zero story elements to adapt. Maybe if the movie featured naval combatants going head to head and controlled by unseen forces? Or if the aliens were manipulating ships to fight each other? I don’t know, I’m just spit-balling here, but you can see how difficult it would be to make a good movie from the game.

So why do it?

Obviously Universal is hoping to find the same success with Hasbro that Paramount has with their Transformers movies, but it’s still so nonsensical. The Battleship name offers no recognizable pull for audiences. These aren’t fighting robots that viewers have seen in action previously on TV or via toys in their hands…this is a board game with no moving pieces. The film could exist exactly as is under a different name and would end up with the exact same box office results.

Check out the new ad below.

Berg has made some good films (The Rundown, Friday Night Lights) and one great one (The Kingdom), but my expectations are still pretty low for his latest. Part of it stems from the sheer stupidity of linking this (or any movie) to a game like Battleship.

But my biggest issue here is the film’s obvious attempt to emulate Bay’s Transformers movies. The giant, bladed balls of metallic mayhem? The modulated robotic sounds? The vapid-looking cast of people erroneously referred to as “actors”?

And if the “battle for Earth begins at sea” why does more than half of the ad’s action take place on land? Did they just spoil the fact that the aliens defeat the Navy and move their forces inland? Or is the marketing department just phoning it in…

Battleship opens May 18th.

I tease, of course. The Avengers is almost guaranteed to be a gigantic hit this summer and probably one of the year’s highest grossers. The film has a built-in audience by virtue of its characters, history and the intentionally structured universe that Marvel has created with the earlier films.

It’s going to be huge thanks to the presence of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo/CGI) and others. And it’s going to be fun thanks to Joss Whedon in the director’s chair.

But will it be any good? All signs point to yes, and that’s including the new TV spot below.

We have a Hulk indeed.

Most of this ad consists of footage we’ve already seen, but there are a couple new and notable highlights. The Hulk bitch-slapping a flying vehicle out of the sky is cool, but for me the money shot is the verbal face-off that preceded it. Tony Stark versus Loki? Love it.

We expect the action and effects to entertain, but I’m hoping that Whedon and friends take this opportunity to also feature lots of character interactions. These are some fun personalities, and it’s good to let them breathe a bit before tossing them into battle.

The Avengers opens May 4th.

Do you like insane spaghetti Westerns? Of course you do, your eyeballs work. But I can personally guarantee that you have not seen anything until you seen an insane spaghetti Western…in 3D! During last year’s Fantastic Fest, our ocular cavities were lovingly assaulted by the tidal wave of extra-dimensional madness of 1981′s Comin’ at Ya!

The film, which was made at the dawn of, and credited with contributing to, the resurgence of studio-released 3D films, is a nasty, gritty revenge story that works in a number of hilarious gimmicks designed to force-feed imagines from the screen into your consciousness. The film made such an impression that it was picked up for distribution by the young, but formidable, Drafthouse Films. Yes, as in The Alamo Drafthouse. Drafthouse Films has already helped spread the good news of Christopher Morris’ Four Lions and their recent acquisition Bullhead is nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Now they’ve given this little indie absurdity a fancy digital restoration for its Texas theatrical launch.

Need more convincing to see Comin’ at Ya? What’s wrong with you? In any event, we’ve included the trailer to help prepare your brains for the visual roundhouse kick of pure cinema magic that is Ferdinando Baldi‘s Comin’ at Ya! And we’ve also listed the cities and theaters below that will be playing this amazing gem, one of my favorite entries from Fantastic Fest 2011, starting February 24th.

AUSTIN
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Alamo Drafthouse Village
Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek

BEDFORD
Bedford Movie Tavern

DALLAS/FT. WORTH
Hulen Movie Tavern
Rave Cinemas Hickory Creek
Rave Cinemas Ridgemar

DENTON
Denton Movie Tavern

HOUSTON
Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park
Willowbrook Movie Tavern
Rave Cinemas Yorktown 15

HURST
Rave Cinemas Northeast Mall 18

SAN ANTONIO
Alamo Drafthouse Park North

If you made it through Buried without the assistance of prescription drugs and found yourself thinking afterwards, “damn, I’d love to see another thriller that involves a dude, a box, a mission, and a cell phone,” have we got a treat for you! Gabe Torres‘ Brake includes all of those elements, plus bonus water torture!

