Okay, getting beyond that controversy (it’s only a controversy to the exceptionally noisy nerds who rule the internet and Sony‘s marketing team who would only use it to fuel more interest in the film), what did this new trailer show us that we didn’t know before about the Amazing Spider-Man?

Much of the footage was exactly what they showed us at San Diego Comic-Con last July, but there was a whole lot more that we’ve never seen yet peppered throughout the trailer. I’m going to focus on the revelations and questions that I found most interesting. If you find something that piqued your interest that I didn’t cover, feel free to comment below or contact me on Facebook or Twitter.

First, in case you haven’t seen it, the trailer…

• 0:08 – The trailer opens with the New York City skyline, just like the Avengers teaser that debuted this past Sunday. It’s no mistake that in Marvel Comics, Manhattan is as much a character as the people who put on the tights. It’s an establishing shot that tells the world that this is set in the most famous city in the world and it just happens to play host to arguably the most popular super hero in the world.
• 0:12 – Peter’s relationships are pretty quickly laid out. Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) is his girlfriend and there is more than a little tension between him and Gwen’s father, police chief Captain Stacy (Dennis O’Leary). And although the window scene appears to be at a time when Gwen doesn’t exactly know Peter’s secret identity, later scenes indicate that she figures it out well before the end of the film. Ben provides some voice-over and May looks concerned, but they appear to exist solely for the setup of a legend.
• 0:34 – A great comedic moment during the carjacking that shows us that Spider-Man is a funny guy. He doesn’t nervously quip. Spidey is meant to be boldly funny to the same degree that Peter is shy and reserved. And while we see a bit of his rapid-fire webwork very quickly in this scene, the footage from Comic-Con showed us how Spidey combines his goofy banter and trick-shot shenanigans. Later we see that a cop gets involved, showing us that Spidey needs to defend himself against an attack from the good guys as well. I am eager to see more of this scene because it seems to exemplify the funny and dangerous tension that exists in Peter’s life when the criminals are not as much of a problem for him as the police are, even though both he and the cop are trying to just do what they believe is right. And it all comes down to how Peter deals with those situations that makes him a hero despite the burden put upon him.
• 0:45 – Through flashbacks, we discover that Peter’s parents didn’t necessarily die as we once thought. They left with a very big secret hanging over their heads. It turns out that Dr Curt Connors, who works at Oscorp (Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin‘s company), was friends with Peter’s father, Richard, who also worked there. Over the course of the film, for whatever reason, it appears that Peter’s inherited scientific genius leads to helping Dr Connors regain his lost arm through a serum that Peter creates, leading to the birth of the Lizard. This opens up all sorts of story possibilities that will likely lead us into Peter meeting and battling the Green Goblin in the next film. Smartly, the filmmakers are keeping with the foundation of the earlier films, in that it’s the relationships in Peter’s life, not Spider-Man’s that lead to conflict, both physical and emotional. This is where movies like the Green Lantern got it wrong.
• 1:08 – Ooh, that’s a fun little web down the sewers. I think he’s going to catch a Lizard. I like the fact that the strands are so taught, showing just how strong they are, even with Spidey perched atop them with literally zero sag from his weight.
• 1:16 – I’m still having problems with how digital the Lizard appears to be, even when it’s just his arm punching through the roof of a car. I realize it’s necessary and that a rubber suit would look much sillier, but to me, he still doesn’t seem to have any heft, any weight to him. I don’t doubt the fight scenes will look cool, but I need to see more to convince me that the Lizard isn’t more than a flat digital projection for Peter to punch. At least they made the Lizard’s alter-ego more than 2 dimensional, as I believe his personal connection to the Parker family will raise the stakes between the two characters. However, since the villain knows the identity of our hero (again), he’s likely going to die. Although it would be fun to see Osborn gather him up and lock him away along with a few other monstrous freaks, Sinister Six style, and unleash them on Spidey a few films from now.
• 1:21 – Back to the web shooters. Close up (see picture below), it definitely looks like Peter cobbled it together from pieces of available tech around the house. That is just one more thing that’s showing off his scientific genius. It looks like parts from a watch with some digital enhancements. Either way, it’s cool.
• 1:36 – Spider-Man unmasked! Don’t get too excited. It’s doubtful he’ll be exposed to the world. But, as you can see, he wastes no time taking down his captors, giving them little chance to see his face in the process. Plus, it gives the filmmakers a reason to show their actor’s face. As it is in almost every masked superhero film, the hero has to lose his mask in the battle, whether you’re watching the first Spider-Man or Iron Man. You don’t pay an actor all that money and then just hide his talent behind a mask when the audience is supposed to be identifying with him physically and emotionally. It’s hard to do that without seeing his eyes. It’s annoying to me, but necessary I guess.
• 1:52 – Black and white flashback to a spider in a glass case along with a voice-over from Dr Connors asking of Peter wants to know the truth. Does this mean that the source of Richard Parker’s older experiments were spiders? Could the very thing that gives Peter his powers early in the film be something his father created years ago? I’m guessing that we’ll be seeing papa Parker in the next film at some point, when it all comes out that the demands of Osborn and Richard Parker’s controversial experiments were the reason for Peter’s parents going away when they did.
• 2:10 – Spidey and the Lizard face off on top of the Oscorp building! ‘Nuff said!
• 2:17 – So what’s Peter doing by bringing down that tower on top of the Oscorp building? The Lizard was up there at some point, but he doesn’t appear to be there when Spidey clumsily brings it crashing down. And, it would appear to be a bit excessive as well, unless the Lizard was somehow way up on the tippy top of it.

