There are certain comedy sub-genres that have either become parodies of themselves or just lost in Instant Netflix obscurity. Genres like the college comedy, the buddy cop comedy, and most importantly, the road comedy are among these. Something about protagonists finding themselves through an adventurous road trip has a certain amount of majesty to it.

Thankfully, comedy gurus David Wain and Ken Marino, best known as prime members of The State, have not forgotten the wonder of the road comedy, as the first trailer for Wanderlust has hit the web. The film stars Paul Rudd and (unfortunately) Jennifer Aniston as two workaholics living in New York City that decide to embark on a journey across the country to find themselves, and some pretty zany characters along the way.

If the writing style of Wain and Marino (the same minds that brought you Role Models) isn’t enough to get you into this flick, the massive cast of cameos should help. You can look forward to seeing actors like Justin Theroux, Malin Akerman, Alan Alda, Kathryn Hahn, Melissa Joan Hart, Ray Liotta, Reba McEntire, and Kerri Kenney-Silver in the film, just to name a few.

So before you pass judgment, check out the new trailer after the jump! Wanderlust is set to hit theaters on March 24th, 2012.

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You may have heard of a film called Sullivan’s Travels, and if you’ve heard of it, you may know the gist: Popular but unfulfilled director Sullivan is tired of making commercially successful but emotionally and intellectually vapid films. He decides that his next film (named O Brother, Where Art Thou?) will be a socially conscious depiction of the lower classes.

Through a series of comic mix-ups, he gets tossed in prison. One night a cartoon is screened for the inmates and Sullivan has an epiphany: The best way he can help the downtrodden is not by making high drama, but low-brow crowd-pleasers.

Larry Crowne is the kind of movie Sullivan would make if he were alive today. It’s full of plot-holes, cheap laughs, lazy pop-culture references, and utterly devoid of conflict. But for the women-age-45-and-up demographic wanting to see a cute romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts (have they ever been paired together? I can’t recall), this should suffice.

Tom Hanks, who wrote, directed, and produced it, plays Crowne, a middle-aged supermarket drone/former Naval cook who loses his beloved job because he never went to college. Low on cash but doggone tenacious, he enrolls in community college, taking a speech class taught by the jaded Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts, who’s getting more attractive with age) and an Econ 101 class taught by the zany Dr. Matsutani (George Takei).

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Green Day is a generation defining band. They have grown and evolved with their fans consistently over the past two decades but have also managed to remain as relevant today as they were when their first hits came out in the early ’90s.

Green Day’s evolution as a band took another interesting turn last year when their latest mega-hit album ‘American Idiot’ was adopted into a stage musical. Logically there is only one place to go after you take Broadway: Hollywood!

Deadline is reporting that Universal Pictures is looking into turning the successful musical into a feature film:

Universal Pictures is negotiating to turn the Green Day-fueled Broadway musical American Idiot into a feature film. Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning Milk scribe, is in talks to write the script, and Michael Mayer will direct.

Mayer helmed the stage run of the musical, which is closing on Broadway April 24 and launching a tour in the fall. Black most recently scripted J. Edgar, the Clint Eastwood film that stars Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover.

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Depending upon your feelings toward Russell Brand, you will be delighted or horrified by the most recent box office weekend totals. Despite the fact that four new films opened on Friday, last weekend’s holdover Hop managed to remain on top for a second week in a row.

Brand voices a rabbit who is the main character in the film. The film dropped about 42% from last weekend, which is a little high for a kiddie flick, but it has earned $68.2 Million in its first two weeks of release.

Coming in at number two was the Arthur remake, also starring Brand in the title role. The film only made about $12.6M. That total is quite low considering the fact that the film played on over 3,276 screens. That’s only a $3,276 per/screen average.

The moody assassin movie Hanna almost overtook Arthur with $12.3 million in ticket sales, while playing on a far fewer screens (2,600).  Another newcomer placed fourth. Soul Surfer played on about 2,300 screens, and made $11.1 M.  Even more impressive was the fact that the film got a coveted A+ from audiences polled by Cinemascore. That is extremely rare. Sony Pictures reports that over 80% of the audience was female, also rare.

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We all remember the scoffs Universal got when news hit that they were doing a fourth sequel to the Fast and the Furious franchise, but when the film opened to an astounding $70 million in the first weekend, the only people laughing were at the studio. So why wouldn’t they continue that trend with another film?