Starring Stephen Dorff (between this, Somewhere, Immortals, and Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, the former heartthrob is having a real renaissance – well, let’s not count Bucky Larson) as a Secret Service agent who wakes up in a plexiglass box in the trunk of a car, Brake comes across like the bastard child of Buried and Saw. See, Dorff’s Jeremy Reins has been trapped in the box by some nefarious types (duh), who won’t let him go until he gives up some government info. And they’re not content to just trap him in the box, they’ve rigged up some real torturous treats to unleash on him as time ticks down until it’s run out.

Take a deep breath and watch the trailer for Brake after, ahem, the break.

My main beef with this trailer is that it gives so much away – it reads more like a condensed version of the film. Why not save those tricky twists for the actual film? However, that plexiglass box does allow a lot more visual freedom, and it works to alleviate some of the strain of confinement.

Brake‘s official synopsis doesn’t tell us much more than the trailer does, but hey, at least we know what Roulette is:

Jeremy Reins (Dorff) is about to have a very bad day. He wakes up in total darkness, confused and disoriented. The only light comes from the blood-red digital numbers ticking away above his head. Jeremy quickly realizes he’s in trouble. It’s hard to breath. He can barely move. And no one will answer his cries for help. Then, he hears the sound of an engine and it all becomes clear…he’s trapped in the trunk of a moving car.

As his captors reveal themselves and their motives, Jeremy realizes he won’t be set free until he gives up the whereabouts of “Roulette,” a secret location where the U.S. President is taken in the event of a terrorist attack.

Brake will be available on NOW.com, Amazon.com, iTunes, XBox, or Playstation starting February 17, with a theatrical release following on March 23. [The Awesomer, via /Film]

Remember Mel Gibson? Well he remembers and misses you. Not all of you of course, and by ‘you’ I mean exactly who you think I mean. But he misses most of you. The past few years haven’t been all that kind to the guy, both personally and professionally, but to be fair it’s mostly his own fault. Still, I couldn’t care less about his offscreen antics and behavior. I only care about the movies.

And the guy has made some great ones.

He’s found massive success as a director, but his last box office hit as an actor was Signs from a decade ago. His recent one-two punch of Edge of Darkness and The Beaver failed to generate much interest, but neither of them were really in his preferred wheelhouse of blackly comic action. The best example of his from that mini genre remains Brian Helgeland’s fantastic Payback. (His director’s cut is also quite good although it drops much of the comedy.)

Gibson’s latest is Get the Gringo (aka How I Spent My Summer Vacation), an action comedy about a criminal who heads to Mexico with a car full of cash and a dying accomplice only to get arrested by local authorities and tossed into a tough prison. Don’t worry though, he gets out.

Check out the new trailer for Get the Gringo below.

Is it me or does this thing have a really strong Payback vibe? I’m not complaining, and I’m happy to think of it as a sequel in spirit to that 1999 film. It looks to have the same mix of action, torture and dryly comic dialogue too, and while it’s unclear if the narration in the trailer is actually in the finished film that also matches the earlier film’s tone and style. The only unfortunate thing about it is the film is set to bypass theaters in favor of a video on demand premier. It’s an interesting move for a major star (at one time at least) that finds the middle ground between theatrical and straight to DVD releases.

Get the Gringo hits VOD on May 1st, followed by a DVD/blu-ray rollout before the end of the year.

While fear of flying isn’t exactly a unique phobia, most people who suffer from (ten dollar word coming up) pteromerhanophobia are afraid of understandable and traditional stuff, like heights or being in a confined space or plummeting to their deaths in a giant aluminum tube or being like Devon Sawa in Final Destination (chilling). Normal fears! But for those of us who have somehow managed to avoid classic flying phobias, director Takashi Shimzu (The Grudge) seems dead-set on making sure no one views air transportation as a safe option ever again.

In 7500, Shimzu has gathered a predictably second-tier cast (including Ryan Kwanten, Leslie Bibb, Nicky Whelan, Jerry Ferrar, Christian Serratos, Jamie Chung, and Amy Smart) as the terrifyingly good-looking passengers on a jet bound for Tokyo. As if a ten-hour flight doesn’t sound hellish enough, weird occurrences start happening on the plane, and not “weird” as in “drunk guy jumping on drink cart,” but “weird” as in “supernatural and homicidal and evil and oh my God what was that?” That sort of thing.

Take your Xanax, fasten your seatbelts, move your trays into the upright and locked position, and check out the first teaser trailer for 7500 after the break.

