Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the few actors out there that’s been in the business all his life, and continues to amaze movie-goers as he continues to grow in the film industry. This year at the annual Sundance Film Festival audiences were treated with the actor’s directorial debut, Don Jon.

There’s been a little bit of history pertaining to Don Jon within the first half of this year. First it got scooped up by Relativity Media shortly after it’s big screen debut at Sundance. Since the movie deals with a porn addict, there’s got to be a great deal of sexual content sprinkled throughout the picture. Once the picture got its hands on distribution, they had to trim down the movie just a pinch that way they could avoid throwing it into NC-17 territory.

The beginning of the trailer is absolutely adorable as Joseph Gordon-Levitt introduces everybody to his passion project. He looks like he’s about to start jumping up and down with joy. Then we get into the good stuff, which gives you a good taste of what to expect out of the film from the humor to the cool cast, which includes Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Tony Danza.

If you’re interested in reading what one of our reviewers thought of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, check it out here.

What do you think of the first trailer for Don Jon?

Source: Apple Trailers

Say what you will about The Walking Dead (you know, like the fact that the first season never quite lives up to the potential of the premise, the second season featured some of the worst/obvious/most wheel-spinning and ham-fisted plotting seen on modern television, and the third season was much better but still featured a dizzying amount of contrivances), like it’s titular zombies, the show simply cannot die.  Despite its innumerable flaws, the occasional glints of potential (as well as powerhouse ratings) have been a steady engine for the zombie apocalypse program, keeping it running on AMC for at least an upcoming fourth season.  And now the AMC CEO is stating he expects the show to still be on the air in 2022.

Of course, that exact date is likely a bit of hubris, it also speaks of AMC’s determination to wring every last bit of ratings from The Walking Dead much longer than they should, a la Showtime has with Dexter, and Fox did with House, MD.

So what was said?  AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan stated that he “hope[s] that zombies live forever and we’ve just begun to find out what the post apocalyptic world is like, so that we’ll be sitting here at the Barclays conference in 2022 discussing the fact that Walking Dead is not over.”

So, what do you think—will The Walking Dead become the Rolling Stones of AMC, or will it go on way too long? 

Source: Coming Soon

In the annals of cinematic sub-genres, the Awkward Dinner Scene (the one from Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes immediately to mind) can often be the thrilling emotional centerpiece to a film.  Or, it can be just really, really, really awkward, as seems to be the case with the newly-released red-band clip from Only God Forgives (hint: if you’re watching this at work, perhaps some headphones are in order).

The film stars Ryan Gosling as a young man who runs an underground fight club and moonlights as a heroin and coke distributor.  When his older brother is killed, his disturbed mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) insists that he track down the killer and avenge his brother’s death.  Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn (who previously teamed up with Gosling on Drive in 2011), it looks to be another stylishly dazzling chunk of eye-candy interspersed with long, awkward pauses in dialogue.

And just to keep you on the hook until the film’s July 19th release date, here’s a clip of Gosling having dinner with his mom and a date, who appears to be a prostitute.  Things go from bad to worse, with his mother beginning by insulting the date’s profession, before getting down to brass tacks and stating that Gosling’s manhood was always a litter, er, underwhelming when compared to his older brother:

So, from that scene alone, you should be able to gauge whether or not Only God Forgives is your type of film.

What do you think of the clip?

Source: CraveOnline

Yesterday, we showed you two new posters for Edgar Wright’s upcoming The World’s End, his third and final film in the loose Cornetto trilogy that also includes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  And last week, we reported on the first international trailer for the film.  Today, we can now see the full U.S. trailer for the film—it’s a little broader and more slapstick, but it’s still packed with the wit we’ve come to expect from Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

As in the first trailer, the story is pretty straightforward—a group of childhood friends attempt an epic pub crawl back in the day and fail to make it to the final stop, a bar called The World’s End.  Years later, they reunite in middle age to finally complete the pub crawl in their hometown, only to find that the town appears to be overrun with robots disguised as humans.  As with the last two films in the series, it’s all about Wright hijacking a horror/ sci-fi trope and making it a metaphor for growing up—this time, it’s all about how when you return to your hometown after a long absence, everything seems slightly… off.

Check out the exclusive trailer at Yahoo.

