I might have been raised on the old maxim: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all -- but even I can't keep my mouth shut on this one. A new poster and some stills from the live-action Dragonball have hit the net (along with some official pics from Fox), and it is not looking any better for the anime update. If you are one of the few Dragonball fans left out there with hope for this movie, I'm afraid once you get a look at James Marsters as Lord Piccolo, the dream of a decent flick goes right out the window. Although to be fair, I have to give them credit for trying out a slightly more 'modern' look on the new poster art.

Dragonball stars Justin Chatwin as the mighty Goku (a casting decision that has yet to ever really make sense), a legendary warrior who is responsible for protecting the awesome powers of the mystical 'Dragonballs'. Jamie Chung also stars as Chi Chi (Goku's love interest), along with Marsters as the evil Lord Piccolo (oh Spike, where did it all go wrong?), Chow Yun Fat as Master Roshi, and Emmy Rossum as Bulma.

Just last week, the rumors were silenced that Fox would be scrapping the one hundred million dollar film. The current spin from Fox is that they are 100% behind the project -- but honestly, what else could they say? So whatever you may think about Dragonball, plenty of fans will probably be there on opening day. Who knows? Maybe I'll be one of them. I have been known to enjoy watching a train wreck on screen -- how about you?

[Thanks Coming Soon]

So if you aren't lucky enough to live in the wondrous nation known as Canada (can you guess where I live?), then look to your right, because this is going to be your one and only chance to see the first poster for Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Just when you thought Smith's troubles with the censors were over, the one-sheet for the 'adult' comedy has been given a thumbs down by the MPAA, and will not be displayed in the US. That's right, days before the film is set to premier at the Toronto Film Festival, it turns out the only people who will get to see this poster will be those north of the border.

Zack and Miri follows two childhood friends who are strapped for cash, and come up with the wild idea of making a porn to ease their financial woes. The film stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, but there are also plenty of familiar faces from Smith's usual stable (along with some of Judd Apatow's regulars).

It didn't come as a surprise when the film ran into trouble with the MPAA, and luckily Smith managed to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating. But in the age of successful 'R' rated comedy, you would have thought the ratings board would move a little more with the times -- for goodness sake, Good Luck Chuck one-sheets made it stateside. Smith told EW, "When you've got the word 'porno' in the title, naturally, the marketing materials are gonna be scrutinized more closely by the MPAA, I understand they've got a job to do, but c'mon...this image isn't that dirty; they're both fully clad." So even though I am on Smith's side in the argument, you have to love his qualifier of 'that dirty'.

Zack and Miri will premier at TIFF on September 7th, and will arrive in theaters on October 31st.

For quite some time, the supernatural thriller Passengers -- starring Anne Hathaway as a grief counselor working with survivors of a plane crash (among them, Patrick Wilson) who begin to vanish -- had been quietly set on opening this Friday, September 5th.

However, as the date neared without any sign of a poster, a trailer, anything, I began rooting around the IMDb message boards and was about to post a Spanish-language trailer, complete with accompanying amateur translation, when along came a legit trailer (by way of Reelz Channel), a real poster (courtesy of IMP Awards), and a new date of October... well, just October for now.

Given his knack for ensemble dramas such as Nine Lives and Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her, director Rodrigo Garcia seems to be a curious pick for the material, as the focus is less on what's happened to the group as a whole and more on Hathaway and Wilson investigating one another. Otherwise, the vibe I'm getting here is the one I had from 2004's The Forgotten: it has just enough of a hook to get me to watch it, but I doubt that the pay-off will live up to it.

What do you guys think? Will September's Lakeview Terrace and October's Rachel Getting Married satisfy your Wilson and Hathaway jones, respectively? And facing this Halloween's mainstream horror fare, is Sony, under the Tri-Star banner, about to dump this in a limited amount of theaters as they had with, say, Wind Chill, which just happened to star Prada pal Emily Blunt?

If you were looking for a good way to kill some time at work today, I have just the thing: a fiendish, frustrating puzzle!

