E-prepping for an interview with Radha Mitchell later in the week, I twice zapped through the trailer for this fall’s Surrogates, Jonathan Mostow’s forthcoming film in which Mitchell co-stars opposite Bruce Willis, Bruce Willis’ hilarious hairpiece, Ving Rhames and Rosamund Pike. A futuristic thriller/murder mystery that sounds equal parts Total Recall, I, Robot and Minority Report, it features some intriguing looking grand-scale mayhem (I guess Mostow’s destruction of vast swatches of city streets in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was good for something after all), as well as a bad-ass collective outdoors collapse of a bunch of folks. But trailers for The Happening had a shot like that, too, didn’t they? Errr… nevermind.

There seems to be one fundamental flaw, however, to the movie’s premise — or at least something unaddressed in the trailer: if people were living almost exclusively through surrogates, wouldn’t society deteriorate into a carnival of excess, resembling nothing so much as a (further) engorged Bret Easton Ellis novel, instead of there not being any murders for 10 or 15 years? Right, I get that the killing, sexual acting out and other crime wouldn’t initially be inflicted on the actual human host bodies, but attendant property damage and the like would all be rampant, no? And wouldn’t that eventually spill over, revenge-style, into private residences? Just trying to peg where human nature fits into all of this.

A Perfect Getaway is one of those early-August films that’s sneaked up on me, but the trailer reaffirms my affinity for Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich. Writer-director David Twohy has had his hand in some quality projects as a screenwriter (The Fugitive, G.I. Jane), and given good genre before with Pitch Black and I believe Below as well (though my memory is a bit fuzzier on that latter one), so this remote-set thriller, seemingly a blend of Turistas and The River Wild, trips a few wires in positive fashion even if it doesn’t really pop off the screen. More than anything it just seems smartly cast. If it’s well made, too, even without being groundbreaking, that’ll be enough to qualify as decent pre-autumnal big screen entertainment, considering some of its competition.

A trailer of a slightly different sort, for Mac Rogers’ new play Viral, which bows Saturday, August 15 at the SoHo Playhouse, and features four more performances through August 26 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival, aka FringeNYC. A pitch black comedy, and absolute must-see for those in the Big Apple, or thereabouts. To purchase tickets, click here.

Thomas Jane’s feature directorial debut, Dark Country, streets in October, but the trailer is out today. Early, glancing comparisons to Wild at Heart and Red Rock West, by way of young-lovers-on-the-road and other generally evoked feelings of Southwestern dustiness, melt away once the now familiar struck-hitchhiker device is introduced, but I’d still rate this moody preview a thumbs up, if only because it doesn’t explicitly spell out what directions it’s taking and moves it’s making, and it looks as if Jane — who also stars in the movie alongside Lauren German, one of Hostel: Part II‘s wayward party girls — and cinematographer Geoff Boyle shot the shit out of this thing.

The trailer for Peter Billingsley’s directorial debut, Couples Retreat (Universal, October 9), is online just now via Apple, and looks like a good bet to wrangle the lion’s share of fall comedy dollars. Notwithstanding the domestic underperformance of The Heartbreak Kid, exotic-set laffers that splurge a bit with scenery and setting have obviously worked out well recently, from Tropic Thunder to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Couples Retreat has a gorgeous, crystal-clear backdrop — the sort that causes women to start nudging their boyfriends and husbands to call travel agents — to go with a solid, hell-in-heaven conceit that allows for plenty of good-time opposites-of-the-sexes friction. Malin Akerman‘s auburn dye job will help hold at bay awkward memories of Watchmen emoting, and the rest of the cast (Kristen Bell, writer-actor Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, Faizon Love, Kali Hawk, Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman, clockwise from top left) shows no evidence of a weak link. Color me stoked, in moderate-to-high fashion. Vaughn isn’t a huge international draw, but I don’t see how this does under $140 million worldwide.

The trailer for Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch’s first film since Boxing Helena, is online, and does a pretty job of selling the movie’s Rashomon-like, B-movie egg scramble of n’er-do-wells, corrupted authority figures and vengeful sociopaths. Maybe too good a job, almost. I mean, only in the sense that the trailer comes across as streamlined, hook-y and conventional, while the final product is — in keeping with the writer-director’s surname — a bit more wildly unhinged. Full review to follow later in the week, along with some interviews probably early next week, coinciding with its limited theatrical release. Surveillance is currently available via VOD, by the way.