The World’s End is set for a U.S. release date of August 23rd.

What did you think of the trailer?

The previous Man of Steel trailers we’ve seen thus far have all more or less focused on the same thing—Kal-El’s journey from his home planet of Krypton to Earth, and the dueling influences of his two fathers.  His Kryptonian father predicts that he will help humans accomplish great things, while his adoptive Earth father wishes for him to hide his identity for fear of persecution; the trailers have more or less focused on that tug of war within the boy in blue.  But the newest clip focuses solely on one thing—the spectacle of seeing Kryptonian criminal Zod and Superman clashing all over Earth.

It’s a fun little trailer, doing its best to remind viewers of how fun it was to watch Zod and Superman toss buses at each other at the end of Superman II.  In short, Michael Shannon’s Zod comes to Earth demanding that we turn over Kal-El/ Superman to him, and that the fate of our planet will be determined by our decision.  And then Zod and Superman make things go boom and it’s exciting.  Check it out:

Pretty cool, no?

Man of Steel was directed by Zack Snyder and also stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, and Laurence Fishburne.  It is set for a June 14 release.

What do you think of the trailer?

Source: /Film

We tend to hate on Hollywood studios because of the movie projects they choose to fund (Transformers 4, anyone?). So much of typical Hollywood product tends to be huge, expensive spectacles with little-to-no story, heavy special effects and poor acting. So, we at ScreenCrave have decided to help jump behind the indie film. Every week we’ve been bringing you an Indie Fundraiser Roundup, which features projects seen on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Now we’re adding on to it by including some of the Best Indie Film Trailers Of The Week. Check out this week’s picks below.

• THE SOURCE FAMILY: Communes were very popular in the ’60s and ’70s, especially ones with creepy, crazy leaders like Charles Manson and Jim Jones. Back in the day, the Hollywood Hills was home to James E. Baker‘s own little commune called The Source Family. Baker was once a WWII soldier who restyled himself as a spiritual guru named Father Yod and gathered a large number of followers who lived with him in The Father House, a mansion in the hills that was sustained by money he amassed by starting a series of organic restaurants in Southern California. According to the L.A. Times, the movie grew out of the 2007 book titled The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Source Family, by Isis Aquarian with Electricity Aquarian. The Source Family is told through intimate interviews with insiders of the group, and archival photos, home movies and audio recordings. The film was made available on iTunes yesterday.
  

• AS COOL AS I AM: Claire Danes and James Marsden play a pair of very sucky parents to Sarah Bolger in As Cool As I Am, an upcoming drama from IFC Films. The film is based on a novel by Pete Fromm that focuses on a smart young woman who must grow up herself while dealing with her immature parents, who had her when they were teenagers. The film hits theaters June 21st.
  

• HEY BARTENDER: The art of bartending is depicted in Douglas Tirola‘s Hey Bartender, a documentary that had its world premiere at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. The film  looks at the lives of two men, a former Marine and a disillusioned white collar worker, who hope to reinvent themselves by tending bar. The doc also includes commentary from some of New York City’s best cocktail hosts including Graydon Carter, Danny Meyer, Frank Pellegrino and Amy Sacco. 4th Row Films is distributing the film on June 7th.
  

Indie Fundraiser Pick of the Week:

• YOUNG AMERICANS: A few years ago I went to a play at UCLA to see one of my best friends perform, and had the pleasure of “discovering” Jill Renner, a lovely, talented young actress. While making the rounds on Indiegogo, looking for a project to give a shout out to for this very article, I came across Young Americans, a totally independent project starring Renner herself. The film comes from Alexandra Cuerdo and Chelsea Mayer, a female writer-director team from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. Labeled as an erotic thriller, Young Americans is about a girl who washes ashore on a mysterious island, inhabited by four strangers who share a terrible secret. The filmmakers are trying to raise funds for this project on Indiegogo, where they’ve also posted an interesting teaser. This film seems to be loaded with talent, and the story’s intriguing as well. If you’d like to support them, head over to their campaign page.
  

Those are the projects we have for you this week. Be sure to check back every week for our Best Indie Film Trailers of the Week–helping you stay informed about indie cinema.

Which of these projects interests you? Which are you looking forward to? Got one we missed?