The folks at Empire Online have devised a quiz wherein you are asked to identify a movie based only on one letter taken from its poster. The quiz looks like a ransom note -- "CAN YOU GUESS ALL THESE MOVIES FROM JUST THESE LETTERS?" -- and you basically have to recognize the fonts, though in some cases there are other clues, too. That "S" has a period after it ... or is it a bullet hole? The "O" seems to be spotted. Why is there a hand in that "A"?

I didn't think I'd do very well, but I wound up getting a lot of them. (I'd know that "J" anywhere!) It helps that a lot of the films are fairly recent and that none of them are obscure. Many are Oscar-winners and/or box-office champs. Use your powers of recall, your powers of deduction (why is there a quotation mark with the "G"?), and your powers of wasting time on the Internet.

Here's a piece of coolness that's been making its way around the internets today. From our friends at First Showing (via Superhero Hype) comes what appears to be a fan made poster for The Dark Knight Returns (click to enlarge), a sequel to this summer's The Dark Knight. No, a third Batman film has not been announced yet, so don't go gettin' your knickers in a twist thinking they've already started promoting the next film. (God, please don't tell me they've already started promoting it -- I think I speak for all us online movie dudes when I say we need a few months off to recover from this puppy.)

That said, can you spot the two new characters this poster introduces? Yes, one of them is Riddler, but the other is a bit harder to locate. (Hint: Look at the newspaper articles.) No one knows exactly what direction the next Batman movie will head in, except for the Nolan boys should they decide to pen the script. Riddler is a cool character, but is he too close to Joker? Should they take a chance on Catwoman? Should they dip into a lesser known villain, or create a brand new one? One thing's for sure: You folks will not get tired of this debate anytime soon ...

Yesterday, Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere put up the poster for the new comedy My Best Friend's Girl, starring Kate Hudson, Dane Cook, Jason Biggs and Alec Baldwin. The poster (which premiered online earlier this summer) is boring in the extreme, making the film look like your typical snoozerific rom-com, and the digital altering on the photo makes everyone involved look rather ... freakish.

My first reaction on seeing the poster was, "Boy, somebody's screwing up the marketing on this film," quickly followed by "Hey, I don't remember Dane Cook's complexion looking quite so dewy-fresh ... "

I've seen the red-band trailer, which is actually pretty funny, if you can overlook the more misogynistic elements (or at least, in my own case, overcome the feminist tendency to be immediately annoyed by blow-job jokes) , and the film being marketed in that trailer and the film being promoted on this poster are not the same film. Not that it looks like something I'd choose to see over a good indie flick, but if I wanted a lightweight comedy film, and I'd already seen Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, and couldn't find anything else to do here in Seattle on a nice day, I'd maybe see this.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for the film Ping Pong Playa (click image above to enlarge), directed by Jessica Yu (Protagonist). Starring Jimmy Tsai (who also co-wrote the script with Yu), Ping Pong Playa follows one kid who dreams about escaping his dead-end job and playing professional basketball in the NBA ... except his entire family is obsessed with the world of ping pong. His dad runs a ping pong-related store, his mom teaches the sport and his brother is a ping pong champion. Will our hero break away from the pong pressure and live out his b-ballin' dreams, or will he discover that the game he dissed was the game he missed?

In her positive review from last year's Toronto International Film Festival, Cinematical's Monika Bartyzel called Ping Pong Playa "a refreshing reversal from the usual comedic fare -- a lone Asian American beacon of laughs in a sea that usually has only spots of color." Check out the trailer after the jump. Ping Pong Playa arrives in theaters on September 5.

Those attending VegasCon '08 saw four new character posters for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, which give us our first look at the reborn versions of Sulu, Chekov, Scotty and McCoy. The image above shows Karl Urban as Leonard McCoy and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov; you'll have to go to TrekMovie.com, which had the first photo of the posters, to see Simon Pegg as Scotty and John Cho as Sulu. It should surprise no one that these Starfleet officers are much more photogenic than their original counterparts, and not, I think, merely because they're younger. (I mean, look at this guy.)

This comes on the heels of the first screening of the complete film for Paramount execs, which apparently went very well, though since the source for that could really only be from inside Paramount, I'd take that with a huge grain of salt.

