How else to explain the fact that the new New Moon trailer has debuted in France before America than to assume French Twilighters are considered better and more deserving than those in the U.S.? Or, is this just part of the continued teaserific marketing strategy from Summit? After yesterday’s trailer teaser ridiculousness, I wouldn’t put it past them, even if the thing was unofficial, recorded on video cam inside a theater and removed for copyright reasons later today. If Summit is really into teasing and whetting appetites, it was likely enough, considering any true Twilight fan would have been attentive enough to see the thing on any number of websites posting it this morning.

Anyway, since the trailer isn’t accessible anymore*, I’ve got nothing else to say about it — not that I know enough about the franchise to comment adequately anyway. I can at least share a screen capture of some bits that I found on a blog called My Twilife. So enjoy that little tease on the right there.

Let’s see what the film blogs are saying about this latest nibble for the impatient fans after the jump:
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I would title this Bloggery “Comic-Con 2009 Day 2,” but I’m going to reach back a little to the second half of Day 1 since yesterday’s post went up before the Avatar panel, plus people are still talking about that New Moon presentation more than 24 hours later. Unfortunately, there’s so much news and hype coming out of the Con today (Gary Oldman spills Batman 3 beans! Saw VII is greenlit!) that I may ignore some the stuff I care less about, like all the “awesome!!” responses to movies that will more than likely be commercial failures (like the ten listed here). Unless they’re really hilarious or profound.

Without further ado (I have little to say in this intro because I’m not at the Con), check out my favorite coverage from San Diego from the last 24 hours after the jump:
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I had planned on taking the day off from the Bloggery today, but I was drawn in by the odd attention being paid to some new photos of Dakota Fanning on the set of the girl group biopic The Runaways. I guess it fits to end the week with another look at rock and roll pedophile bait, since I already devoted one day to the Chipettes. But it’s not like this is actually the first look at the 15-year-old former child star as singer Cherie Currie. It’s not even the most scandalous. Still, the fact that the media is focusing on Fanning and ignoring the full band shots (this is apparently the first look at all the Runaways actresses, if not the first look at Fanning) is either because people are obsessed with the maturation of a female child star or, due to the near-equal concentration on Kristen Stewart, they’re trying to get traffic from Twilight fans.

Anyway, I’m still waiting for the re-creation of this costume to really spark talk of “kiddie porn,” and I’m still wondering if we’ll end up with a “leaked” shot of the Fanning/Stewart lesbian kiss once that scene is shot. It would rival the Vicky Cristina Barcelona kiss as far as media attention goes. Otherwise, there’s not much reason to discuss these latest images, other than to hope that it makes teenyboppers curious about Iggy Pop.

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The first (real) trailer for the Twilight sequel New Moon debuted at the MTV Movie Awards last night, and while it appears to be receiving less attention and buzz than the Bruno/Eminem stunt, it is stirring a bit (just a bit) of noise on the Interweb today. Though I admit to not being very familiar with the franchise, I think it’s a well done spot considering the film is still shooting. I especially like the parallel action of the junkie-like lunging of the rude birthday party guest and the shapeshifting leap attack from Taylor Lautner’s werewolf character. Those in the Twilight world are apparently very quick to their feet when it comes to both cravings and savings.

Still, probably my least favorite thing ever is a CGI werewolf, whether its in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cursed, Van Helsing or any other lycanthropic films I purposefully avoided and forgot about. The one in the New Moon trailer, however, is relatively decent-looking. But could that just be because it looks adorable?

Obviously the majority of my bloggery peers are responding with ignorance and disinterest, but surely there are a few non-Twilight-obsessed movie sites excited about this sequel. Let’s take a look after the jump:

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If you were a movie producer looking to make a lot of money, and you had the chance to do this with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, would you put the project in the hands of the people who made the first film, which was not successful in any way, shape or form, or would you put it in the hands of the guy who wrote the first, crappy film but who later redeemed himself with an enormously popular, long-running TV series adapated from that film?

Obviously, most of us would choose the latter, but then I guess we just don’t know something Roy Lee and Doug Davison (of the Asian-horror-remake factory Vertigo Entertainment) know. The duo is teaming up with Fran Rubel Kuzui, who hasn’t directed a film since Buffy but who “served” as an exec producer on the TV show, and her husband, Kaz Kuzui (producer of the original movie), to relaunch the franchise with a new, darker, event-sized Vampire Slayer movie, which will have nothing to do with the show, and which, as of yet, has no involvement from Joss Whedon.

Due to the success of Twilight and True Blood, I can see why someone would want to kick start another vampire franchise, especially one with name recognition, but is there anyone who would look forward to anything Buffy without Whedon? And even with him, would anyone accept a new actress in the title role after Sarah Michelle Gellar made it iconically her own? Let’s check out the film blog reactions to this ridiculous announcement after the jump:
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If these Bloggery roundup posts were truly meant to represent the hottest film news of the day, they’d always be about Twilight, or at least its star, Robert Pattinson. As I’ve learned from regularly monitoring movie sites, there’s something relative to the franchise to report on at least once every 24 hours (today we somehow got double news, with Pattinson announcing he’s committed to a fourth installment). And it will continue to be this way for the next few years. So forgive me this one time for caving in, like others, to turn the spotlight on an advertisement for a movie I know little about and likely will not see.