So here it is, the fifth film in the series, titled simply Fast Five. Worry not, fans won’t get another Tokyo Drift, as Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and a bunch of the originals are all returning. Here’s the breakdown of the film.

Since Brian (Walker) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) broke Dom out of custody, they’ve blown across many borders to elude authorities. Now backed into a corner in Rio de Janeiro, they must pull one last job in order to gain their freedom. As they assemble their elite team of top racers, the unlikely allies know their only shot of getting out for good means confronting the corrupt businessman who wants them dead. But he’s not the only one on their tail. Hard-nosed federal agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) never misses his target. When he is assigned to track down Dom (Diesel) and Brian, he and his strike team launch an all-out assault to capture them. But as his men tear through Brazil, Hobbs learns he can’t separate the good guys from the bad. Now, he must rely on his instincts to corner his prey…before someone else runs them down first.

The flick is set to hit on April 29th, and you can check out the full trailer after the jump.

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This week’s pick is the 1979 least known and only comedy from director Steven Spielberg, 1941 which stars Saturday Night Live originals Dan Aykroyd (Sgt. Frank Tree), and the incomparable John Belushi (Capt. “Wild” Bill Kelso, U.S. Army Air Corp.) Other supporting actors include Bobby Di Cicco (Wally Stephens), Ned Beatty (Ward Douglas), Lorraine Gary (Joan Douglas), Murray Hamilton (Claude Crumm), Christopher Lee (Capt. Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt), Tim Matheson (Capt. Loomis Berkhead) and Toshiro Mifune (Cmd. Akiro Mitamura).

Also on hand are Warren Oates (Col. Maddox), Robert Stack (Maj. Gen. Joseph W. Stillwell), Treat Williams (Cpl. Chuck “Stretch” Sitarski), Nancy Allen (Donna Stratton), John Candy (Pvt. Foley), Slim Pickens (Hollis P. Wood), and Count Floyd himself, Joe Flaherty (Raoul Lipschitz).

The opening of the film informs the audience about the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 which hurtled an unsuspecting America into World War II. The West Coast of the United States was fearful that the Japanese would attack California next. These were actual fears that were quickly realized by its citizens, and that extreme caution and observation was needed to thwart any attempt which made invasion possible. The film is set just six days after the Pearl Harbor attack.

In the first few opening minutes of the film, Spielberg, and writers Bob Gale, John Milius, and future director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future trilogy) fantastically lampoon Spielberg’s Jaws opening by using the very same actress to re-create her skinny dip scene in the early morning hours. Veteran Spielberg composer John Williams even re-creates his famous theme music. The female swimmer is instantly caught on the periscope of a Japanese submarine which is prowling the California coastline for a worthy military target.

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This past weekend at New York Comic Con, we got the opportunity to sit in on the panel for director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s prequel of John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing. Carpenter’s 1982 classic was a remake of Howard Hawk’s 1950′s classic The Thing From Another World which was based on a short story entitled “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell.

Heijningen’s film covers the three days prior to Carpenter’s version. A Norwegian research team discovers an alien body frozen in Antarctica. Much like the Carpenter film, the alien is thawed and soon begins to wreak havoc on the  research team who discover that it is a shape shifting being that now wants to copy life on Earth.

Very quickly, the team doesn’t know which of them is human or the thing. The film stars Joel Edgerton as the main hero, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World), Eric Christian Olsen (Community), and Ulrich Thomsen also make up the cast.

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This year at Comic-Con, one of the cooler features of the show didn’t actually take place on the con floor, but just outside of it, as Universal set up a machine outside that released several people-shaped bubbles into the heavens. Nobody had any idea what this meant, or what the movie even was, until now.

The first trailer for Skyline directed by The Brothers Strause, visual effects masters involved with such films as Iron Man, Jonah Hex, 2012, Bedtime Stories, Avatar and more, has hit the Interwebs. And we, of course, have it for you to watch.

Basically the film is about two guys who, hungover, walk outside after a late night party to see their world overrun by alien spacecrafts. People are drawn outside of their homes by a light that then sucks them up into the air.

The imagery itself is quite impressive, so we’ll see if the rest of the film can carry the weight. Even though the brothers have little directing experience, at the very least, you know the film will look pretty.