I came to Star Trek late, which led to oddball results like my liking Star Trek: Voyager. (I think that asking "What would Janeway do?" is a good way to lead your life.) So I'm likely to be less offended by canon alterations than die-hard fans of the original series. Thoughts on the new versions of these characters?

Cinematical has just received the above exclusive poster for Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two (click on the image to enlarge). The French film, which opens on Friday in New York (and On Demand), focuses on a French TV weather girl who is caught between two men. One is a famous author she loves who refuses to leave his wife, while the other is a younger industrial heir. Looking at the poster, I think of the swinging decade of a time long past, but I doubt there's any '60s flavor in the foreign film. However, you can divulge in a feature that our Jeffrey M. Anderson called "another superbly-made, highly enjoyable Chabrol film."

Cinematical has just received this exclusive final poster for Igor (click image to enlarge), who just looks like the most adorable little awkward hunchback I've ever seen. With a voice cast that includes folks like John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard, Christian Slater ... and, well, look at the poster for a complete rundown ... Igor centers on that dude in purple right there -- the hunch-backed assistant to an evil scientist who has dreams of winning the Evil Science Fair and becoming a Mad Scientist too. (And some kids wanna be doctors and lawyers -- screw that!)

Igor arrives in theaters on September 19, and it really does look like a lot of fun. Go check out the trailer after the jump; it's kinda like Young Frankenstein meets Tim Burton meets a CGI flick you won't mind spending a few bucks on. Pull the switch!

... Because when you woke up this morning, the first thought to hit your brain was, "Wouldn't it be great to get a good look at some naked blue ass at some point today." That's what we're here for!

All kidding aside, Warner Bros. has released some really cool Watchmen character posters, all of which you can check out (in giant form) by clicking through the gallery below. Watchmen was among a small group of films that had a major presence at this year's San Diego Comic Con. Director Zack Snyder had his entire cast in attendance, and he also brought with him an extended trailer for the flick that had fans (including our own Elisabeth Rappe) all giddy and whatnot. I plan to start reading the graphic novel for the first time next week (so I can actually know what the hell I'm writing about as the film's release date grows closer), but in the meantime feel free to tell us what you're most excited about seeing.

Watchmen hits theaters on March 6, 2009.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for the film Doubt (click image above to enlarge), starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, Doubt was written, adapted for the screen and directed by John Patrick Shanley (whose last directorial effort came in the form of the very awesome Joe Versus the Volcano). Set at a Catholic School in the Bronx in 1964, Doubt tells of a stern principal and nun (Streep) who accuses a priest (Hoffman) of "acting inappropriately" with a young black student, and the younger, inexperienced nun (Adams) who comes between the two.

While on Broadway, Doubt was the talk of the town, and we expect this big-screen version to give us more than one buzz-worthy performance, especially with a cast like this. I can't be the only one looking forward to a little Doubt this December. Have you seen the play? Whaddya think?

I don't know how I never saw these, but some old Canadian Filmmakers Festival posters are sailing through the web, and they show what spoofing should be like. Think Jaws -vs- a fisherman, the little Poltergeist girl swayed by hockey, Superman ready for winter, and Dorothy in a pair of sensible boots rather than slippers. But my favorite is above, because it would make one hell of an awesome comedic remake of The Birds. Canadian geese -- they're the real birdly foe. They take over outdoor spaces, attack you to mark their territory, and they're scarier than Hitchcock's mean feathered fiends. If only these were the sort of spoofs hitting the big screen these days.

Check them out in the gallery below, and read more about the festival over here.



[via Slashfilm]

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for The Secret Life of Bees (click above image to enlarge), based on Sue Monk Kidd's best-selling coming-of-age novel. And talk about an all-star cast of top-notch female talent, Bees stars Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning, Alicia Keys and Sophee Okonedo. The film, which is set in South Carolina in 1964, follows two friends (Fanning and Latifah) who run away from home in order to solve the mystery surrounding one of their mothers. Eventually, the three Boatwright sisters (Latifah, Keys and Okonedo) take the two girls in and teach them how to care for and raise bees. The book itself has a ton of fans, and I expect the film -- especially with this cast -- to win over a slew of new ones as well.

The Secret Life of Bees buzzes into theaters on October 17.