OgMog

Don LaFontaine–the throaty voiceover actor famous for beginning many a movie trailer with an ominous “in a world…”–died in LA yesterday from a collapsed lung.

In addition to being the voice to many movies, he was the voice of Paramount, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, UPN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, as well as several commercials. His website estimates that he has done hundreds of thousands of voice spots between movies, TV and radio.

I’m positive his legacy will live on in the form of loving parodies, seeing as he began to poke fun of himself long before he died.

(via CNN)

As a superhero geek, if there’s one movie out there that I’m biting my fingernails about, it’s WATCHMEN. You don’t have to be a fanboy to know that the project’s had all kinds of trouble, mostly centering around the source material’s creator, Alan Moore, distancing himself entirely from the project.

That being said, Zack Snyder’s put together a pretty awesome trailer, even if it tells you absolutely nothing about the movie’s plot. If anything, it’s an extended montage of shots taken directly from the graphic novel, which is certainly reassuring, but not necessarily the linchpin to convincing me that it’s going to be a great movie.

While we wait for the next trailer to hit, take a look at this remix I threw together. A couple years ago, my friend Cameron read Watchmen and wrote a song inspired by the Dr. Manhattan Mars scene. I decided to sync up his song with the new trailer, and it actually works out pretty well.

Now that’s how you make a superhero movie! I just got back from seeing the new Marvel Studios release, IRON MAN, and was literally blown away. Sure, I’m the exact demographic they’re targeting this release to (male, early 20’s, geek) — but I’ve been incredibly disappointed with the recent breed of superhero films.

The problem is they’ve saturated the market. For every good one we get, there’s usually a slew of three or four crappy ones to follow. So as excited as I am for these releases, I usually expect the worst.

Well, IRON MAN was a different sort of movie. It was fast, exciting, funny, action-packed, and wildly entertaining. Pretty much the epitome of what you want a summer blockbuster to be. As much as I’m excited about THE DARK KNIGHT, it’s a little too cynical and brooding to be a popcorn movie.

(more…)

This has been floating around the internet quite a bit today, so I thought I’d throw it up here as well.  This is a side by side comparison of the trailers for the upcoming Dark Knight Batman film and the 1989 Tim Burton Batman.  They are suspiciously similar.  What does this mean?  Was one influenced by the other? Is it an homage? Is it simply that trailers are formulaic?  I know what Jack Nicholson would say.

Take a look at the side-by-side comparison below:

Any ideas? Maybe the Riddler knows the answer.

UPDATE: The 1989 Batman trailer above is a fraud.  It is a fan-made trailer recut to match the Dark Knight trailer.  Check out the real 1989 Batman here.

When I see billboards literally flooding Los Angeles before a movie’s release, I become verrrrry hesitant. Usually, these films turn out to be the worst of the worst, with so much money put into advertising that the opening weekend rips enough people off to make the studio their money back for creating a shitty movie.

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