You know how a movie can get so hyped up that by the time you see it your only possible reaction is, “that’s it?” Well, it definitely works for short films, though it’s not often enough that shorts gain so much attention. I mean “real” shorts, the kind that play at film festivals, not funny skits and user-generated YouTube videos (feel free to argue that many of these count as shorts; I won’t necessarily disagree). And yes, Spike Jonze’s We Were Once a Fairytale, which stars Kanye West, did play at a film festival (Los Angeles), so I guess that makes it a “real” short. And now it’s been leaked online (temporarily by Kanye, himself) just in time to make a (presumably) good companion piece to Jonze’s box office winner, Where the Wild Things Are.

After all the Tweeting and bloggery I noticed centered on the film last night and today, I’m pretty underwhelmed. I appreciate the stop-motion animation at the end, but otherwise I guess I just can’t really stand Kanye’s persona here  — fictionalized or not — and would have stopped it short had I not heard there would be some trippy shit eventually. Also, I’ve now learned that I need to stop watching TV shows and short films online while I eat my lunch. Between this and The Office wedding episode, I hope to never see someone vomiting (even if its rose petals) while I’m chewing food again. Besides, I’m far more interested in another upcoming Kanye collaboration, with animator Bill Plympton.

Check out other film bloggers’ reactions to the short after the jump:

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I don’t care much for scary movies (they tend to bore me), but I do enjoy watching other people reacting to them. That’s why I love the new trailer for Paranormal Activity, a $10,000-budget horror flick that’s been frightening film festival attendees since 2007 and which finally opens in regular theaters next week.

The trailer focuses on footage of the audience of a recent screening of the film while showing very little of the film itself. The idea is to show us that people are indeed scared silly. But what I appreciate, as a strong advocate of moviegoing, is that it kind of tells us we need to see this thing in a theater with a large crowd for the optimum experience.

I guess you could still wait for the film to hit DVD and do your screaming and jumping from your couch, but doesn’t it look more fun with a bunch of strangers? Personally, the trailer makes me want to watch the rest of the night-vision audience-cam footage more than the actual film, but hopefully going to the cinema to see this will be just as good. As long as nobody minds me sitting in a lawn chair in front of the auditorium, facing the seats instead of the screen.

Unfortunately, on September 25, Paranormal Activity is only opening in 13 cities and the closest to my home of NYC is State College, PA (and that’s a very long bike ride to see a movie!). But so far only myself and 429 others have “demanded” it play here, so I’ll probably never get the chance to experience the film as it should be. Maybe I can sneak into the homes of people who’ve rented it, though, and watch their reactions?

Check out what other film blogs are saying about the trailer after the jump:

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While most water cooler discussions today focused completely on the Kanye West VMA controversy, the playground likely had room for another topic related to MTV’s award show: the new trailer for The Twilight Saga: New Moon. But were the boys participating in that talk? Summit probably hopes so given that the spot seems to be trying harder to appeal to that young male demographic.

I don’t think the attempt will work, however. For the first Twilight film, after reaching out to the true, female-dominated fanbase, Summit released a trailer that admirably sold the thing as if it were a superhero movie. It came really close to getting me in the theater. This time they’ve got another more action-heavy trailer, which at times makes New Moon seem like The Matrix as directed by Stephen Sommers. Which I guess might seem cool to teenage boys. But there’s still enough obligatory beefcake shots and romantic fluff to overpower that idea.

Male moviegoers, feel free to prove me wrong. First, though, let’s see where the other film blogs stand on the issue after the jump:

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Disney probably should have saved its Marvel acquisition news for this week’s big D23 Expo (”The Ultimate Disney Fan Experience”), because nothing announced at the event could possibly top it. Plus, many of us would rather now hear about Disney’s plans for the comic company’s film adaptations instead of plot details on Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 and a title reveal for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean installment. The fact that Guillermo Del Toro’s secret “D” project ended up being just some animation production company rather than a Deadman movie doesn’t help fanboy reactions, either.

