I’m about to head to bed (long day of Holiday work-planning) but it probably means something that this Warner Bros.Viral-Site – which is supposedly a “countdown” timer using Kryptonian alphanumerics – has gone up online as part of a “Man of Steel” ARG promotion. Will we get lucky and get to see the full trailer before it debuts in front of “The Hobbit?”

I’m not a tremendous fan of “The Lone Ranger,” but having so recently suffered through “Green Lantern” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” my heart breaks with empathy for what Johnny Depp, Gore Verbinski and Disney have in store for them. Holy SHIT, does this look terrible. Cheap self-parody is one thing, but inconsistent and bad cheap self-parody is another:

Improbably, M. Night Shyamalan is out of Movie Jail again. Here’s the trailer for his latest project, “After Earth,” a Will & Jaden Smith team-up project in which the two play a spacefaring father and son who wind up stranded on a post-apocalyptic Earth that has reverted to a neo-prehistoric state (he wouldn’t have it turn out to actually be the past with Jaden as The Intelligent Designer… would he?)

http://movies.yahoo.com/video/earth-trailer-1-170245149.html?format=embed

The Boston Online Film Critics Association, of which I am a member, has voted on it’s innaugural year-end awards.

The big winner is “Zero Dark Thirty,” taking Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. Daniel Day Lewis gets Best Actor for “Lincoln.” Go here for the full roster of winners and the “Top Ten” list that “ZDT” topped to win.

Since someone is going to ask, I can tell you that three out of the four acting categories match my personal picks (everybody got three ranked picks per category save for Best Picture which was a 1-10 ranked list, I believe individual ballots will be posted sometime next week) which is pretty cool; and that not only do I have no serious “disagreement” with any of the winners I think it’s an exceptionally good roster.

P.S. For the record: Every elligible film has been screened for critics as of today. While reviews and/or public opinions are embargoed on some of them (i.e. YES I’ve seen Django, ZDT, The Hobbit and Les Miserables but NO I can’t tell you if they’re good yet) awards are not. I’m aware that that doesn’t make much sense, but we don’t make the rules.

Nothing came out this week, okay?

“Intermission” has canceled screenplay fun.

I was not an enthusiastic fan of JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot. It was good… just not especially good. Passable. Decent. Not-unwatchable. Might’ve been better if Chris Pine were capable of displaying a recognizable human emotion beyond vague self-satisfaction.

Anyway, here’s the trailer for the sequel, “Star Trek Into Darkness” (no, I didn’t forget the colon, they did) which doesn’t really reveal what everyone wanted it to reveal, i.e. the identity of Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain. Everyone has been assuming he’s Khan, which would be an overly obvious and safe choice (which is why it probably IS Khan) but the case could also be made for him playing Gary Mitchell. The only “special” thing we see him do is display some sort of superhuman strength, so really it could be either of them (in modern movies, telekinesis gives you all the other super-powers too, generally.)

In any case, he’s blowing shit up in front of big crowds while ranting about Starfleet/Federation/etc not being as secure and safe as everyone thinks, so… yeah, whoever he is looks like another riff on The Joker. I let that slide with Silva in “Skyfall” because theres was a bit more to him eventually… I’m not inclined to be as kind here.

Whatever. Low-priority release on my end. Could be good, could be bad, not going to make or break my year one way or the other. We’ll see. Would like to know if the new blonde gal is playing Nurse Chapel or Yeoman Rand, though.

“Tron: Legacy,” like “John Carter,” was a project that (barely) made it to screens before Disney decided to cut off their plans to take over the “boy market” (their words) with their own genre properties and instead just buy Marvel and Star Wars’ catalogue. Both films got a mixed reception from critics and audiences, but “Tron” at least made money… though for awhile it seemed like not enough to justify a planned new set of sequels.

Apparently, that’s changed. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the project is back on with director Joseph Kosinski returning to direct. No word on a storyline, though extra scenes and clues from “Legacy” point to Cilian Murphy (as the son of David Warner’s human heavy from the first movie) having been set up for a larger role. Whatever, it’s more Tron. I’m there.

I really want to still like Johnny Depp. Good actor (most of the time) and seems like a decent guy. I don’t even mind that he’s evidently decided to just keep riding the “offbeat actor being weird in bloated franchise epics”gravy train, really… just that he keeps doing such a terrible job of it. “Dark Shadows” didn’t work, “Pirates 4” was godawful, “Lone Ranger” looks like a disaster, etc.

That said… if ever there was a symbol to summarize just how much Depp’s career/image/persona has “turned around” in my eyes, singing up for another big, comfy Disney project that’s basically a version of a vastly more interesting Terry Gilliam project he almost made back before “Pirates” made him the new It-Boy would do it. Yeesh! If you had to make a movie about Terry Gilliam’s career, him standing in front of a theater advertising the premiere of THIS movie would be the final shot.

Cinema Salem is a great little outfit in Salem, MA that brings not only major releases to it’s screens but indie, arthouse and foriegn features to a local, downtown movie scene. These are the good guys, and like many others they are in danger of being left behind in the push to convert to digital.

They’ve started a Kickstarter to help get themselves secure for the Digital Future, I’ve already backed them, and in the spirit of The Holidays I’m asking any of my fans (local or otherwise) who’re in the giving/seasonal mood to think about kicking in what they can if they so wish. You can do so HERE. Thank you.

I tend to be high-strung and on-edge during the holidays for a number of reasons, but I’m actually quite fond of American Christmas – aka the modern holiday of commercial consumption (presided over by neo-pagan deity figures like Santa, Rudolph and Frosty) that has about as much in common with the Christian holiday it grew out of as that holiday itself had in common with the pagan seasonal celebrations it originally co-opted. Hence, stuff like this tickles me.

Loathe as I am to link to batshit-insane, racist, homophobic birther “news” site WorldNetDaily, this video (and th unfuriated comments it inspired) is kind of delightful: Richard Rives – a controversial “Christian Archeaologist” (he runs Wyatt Archaeological Research, which promotes dubious expeditions seeking out scientific evidence for Biblical lore) who has also dedicated a series of books and scholarly articles to “exposing” the (otherwise well-documented) pagan origins of modern Christian traditions with an eye towards getting back to some “pure” original form – here argues matter-of-factly that present day Christians oughtn’t celebrate Christmas because the holiday itself has almost zero Biblical basis, instead being a Pagan festival “adapted” to Christianity later.

http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?embedCode=Z5Y2ZlNzqdZeWVpnR4DYBfI2zMTYT8pG&height=295&video_pcode=9kcm06PtVGNZkFkXR2898mHnBha_&deepLinkEmbedCode=Z5Y2ZlNzqdZeWVpnR4DYBfI2zMTYT8pG&width=525

What’s fun for me in this is that, while Rives is almost certainly a nut, he’s not “wrong” in his data. This is why – much as I loathe the Rich White People Faux-Victimhood Pageant that is “The War on Christmas” – I’m also increasingly annoyed with the snarky “holiday takedown” campaigns waged by activist-Atheism this time of year. I mean, guys (meaning Atheism) …I’m on YOUR SIDE vis-a-vi “fuck the fundies;” but going all Anti-Xmas is a meaningless and kind of mean-spirited “cause” to take up – whether they admit it to themselves or not, MOST Americans are celebrating a secular holiday whose “gods” are acknowledged fictions created by pop-culture folklore of the 20th Century. Chill out.