Today at Comic-Con saw less news, but much more high-profile announcements. Most of the action took place in Hall H, which was bogged down with some serious line management problems, but we’ve got it all summed up right here for you.

The first big presentation of the day was from Warner Bros. First, the first footage from Green Lantern was screened. Although nothing spectacular, the fans enjoyed it overall, but were disappointed with the lack of Reynolds in the suit. This only confirms the fact that the suit is a work-in-progress. Still, I am looking forward to this film and hope that it can be a simple, fun superhero origin story, which we haven’t seen a lot of recently. Also, I’m looking forward to the more fantastical elements of the hero. Producer Donald DeLine said that many other Green Lanterns are featured and that the movie is part space opera, which is a good sign that they’re not ignoring that area of the Green Lantern mythos. And although the Green Lantern announcements are cool, DC has really not stepped up their game to challenge Marvel’s cinematic dominance. Geoff Johns is now in charge of their creative decisions moving forward, which is a great move, but the company has not centralized their film properties as Marvel has to such enormous success. Also, there was no word on Batman, which was a huge missed opportunity. Still, I’m hoping that after Green Lantern DC gets their act together and makes something great, maybe a Justice League movie? (Although I’m torn on whether or not Chris Nolan’s Batman should be a part of anything like that.) After a short Harry Potter trailer and panel, Zack Snyder came onstage for Sucker Punch. This new movie is based on his idea and stars an ensemble cast of women who are breaking out of a mental institution and includes Carla Gugino, Jamie Chung, Vanessa Hudgens, Jena Malone and Emily Browning. I’m not sure what to think about this movie, but the footage got a fantastic reception and it sounds truly unique. Hopefully the trailer gets released online soon so we all can see it.

Let Me In, the American remake of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, has had an enormous 360 when it comes to the public’s view. After a period of resenting the fact that such a movie was being remade, it seems like every detractor has been shut up by footage from the upcoming movie. I know I wasn’t too excited for this, but now its definitely on my radar. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield), from what I can tell, is doing a fantastic job helming the movie. He talked about how Steven Spielberg gave him tips for interacting with young actors, and that is what has me most excited for this film. Both Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Grace Moretz ((500) Days of Summer, Kick-Ass) have a lot of potential to give amazing performances and I hope they both pull it off. Check out this trailer for the film:

At this point, Hall H screeched to a halt after a fight broke out. It’s still unclear what actually happened, but the prevailing rumor is that someone asked another guy to move and when he didn’t, he stabbed him in the face with a pen. That’s speculation, but the scene was pretty grisly with blood everywhere and the victim being taken out on a stretcher, all with 8 or 9 cops in the vicinity.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost then introduced their new film, Paul. In the movie, the duo travel to Comic-Con and then embark on a road trip to Roswell, New Mexico. On the way they meet an alien named Paul, who is voiced by Seth Rogen. Paul is directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad) and the supporting cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Jason Bateman, and Jeffrey Tambor. I am really looking forward to this movie as Pegg and Frost are consistently hilarious and the story is pretty original. Paul is not your typical alien – he basically thinks of himself as an everyday Joe. Road trips are always pretty fun so having one with this trio of comedians and an alien should be awesome.

Once again Jon Favreau showed his skill at captivating the geek demographic by creating huge anticipation for Cowboys & Aliens, his new movie starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, and Sam Rockwell. Although the idea is great, it takes skill to blend such two very different genres, but Favreau is going for a very Western feel. After explaining that he is trying to emulate the Sergio Leone/John Ford films of the 40s and 50s, while using practical effects from the 80s as well as CGI for the aliens, he decided to just screen some early footage. Although the crew has only been shooting for three weeks, attendees were very impressed by the scene. In a surprise appearance, Harrison Ford was brought on stage in handcuffs by two security guards. It was his first appearance at the convention and the crowd went nuts. This a natural reaction, of course, to the man who played Han Solo and Indiana Jones, as well as many other awesome characters. I hope Favreau can really nail the Western feel and deliver a really fun, interesting film due out next summer, July 29th.

Now the presentation you’ve all been waiting for: Marvel. What Marvel is doing with their properties on film is incredible. By going independent and forming Marvel Studios where writers can collaborate and come up with great, interlocking stories for all of their superheroes, the company shows that it knows what its doing. Hopefully the result will be incredible, but there are a lot of moving parts, and all of them must come together perfectly. Captain America was first, as a short teaser showed Chris Evans in full costume throwing the iconic shield at the camera. After some discussion, the filmmakers actually had some footage to show which involved Hugo Weaving as Red Skull searching for an artifact that has something to do with Odin. I really like the Indiana Jones/World War II period piece vibe I’m getting for this movie. I hope Joe Johnston can create a very good atmosphere and seeing Cap killing Nazis is going to be sweet. Next up was Thor, which is much farther into production. A lot of footage was shown, and I can’t wait to see the trailer. Apparently the costumes are not nearly as cheesy as they looked in the first images we were shown. Reactions were very positive, which is a relief. Finally, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige brought on The Avengers. After years of rumors, this movie is finally actually happening. The final lineup was announced: Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, Scarlett Johansson as Natalie Rushman/Black Widow, Chris Hemsworth as Donald Blake/Thor, Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk (see the full cast in the photo from the event). It’s going to be insane seeing so many heroes on screen at the same time. I hope Joss Whedon can bring together all of this madness and deliver an amazing film.

