Looks like the Snow White feature film death race of 2012 has kicked off its second leg with a bang – a terrible, gobsmacking, color-dazzling nightmare of a bang. Tarsem Singh‘s take on the tale of the snow-white-skinned princess and her vertically challenged woodland friends is the more comedic of next year’s dueling Snow White features – Mirror, Mirror is the one that stars Lily Collins, Armie Hammer, Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane, and Sean Bean – though after this first trailer, absolutely no one will mix it up with Rupert Sanders‘ darker Snow White and the Huntsman. Tarsem’s take on the Grimm Brothers fairy tale has long been rumored to be a comedic family adventure, though this first extended look at the film looks more like a comedic adventure for drug addicts and people who think Julia Roberts is capable of pulling off an accent that is somehow not totally laughable. Tarsem’s seemingly pulled together all the elements of the Snow White story – evil queen, lovely princess, dumb bunny hunk o’ prince, dwarfs to save the day – without even a smidgen of irony. Take a bite of the acid-laced apple that is Mirror, Mirror and check out the first trailer after the break.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collector of film and television news and links that is currently working for the weekend. It certainly wants a little romance. You won’t catch it goin’ off the deep end. Da nanana na na… We begin tonight with more photos from The Amazing Spider-Man. Sony is hoping that its Comic-Con presence next week helps the webbed wonder get back into the public eye, as they’re counting on this franchise reboot to be a big earner. In the mean time, we get a few looks at a slick new costume, practical web-shooters and an intimate moment between our bloodied hero and his blond dame. All this and more in the gallery found over at /Film.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a movie news column that wonders: “does your daddy know that it sneaks into your room every night?” In a slightly less creepy description, it’s a column that, as of tonight, is of two minds: one that thinks about movie news and is seemingly on vacation, and another that is all about television. Like The Adventures of Pete and Pete. No, seriously. Tonight’s top story is an imperfect first look at Colin Farrell in the Len Wiseman directed reboot of Total Recall. Some sites are dedicating primo space to such an image, so I thought I’d throw it up there because it’s a decent sized fish on a day where news has been flowing into our nets plentifully. In other non-fishing references, the Total Recall character looks a lot like plain old Colin Farrell. Nothing to see here, I suppose.

Twitter is good for a few things, like telling the world what sandwich you’re eating, finding random hook-ups, or coordinating a revolution. But mostly, it’s for sharing your opinion and arguing against everyone and every-bot you can find. Since arguments are most often a result of anger and rage, we’ve merged the Inaugural Twitter Fight Round-Up with Boiling Point as a way of introducing it. In the future, we’ll consider shooting itself off into its own little column if we have enough ammunition – which we most likely will. This week we’ll take a look at arguments surrounding letter grades for movies, the R-Rating, and Game of Thrones’ Sean Bean. It’s also important to note that everyone we talk about (so far) is a friend. We’re not attempting to insult or reinvigorate the argument, but merely to use it as a starting point to more discussion and ultimately a verdict. So quit your crying.

A good number of months ago I made the plunge and cut the cable of having a traditional TV service. What I thought might be something that could take some getting used to, pretty much instantly turned into a freeing experience of paying far less money in my monthly bills and not spending so much time staring at time filler nonsense on the big, hypnotic screen in my living room. I didn’t miss dealing with companies like Comcast or Direct TV at all. Well, I missed one thing. I missed HBO’s original programming. And when I heard that they were debuting a new show based on those George R.R. Martin novels I read and liked a while back, well that sealed it; I needed to get myself some access to HBO. Luckily I frequent the services of a delightful bartender who has been letting me come over to her place and watch Game of Thrones off of her DVR. This is really the sort of show that makes having television worth it, and one of the last things that cable companies are desperately holding onto to try and keep subscribers. For the past few weeks I’ve had a number of things jump in the way of me keeping up with the show, first some illness, and then some tornado related power outages; so this week I found myself with the daunting task of catching up with three episodes. The thought crossed my mind that I might be too far behind, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

At the end of the fourth episode of Game of Thrones I felt like the feeling out process was over and that the fifth would be the one in which characters finally started playing their cards and coming into direct conflict with one another; and boy was that true. This episode felt so much different than the previous four in the series. Fewer characters get face time, the focus is narrowed, and the war between the Starks and the Lannisters steps up to take center stage. The pacing has been pushed forward, there are fewer scenes of pondering and pontificating, and the violence has been amped up to gross levels. Awesomely gross levels, but gross levels nonetheless. With this episode it feels like the writers are taking a step back from explaining themselves so much, and from this point on the viewers are going to have to hold on and keep up. Most of the people who I talk to about this series have said that they really love it, but there have been a few holdouts that think it’s a little too sleepy. If you’re one of those bored naysayers, and this episode didn’t manage to wake you up, then I suggest you cut your losses and find yourself another series to watch. For the rest of us… did you see The Mountain cut off that horses head?!