Fans of the Jurassic Park franchise have had to suffer through a lot—first there was the so-so sequel (The Lost World), and then the just plain bad one (Jurassic Park III), then 15 years of nothing but rumors before solid plans for a Jurassic Park 4 became a reality with Safety Not Guaranteed director Colin Trevorrow .  And then the project got delayed for another year, so that Universal and Trevorrow could best ensure the sequel isn’t terrible.  And now, in case you Jurassic Park fans weren’t nervous enough, comes news that the film could be a reboot.

/Film notes that in a recent profile of Sam Neill (who played paleontologist Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III), Neill was asked if he would be returning for the new film, and had seen the 3D version of the original:

As well as confirming that he is unlikely to be a part of next year’s Jurassic Park 4 (“I’m told it’s a big reboot, a total re-jig”), Neill confesses he hasn’t seen the new version of the original.

While Neill is asserting a “total re-jig” of the franchise, it’s hard to believe that  Trevorrow and company would actually restart the entire Jurassic Park franchise with some new actor showing up to stutter his way through the role of Ian Malcolm.  More than likely, it will be the first film to not contain any of the old characters, and will be the beginning of a new series of films (just as parts I-III loosely form a more or less interrelated trilogy via recurring characters).  Just do expect any of the old gang to be limping their way through Isla Nublar.

What do you think of the JP news?

We’ve fallen into the age where digital platforms, such as Amazon and Netflix, have turned into the new wave of go-to television. There are plenty of other companies that fit the profile that want to take part in the latest craze, but the newest one to join the ring may surprise you. What makes this news even cooler is what video game they’re turning into a live-action series and who’s one of the fine people helping put it together.

Following the announcement of Microsoft‘s new XBox game system XBox One (which, personally, sounds like a really boring title for a new console), they brought out Steven Spielberg to deliver the big news. The world famous filmmaker revealed to everybody that he’ll be directing Xbox’s first official live-action television series which is based off the Halo video games. Now this may not be the big bad movie that a lot of fanboys/fangirls have been dreaming of for years, but to be able to have Steven Spielberg on board handling the whole thing sounds pretty wonderful.

For the time being the show will be released exclusively on XBox Live, unless they say otherwise at a later date. It’s no surprise that Microsoft eventually went down this route, especially since they have been letting many other digital platforms like Hulu or Netflix strut their stuff on their own system. The question is will this Halo television series look anything as cool as the Halo Reach trailers? Here’s one of them below in case you’ve forgotten about them.

Do you want to see a live-action Halo television series or movie?

Source: Slashfilm

In the first U.S. poster for Edgar Wright‘s The World’s End, Simon Pegg raises a toast to, you guessed it, the end of the world. Along with this new one-sheet, Focus Features released another UK banner. The new posters feature Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan and Rosamund Pike, and offer the new slogan, “Barmageddon Begins.” Check them out below.

The third installment of Wright’s Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy (the others being Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), revolves around a group of friends who, twenty years after having attempted an epic pub crawl, decide to head back to their old stomping grounds to try it again–when they discover that the town has been overrun by a world-threatening menace. The film also stars Chris O’Dowd and Rashida Jones.

Below you’ll see the first American poster, along with another U.K. banner:

In other World’s End news, Edgar Wright took some time to reply to fans’ questions about the movie. He talked about everything from his inspiration to the look of the “invaders” to cameos. He even gave tips to aspiring writers, directors and storyboard artists. (He said, “Get out there and make mistakes. You are your best teacher. Experiment!”) You can check out the whole thing at Yahoo!.

The World’s End opens in the U.S. on Aug. 23, after opening in the UK in July. Sadly, the people overseas will get to see the film before us.

What do you think of the new poster? Are you excited for The World’s End?

[via /Film]

Well, here’s the fourth trailer for Disney’s The Lone Ranger, the mega-budget film (estimated at $250 million) that cost just about as much as Disney’s John Carter film did last year, and has had nearly as many behind-the-scenes snags and production issues (it’s almost as if the universe is trying to prevent these movies from being made, and the Mickey Mouse people just won’t listen).