Behold the cast of "The Avengers"

Well that was a very big day at Comic-Con, and while we knew most of this going in, it was still awesome to see all of these projects materializing before our eyes. Its going to hard, but we can’t fuel the hype too much. I’m looking forward to all of these films as much as anyone, but I’m not going to let the anticipation ruin my enjoyment of the movies as movies.

When the credits started to roll at the end of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, I was left with an unexpected question. What was the point?

Here is a film that would have won Oscars aplenty back in 1956, the year it takes place. But alas, it is now 2010 and there isn’t a single idea or thought in the film that hasn’t been had a thousand times before and better. What is it then that has attracted a director of Scorsese’s calibre and actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Emily Mortimer?

The answer will become obvious once you lay eyes upon the film. It’s all about the style and atmosphere. This is not the kind of movie often made in the 21st century and it must have been enormous fun to make. As a viewer, it is a curious wonder to behold. There isn’t a thought or sensibility that exists within Scorsese’s movie that would be alien to the world of 1956. As a result, it takes some getting used to.

The style requires the actors to talk in pseudo-serious tones and deliver over-heated treatises that extend well beyond the terse soundbites most modern scripts require.  The camera spirals up and around the characters and there are quick pans to new scenes and wipes for others. There are long dark, hallways, moldering basements, wailing rainstorms, ominous cliffs and the kind of psychobabble that reveals a certain social naivete towards mental illness. No one behaves as we suspect they might, but instead they adhere to an out-of-date cinematic code that would be most welcome in a film noir.

One thing I love about Scorsese is his ability to make a film free of ironic sentiment. There isn’t any winking or nodding going on in Shutter Island nor does it feel the need to make the characters smarter than the movie they find themselves in. In doing this, he pulls stronger and more natural performances from his actors. For my money, he has been the only director capable of getting a robust performance from Dicaprio. Leo might be wrong for the square-jawed, damaged Federal marshal, but he plays the unhinged part with a recklessness that enhances the rising tension.

Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams and Patricia Clarkson are the females here, and none of them are typical damsels in distress or femme fatales. They sometimes exist as all of them and none of them, and Williams in particular gets some awfully chilling moments towards the close. It is always good to see Ben Kingsley, but even better when he’s giving it his all and not just cashing a paycheck. No fear, Sir Ben is at the top of his form and I was more than happy to see the creased, world-weary face of Max Von Sydow peek around the edge of the German doctor’s chair.

On a visual level, there are sights worth savoring. There is a handsome and lonely quality to the imagery that makes it a dark pleasure to drink in.  It is hard to describe the shivers of delight that accompany a moment like the one where Dicaprio, wrapped in the feverish dementia of his own grief-stricken dreams, holds Williams while a large smoldering hole containing thousands of flickering embers opens in her back. Later there are just shivers as hundreds and hundreds of rain-soaked rats pour from a crevice in the rock face and clambor to and fro on the craggy cliffs, inches away from the revolted marshal.

As moviegoers, we have been trained to enter a thriller with a keen awareness of the endgame and to believe that each piece only exists to lead to the next, building an arcane vertebrae connecting an all important conclusion. If those pieces cannot support the whole, or if we can’t reconcile the pieces, then we may reject the entire creation. As it turns out, Shutter Island could care less about building a water-proof mystery that holds up to scrutiny. It lives and breathes its own aesthetic beauty, savoring each unkempt graveyard and solitary lighthouse with a near hedonistic abandon.

Shutter Island wants to live free of the cares and concerns of its plot, but in the end the brittle narrative  apprehends the film and slams the iron door shut on Scorsese’s pulpy aspirations. He needed a better story for all of his dark props, eerie sets, and leering actors to inhabit. If not a better one, then at least one that feels fresher. Dennis LeHane’s story isn’t the lifeblood of the film, but it proves an unwelcome distraction from Island’s Gothic excess all the same. When the ’so what?’ comes it is a direct result of the saggy, predictable conclusion.

I didn’t love Shutter Island, despite its many good qualities. It’s a great entertainment if you don’t think much about it, but it’s hard not to see the film as a disappointment. There are moments of sincere power and then, too, entire sequences that simply don’t work. A significant lack of dramatic tension in the late going dilutes its status as a thriller. Still, it cannot be denied that the movie possesses a quality that isn’t often seen in the genre; good, old fashioned paranoia.