The trailer for the remake of Fame is up now, on Yahoo, and it seems a fairly sincere and earnest thing, a reworking that can at least hold its head up in the company of Step Up 2 the Streets and its predecessor, and maybe even something like Rent. Yeah, at its core some of the same familiar aspirant-performer trappings that helped make the High School Musical franchise such a huge tween hit are there, but there seems to have been a concerted effort here to ground this puppy in the real world, or at least something approximating it. Gone are the fuzzy leggings and headbands — probably a good call. Good to see Charles Dutton grab some work, too.

I have no idea how this will do at the box office, but presumably distributor MGM has carved out a parcel of autumnal land to help woo school audiences. If nothing else, the Step Up movies (with their $114 and $150 million worldwide theatrical grosses, respectively), plus a so-so $24 million gross for spoof movie Dance Flick, prove there’s a teen-plus audience for performing arts school films, even if a lot of those teens probably made/make fun of overtly arty types at their own schools. Ahh… teenage contradiction and incongruousness. Fame releases nationwide on September 25.

Beware: the trailer for this fall’s Old Dogs, starring John Travolta, Robin Williams and Seth Green, is more than just unfunny — it steals a part of your soul. Seriously, it reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix’s line to Nicolas Cage in 8MM, about not being able to unsee things. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The trailer for this fall’s Sherlock Holmes is out and about online, and while I generally support all endeavors in the professional resurgence of Robert Downey, Jr., I don’t know that this winking mash-up whets my appetite much for Guy Ritchie’s film. The slow-motion bare-knuckle boxing stuff, the mock-cute spitfire stuff with a corseted Rachel McAdams (perhaps it’s trace memories of Salma Hayek‘s turn in Wild Wild West), the cut-rate banter (from three credited writers)… it just feels all stitched together from previously seen parts. We’ll see, I suppose…

Through almost sheer, Herculean personal effort, Ryan Reynolds elevated the original Van Wilder into something moderately funny and attractive, despite the presence of Tara Reid; its spin-off sequel, Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, took the anarchic collegiate party-planning overseas, focusing on Kal Penn’s character, Wilder’s protégé-turned-playa. It was a down-market blend of pretty much exactly the sort of set
piece comedy and very occasional flashing of boobs that one would expect, and I don’t remember it doing well enough either in theaters (where it received an abortive release) or on DVD to give anyone the idea that another movie was in high demand.

Yet the name still has some cachet, I guess. So that leaves us with the trailer for the direct-to-DVD prequel, Van Wilder: Freshman Year, starring the improbably eyebrowed Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls) and Kristin Cavallari. Flatly scripted, unimaginatively staged and weirdly framed/edited (though perhaps to cut around audience-pleasing nudity?), this clip really does nothing except make one pine for the original, and appreciate Reynolds even more. If it delivers on the baser elements its base desires, it could prove tolerable. But there isn’t much manifested evidence of cleverness and, you know, we don’t even seem to find out why Van first wears the mask, or kills his sister, or… oh, sorry, wrong prequel. Bennett (above left) does seem to be having a go at channeling Reynolds’ vocal rhythms, though. That might either work, or become annoying in fairly short order. Van Wilder: Freshman Year hits DVD on July 14.

So I’ve watched the long-play trailer for Funny People, Judd Apatow’s new film, twice now, and while I understand that the segue into James Brooks territory is somewhat natural and expected for a young-ish father (kids often spark grappling with mortality, ironically), and doesn’t at all indicate a precipitous drop-off in relative quality (or attendant commercial success), I can’t help but feel like it gives away a bit too much of the movie’s twists and turns. Less fanciful, more grounded real-world comedies, those not powered by conceit, needn’t necessarily sell the stick that stirs the pot; movies like that are all about showcasing the tone, some good jokes, and a likeable/relatable cast… things Funny People has in abundance. Sure, it’s not quite a Ransom-esque reveal — a la that trailer’s casual foregrounding of the movie’s publicly announced bounty on the kidnapper of Mel Gibson’s son — but playing the death card and then pulling it back off the table in under 60 seconds seems a bit flippant, especially juxtaposed with Leslie Mann’s hilariously woeful Down Under accent. If I’m overthinking the film I’ve now already guessed part of its ending.

