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Here’s the setup: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Sam Rockwell are cowboys who have to fight off an alien invasion.

Sold.

Trailer/IMDb

Darren Aronofsky, one of my favorite directors, will be directing Wolverine 2. I’m understandably excited, because, while I actually enjoyed the first Wolverine movie, it certainly could have been much better. Hugh Jackman and I agree that Aronofsky’s dark viewpoint should be a great fit for everyone’s favorite feral mutant (hopefully following his journeys through Japan).

The first trailer for the Cohen brothers western ‘True Grit‘ has landed.  Enjoy the return of The Dude… or as close as we’re going to get.

I wish the trailer showed Barry Pepper too.

Hollywood certainly hasn’t given us much evidence that video games can be properly adapted to film. However, this they have given us two great movies that are heavily inspired by games. The first, Inception, is dissected by Kotaku, and the second is, of course, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, which Ars discusses.

Underneath the surface of the love interest story, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ is really a movie about two intertwined things. One, as Ars mentions, is the story about a boy who’s lost his filter separating reality from the reality of video games. Second, the film, and of course the comic before it, are an investigation of that twist: what if your life was a video game? What would be your challenges, goals, achievements, points, levels?

The film also weaves together a fanatic music pallet designed by Nigel Godrich. I was extremely impressed by the degree to which the filmmakers used music, which is a large part of the story since Scott is in a band (wonderfully named ‘The Sex Bomb-ombs‘), as an expository device and integral part of the film. They could have taken the easy way out and simply alluded to most of the music but instead they harnessed the opportunity to really expand on the comic in the audio space.

It’s often said that adapted works aren’t as good as the original book/comic/video game/whatever. I haven’t read the original Scott Pilgrim comic, but if more movies were adapted with this kind of creative yet reverent approach, that would be a thing of the past.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – 5 out of 5

Black Swan is the latest from Darren Aronofsky. Great cast. Trailer here.