Lionsgate and Frank Miller debuted Eisner's "The Spirit" trailer at NYCC this past weekend. What was shown was closer to "Sin City" than Eisner's pulp masked adventurer stories, but I loved it nonetheless.

Will Eisner and Frank Miller both have a passion for cartooning, the City, and women. As Eisner matured as an artist, he began to explore more sophisticated concepts like City life and comic narrative. Miller's maturing process was short-lived. After doing seminal works like "Dark Knight Returns" and "Daredevil: Born Again", Miller said, "to hell with it" and commited to elevating the sex and violence of American comics flirted with to sophisticated levels of style. His evolution was polarizing. Ironically it was his embracement of these more juvenile trappings that brought him success in Hollywood.

The teaser hints that what Miller's developed for Eisner's "The Spirit" is a nice mix of the purest elements of modern Miller and early Eisner. Too bad we're going to have to wait until 2009 to see the final product.

Here's the teaser (in HD, so please be patient!):

I had the great pleasure to watch Wong Kar Wai's "My Blueberry Nights" on the big screen. My, what a gorgeous film. I love how Wong captures a wide range of American life with the perspective of an outsider. I've heard the film hasn't been getting very good reviews but I'm not really sure why. The performances were very good. I wanted to hate Norah Jones (I actually did for the first few seconds) but I quickly fell in love with her character. There were solid performances all around. And, as usual for Wong Kar Wai, the movie is visually stunning.

I was surprised that Christopher Doyle (the master Cinematographer that often works with Wong) was not involved on "My Blueberry Nights". The visual language of the film seems to borrow heavily from Doyle and Wong's previous work.

The movie is a romance, so I don't recommend it to people who can't stand getting a little emotional (sorry Jerry, this film ain't for you!) but for everyone else, I definitely feel it's worth checking out.

Below is a HD version of the Trailer. It takes a little longer than the typical YouTube video to load, but Wong Kar Wai's visuals demand the better resolution!

I just came across the trailer and website for Tarsem's latest film, THE FALL. Tarsem is best known for doing R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" video and THE CELL movie with Jennifer Lopez. From what's being shown of The Fall, this film will be just as visually rich.

Below are the trailer, a clip I found on YouTube and the gorgeous opening image on the website. I highly recommend you check out the gallery on the website.

Ang Lee can stick to doing "Brokeback Mountain". This is the Hulk that I've been waiting for!

As much as Gobi has tried to convince me that the original Hulk film was a good film, I hate the pseudo-intellectual art film approach Ang Lee took. All I want in a Hulk film is Hulk destroying a bunch of stuff and fighting monsters.

It looks like the director of the "Incredible Hulk" understands this. I also love the Dale Keown (creator of Image Comic's Pitt) take on Hulk's look.

The SPEED RACER live action film now has me officially excited. I can't pin-point what did it for me... but these 2 new international trailers convinced me that the hyper-color visuals can work without being cheesy. It's young and vibrant yet dynamic. I'm sold.

I went to see "Be Kind Rewind" with my girlfriend.

My feelings are a bit mixed. I enjoyed the film, but there were some things that really bothered me.

Having seen "Science of Sleep" and "Be Kind Rewind" it has become very clear to me that Gondry doesn't care about structural perfection. I felt "Eternal Sunshine" was a near perfect film. The way it plays with plot and character suggested some deeper understanding. It also did a clever job of playing with the conventions of relationship dynamics in film to bring us to a very complex but satisfying place at the end of the story which gave me a nice mix of intellectual and emotional satisfaction.

But in the two films that Gondry both wrote and directed ("Science of Sleep" and "Be Kind Rewind") I felt like there were moments where it seemed that Gondry was more interested in getting from point A to point B with little or no effort given to finding a sensible means to get there. After watching "Science of Sleep" I attributed such problems to it being Gondry's first self written film. But after seeing the glaring plot problems that Gondry used to solve aspects of "Be Kind Rewind's" story, I'm starting to think that Gondry just doesn't care.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing... but having being raised in the limited language of "Hollywood" films, it still leaves a nagging feeling with me that with a shift in focus or a more concentrated effort on structure, both films could have been way closer to the near-perfection that I regard "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" to have.

The good stuff is absolutely wonderful. Mos Def and Jack Black are great. They make the perfect team of geeky misfits. The "sweded" versions of films they make together are beautiful... so much so, that you wish more time in the movie were afforded to the various low budget homages they do to modern film "classics".

The final film they put together is brillant and makes me wonder what the actual process was behind it. The way it looks and feels suggests that the brainstorming that characters go through for this final opus of a "sweded" film was the genuine brainstorm with the actors involved. Little bits that were thrown out and later integrated into the project feel way to free-form to have been included into the original script.

Unfortunately, the story, the glue that holds it all together, feels very rickety. It starts off great. But as the cast of participants becomes larger, the motivations take a huge backseat to the creative process... so much so that it feels like the film's story is just an excuse for everyone to become a part of Gondry's great filmmaking Sandbox.

The overall feeling of this creative movement is so strong, that I kind of got the feeling that Gondry didn't want to give you a satisfactory conclusion he wanted you to participate creatively to come up with your own.

To close things out, here are really nice "sweded" versions of "Kill Bill", "Star Wars", and "Die Hard". These guys were probably "sweding" way before Gondry introduced the term to the mainstream. With the release of "Be Kind Rewind" I'm sure they're getting some well-earned exposure!