As we all already knew, Peter Pan is a monster who swoops down, breaks into bedroom windows, and takes children deep into the night to never, never return. Now, filmmakers are catching up to that fact and developing a story that reflects the grisly, real-world terror of Pan. According to Dark Horizons, Aaron Eckhart has signed on to play Captain Hook – a former police detective haunted by the ghosts of his past, hunting down a kidnapper (who probably wears green tights). AnnaSophia Robb will play Wendy, a victim who survived and has joined in the manhunt. Plus, Sean Bean is on board to play Smee – the only person on the police force helping Hook. All of these things are good things. The propensity to go darker for our children’s stories is a trend I can fully get behind, because it means revealing a much more human side to tales usually filled with glitter and fairy dust. On that note, there’s no word yet as to whether Tinkerbell will be a much-needed prostitute with valuable information. Animation director Ben Hibon will make his directorial debut here from a script written by newcomer Benjamin Magid. It’s good to see some new blood pumping through the system aided by some solid acting talents and a strange premise. Of course, this isn’t the first dim project for the boy who wouldn’t grow up (not to mention the four or five hundred Snow White and Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel projects [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The newest original series from HBO is a dense tapestry of people and places. It’s based on the first chapter of an epic fantasy series referred to as “The Song of Ice and Fire”, and the first episode alone introduces us to more characters than you can shake a stick at. Don’t let that deter you from putting in the work to follow the series though; HBO has pulled off stuff like this before. It took me three or four episodes of The Wire before I really knew who everyone was and what was going on, and that turned out to be the greatest television show ever produced. Seeing as this one was developed by the same people who gave us the epic, badass series Rome, I would say that Game of Thrones has a lofty task ahead of it, but a better than average chance at becoming a success; especially if it keeps up the quality of the first episode.

The year was 2005 and Michael Bay was looking to try something new… Sort of. He was looking to try his hand at a genre he had never attempted before, Sci-Fi. So what did he do? Why, he surrounded himself with some of the people that do it best, of course. Some of those people being Steven Spielberg, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. And what did the combination of these four titans give us? Why, Michael Bay’s only box-office disappointment but most under rated film, The Island. I didn’t have the opportunity to catch The Island until three years later however when I was first starting to realize my passion for all things Michael Bay. But even on DVD I knew that this was a special film. It was a film that contained a little bit of everything and yet managed to make it, it’s own.

There are no morally sound characters in Black Death, Christopher Smith‘s followup film to Triangle. Nearly every character is a pure bastard. No one in this universe, which is a solid mix of a genre filmmaking and period piece, could be deemed a good person. Oddly enough, though, the most charming character is who some will claim to be the villain: Carice Van Houten‘s charming and intimidating witch. The British director is interested in playing in gray areas and raising questions. If you have seen Triangle, then you should know by now Smith isn’t all about the answers. Black Death may not end on the complete mind-boggling question mark that Triangle does, which Smith himself jokes about, but there are definitely some open ends to be discussed. Here’s what director Christopher Smith had to say about his atmospheric horror film:

After a pretty dismal 2010 in terms of horror films, I decided to look into my crystal ball and peer into the future. By the future I mean 2011. While gazing deep into my crystal ball laptop monitor, I feel fairly confidant that 2011 will be approximately 78% better in terms of horror than the previous year. Why do I feel more confident in this year’s horror slate? Because in trying to find just 11 titles to bring attention to, I had to whittle it down from sixteen. Why not give you all sixteen? Because it’s 20-eleven, not 20-sixteen, duh. Anyway, here are the 11 horror films to keep on your radar this year.

Black Death has flown under the radar much in the same way the original bubonic plague didn’t. The coming of this trailer was not heralded by clouds of ash descending onto towns like snow, or the nightmarish ululations of disease-blind peasants crawling toward your pant leg. But it arrived nonetheless. The Dark Age action drama stars Sean Bean as the leader of a group of fighters investigating why one village has been unharmed by the tiny thing killing whole populations. They venture out to fight back the demons causing the destruction. The synopsis hints at something supernatural, but the trailer doesn’t. It is stark, hopeless, and meant for mature audiences:

A post-apocalyptic future where the rantings of a divorced cab driver have become the basis for a major religion. Who wouldn’t want to see that on the big screen?

It’ll also have Sean Bean, Dougray Scott, and sounds a lot more like a remake of Shaolin Soccer.

Previously thought to be (a) way off the radar, then (b) not worthy of being on the radar in the first place, the Chris Columbus directed film Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is now somehow creeping onto not only my radar, but also my watch-list.

Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings) has been cast as the lead in HBO’s adaptation of “A Game of Thrones” the first book in George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire”. The series consists of four books with three more in the works.