In 2008, Scorsese directed a documentary about Val Lewton, the 40′s era producer that developed films like The Body Snatcher and Cat People, the latter of which features one of the finest chase scenes in the history of the movies. I’d like to think if Lewton saw Shutter Island, he’d be there, saluting Martin, and offering his hand from the shadows.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

I have been stoked for the release of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s most recent collaboration, Shutter Island, since back in October when I saw the trailer before Paranormal Activity.

While I’m a huge Leo fan and am partial to pretty much anything with him in it, the fact that Shutter Island has Scorsese and DiCaprio working together pretty much guarantees it will be a good flick. The two had success together with both The Aviator and The Departed, so I’m expecting good things from the duo again.

With the film’s release fast-approaching, my excitement has been spurred even more by seeing the trailers on TV, and now with the release of a behind-the-scenes featurette for Shutter Island.

Scorsese and DiCaprio have both frequently discussed how much they enjoy working with each other, and in the exclusive featurette about Shutter Island, the respect the actors have for Scorsese is evident. The video, while short, gives a little insight into how Scorsese goes about approaching scenes, and how the actors feel connected to their scenes due to Scorsese’s own connection to the film.

Check out the featurette below:

The suspense thriller Shutter Island follows two U.S. Marshals who go to investigate the disappearance of a woman from a mental hospital for the criminally insane. While there, Teddy Daniels, played by DiCaprio, comes to believe he has stumbled upon a twisted plot by the hospital’s doctors, which results in him doubting everything from his memory to his sanity.

Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clark, and Max von Sydow star alongside DiCaprio. Shutter Island hits theaters February 19th.

Atomic Popcorn again brings you the best in local Baltimore movie screenings. February 17th we have a screening for Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest film – Shutter Island. I have been following this movie for a long time and it is a MUST see!

Synopsis:

From Oscar®-winning director Martin Scorsese, “Shutter Island” is the story of two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island’s fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane.

Check out the trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/shutterisland/ or below:

This is a first come first served screening. Please click HERE to print off our passes.

Check out the pics of Tina Fey and Steve Carell on the set of their upcoming comedy, Date Night. Taken during production in downtown Manhattan, you can see the hilarious (HILARIOUS!) duo as they embark on their date. Might I suggest that Mr.Carell is trying to tip a man. Wacky stuff there. Wacky.

Date Night is directed by A Night at the Museum 1-2 director Shawn Levy and also stars Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Taraji Henson, Kristen Wiig, Ray Liotta (the list keeps going), Mila Kunis and, of course, Mark Ruffalo. The film is due out next summer.

Source: Coming Soon

Adapted from the José Saramago novel and directed by Fernando Meirelles, Blindness,  depicts the events of a sudden epidemic of blindness that sweeps across an unnamed city. Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore and Danny Glover star in this film adaptation.  While one would think everything would go black, it actually goes white. The White Sickness as its called, slowly effects folks that come in contact with the infected.

The story starts off bringing us into an unnamed city during rush hour. People hustling and bustling everywhere, cars beeping their horns and then we zoom in on an unsuspecting man. He is not moving his car and people are rightly pissed off. While the camera takes on a long ride to get to him, you can make out that he is rubbing his eyes. He is shouting that he can’t see. He is blind.

We follow the strand of this sickness from this man onto everyone that he comes in contact with, his wife, the doctor who he visits (Ruffalo) and eventually to everyone they come in contact with. Its a large domino effect, a very large one.

Ruffalo gets home that night to what seems to be a marriage that is on the brinks. Moore plays a wife that seems to need a drink to get through the evenings at home. Going to bed early, leaving the doctor to his studies to this amazing sickness he encounters, she retires for the night.

Waking up the next morning proves to be an bad day for the doc. He cannot see either, at all! He is afraid to let his wife know or get to close due to it having an effect on everyone you come in contact with. This is where the true story begins. The doctor’s wife doesn’t go blind…at all! She is the only one that can see.

I won’t go into any more of the story as you can see this yourself if you so choose. But please be warned, while this movie is a struggle for humanity, pride and justice, it is one of very naked realism (no pun intended). Folks run around naked, there is rape involved, pillaging, basically anarchy to an extent in this film. Relationships are torn apart and made anew. The struggle that goes on in each person we meet in this film is strong, it definitely has an impact on the viewing audience.

While I would like to say I enjoyed this film, I did not. It’s not at all the film itself, its more the concept. Its depressing to think of things such as this happening to anyone you may love or come in contact with. The brutal honesty within the film kind of struck a chord with my senses along with others in the theater. I counted 7 people who left the film early.

The film can drag in places and then pick up just when you thought maybe it would end.

Overall I would probably not recommend this to anyone to see in the theater. No children at all should see this as its something that may leave a small imprint in my mind for a while. The movie itself was directed wonderfully. he scenes themselves were done well and thought out in a great way. Just the content matter itself is what I disliked. The bleakness, the white, the drab, the death…not something I look forward to spending two hours of my life contemplating.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