7500 opens on August 31, 2012. Plan your summer vacations accordingly. [IGN]

Dozens of filmmakers have utilized music from The Chemical Brothers (Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons) for their movies, and the eclectic rave staple even snagged their first gig as film composers for last year’s Hanna and as contributors for Black Swan, but now they’re the subject of a concert doc that looks as fascinating visually as it does aurally.

Don’t Think comes from director Adam Smith, who stole a page from The Beastie Boys’ Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! to include both professional camera rig shots and personal cell phone footage of the tranced-out crowd – which seems fitting considering The Chemical Brothers (then, The Dust Brothers) got their start working with The Beastie Boys.

Stuff a pacifier in your mouth and check out the trailer for yourself:

Yes. All day long yes. And all night long to be sure. According to The Creators Project, the footage was shot at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, but it might as well have been Mars. Capturing the transformative nature of live music can be a tough task, but even the teaser seems to be able to shift a few brain cells over. At any rate, it’ll make a hell of a double feature with Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never.

The movie will be in 500 theaters worldwide starting February 1st.

MTV, TMZ, The Real Housewives of Whereever, Dancing With the Whoever…modern pop culture is a wasteland of broken people being made famous for little other than the willingness to humiliate themselves. But the bigger problem is, more and more we’re viewing what the people involved in these projects do not as humiliation, but as “living the dream.” If you’re one of the good ones who thinks that the current cultural milieu in the United States is poisonous and is creating a society of vain, ignorant, entitled freaks…well, then director Bobcat Goldthwait has a cathartic expression of violence in store for you.

Goldthwait’s latest film, God Bless America, is about a man who gets pushed to the brink and responds by going on a murderous rampage where he systematically mows down all of pop culture’s most vile, vapid icons (with some collateral damage involving rude, selfish, everyday behavior along the way). Check out the film’s red band trailer after the break.

God Bless America hits OnDemand on April 6, with a theatrical release on May 11, so you might as well watch the trailer and start getting pumped full of righteous anger now. [Hulu]

The teaser trailer for the upcoming Guy Pearce vehicle Lockout (formerly Lock-Out) gave us a glimpse at the rogue charm Pearce has mustered up in the lead role, but it didn’t let us in on much of what the movie is actually about. The new full-length trailer over at IGN gives us a bit more of that Pearce sass, but it also lays out pretty much the whole plot.

Some of my favorite movies ever take multiple genres and blend them together. Sometimes blending genres creates a tonally weird mess (Cowboys & Aliens), but when you do it right you create something fresh and new out of used parts (Serenity), and it seems like Lockout has some potential to do the latter.

What we’re dealing with here is essentially a mixing of the spaceship movie with the prison movie, with a dash of caper film thrown in. Guy Pearce plays a loose cannon operative (who calls back to Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken more than a little) given the task of breaking into a maximum security prison that orbits the Earth and rescuing the president’s daughter, who had ridiculously been visiting the prison when a riot broke out. The results are a genre bending action movie that looks like Alien, shares plot elements with Escape From New York, and even throws some Con Air at us for good measure.

I don’t know how you feel, but to my arrested, adolescent brain that sounds like a recipe for an all-time great. And even if this thing turns out to be lame, it’s still good to see Pearce getting a chance to star in something again.

A little over a year after jailing and banning their most famous filmmaker from making movies, Iran might win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It would be a first for the nation whose government seems to strongly dislike creativity and freedom of speech, but its entry this year, A Separation, almost seems like a sure thing. Come February, writer/director Asghar Farhadi and Iran might be standing on the winner’s podium.

But it’s not a done deal yet. A Separation and 8 other films were announced last week as part of the Oscar shortlist – just one step away from becoming an official nominee. They include a Danish comedy set in Argentina, a masculine drama about the underground world of illegal bovine growth hormones in Belgium, and something marvelous from Wim Wenders. It’s, to say the least, a varied group. Except that almost all of them are dramas from writer/directors.  So, yeah. Subject matter-wise though, it’s a full spectrum.