Of course, all of that analysis only makes me more excited to see the film. It looks darker, sleeker, more mature than the previous films, which I loved as well, but I’m glad they’ve taken this in the direction they have. And I hope they ratchet up the villain threat level exponentially as the sequels roll out over the next decade. Spider-Man is a fun, thrilling character with whom we can all empathize. Put him in the right situations and you’ve got a great comic book and a great movie. And all the haters can now shut up. I don’t think anyone can deny that Andrew Garfield looks great in this role and if there is any weak point in this film to be judged WHEN WE ACTUALLY SEE IT, it won’t be him. If you’re still a cynic, nothing’s really going to break you, so don’t watch this next clip…

The Amazing Spider-Man swings into theaters July 3rd, 2012.

Again, this is NOT the trailer you saw during the Superbowl! This is that clip and a whole lot more! But if you need to see even more Avengers related stuff, go to facebook.com/avengers.

If your eyes aren’t fast enough to catch all of the goodness packed within, here are a few screen grabs from the trailer:

Anyway, my point is about the weirdness that took place the other day in New York City. New Yorkers rarely look up and hardly anything phases them. But when people started reporting that they saw 3 human figures flying just off the shore of the Big Apple, everyone took notice. The flying figures were actually a set of human-sized remote control planes, created as promotional project put together by the folks at ThinkModo, who specialize in buzzy viral marketing campaigns that are just a little bit strange. The first clip I have linked below shows how they did it…

Chronicle hits theaters this week, February 3rd, 2012.

Chronicle Trailer

Er… don’t answer that.

Well, whether you feel that strongly about such people or not, I suggest that instead of acting on such urges, it might be healthier to live vicariously through a guy named Frank. He has no money, no job, no love life, and he just got the news that he could be dying. He’s become more than a little unhinged. He’s also the main character in a new film by Bobcat Goldthwait. If you know who Goldthwait is and you think he’s just that tweaked, screeching guy from the Police Academy movies, think again. He’s actually spent a lot of time writing and directing a number of films over the years. His latest is God Bless America, which finds Frank with a thirst for righting all the wrongs in the world, starting with the little things. Speaking of little things, he picks up a sidekick/accomplice along the way, in the form of a 16 year old girl named Roxy, who believes that the best way to wipe away the bad in this world is with a few well-placed bullets to the head of those responsible for it all. This looks like it will be a fun dark comedy and an exercise in cathartic celluloid (or it would be if theaters weren’t totally digital nowadays).

Check out the RED BAND trailer below (“Red Band” means that the trailer is very uncensored and Rated R, i.e. not for kiddies).

God Bless America arrives in theaters (I swear to GOD, you better not talk in my screening!) May 11th, but you can also see it on Video On Demand starting April 6th.

TED has put together a clear and concise video with speaker Clay Shirky, who discusses the origins and reasons behind the proposed bills and why they pose a threat to our freedoms, not just in the USA, but around the world. It is an enlightening 15 minute talk, clarifying the history behind this stunningly bold step by the entertainment companies to make us merely consumers and never creators (without their permission and a hefty cost). By watching this, you’ll understand the very things that terrify the big media companies today and why they’ve spent so much money buying politicians to make sure these bills pass one way or another.

You can see it in even higher resolution on the Apple site here.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey arrives in theaters December 14, 2012.

Although, as we saw in the special footage they showed in front of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol last week, Bane’s voice is still incomprehensible. That has to be fixed by next summer.

Check out the full trailer for the Dark Knight Rises available online for the first time now, courtesy of ComingSoon.net!
The Dark Knight Rises in theaters July 20, 2012.

Co-created by founders David Chodosh and former Marvel Comics editor Terry Kavanagh, MyBeanJar gives mobile device users and gamers the chance to win prizes and discounts at some of their favorite stores and restaurants just by playing a game! The concept is simple: when you play a game, wouldn’t it be nice to actually achieve something in the real world? MyBeanJar does just that through games that have partnered with them and by working with local merchants to give you great discounts on food, merchandise, and more. However, since it’s just launched, it’s only useful to those who live, work, and play in the South Bay region of Los Angeles – for now! But it will be expanding quickly across the US in the coming months as it partners with a variety of businesses and game developers. Also, MyBeanJar is currently available only on the iOS platform (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch), but they will be launching an Android version soon enough.

