Why they didn’t go with the title jObs is anyone’s guess.

At the end of the film, we see a comparison between the actors and the people they played, none of whom are credited. And despite spending two hours with these fellows, there aren’t many you could name. Cliched as it is to say, but that’s a metaphor for the entire film — it’s so concerned with covering all the major events in the history of Apple Computers and simply the looks of its founders and key people that it misses the mark giving the viewer a sense of what made founder Steve Jobs tick.

Granted, the movie opens with a fantastic scene of Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) announcing the iPod. Kutcher’s inflection, body language, and script are dead-on as he builds the audience’s anticipation, teasing them with hints and pauses and mere suggestions — there’s a mix of delight and arrogance that’s electric. Even if you’ve never heard Jobs speak, the performance still conveys the feeling of being in the presence of a great man at the peak of his strengths

It’s too bad the film likewise peaks in this scene. We flash back to Jobs’ college years where we’re told he’s a renegade, a rebel, the guy who doesn’t wear shoes and drops acid and casually mentions to a fling that he has a girlfriend He takes a hit in a field with his girlfriend (Amanda Crew)  and after copious amounts of dancing, he lies back, restless. His girlfriend queries, “You’re thinking about your parents, aren’t you?” a tear rolls down Steve’s cheek, and the audience laughs.

I’m hesitant to write a summary of Super 8 because I went in knowing nothing about it, had some reservations at first, but was so surprised at around the 10-minute mark that I immediately came on board. So if you’d like to enjoy it cold, read no further. Though I suspect that warning could apply to any film.

Super 8 takes place during the summer of 1979 and follows an outcast group of kids deeply engaged in one of the great pleasures of childhood: making movies. There’s the director Charles (Riley Griffiths), Joe, the makeup guy (Joel Courtney), a few of their bucktoothed, gangly friends, and the female lead Alice (Elle Fanning). Of course, these kids invest much more into their movies than my friends and I ever did (makeup? Multiple angles?), and one of the running gags is Charles’ insistence on production values, regardless of whether it endangers the cast and crew.

While shooting one of the scenes at an abandoned depot, a train barrels past and is derailed by a truck driving down the tracks. The magnificent crash is caught on film and the kids discover that the driver of the truck, who miraculously survives, is their science teacher Mr. Woodward (Glynn Turman), who tells them to get the hell out of there just as the feds arrive.

We’ve been following this one for a long time since the days when we only knew a bit about the story. Fortunately, over the months we’ve gotten more and more info about J.J. Abrams Super 8, including a poster and a couple trailers.

Now, as the movie is getting even closer to its release date, we’ve got more to share with you in the form of an actual clip from the movie.

In this one we’re given a bit more of the scene where the kids are making the film that causes all the trouble. Unfortunately, a lot of it is the same footage we’ve seen already including the truck versus train explosion and the kids running from it.

It does, however, play up the obvious budding romance between the main kid and the girl that almost gets away. I wonder if, during the course of the film, those two crazy kids finally get together? And by “get together’ I mean hold hands or have one very innocent kiss, much like Elliott did during the “free the frogs” sequence in E.T. It is a Spielberg homage, after all.

Even if we have seen a lot of it before in other trailers and whatnot, it only serves to enhance my desire to see the entire film. Damn you Abrams, you got me.

Check out the new video after the jump. Super 8 arrives in theaters on June 10th.

John Irvin’s (Hamburger Hill & The Dogs of War) 1998 HBO film When Trumpets Fade is an intense, brutally honest  look at front line combat at the closing end of World War II. As the German Army is in full retreat towards its own borders, American infantry units (primarily the U.S. 28th “Keystone” Div. of the Pennsylvanian National Guard) converge on the Hurtgen Forest, Germany’s romantic hunting ground which borders Belgium in the late autumn of 1944.

Ron Eldard stars as reluctant anti-hero David Manning who is the sole survivor of a failed attack against the German lines at the beginning of the film. The supporting cast include Zak Orth (Pvt. Warren “Sandy” Sanderson), Frank Whaley (Medic Toby Chamberlain), Dylan Bruno (Sgt. Patrick Talbot), Devon Gummersall (Pvt. Andrew Lonnie), Dan Futterman (Pvt. Doug Despin), Steven Petrarca (Pvt. Sam Baxter), Dwight Yoakam (Lt. Col. George Rickman), and Timothy Olyphant (Lt. Terrence Lukas).

Manning shirks most responsibilities and has a hatred for anyone in authority. Manning is viewed by his fellow soldiers as an irresponsible individual who fails to conform to military protocol.  His commanding officer Capt. Roy Pritchett (Martin Donovan) believes that Manning has what it takes to lead men and promotes Manning to Sgt. and orders him to take command of a new squad of fresh faced troops who are heading to the front as replacements.