The final 5 will be announced tomorrow morning, but here first are the trailers from each of the 9 shortlisted movies from far off lands (like Canada):

A Separation (Iran)

Directed by: Asghar Farhadi

Written by: Asghar Farhadi

Starring: Peyman Moadi, Leila Hatami

Review of A Separation

Bullhead (Belgium)

Directed by: Michaël R. Roskam

Written by: Michaël R. Roskam

Starring: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeroen Perceval, Barbara Sarafian

Review of Bullhead

Footnote (Israel)

Directed by: Joseph Cedar

Written by: Joseph Cedar

Starring: Lior Ashkenazi, Shlomo Bar-Aba, Yuval Scharf

In Darkness (Poland)

Directed by: Agnieszka Holland

Written by: David F. Shamoon (from the book by Robert Marshall)

Starring: Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader

Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)

Directed by: Philippe Falardeau

Written by: Philippe Falardeau (from the play by Évelyne de la Chenelière)

Starring: Fellag, Danielle Proulx,

Omar Killed Me (Morocco)

Directed by: Roschdy Zem

Written by: Roschdy Zem & Rachid Bouchared & Olivier Gorce & Olivier Lorelle (from the book by Jean-Marie Rouart)

Starring: Sami Bouajila

Note: No subtitles on this one, friends.

Pina (Germany)

Directed by: Wim Wenders

Written by: Wim Wenders

Starring: The choreography of Pina Bausch and a bunch of dancers

SuperClásico (Denmark)

Directed by: Ole Christian Madsen

Written by: Ole Christian Madsen & Anders Frithiof August

Starring: Paprika Steen, Anders W. Berthelsen

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Taiwan)

Directed by: Te-Sheng Wei

Written by: Te-Sheng Wei

Starring: Umin Boya, Masanobu Ando, Landy Wen, Irene Luo, Vivian Hsu

Of the shortlist, only Taiwan, Denmark, Canada and Germany have ever won before (Denmark leads that group with 3 wins); Morocco has never even been nominated; and Israel leads with most nominations without a win (9). Despite a noteworthy career, this is also Wim Wenders’s first nomination in this category. His only other Oscar nomination was for Best Documentary in 2000 with Buena Vista Social Club.

It’s also important to note that this is another year without France or Italy in the running. France has an ebb and flow to its nominations and wins, but even though Italy leads with the most wins ever (13), it hasn’t won since 1998′s Life is Beautiful, and it’s only had one nominee (Don’t Tell) since then.

The lesson from this year’s shortlist? World cinema, or at least the United States’ relationship to it, is changing, and new players are emerging to deliver some incredible movies.

Which five will make the cut?

Like many a warm-blooded American male who spends a little time here and there on the Internet, I can’t say that I haven’t been witness to the world of adult entertainment. And like any major money-generating form of entertainment, there’s a wide array of such films, videos and images out there in the world. Some is classy and sexy, while some involves animals. Ewww.

That said, like the mainstream world of film, even pornography has its superstars. And even those superstar personas have real (or mostly real, at least physically) people behind them. So when a documentary seeks to explore what’s happening in the minds of those who would disrobe and perform a wide variety of sexual acts on camera for money, it’s hard not to be just a little bit interested. When such a documentary presents a trailer as sleek and classy as that of Deborah Anderson’s Aroused: The Lost Sensuality of a Woman, one that goes beyond the titillating and promises something insightful and perhaps substantial, the film critic in me taps the red-blooded hetero male in me on the shoulder and proclaims, “yeah, we should keep an eye on this one.” Because perhaps it could be interesting on both intellectual and provocative levels.

Watch the trailer for yourself below:

Aroused features a look at the lives of s0me of adult film’s most recognizable stars such as Jesse Jane, Belladonna, Katsuni, Allie Haze, Kayden Kross, April O’Neil, Francesca Lé, Lisa Ann, Brooklyn Lee, Alexis Texas, Asphyxia Noir, Teagan Presley, Ash Hollywood, Tanya Tate, Lexi Belle and Misty Stone.

The film will be available to audiences in Spring 2012. More information can be found at TheArousedProject.com, a slightly NSFW website, or on the slightly less NSFW Twitter @ArousedProject. Hat tip to April O’Neil on Twitter for (a) pointing me in the direction of this project and (b) featuring an awesome Twitter background that includes The TARDIS.

Has a titular character for a tentpole film ever been muted in their own previews? That seems to be the case for Universal Pictures’ flashy-looking Snow White and the Huntsman, which so far seems hellbent on not letting its lead, played by Kristen Stewart, utter a single word in the previews. It’s probably wise to let Charlize Theron do all the talking, but how do you not give Snow White at least one line? Even Chris Hemsworth gets to open his mouth and yell in slow motion once again, Thor-style. Stewart is only given the exciting task of gazing off and acting lost.

