But me, I wasn’t able to get that excited. I didn’t see the clips, or any video for that matter; I wasn’t familiar with Millar’s series. All I had to go off of were some screenshots–which were interesting, but still. It wasn’t until last week that official video was released, a teaser, and I was able to get an actual taste. And, well, it does look like a lot of fun. But I think for now I’m still holding off on going all giddy bananas. Check it out embedded below.

The idea gets me more than anything else: this young, geeky guy gets bored and decides to play superhero, get in costume, give himself a name, fight crime–all without any kind of powers. Then his friends join in. It all sounds right up my alley. And now with the trickle of advanced screenings started, a whole new wave of hype is building. Peter at /Film says a friend of his saw it and called it “one of the best movies” he’d “ever seen,” and another declared it the “best superhero movie ever made,” and a third likened it to a cross between The Matrix and Shaun of the Dead.

To echo the insightful musings of a young Joey Lawrence circa NBC’s Blossom: “Whoa.”

Here’s the first official trailer below, but it’s a Green Band and apparently patchy, bereft of some of the more bloody, hardcore elements that were shown at the Con. So maybe reserve final judgment till the R-rated Red is released. I know I am. I love the style here and I love the promise of seeing brutal violence being doled out (specifically, it sounds) at the hands of innocent little Hit Girl in a story about fake superheros. But still, I still need some convincing.

Kick-Ass is expected April 16th of next year.

You know the whole Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse double-feature experiment back in ‘07? The strange movie event with Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof sandwiching a handful of fake trailers for things like Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS and Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving? Well, this is what they talking about. Exploitation films, the cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap ’70s b-movies that had to be hyper-exaggerated and hyper-ridiculous for anybody to pay attention to them. And not being tied to any major production companies, these guys were able to do just about anything they wanted. And hey, who cared? It wasn’t like they were really competing with the big guns. It was basically a whole different market–unpolished and anti-highbrow entertainment. These were movies about–not with, about–gratuitous sex, violence, car chases, racism, gore and gratuitous gratuity. Whatever. If you can’t compete with TV and major studios, you don’t join ‘em, you just offer something that they can’t: Cheap one-admission-charge double and triple features, sometimes all-night marathons. Complete political in-correctness.

And then home video had to come along and ruin everything…

But you don’t care about the why or history. The point is that there’s been an almost resurgence in the exploitation film. First Grindhouse in ‘07, then the news that Rodriguez is developing a full-feature Machete film (trailer attached at the foot, below BD’s) and that him and Tarantino are considering a Grindhouse 2–and now this, Black Dynamite. Could it be that the exploitation film is actually coming back??? …Er, probably not.

Grindhouse did so not great when it came out that they ended up splitting the double-feature into separate billings in Britain and the other parts of the world. And that was with the coveted Tarantino brand stamped onto it. But so what? Black Dynamite knows kung-fu and he’s a badass with a score to settle. And of course the ladies love him. His name is “Black Dynamite” for Christ’s sake! So exploitation films may not be “coming back,” per se, but they’re definitely fun while they last. Check out the trailer below and tell me what you think.

BD comin’ at ya October 16th…Sucka!

Crazy, right? It’s like equal parts hardcore and hilarious, stupid and surprising, like some crazy, fun and badass popcorn amalgam of Constantine meets Terminator meets the Matrix. Definitely not a flick for everyone, but for me, it feels like something I could totally get behind. I mean, we’re talking about Kill Bill-style action here, except with angels! Michael in the left corner wielding an M16 in 1 hand, dagger in the other vs. Gabriel in the right, with a mace and a crapload of God’s fury. How can you say no to that?

And what’s cool is how much like a graphic novel it feels. Even the poster, its lighting and the landscape orientation in favor of the usual portrait. This is a movie for fanboys, there’s no question about that, fanboys into demon ice cream men and cursing, wall-crawling grandmas.

And dear, Lord…writing that out just made it even more awesome!

January 22, 2010, that is when the world is end. And it’s going to be epic.

Set to release August 14th, the promos have been kicked up a notch lately, though, teasers on Facebook sidebars and such–even a full trailer to gawk at. And if you haven’t seen it yet, let me be the first to tell you: This movie looks awesome.

The premise is that aliens came to and have been living on earth now for nearly 30 years, in South Africa, to be exact. They don’t just live anywhere, though. They’re kept safely (or so you’d think) in the quarantined area of District 9. But guess what? Yep, you got it. Something goes wrong.

What’s really cool is that the film’s shot in Cloverfield-esque mock-documentary style (which, honestly, in a movie I wasn’t expecting much at all from, made Cloverfield scary and cool as hell for me). And despite the aliens looking eerily similar to grimier, post-apocalyptic Transformers, I think this is as pumped up as I’ve been for a action film in quite a while. I almost don’t want to say it out loud and jinx it, but the trailer was giving me all sorts of new-age Aliens vibes. But those are huge shoes to fill and, like I said, I don’t want to jinx it.

District 9 to hit theaters August 14th.

