The Super Bowl spots for UP, STAR TREK, LAND OF THE LOST, G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, and TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN!

Today is the Super Bowl, which means that big entertainment studios (among many other companies) will be dropping unconscionable amounts of coin on measly 30-second spots to shill for movies, some of which won't even be coming out 'til August. And thanks to the glorious wonder of the Internet, we can take a gander at them several hours before they air.

This first spot is for Disney and Pixar's Up. I know some folks who have seen advance footage of this one, and they cannot stop raving about how good it's already looking. Go to Disney's website to see the commercial in much higher resolution. This will definitely be on my "must see" list this summer...

The next one is for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, due out in May. Another one that I'm eagerly anticipating, for one reason because this looks totally unlike anything that has been done in the forty-some years of the Star Trek franchise. And because I trust Abrams to deliver the goods...

This next one is for Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell. A movie that so far I am remaining very cautiously optimistic for. I must admit though: visually at least, this spot is hitting on all the right chords. Love the shot of the "time/space junkyard", the multiple moons and the Sleestack of course. The music has a great vibe to it also. We'll see this spring how this one fares...

The Super Bowl commercial for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Color me "meh". I'm just not getting this one yet. It comes perilously close to making me understand the whole "raped my childhood" thing that a lot of Star Wars fans have cried out over the past decade. That's supposed to be Destro that Christopher Eccleston is playing (sans the mandatory beryllium steel mask Destro always wears). Looks as outrageous and loud as any Stephen Sommers flick. I doubt I'll be there opening day for it but if word is good, I'll probably check it out, if only out of curiosity. ComingSoon.net has the commercial in multiple high-res Quicktime versions...

And finally, here's the Super Bowl ad for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. A movie that I am extremely looking forward to but until now I have somehow remained blissfully unaware of what it's going to be about. And if this spot is any indication, the sequel to 2007's Transformers is going to completely pour on the crazy!

Oh yeah: Go Steelers! :-P

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First poster for LAND OF THE LOST

Props to Cinematical for scoring the first look at the teaser poster for this summer's Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell and based on the television show from thirty years ago...

Friday night I watched Elf for the first time. It's a very funny movie! And it reinforced what I said a year ago when I first reported on this movie: that given a serious treatment of the plot, Ferrell could expand on the perception most folks have of him, 'cuz he would prove that he's capable of being a legitimate action star. Though from what I'm hearing Land of the Lost is still being produced as a comedy... which the original TV show was anything but.

Nice poster. I like the giant carved Sleestak especially. But color me "overly cautious" about this for the time being.

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Universal turning LAND OF THE LOST into a comedy starring Will Ferrell?!

This sucks donkeys balls to no end.

Yeah you read that right: I did dare to use my personal "worst epithet ever" for this. Because everything about this project (with the possible exception of Will Ferrell which I'll get to later) screams out "wrong" in every way possible.

I was 5 years old and in kindergarten when WFMY out of Greensboro started showing Land of the Lost on weekday afternoons at 3:30. Land of the Lost, even before I ever saw a Star Wars movie, was my first serious exposure to what I would come to appreciate as epic storytelling within a broad mythology. The weird landscape, the dinosaurs, the Sleestaks, the Lost City, the Pylons, the Civil War soldier, the ape dudes, the spaceship... and Rick Marshall and his two kids trying to get home: I ate it all up and wanted more. Here's the first season's opening title sequence if you've never seen it before...

Then they had to show the Season 3 episodes where Rick left and Uncle Jack showed up. By that time I was 6 years old and had realized, before the term had ever been coined, that Land of the Lost had "jumped the shark". Let's not even talk about the early Nineties remake.

Ain't It Cool News was where I first heard that Universal is about to spend $100 million dollars on a big-screen Land of the Lost feature starring Will Ferrell.

Universal's Land of the Lost is being billed as "an event comedy".

Ummmm... 'scuse me?

Land of the Lost is not a comedy. No doubt that there were some light-hearted moments in the original show, but for a children's series it was always dark and foreboding. What ABC's Lost is today, is what Land of the Lost was back then. And in the hands of people who understand Land of the Lost and "get" the whole concept, this could turn into a fantastic project. I think that Will Ferrell could do a fine job with this: it has the potential to move him out of the perception that he's mainly a comedy actor, if the material is treated seriously. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Can't Sid and Marty Krofft maintain some creative control over this? The way things are going we can look forward to Chris Rock and Adam Sandler in the Far Out Space Nuts movie any day now.

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