Still, I was glad to hear that the screening of the first 30 minutes of The Princess and the Frog was well received. I’m also grateful for comedian Paul Scheer for this image of a robot Abe Lincoln. Although it’s probably just a relic from the Halls of Presidents exhibit at Disneyland, I’ll be dreaming tonight of the Lincoln film I wish Steven Spielberg would make.

Oh, and umm, any update on the next Muppet movie is obviously going to put a smile on my face. Presumably this is the Jason Segal project we’ve been excited about for 18 months now. And it’s title is: The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made. Hopefully this means Gonzo will be directing and that it will therefore be as silly as possible.

Check out the other film blog reactions to the D23 announcements after the jump:

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Following the Disney acquisition of Marvel, and now seeming a response to that deal, Warner Bros. has announced a new company called DC Entertainment, which will apparently be an umbrella for DC Comics as well as, presumably, whatever film projects the WB plans to adapt from its publications. This may just be another false promise that the corporation is finally getting its shit together in order to compete with the more prolific Marvel Studios, but DC fans at least have a new hope until the next round of disappointments.

Really, there’s not even official word that the creation of DC Entertainment has anything to do with plans to get more comic book movies into gear. There’s some general implication, but no specific revelations. Regardless, the geeks are jumping on this as a sign of such, so if Warner Bros. is smart they will have something movie-related — something big and specific — to announce by the end of the week. Okay, I’ll give them until the end of next week since it’s DC we’re talking about.

Check out what the other film blogs are saying about and hoping for with this announcement after the jump:

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Peter Knegt points to 45 seconds of Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers, which debuts at TIFF this week and then comes to NYFF in about a month. It’s sort of a trailer, and it’s everything you could hope for from a teaser for a shot-on-circa-80s-VHS portrait of Korinean freaks at play. That green analog noise fadeout at the end is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen … well, today, at least.

Robert Lloyd’s review of the new At the Movies, which debuted on TV this past weekend, hits on a good point that often gets lost in the, “Wow, The Two Bens were bad” pile-on. It’s not just that neither was very good, but that even in their badness, they were poorly matched:

Mankiewicz (grandson of “Citizen Kane” writer Herman and the great-nephew of “All About Eve” writer and director Joseph) was clearly better versed than Lyons (son of “Sneak Previews” host Jeffrey) in the literature of film, but that tended to make the show seem unbalanced. The original hosts could be spiky toward each other, but they always came off as equals; when they disagreed, Mankiewicz tended to make Lyons look wrong.

Lloyd is correct that the new version, starring A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, “restores the balance” between critics that made the old Siskel and Ebert battles so entertaining. But the show is not as humorless as those shiny table promo shots might have you believe. Witness my favorite moment of the first episode above, in which Scott approaches his review of Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain as a dry, conceptual joke.

Above: the nearly five minute trailer for the new incarnation of At the Movies, starring A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Of note for the strenuous attempt to imprint the notion that this pair is all that those young, recently fired guys named Ben were not. Actual titles used on screen within the first minute of the trailer: “Two accomplished critics”; “Serious reviews”; “Serious journalists.” The trailer also allows Philips and Scott to casually run down their list of professional credentials, and then goes behind the scenes of a photo shoot producing a very serious promotional shot of the two critics sitting at a big shiny table. It’s all very, very serious. Which is awesome.

I apologize for being such a negative S.O.B. this week, but at least it seems to help with other blogs‘ dry spells as far as comments go, so I’m going to continue my “concern trolling” today in order to announce my low expectation for this Alien prequel, for which Fox reportedly is now bringing Ridley Scott back to the franchise to direct. I have a general distaste for prequels, so I’m obviously biased. I admit this completely. But what could really be the benefit to this? So we can actually witness the back story of the xenomorphs? If this is to be like most villain origins, I anticipate finding out the aliens were all orphans and/or had lost a childhood love to disease.

Okay, fine, I’ll end on a positive, hopeful note: if Scott can make the prequel less an explanation for why the xenomorphs are so evil and instead make an Alien film that’s basically Black Hawk Down in space (or is that what Cameron’s Aliens was?), I will totally be on board for this. I do like both Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection, so I guess I’m pretty much obligated to give this a chance.