The teaser trailer for Todd Phillips’ The Hangover (Warner Bros., June 5) is online, and it succeeds in imparting testosteronized laughs, coming across as a frat-approved mash-up of wild hijinks somewhere between Old School, Very Bad Things and that episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Ned Flanders end up marrying cocktail waitresses in a drunken haze. From the unexpected Mike Tyson cameo to the fact that apparently Ed Helms spends a good portion of the movie suffering the effects of a knocked out tooth (I generally love when movies handle violence with actual consequences, be it horrific or comedic), I can get on board with the vicarious thrill of some bad decision making.

The red-band trailer for Bruno (Universal, May 15), Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat follow-up, is now online, and it promises another wild, semi-improvisational in-character romp into America’s hearts of darkness, as well as perhaps an answer to the age-old question: “How do you defend yourself against a man with two dildos?” The adopted black baby bit is provocative, to be sure, and the O.J. reference understandably gets a big reaction; it’ll be interesting to see if that’s a single throwaway line, or something mined for further comedy of uncomfortability.

It looks like John Krasinski’s Jarhead cameo paid off, since he’s starring opposite Maya Rudolph in Sam Mendes’ next film, Away We Go, the trailer of which is now online. It’s melancholic summer counter-programming (Focus Features, June 5, platforming), and talk about being of a piece with the depressed times — the movie tells the story of two expectant thirtysomethings trying to establish some sense of rootedness as they get ready to bring a kid into the world despite being gripped by ennui and panic at all the examples of stability, interpersonal and otherwise, around them. I’m sure bittersweet and quiet, to-scale uplift are the target, but there’s palpable pain here, and it seems like a match with the current zeitgeist. The trailer feels like the filmic equivalent of Bedlam’s “Harvest Moon,” something “true” and unfussy and muted, like Garden State and All the Real Girls, or like Junebug and The Great New Wonderful wanted to be.

Sam Raimi’s return-to-roots horror flick, Drag Me To Hell, is trailered over at Rope of Silicon,
and it looks like a moderately stylish thing, with well sketched mood,
and certainly some inventive angles and all that. People forget, what
with the baked-in-cake success of the Spider-Man flicks and all, that Raimi is a master of camera placement. Go back and look at the Evil Dead films and his other early work, if you doubt.

The film centers around an ambitious loan officer (Alison Lohman, above left) who, after her callous actions cause an old woman to lose her home, finds herself the victim of a powerful curse that will damn her soul for eternity. Not entirely sure, but the curse may or may not involve repeated exposure to disgusting eczema. David Paymer plays Lohman’s boss, and Justin Long does the baby-it’s-OK-no-seriously-you’re-going-crazy-with-all-this-oh-I’m-cursed-shit thing. Drag Me to Hell opens May 29, from Universal.

Eric Bana really loves his car, as it turns out. So he made a documentary about it, called Love the Beast, which, incidentally, I believe I heard bellowed behind closed doors at some high school parties…

His big screen studio debut, Superbad, made huge bank, but anyone who ever saw Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers can attest to his skill with less broadly observed humiliation, and this spring’s Adventureland marks his return to auteurish roots — his first writing credit since his 1996 debut. The trailer is up online, and color me pleasantly engaged, and leaning forward a bit, for now.

I detest have a negative gut reaction to star Jesse Eisenberg in ways that I can’t fully explain — it’s just something about his face — but his presence alone hasn’t, in the past, stopped me from enjoying movies he’s been in, and I acknowledge that he’s not without good shoegazing, dweeby wallflower comic timing. Kristen Stewart is a sweetheart, and just the right sort of fit for this type of film, especially before multiple Twilight sequels forces her into more yawning, conventional films, roles, clothes, attitudes, etcetera. Having Ryan Reynolds on board for some disapproving-mentor-comedy certainly doesn’t hurt either, and SNL-ers Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig look to actually have somewhat fleshed out characters to play around with, which must come as a joint relief to them as they serve their mandatory five- to seven-year big screen apprenticeships.

It works because we’ve all had shitty jobs that we felt a bit too big for, and the period detail, if maybe a bit twee and Juno-ish, looks faithfully of a piece, and also because so much of the comedy seems rooted in circumstance, and reality — the notion of saving up five-minute bathroom breaks, for instance. And don’t diss the hurled corndog. As someone who once had a taco thrown at them, I can tell you that food-based assaults are more common than you might think. Adventureland opens March 27, from Miramax.

The teaser trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, if you need it. Man… can’t wait for the five-minute comedy bit where Shia LaBeouf’s parents still think he’s masturbating, despite presence of giant robots.