It seems Disney is really, really banking on the fact that people will see Johnny Depp and a bland blond guy zipping around in CGI representations of the antiquated past and remember how much fun that had watching the exact same thing with from the same director Pirates of the Caribbean (Gore Verbinski), rather than note how the film looks like a weird mash up of The Wild, Wild West and John Carter.

But hey, the trailer has a lot of boom-booms and bang-bangs, and Johnny Depp is all twitchy and odd, and the combination of those elements tends to generate millions in box office.  So, trailer:

So there you have it—it’s Pirates of the Caribbean in the old west; if that sounds like your thing, go have some fun on July 3.

What do you think of the trailer?

It’s hard to get a read on whether or not the upcoming The Wolverine is any good after the horrendously dull disaster that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine—there are moments in the new trailer that look genuinely great or entertaining or thrilling… but that sour taste from X-Men Origins just keeps popping back up.  Maybe viewing The Wolverine in its entirety will be the antidote.  We’ll see.

But hey, look, a new trailer.  This one doesn’t add much in the way of plot to what we already know, but it does carry with it a ton of new scenes—likely the most talked-about will be the dream sequence intro, in which Logan/ Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is haunted by the memory of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), whom he killed at the end of the also-terrible X-Men: The Last Stand.  It’s a nice continuity bridge to the earlier films, but also a cold reminder of the awful ending to the original trilogy.

Elsewhere, the trailer hits the plot points that have already been established—Wolverine is called to Japan, where a rich old man (whose life Wolverine once saved) offers the near-immortal mutant a gift: mortality.  And then a bunch of ninjas with swords show up and there’s a mutant version of the train fight from the first Mission: Impossible movie.

Directed by James Mangold, The Wolverine is set for a July 26 release.

What do you think of the trailer?

Source:  /Film

This week offers a number of this year’s earlier films, most of which failed to make much of an impression at the box office. This was sad for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and for Warner Brothers, who thought they might have the next Twilight/Harry Potter on their hands. There’s also a ton of cool older titles hitting DVD and Blu-ray this week. Check them out…

New:

• The ABC’s of Death: This omnibus horror films is like most omnibus horror films. Some sections are good, others are crap. Twenty six chapters of people dying are presented here in short films made my filmmakers and well selected amateurs. Eh.
• Beautiful Creatures: Warner Brothers thought they might have a franchise with this one. They were wrong.
• The Last Stand: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the big screen was met with yawns. Word is that it’s actually a pretty good action movie, but now that it’s on home video it might find an audience.
• Parker: This third attempt at bringing Donald E. Westlake’s character Parker to the big screen (after Payback and Point Blank) at least was derived from a different novel. This was mostly sold as another Jason Statham vehicle, and was dinging for being too plot heavy.
• Side Effects: Is this Steven Soderbergh’s last theatrical feature film? Who’s to say, but just in time for his Liberace bio-pic, this film hits home video. Channing Tatum and Rooney Mara star in this mystery thriller that is Soderbergh’s take on a more Brian De Palma-esque movie.
• Stand Up Guys: Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin star in this barely-released and barely-seen dramedy about a man who’s released from prison, and his old friend, who’s supposed to kill him the next day. Do you think they follow through on their orders?
• True Blood: The Complete Fifth Season: Get your naked vampires on.

Classics:

• The Burning, Captain America, The Town That Dreaded Sundown: The latest from Scream and Shout factory are two horror movies, and the terrible 1990 version of Captain America. The Burning is one of those films that has always been hyped as something, but actually isn’t that good.
• Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro: Two Hayao Miyazaki films are beign released on Blu-ray, and if you need to be sold on picking them up, I don’t think I can help you.
• Medium Cool: Haskel Wexler’s semi-documentary put Robert Forester in the midst of the 1968 democratic national convention, which was interrupted by violence. It’s a fascinating curiosity, and definitely lives up to Criterion’s goal of releasing important movies.
• National Lampoon’s Vacation, National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, Sommersby, The Ultimate Gangsters Collection Classic (Little Caesar, The Petrified Forest, The Public Enemy, White Heat), The Ultimate Gangsters Collection Contemporary (Warner Brothers): The latest catalog dump from Warner Brothers includes some great classic noir/gangster movies. Of them, the best is easily White Heat. There’s are also the Vacation movies, if that’s your thing.

What are you picking up this week?