Check out the rest of the film blog reactions after the jump:
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It seems impossible these days for a film franchise to keep its cast intact for a full run. This time it’s the Twilight series that has succumbed to the switcheroo game, as Bryce Dallas Howard was announced to be taking over Rachel Lefevre’s character, “Victoria,” as of the third film, Eclipse. This sort of thing nearly happened before for the Twilight series when Taylor Lautner came close to being fired from the part of “Jacob” after the first film, because he wasn’t seen as a strong or fit enough actor for the demands of the role in New Moon.

With this news, Howard cements herself as the official go-to actress for filling in vacated roles. In the past she has been a substitute in Lars von Trier’s USA - Land of Opportunities trilogy, taking on the lead role “Grace” originated by Nicole Kidman in Dogville for the sequel Manderlay, and she more recently filled in for a non-returning Claire Danes as “Kate” in the Terminator franchise (for which she also replaced the first-choice substitute, Charlotte Gainsbourg) Also, let’s not forget that she replaced Kirsten Dunst as the lead in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, when Dunst departed to make Elizabethtown.

With the way things are going for her, I predict she’ll be taking over as “Ginny Weasley” in the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, “Black Widow” in Iron Man 3 or The Avengers, “Rachel Dawson” in the next Batman film and “Kumar” in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.

Let’s take a look at what the rest of the film blogs are saying about the substitution after the jump:
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Yesterday, a reader commented that Elvira and mumblecore are to me what Twilight is to most movie blogs — ie: I’ll shamefully cover anything having to do with either. That commenter was correct! And I also like things having to do with Ghostbusters! The above clip, which reimagines the 1984 film as a circa-1954 comedy featuring a super-group of the decade’s comic stars — Martin & Lewis, Bob Hope, Fred Macmurray — isn’t terribly funny, but it makes just enough sense to be satisfying.

Stereogum has posted a music video for Austin band The Octopus Project, directed by David and Nathan Zellner. It doesn’t have a Barry Lyndon homage starring a monkey, but it does have a singing boat and psychedelic crustaceans. That is enough.

Three videos of note on the Facebook page (you may have to sign in and become a fan to see it) for Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax: two intros for Bujalski’s work made for Canadian TV, one starring Shawn Sides as Elvira and the other featuring Alex Karpovsky as Dracula. In both, bats flutter by on strings, as Bujalski himself looks on, silent but bemused. “Tonight I have a thirst,” Elvira drawls. “A thirst for a spine-tinglingly cold taste of American independent cinema!”

This is doing it right.

And then there’s this, also embedded above. I saw this on YouTube and thought it was a joke, like that thing with Kent Osborne in the garage, but apparently it’s an actual ad for a film series on Channel 4 in the UK. The ad features young attractive people standing in front of graffitied walls (very first season Real World), earnestly informing us that there’s a type of movie in which “there are no buldings blown to hell in slow motion, and you know what? That’s okay, because these films are about people!” The kicker: “There’s something going on here.” Cut to slow-talking redhead girl: “And that something, is a little something called mumblecore.” She then looks at the camera with one of those “this is just between you and me” smiles that are most often seen on television in the promotion of feminine hygeine products.

This is doing it wrong.

Beeswax opens at Film Forum on August 7 and expands to several other cities shortly after that. I like it.

Can the San Diego Comic-Con really make or break a movie? That’s a yearly question asked in the days leading up to the annual geekfest, and few experts ever provide a definite answer. Most people point to weak Con receptions of footage from ultimately failed films like The Spirit and Catwoman as proof of the event’s influence. Meanwhile, there’s the corresponding recognition that positive buzz at the Con for certain niche titles like Twilight and 300 led those films to boffo box office.

But despite the few times Con attendees have been on the same wavelength with the rest of the moviegoing public, it’s important to remember the many movies that had geeks excited in San Diego but which couldn’t garner much interest from mainstream audiences in theatrical release. After the jump, we take a look at ten such movies that buzzed well at Comic-Con only to fizzle at the box office.
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