We talked with Bean Jar co-founder, David Chodosh, about how MyBeanJar works and where the idea came from…

Learn more about MyBeanJar and when it’s coming to your area by heading to http://mybeanjar.com or downloading the app from the App Store for FREE on your iOS mobile device.

Unfortunately, “picturing this” is all we could really do; as Interwave gave us a single ticket to a multiplayer party. We could not get the competitive play to even start until we had at least 4 players in our game – and the online servers last weekend were either empty or secured. So it was difficult to enjoy features like command view without shelling out for additional licenses… something were remiss to do (not for any principle really, just that 25 bucks per license can also feed us all ramen and cereal for a week).

Still, the levels we played (well… wandered really) we’re beautifully designed and rendered. Play is set in post-apocalyptic imagined cityscapes of UK, Japan, Dubai and elsewhere. The terrain is littered with torched cars, waste and bodies – as the vast majority of humankind is gone (except soldiers… and those exclusive radiation-resistant workers who keep the electricity on). Except for the specific controls of the game (like resource centers), there’s little interaction with props, like vehicles; “Damn, why would they put a tricked-out snowmobile here if I can’t fire it up?”

Here are some cool vehicles I can't seem to ride.

Your team is pitted against another, in an attempt to take each others flag… er… command center – assisted by one uber-player who can coordinate your movements and grant supplies from above, via isometric map view. The description claims “Nuclear Dawn is the first game to offer a full FPS and RTS experience…”, which kinda spits in the faces of the old Battlefield 2 development team.

Taking a page from Team Fortress and others, you pick your solder from a list of career types, to match your style (lurk and snipe vs. stand and deliver, vs. perhaps fix some things). Experienced players can unlock weapons and premiums to enhance game play, and industrious players can create their own maps too.

Powered by Valve‘s Source, the experience is as good as Half-Life 2, Portal, Left4Dead and the others which use this engine. My Alienware M15X laptop has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M and Windows 7 64 – and had no problem giving me smooth action and beautiful imagery. Some maps and gameplay devices – like the command centers, spawn points and recharging resource units – are even reminiscent of the Half-Life’s Combine. The way the secondary resource unit activated itself and started doing little “mechanized push-ups” had me thinking that it was scaring away City 17′s Antlions, rather than pumping out numbers to recharge me. Ah, memories…

This game would be a blast at an old fashioned LAN party – or perhaps a sponsored expo competition. But like I said at the start: we need 4 live solders for the challenge to even begin. This is possibly because someone at Interwave decided you needed 2 to control some resource points, times the two teams it takes to tango.

Without a lower threshold to entry (not just price – but something to DO until you can herd the requisite quantity of players, like a single player campaign – or some bots to play) this game might become a victim of bad timing: Some heavy hitters with huge promo budgets are hitting the market this winter (MW3 for example), and Team Fortress 2 is free now. Events like these are likely to siphon away the same “team theme” players this game sorely needs to build market momentum.

UPDATE: I just checked the Nuclear Dawn server community recently, and it looks like the lower Valve price – perhaps combined with Free Weekend promos and other giveaways – has drummed up a fair community of (likely Counter Strike ex-pat) players, and servers to host them. Interwave has just released a nice update as well!

Who does he call when it gets too deep for him? Apparently, Bruce Willis in an El Camino.

Yes, Dwayne Johnson aka “the Rock” seems to be the go-to tough guy (and kid-friendly funny tough guy) you call in to supe-up up your sequel. He’s already appeared in Fast Five and he’s appearing in Journey (to the Center of the Earth) 2. Now he’s the 50-cal toting Roadblock in GI Joe: Retaliation. If nothing else can be said about this film, he certainly looks the part.

On GI Joe‘s latest trip to the big screen, it looks like they’re leaving the super exo-suits and mostly CGI character stuntwork behind them. Actually, it looks like they’re leaving most of GI Joe behind them, if the trailer is any indication. There’s a greater sense of realism to what’s happening in this new film. Stepping away from the rule from the classic 80s GI Joe cartoon series where no one ever died, it appears that most of the Joes get slaughtered by the US government at the beginning of the film, leaving Roadblock and a handful of attractive team members in fatigues to take back the Capitol from a Cobra Commander controlled President. Look fast and you’ll see Mr Scratchy-Voice standing next to the President, shiny helmet and all.

Oddly, this trailer makes me want to see this movie despite how poor the last one was. If they keep the cool kung-fu moments with Snakeyes and Stormshadow, amp up some somewhat realistic battle sequences, and actually put a coherent story throughout it that makes us care about these action figures, they could have a fun summer popcorn movie on their hands. You never know…