Press Releases, as a whole, are pretty dumb. I’ve written my fair share and they’re full of self-congratulatory ass-rubbing, weiner measuring, boilerplates and othe frivilous fluff. But hey man, it’s spoon-fed information and if it’s slightly relevant, PRs get eaten up. Which, in the end, is a good thing for everybody, since the intern market would be cut by half if Press Releases were ever given the boot.

So chest-pounding aside, amidst all the crap there’s usually a nugget or two you can pull out, and the latest nugget from a recent Paramount Star Trek XI release will have Kirk’s sugarplums dancing in many a pointy-eared head.

Now that JJ Abrams is for sure directing and a cast is beaming aboard (what a pun- ugh) as we speak, Paramount is giving word that shooting for Star Trek XI will begin this fall and will release its finished and revisioned (sort of) product upon nerdtopia on Christmas Day 2008.

That’s a nice little Christmas present for Trek faithful, but will it be coal or a Christmas miracle? All this rehash of the same characters, just younger, has me all bored but I’m still putting my faith in the reboot spirit.

Don’t let us down, JJ.

Death Proof is a tender movie about a guy, his car and the supple hotties who learn their hotness isn’t much of an asset when it’s being bounced around a pokey, disintegrating hotrod at 200 miles an hour.

Maverick Records, the label for the soundtrack, has given the heads up as to the music you’re going to find when you see the movie and dig the soundtrack. I’ve got a million cheesy lines similar to "Music may be the soundtrack of our lives, but it will be the soundtrack of their deaths!" racing through my head, but I’ll spare you because they’re all terrible. Needless to say, cars and music go together like women and peanut butter, as Cal Naughton accurately put it.

The soundtrack will feature what you’d expect from a Tarantino movie, lots of "way too cool for you but you’ll like it" tunes from the 60s and 70s, and a few bits of dialogue (in italic) to break things up. I’m definitely not cool enough to know Many of these classics because I was too busy listening to sissy music in High School, but I bet a lot of you are. Feast your eyes on the list and search your collection (or itunes) to get the vibe.

The Last Race — Jack Nitzsche
Baby, It’s You — Smith
Paranoia Prima — Ennio Morricone
Planning & Scheming — Eli Roth & Michael Bacall
Jeepster — T Rex
Stuntman Mike — Rose McGowan & Kurt Russell
Staggolee — Pacific Gas & Electric
The Love You Save (May Be Your Own) — Joe Tex
Good Love, Bad Love — Eddie Floyd
Down In Mexico — The Coasters
Hold Tight – Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
Sally and Jack (From the Motion Picture Blow Out) — Pino Donaggio
It’s So Easy — Willy DeVille
Whatever-However — Tracie Thoms & Zoe Bell
Riot In Thunder Alley — Eddie Beram
Chick Habit — April March

Grindhouse opens April 6, but you can nab the soundtrack on April 3.

Speaking of Danny Boyle (Ponte Tower), his new movie Sunshine has revelaed itself a US poster.

And it’s incredibly uninspired. I saw this poster and it was for Zathura. Or Armegeddon. Or any other heroes walking toward you with their objective in the background. Shoot- it even reminds me of that crazy NASCAR on the rings of Saturn commercial that aired in the NFL finals. It’s crappy, man. Crappy. (There’s another Sunshine poster out there for worldwide consumption and it’s not so crappy- see it here).

Ah, well. Danny Boyle’s got it going on in the directorial department and almost always delivers some twist on the genre he’s toying with, so even if the poster is flat, the trailer says the film will be otherwise.

Of course, the UK folks (and generally everyone else in the world) will get to be the judge of that in just a month, while we US folks get to cool our heels until some unannouned date this fall (Touche!).

I know a few Pixar fans (and animation fans in general) were disappointed by Cars. I would respectfully disagree. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the movie upwards of 10 times thanks to the miracle of DVD and children’s ability to watch the same movie over and over. And over. And over. Regardless, it’s a pleasing little film and Pixar’s still coasting on an untarnished track record. In the mean time, a lot of attention is naturally being focused on the next Pixar project Ratatouille, but there’s also pixel-pushing happening on the back end as Pixar readies their next feature, Wall-E.

Enter Jim Hill. The dude is the one-stop shop for all things related to Pixar. The guy’s inside connected and animation fans are usually the beneficiaries of his guts-spilling. And he’s spilling.

In a pretty lengthy synopsis, Jim outlines the up and coming space/future/robots in love-fest with some purple-prosed superlatives like "mind-blowing", "radical departure" and "ballsy choice".

Apparently, all the superlative commentary is based around the idea this movie has a message Al Gore would be proud of (until we get to the part about fatties floating in space- then it would be plain offensive).

See, the earth has been abandoned as a giant junk heap and little robots called WALL-Es are on the surface cleaning it up, while the humans who made the mess are even fatter and lazier than we are now, and living in a space station orbiting the planet. WALL-E is the last of the robots, since they’ve all broken down, and (since this is a robot movie) has become self aware and curious. WALL-E is feeling a little lonely, despite havign a cockroach pal, when along comes a new, sleek and sexy cleaning model named EVE. Since no man (or sentient machine) can deny sweet womanly curves, WALL-E falls in love. EVE pretty much ignores WALL-E and is soon recalled to the space station. WALL-E sneaks aboard her ship and returns with her to the space station, where social commentary and satire ensues.