At least I do have an appreciation for posters, as an artform. And at least a lot of the commentary coming from the blogs regarding this new The Twilight Saga: New Moon one-sheet is humorous. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother with it. Everyone knows we’re going to see another hundred or so marketing images for the sequel before its November release (this wasn’t even the first), so why bother talking about just one? Here’s why: to point out that between this and the official teaser poster for Where the Wild Things Are, movie marketers are really into forestry shots with background light sources.

Okay, that wasn’t very funny (honestly, it wasn’t really supposed to be, anyway), so I’ll just leave it to the film bloggers with more wit to make us laugh at this heavily airbrushed poster. Check out the Twilight jokes after the jump:

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For what it’s worth, it’s perfect casting, but there’s still something surprising about the news that Dakota Fanning is taking on the starring role in Floria Sigismondi’s film about ’70s girl group The Runaways. As 15-year-old rocker Cherie Currie, Fanning will continue to bait stories about how quickly she’s growing up, though really the part seems both ironic and appropriate for the former child actress. Currie, who fronted the band wearing a lot of low-cut tops and lingerie on the outside (before Madonna!), may have grown up too fast thanks to her sexualized image and early abuses of drugs and alcohol, but just because Fanning will play the part doesn’t mean she’ll be similarly thrust into adulthood. If anything, her masquerade as Currie will be more effective if audiences recognize that Fanning is still a little girl.

Fanning remains on track to be her generation’s Jodie Foster (who, interestingly enough, costarred with Currie in the movie Foxes), rather than her generation’s Drew Barrymore. And at best this could be her Taxi Driver (at worst, it’s actually her Foxes). Unfortunately, Fanning is a young girl in the age of creepy Internet comments and count-down clocks (not to mention the truly terrible examples of pedophilia to be found on the web), so much of the response to her casting is going to be stuck in predictably thoughtless concerns for her fading innocence and joked anticipation of her innocence lost.

Here are some of the blogged expectations for how the role will impact Fanning’s age and image:

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There are capital-G Guys, and then there is Greg Mottola, whose semi-autobiographical “how I spent my summer vacation” comedy Adventureland insists that back in his college days, the young director was more sensitive than all those other dudes who just wanted to get laid. That would be fine and all if the big payoff the movie works toward was something other than a scene in which Mottola’s fictional stand-in (played by The Squid and the Whale’s Jesse Eisenberg) gets to ball the girl of his dreams (Kristen Stewart, operating on the other end of the chastity spectrum from her Twilight character). I mean, he’s not that special: The world is full of late-blooming virgins with the romantic notion that two people should really love each other before they have sex (Mottola already dealt with that idea quite nicely when Michael Cera’s character passes up his first time in Superbad).

More interesting than the movie’s paint-by-numbers relationship plot is the environment in which it all goes down. Coming home from his senior year in college, James Brennan learns that his dad has been demoted at work, meaning his family can’t afford to send him to Europe for the summer as planned. Instead, he’s stuck in Pittsburgh with a plastic bag full of joints and the terrifying realization that his college degree is good for nothing more than a shit job at the local amusement park.

A place like Adventureland would make the perfect stage for a Larry Clark-style look at adolescence: In theory, such venues offer a delicious contrast between the fun, clean-scrubbed surface they represent to kids and all the transgressive behavior that goes on between the hormone-addled employees, as they get high on their cigarette breaks, land their first VD from the girl who runs the Ferris wheel or what have you. But Mottola has a far tamer view of the park. Considering that he really held such a job, you’d hope for more insider insights than the fact that the concessions have sometimes passed their expiration date and the games are rigged so no one can win a “giant-ass panda bear” (among comedies, only Waiting has really nailed the borderline-depraved atmosphere of minimum-wage ennui).

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• Twilight star Kristen Stewart is heating up and gaining lots of cool points by being cast as rocker Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, about the all-girl band featuring a young Jett and Lita Ford. Stewart may not look like the best choice for the role (I’d have said Rachel Bilson), but I guess all she really needs is a proper wig. And it probably won’t be too difficult for her to do her own singing in the part.
• It may not be a new film version of The Divine Comedy, as I recently called for, but it’s still interesting to see Hollywood making a movie about Dante Alighieri’s classic literary work by adapting Nick Tosches’ novel In the Hand of Dante. It’s also unfortunate that producer Johnny Depp may be playing Tosches rather than Dante, since everyone prefers Depp in period dress.
• Speaking of Depp in old-time costume, he’d be perfect for the new Phillip Noyce-directed remake of Captain Blood that Warner Bros. is producing. Too bad his slate is very full, and anyway it’s probably fair to give another actor the chance to play a pirate.
• Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight has become the best-selling movie on iTunes this year, and it’s not even available for download yet. I find this interesting less because of all the advance sales, more because of all the people who will be potentially view this IMAX-appropriate film on their iPod.
• More Dark Knight home-viewing madness: the blockbuster will be released to video-on-demand in South Korea two weeks before its DVD release there.

The first ever Summit Pictures Comic-Con panel, which was met with snores up until the Twilight segment began, and then really began amidst continuous Beatlemania-like screaming from fangirls. Oh, and we learned a few new things about Alex Proyas’ Knowing and Paul McGuigan’s Push.

Highlights:

• The Twilight actors are really into themselves.
• Robert Pattinson is one of the most wanted guys in the world.
• Robert Pattinson’s band might be providing a tune to the Twilight soundtrack.
• Nic Cage is in another movie about a foreseen disaster (Knowing).
• Alex Proyas is not directing The Silver Surfer.
• Dakota Fanning was the surprise guest (really she was just late), and she’s all grown up.

Read the liveblogging transcript after the jump.

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