Unfortunately we were unable to make the Disney presentation earlier in the day because we were busy interviewing the likes of Gore Verbinski and Armie Hammer, the director and star of the upcoming The Lone Ranger. In the afternoon, however, we weaseled our way into the Sony Pictures presentation. I think everyone is starting to get sick of Vegas because their presentation was rather short on the talking spectrum. We were treated to Adam Sandler, Selma Hayek, David Spade, and Kevin James being brought out in carriages carried by Roman soldiers and they were on hand to introduce the footage shown. Most of the footage we saw was just trailers we have already seen from their upcoming schedule, but we got extended looks at White House Down, This is the End, and Elysium.
Most of the movies previewed have trailers available online so I’ll just list those below and I’ll talk about the extended footage from the three aforementioned movies.
Movie Previews: After Earth, This is the End, White House Down, Grown Ups 2, Smurfs 2, Elysium, The Mortal Instruments, One Direction: The Movie, Battle of the Year, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, Captain Phillips, Carrie, The Monuments Men, American Hustle, Stalingrad.
Now for the extended previews and footage yet to be seen.
This is the End – It started out with the standard red band trailer that was released online earlier in the month, but moved on to more scenes we haven’t seen yet. It now appears that their end of the world deals with demons and really big devil looking thing that rampages through the city. We got an extended clip of James Franco and Danny McBride arguing over who was going to *censored* and throw it on *censored* with *censored* and then *censored* and it had the entire auditorium laughing their buts off. This definitely looks like the comedy of the year.
White House Down– The footage they showed us played almost in chronological order and for a second I thought they were going to show us a condensed version of the entire movie, alas they did not. We now learn that Channing Tatums character is a normal cop applying for a position as a secret service agent and happens to be at his interview when stuff goes down and is unwillingly thrust into the action. While I’m still excited for this one it looks like it might tread too much into the goofy territory. However, we were shown a clever dig at Independence Day (same director) so if there is more of that then I’m down.
Elysium – This is probably my number 2 on my must see list this year. We got a glimpse into Matt Damon’s character’s back story and were treated to an intense action sequence where they attack a visiting dignitary’s ship in order to download his brain so Matt can sneak on to Elysium so he can find the cure he desperately needs. My only concern so far with this movie is that it looks exactly like District 9, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I hope it’s not due to laziness.
Captain Phillips – I’m not sure if the trailer for this is online or not, but this is the new movie from The Bourne Legacy director Paul Greengrass. It stars Tom Hanks and is a true story about pirates that storm a cargo ship and the chaos that follows. It looks like it could be the ocean version of Zero Dark Thirty. Look for this one later in the year.
The Monuments Men – George Clooney appeared on screen to introduce this one and added a little humor by first confusing this for the Warner Bros presentation then calling the event Comic Con. It’s set during World War II and follows a few art historians that try to recover pieces before Hitler destroys this one. This should be an Oscar contender later in the year.
American Hustle – Hot on the heels of Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell brings us this 70’s set drama about what I can only assume is some sort of hustle. It stars Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and Jennifer Lawrence. Based on what I saw this will probably be my favorite movie of the fall season.
Stay tuned for more CinemaCon coverage.
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Watcher of movies. Writer of books. I love doing both and sometimes I even write about movies. Follow me on Twitter so you can keep track of my boring and uninteresting life @redsixx.