I’ve been hearing about this one for a while but, honestly, have kind of been avoiding the trailer–probably because of the lame title. But when the clock tolls late and its just you and the glow from your computer screen together in your room, strange things happen, trailers get watched. And let me tell you: I’m glad they did, especially the one for Zombieland.

It’s really nothing new, the zombie comedy. And even though casting Woody Harrelson as a badass corpse killer does give the film a certain edge, by now the brand seems pretty well exhausted. So much so that part of me can’t help but look back and think: “Are you really going to top Shaun of the Dead? Probably not. So maybe its time to put this ‘fun with zombies’ genre to bed, at least for a while.”

But whatever. The trailer features scenes in an amusement park and a grocery store–and that’s on top of the “Zombie Kill of the Day.” That’s got to count for something.

Expect Zombieland in theaters October 9th.

Star Trek
Director: J.J. Abrams
Released: May 7, 2009
**** 4/5

Having never seen more than five consecutive minutes of Star Trek in all of my years on this big, blue marble, I had a strange kind of curiosity when I first saw the trailer for the latest filmic addition to the franchise. Everything looked like it was supposed to look from the quick-shots of Trek exposure I had in the past, surfing by the Sci-fi channel late at night with a bowl of ice cream and always something better to watch. It was all there, the flashes of tight red and blue shirts, the blasts of laser gun fire, the glimpses at pointy ears and the loud kind of heroism you only see in silver screened space. It all looked the same, but also somehow different. It looked new, and exciting, and kind of old and throwback, too. Then something crazy happened: I realized that part of me, somewhere deep and buried and aching to come out, actually cared.

A few months later I found myself sitting in a padded chair in a theater I expected to be way more crowded than it was, filled with costumes, and thick rimmed glasses held together in the middle with white tape, and people who looked and sounded like the pony-tailed comic book guy from The Simpsons, arguing about The Next Generation series and using phrases like “liquid smooth graphics.” I was looking to my left and right and playing excited. This was Star Trek, after all, the thing with words like “Clingon” and “Romulan,” the thing with space ships and phasers and William Shatner. Even if it was going to suck, I was determined to have a good time. So I parted my fingers in the middle, put my hands in the air and demanded “Live Long and Prosper” high-fives from each of my, until now, too-cool-for-Trek friends down the row.

This was going to be awesome. Bring on the interstellar adventure!

By the time the previews ended and the first line of film began rolling past the projector beam, my snarkiness was starting to fade. In the first scene, the not-yet-captain Jim Kirk was being born and his father’s ship was under attacked by an angry Romulan named Nero. And soon, Kirk (played by Chris Pine, who deserves all the credit in the world for his performance), in classic action flick fashion, was a grown-up outcast, too wild for his quaint little place on his quaint little world. Then a hardened veteran saw his potential, dared him to focus his energy. And so he did. And Jim Kirk officially became Starfleet’s token rebel cadet, nearly too big for his britches but good enough so it wouldn’t matter.

It took about as long for the film to dive into its plot as it did for me to really warm up it, both to the idea of jumping into a mythology so late in its life, but also to the fact that I wasn’t feeling alienated by it. I could tell there were nods being made to all the Trekkies in the house, but the film never punished me for not being one of them. If anything, that backdrop of history was starting to make the story feel more genuine, like I was even in on the legacy, myself. And contributing to, maybe even creating, that sense of comfort with the film’s world is its shining sense of humor. The movie gets you to laugh with it before you could at it, and then once your guard is down, you realize that the characters, no matter what their planetary race, are all human.

Unlike the newer Star Wars films, Star Trek acknowledges that it’s sci-fi and, okay, maybe a little laughable. So by making humor such a built-in part of the world, it takes everything down a notch. It humanizes it, wallows in the fun and light-heartedness on which action flicks were made. And how can you argue with that?

Director J.J. Abrams (Mission Impossible III) and co. don’t just remake the characters here, they play with them, play off of their defining traits in a way that, at the same time, mocks and loves them for their quirkiness. And the near-exaggeration, the fondness in which everyone is portrayed really starts to rub off. Everything becomes an inherent part of the world here, the humor, the sense of history, the unquestioned air of heroism and honor. It all comes together in a way that always feels like a certain kind of tribute but never like a caricature or simple mimic.

Maybe even more so than other recent origin stories, Batman Begins or Casino Royale, Star Trek takes its source material and truly makes it its own. Through a clever time travel device, the story starts you back at the beginning, before the shows and movies and Trek conventions of the last 40 years or so. It’s 100% accessible to newcomers but filled with enough hat tips to feel as though, even though it starts back at the beginning, it’s still building onto the end.

Through the whole of the story’s rescue mission, the movie becomes as much about Spock (Zachary Quinto) as it is about Kirk, and even though I never thought I’d say this, I almost can’t decide which character I love more. I love each of their conflicts and I love the world that Abrams and co. have created. The special effects are as good or better than anything else out there–everything looks larger than life and amazing–and even though some of the action scenes were definitely over-the-top and unnecessary, this is Star Trek, for crying out loud! Live a little. Strange new worlds, the final frontier, bravely go–all of that stuff.

Oh boy, and now I feel my ears getting pointy and my fingers parting. I think this means I’m officially a newly recruited Trekkie.