I’d rather not spend my evening typing a thousand words that no one will read because they’re drunk, hung over, or avoiding the internet’s two-pronged takeover by Super Bowl XLVIII and #EsuranceSave30. (If you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t want to know. You have to be a greedy resident of the continental U.S., a registered Twitter user, and not opposed to irritating the heck out of all your followers for the chance to win bucks. I’d rather not perpetuate that, beyond what damage I’ve already done there for purely comedic purposes.)
To that end, please enjoy the following summer action blockbuster EXPLOSIONS-filled trailers that either aired during the Big Game, or had tiny teasers aired for them during the Big Game that directed fans to jump online for the full-length extravaganza. (Compatibility warning: if these aren’t cleared for viewing outside the U.S. or on smartphones, my sincerest apologies. Hopefully a quick search would turn them up at other locations.)
Leaving out Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, the internet notified me of four viable specimens that may or may not make zillions this year at the box office. Enjoy!
1. 30-second teaser for Transformers: Age of Extinction, in which Mark Wahlberg has replaced Shia LeBeouf as the guy who runs away from killer robots. But the image of Autobots riding Dinobots will rule the hearts and minds of fans for the next two days.
Alexander Payne’s new film Nebraska perfectly replicates that forlorn Midwest sensation of being trapped in rooms with hordes of impressionable, elderly relatives all living on the same slow-motion wavelength, visiting and reminiscing and comparing their amnesia levels and enjoying life’s remaining minutes at the speed of molasses, except when they’re jumping to conclusions at hyperspeed. When that happens to me, I put on a brave front while suppressing the desperate urge to crawl out of my skin. With SNL’s Will Forte acting as my proxy and reenacting my childhood family vacations so vividly, I’m surprised I didn’t convulse in my seat with flashbacks.
Older fans of Matthew McConaughey’s spate of ’90s romantic comedies may be in for a shock when they walk into Dallas Buyers Club and see him playing Christian Bale’s character from The Machinist. He and costar Jared Leto (both radically transformed and up for Oscars this year) underwent severe weight loss for their roles in this based-on-a-true-story underdog drama that’s one part can’t-we-all-just-get-along and four parts sticking-it-to-The-MAN.
If you’re online much, you’re already aware this year’s Academy Awards nominations were announced today. If you follow either The Hollywood Reporter or The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on Twitter, you had the opportunity to see the categories live-tweeted one at a time early this morning. If you shared my mistake of following both entities, you were treated to a double-barrel Oscar-nom redundancy blast that turned Twitter to sludge for fifteen minutes. Homework question: how many live-tweeters does any given event really need?
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 