Check out the first full trailer of the film after the jump. Be sure to catch Skyline in theaters everywhere on November 12th.

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We’re all pretty big fans places and things where technology and Hollywood meet, so we felt it was pretty necessary to bring attention to this brand new mobile app from Best Buy. It’s called Movie Mode, and it’s a new way to enjoy films in the theaters, starting with this Friday’s release of Despicable Me.

The app syncs directly with the audio of the film, and will enhance the experience by giving you a little something to do during the end credits, aside from waiting for the expected post-credits sequence. From a Best Buy:

Available as a free download, Best Buy Movie Mode comes to life via “The Minionator,” created as part of an exclusive collaboration with Universal Pictures and tied to the July 9 release of its must-see RealD 3-D CGI feature “Despicable Me” produced by Chris Meledandri.

“The Minionator” is Movie Mode’s first film enhancing experience and offers fans a deeper connection to “Despicable Me” by translating for audiences what the film’s mischievous little yellow characters, the Minions, are saying. The app acts as a translator during the 3-D theatrical end credits for the special language of the Minions. The app will also translate the Minion language throughout the entire movie on Best Buy’s exclusive “Despicable Me” DVD released later this year.

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Diane here and fresh off  the red carpet premiere of Universal Studios’ Hollywood latest attraction, King Kong 360 3D.  If you have a chance to swing on by this summer, it is worth the wait.

Yesterday while walking among a 360lb Bengal Tiger, a 13 foot Python, a feisty monkey, and tribal dancers who kept on telling me to touch their dinosaur bones I became entranced with the world of Skull Island and a gorilla who’s eaten one too many Big Macs.

I was not alone, The Office’s Craig Robinson, Oscar Nunez, and Kate Flannery, along with Kevin Smith, Yvette Nicole Brown of Community, Wayne Brady,Wanted and King Kong’s Thomas Kretschmann, and a very shy Christopher Lloyd were all there sampling the gourmet apps and reveling in a filmed introduction to the experience by none other than a slimmed down Peter Jackson in 3D.

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With all the movies coming out these days its easy to get lost in all the promotions by the studios. In an effort to get audiences interested in their particular film, they often deluge potential movie goers with a whole bunch of promotional stuff that due to the sheer amount, is often overlooked or just plain ignored. Sometimes, however, something comes along that’s kinda fun and deserves a bit of attention.

One such promotional tie-in is Universal’s current Get Him to the Greek song contest. To enter is simple, especially for all you budding rockstars out there.

Just record your cover version of Infant Sorrow’s (Russel Brand’s fictional band in the film) hit song “Bangers, Beans & Mash” and enter for a chance to win a trip to the world premiere of Get Him to the Greek at L.A.’s famous Greek Theatre. 20 runners-up will win limited edition Infant Sorrow merchandise, so don’t feel bad.

Get Him to the Greek features Jonah Hill and Russell Brand and is directed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall‘s Nicholas Stoller. It tells the story of a record company executive (Hill) with three days to drag an uncooperative rock legend (Brand) to Hollywood for a comeback concert. It also stars Sean Combs, Elisabeth Moss, Rose Byrne and Colm Meaney. It hits theaters June 4.

Remakes and sequels are a dime a dozen. While Repo Men is neither of those, it bears incredible similarities with Repo! The Genetic Opera, a rock musical released in 2006. The films are very much the same in content and style, while the stories that they tell are very, very different.

Remy (Jude Law) seems like a normal guy. He’s got a wife and child, lives in a house in the suburbs, drives a fancy Volkswagon SUV. What isn’t so normal is Remy’s job. He repossess people’s artificial organs when they can’t afford their payments to The Union, the company that makes and finances the organs to people in need.

Anyone who becomes late with their payments is hunted down by The Union’s “repo men” and their artificial organs are repossessed, usually resulting in their immediate death. Remy and his partner Jake (Forest Whitaker) don’t mind being repo men, in fact they quite enjoy it. But when Remy’s wife decides maybe her husband should consider a career change, everything changes.

It’s hard to discuss this film’s plot without giving away the two major twists that make this film interesting, but I’ll just say that the Remy you meet in the beginning of the film is very, very different from the Remy at the end of the film. Think of Christian Bale’s character in Equilibrium as a comparison. Jude Law does a great job with this transformation, and Whitaker isn’t too shabby either.

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