Remember: This weekend is your chance to support original filmmaking at theaters.

Below, the trailer for “Saving Mr. Banks,” the “making of ‘Mary Poppins” movie with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as author P.L. Travers. Looks pretty good to me – obviously leaning on a fairly fictionalized version of the story (the real events didn’t exactly have a cinematic arc, and neither character would come out particularly likable) but the basic idea of Walt having to realize that this isn’t just one more fairytale to monetize vs. Travers possibly coming out of her own shell a bit re: the personal trauma that informed the book (Travers’ father was a banker who died young, leaving her and her sisters in the care of their mentally-unwell, suicidal mother.) There doesn’t appear to be anyone in the cast playing Madge Burnand, who is believed to have been Travers’ partner at the time.

Unless there’s a film I’m forgetting, this is the first time Walt Disney as a “real” figure has been the central character of a film, which is sort of incredible given… well, that he’s Walt Disney. The Disney company put the money behind the production, but the screenplay wasn’t developed in-house, it’s a Black List pickup. I assume they’ll probably end the film at or around the conclusion of Travers’ actual collaborations with the production – Walt slightly cowed by having come up against an underestimated “children’s entertainer” as headstrong as himself, Travers headed back to England having experienced some sort of self-purging catharsis – and sidestep the less-than-amicable way they ultimately split: Travers turned up at the L.A. premiere uninvited, accosted Disney at the after-party with demands to get rid of the the animated sequence (she hated cartoons) and was told matter-of-factly that “the ship has sailed;” hence why there were never any sequels even though Walt tried for them.

“Seventh Son” is apparently an adaptation of yet another YA Fantasy franchise I’ve never once heard anyone talk about, and looks more-or-less like the rest of them save that halfway through I started getting a strong sense that the “Castlevania” logo was about to pop up.

Via Bleeding Cool

Tom Hanks is Walt Disney. Emma Thompson is “Mary Poppins” creator P.L. Travers. The movie is “Saving Mr. Banks,” a dramatization of the contemptuous relationship that developed between the two (both notorious egomaniacs known publicly for children’s entertainment) during the lengthy process of Disney trying to secure film rights (and then an actual film) to her books.

Here’s the first (red-band) trailer for Spike Lee’s version of “Oldboy,” which does a decent enough job of laying out the basic story while also making sure to pre-warn fans of the Chan Wook-Park film that no, they probably aren’t going to bother with that last plot-twist (which wasn’t in the Manga both films are based on) …but that they are apparently going to try and do the hammer fight.

PfffffFFFFFF… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem…

…HEH. HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE HA HA!

Laughter is not technically a comment.

On the one hand, this Chinese Johnnie Walker commercial featuring a CGI Bruce Lee (from “Torque” amd “Detention” director Joseph Khan) is creepy in the way that dead people “endorsing” products generally are. On the other hand, if there’s any celebrity living or dead for whom it can be argued that their cultural presence as a “mythic figure” has so transcended their actual existence that something like this isn’t really that much more “offensive” than Santa Claus selling Coca-Cola… I guess Bruce Lee would be it.

Either way, it can’t be denied that the effects used to pull this stuff of, while still not “there,” are really close to getting “there.” I wonder who the first celebrity will be to “star” in an (otherwise live-action) film as their own years-younger self? It’s not that far outside the realm of possibility for a studio to say “Y’know who would’ve been good in this? Bruce Willis, but like ten years ago Bruce Willis…” and for Bruce Willis (or whoever) to just do the mocap and voice work for that.

Let’s support new things.

via Jezebel

Here’s the interesting-looking trailer for “Wadjda,” notable for being the first full-length movie ever directed by a woman in Saudi Arabia, currently booked for a U.S. opening later this year. Story concerns a 10 year-old girl, Wadjda, doing anything she can think of (including entering her school’s Koran-memorization competition) to cobble together enough money to buy a bicycle. For cultural context: The bike is kind of a big deal because it has only been legal for women to ride bikes in The Kingdom since April – as in, this past April.

Yeah, it’ll be fun to see “classic” lets-pretend-this-is-actually-scary Chucky again; but I think I’ll end up in the minority that REALLY misses Glen and Tiffany…