This is only a 60 second preview and I’m sure we’ll see Stewart say something before the film comes out, but after two previews with zero dialogue, it’s starting to get a bit comical. Check it out after the break.

And when exactly will Universal boast about that amazing supporting cast they got here? Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Eddie Marsan, and Nick Frost is what every nerd would deem to be a dream team.

Snow White and the Huntsman opens in theaters on June 1, 2012. [Facebook, via HeyUGuys]

Inspired by the real life murder of Ahmet Yildiz, filmmakers Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay set out to tell the story of a friend who was believed to be killed by his father for being in a homosexual relationship. The result is Zenne (or Zenne Dancer) which focuses on three disparate characters forging a friendship that challenges at least one of them to come to terms with who he is.

According to Reuters, that’s not all it’s challenging. At least one newspaper in the largely Muslim country has decried the movie as “homosexual propaganda” made by people trying to “legitimiz[e] perversion through their so-called art.” This comes on the heels of the movie winning 5 awards at Turkey’s most respected film festival, the Antalya Golden Orange – including Best First Feature and Best Cinematography.

Check out the trailer:

 Even from the trailer it’s clear that this is a first feature, but it still looks compelling. It may be shocking to Turkish audiences, but there are undoubtedly more than a few here in the United States that would, sadly, be shocked as well.

Still, the entire project is a show of defiance and bravery coming out of a country that still sees many families killing young women for acts that, to their minds, bring shame. Yildiz’s case is thought to be the first gay honor killing, but it looks like his story will live on in a film that confronts sexual politics, religion, and massive amounts of gold bangles.

What do you think?

Have you noticed that songs about getting completely, vomitously, blacked out drunk are getting popular now? From Taio Cruz talking about his hangover and drinking until he throws up, to Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” and Far East Movement and whatever Ke$ha is, it’s a sobering trend. The generation that’s in high school and college right now is trying to get on dialysis as fast as possible. It’s a noble goal, but it’s still no excuse for buying Natty Light.

Meanwhile, at least one film is celebrating the act of celebrating. Project X‘s first trailer was manic and hurried, but this second trailer (via Coming Soon) effectively gives as much backstory as the movie can muster: three high school kids want to make an impact after floating through unknown by their classmates. A party ensues, and then the party goes viral.

Check out the party for yourself:

Why doesn’t the guy yell that he’s a Golden God before jumping? Is that the cup of a carpenter? Tough to say, but the trailer looks completely vacuous.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the movie itself might still deal with some serious adolescent issues, but John Hughes this isn’t (although it seems likely that an Asian exchange student will end up hanging upside down in a tree at some point during the party).

What do you think?

The inevitable has finally happened – I’ve confused Resident Evil with Underworld and somehow completely forgotten that there is yet another Resident Evil film on the way. My confusion might just be a mask for basic ennui, but it’s unclear at this point. In any case, look, there’s another Resident Evil film. According to its first teaser trailer, it appears to borrow (pretty loosely) from equal parts The Thing, its own mythology, Dawn of the Dead, and Independence Day, with a dash of The Fast and the Furious hat-tipping (you’ll know it when you see it). I can’t make heads or tails of it, and that’s likely due to two things: one, I haven’t watched an R.E. film all the way through since the first one, and two, this teaser trailer is essentially a Sony ad.

No, not like, “oh, there’s a lot of product placement in this trailer!” more like “oh, there’s about 30 seconds of a film trailer in the middle of this Sony ad.” It’s a weird enough move already, and one that will likely be mocked for quite a bit, but what’s even weirder is that, if the trailer is taken literally, it means that the rest of the world in Resident Evil is having a super-fun, technology-connected good time while America smolders into monster-laced ash. So, you know, fun.

Check out the first trailer (sort of?) for Resident Evil: Retribution after the break.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson is back for the fifth (!!!) installment of the video game adaptation franchise, marking his third outing with the series (he kicked things off with 2002′s Resident Evil and returned for 2010′s Resident Evil: Afterlife). As ever, the film follows Alice (Milla Jovovich who, at the very least, still looks as fantastic as ever) as she battles the evil Umbrella Corporation.

Resident Evil: Retribution will hit theaters on September 14, and will (shockingly) also be shown in 3D and IMAX 3D. [Yahoo! Movies]