That’s just the first act of WALL-E. Apparently, the avante-garde part of the tale comes that within the first 1/3, there’s no dialogue. No cute talking robots- just soundtrack, beeps and ambient noise. From what I read, it didn’t see anything more ballsy than what Pixar’s done to date (including their shorts non-dialogue shorts like the Jackelope song, the telephone wire birds or the one with the jokers on the Cars DVD). Even so, it’s Pixar so there’s bound to be something special about it.

Jim Hill gives a beefier version which you can find here, and you may find he gives it way more justice.

I still think the rest of the world is getting a better title out of Die Hard 4.0 than the US is getting with the wretched and embarassing Live Free or Die Hard. Stop with the clever titles. The thought of the gimmick that’s taken full rabid control of DVD edition titles moving to mainstream film titles has got me all squirmy inside.

To add insult to injury, the rest of the world is also gandering at a pretty cool poster of greasy, bald and sweaty (why did those adjectives suddenly feel pornographic?) Bruce Willis giving his patented look of cool concern amidst the sparks of off-camera carnage. Plain, but I like it.

View it to your hearts content here or check out a larger version on the interwebs of Russia here.

" Psychological thriller" is such a misnomer when pigeonholing a film. Isn’t anything that involves fear and mystery, ultimately, psychological? Bah. Philosophy be damned. I’ll follow tradition.

Speaking of, Actor/TV Director Joe Rassulo’s had a good time lately, as he’s finished up a film, Bull Run, and his self written (soon to be self-directed), based-on-true-events story Damaged has been co-financed by Monarch Pictures and Crossroads Productions.

Damaged is the story of a girl who is psychologically damaged thanks to a fear of being unable to escape embarrasing situations– kind of like the fool pictured here. In fancy clinical terms, the condition is known as agoraphobia* . The real-life events the story is based on took place in both California and Arizona, home of many a psychologically-thrilling opportunity to embarass oneself (naked Lake Havasu coeds, I’m referencing you). Unfortunately for the heroine, she’s also being manipulated into thinking she’s killed some people in a manner most foul.

I really wanted to give you more background on the real-life events which inspired the screenplay, but I couldn’t dig any up. If you’ve got ’em, let’s hear it on the boards.

*Don’t be mislead by Variety and other sources- Agoraphobia is not the fear of open spaces- that’s a misnomer derived from the Greek roots of the word- Thanks, Wikipedia! No word on whether the movie will stick to the literal or popularized version of the term.

There’s been a couple high-profile stories in the last few months about people who are discovered living in so much squalor and filth, their homes are put under quarantine and closed off as unfit for human inhabitance. I’ve tried showing those stories to my lady-friend who doesn’t appreciate the clothes pile I leave in the closet (it’s a stratified sorting system, lady!) and saying, "It could be worse." She didn’t buy it. Maybe I could get her to read John Searles’ Strange But True, where characters are so caught up in the grief of their past, they turn their personal spaces into land fills.

That’s not even close to the premise of the novel, but I think I could be on to something. Still, in what may be the longest and most non-sensical segue I’ve ever written, I’m trying to get to the fact Strange But True has been tapped for a film adaptation.

The story doesn’t evolve around the filth its characters live in (that’s more incidental as we get to know them); it’s more of a family drama with a bit of crow portent and twisty thriller thrown into the mix. The death of a young man, five years previous, has had depressing ramifications. The girl whom he dated is a morose shut-in, his mother, who is partly responsible for his death, is inconsolable and introverted to the point of ignoring her living son and divorcing her husband. The mystery begins when (strange but true!) the girl shows up, again, five years after junior’s death, at Mom’s door and tells her she’s pregnant with his child.

I don’t what the mystery could be all about. There’s a logical explanation, and it’s called ghost sex.

The film will be produced by Ross Katz, who’s familiar with weird young girls, having recently produced Marie Antoinette.

Danny Boyle is not slowing down. With all kinds of Sunshine going on, he’s jumped into the pilot’s seat for the architectural biography Ponte Tower. And by architectural, I actually mean thriller set in the Joburg landmark.

The landmark itself has a fascinating history and plays into all kinds of American themes like sprawl, immigration and the suburban fear of "there goes the neighborhood".

The Ponte Tower was constructed in the 70’s as low cost housing consisting of a mini-community with fully furnished apartments, but had such great views and was so aesthetically unique, it became a hot-spot for Joburg’s Yuppie denizens. As the city began to grow outward in the mid 80’s, residents packed up and moved to the next hot spot, vacating Ponte Tower and the once-cool Hillbrow area. The vacuum and real estate collapse changed the demographic and introduced vacated, trash-strewn streets and 90’s era drug crime that makes for good movies.

The history and architecture of this place alone piques my interest in the project, and with Boyle travelling to South Africa to develop the project, the story will become tactile very soon.