Earlier this week Sony made a big announcement that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4 were already being planned and officially added to their release schedule despite the fact that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was still a year away. Now today some surprising news has come to light that may explain why they are planning things this far ahead. It would appear they were trying to cram a few too many characters and storylines into the second film and they have since decided to push them off to the sequels. In particular, it appears that Mary Jane Watson did not make the cut for part 2 which means that Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) will not appear in the film despite having shot a handful of scenes. But did Sony have a problem with the character or with the actress playing the character?

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Hey, remember last week when we posted a trippy little trailer for a horror film starring Michael Cera called Magic Magic? As it turns out, Michael Cera also shot a second film with the same director while they were in the process of waiting to make it. Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus is the curious result, which will get a release of its own this summer courtesy of IFC Films / Sundance Selects.

The story also takes place in Chile and revolves around five friends who meet at a party in Santiago. They decide to travel north to find the legendary cactus that gives the mescaline Aldous Huxley wrote about in The Doors of Perception. In case you can’t tell, it’s a psychedelic comedy of sorts and largely improvised as well. Gaby Hoffmann (Uncle Buck) co-stars as a free-spirited girl named (you guessed it) Crystal Fairy. Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus hits select theatres on July 12th; scope out the trailer after the jump and see what you think.

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In honour of the release of the 40th Anniversary Edition of Enter the Dragon on Blu-ray last week, it seems like a good excuse to hold a true battle royale between all of the various martial arts stars from the past four decades. A few years ago we held a poll to determine the best martial arts movie of all time, and as luck would have it, Enter the Dragon came out on top. But who is the ultimate big screen martial arts master? Perhaps that answer is not quite so clear cut. I’ll leave it to you to decide on the criteria, whether it is their physical skill, acting ability, charisma, influence, or simply the overall consistency of their filmography. Cast your vote in this week’s poll and continue the fight in the comments below!

Up until now we’ve only had a few brief teaser trailers to go on, but finally this week Paramount has revealed the first theatrical trailer for Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. The movie takes Ron Burgundy and the Channel 4 news team from the ’70s into the ’80s where they grapple with many new issues including the 24 hour news cycle, racism, and of course, dolphins. The gang’s all here, but this time they’ve also added some new faces to the cast including Kristen Wiig, Meagan Good and James Marsden. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues hits theatres on Dec. 20th; check out the trailer after the jump and see what you think.

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It had to happen eventually. After 60 years of toys, a highly successful series of video games, a popular TV series, a handful of direct-to-DVD animated films and an endless number of amateur stop motion videos on YouTube, a big budget feature-length Lego movie was an inevitability. And with Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 Jump Street, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) at the helm, this is definitely one animated movie I can get behind.

The first teaser trailer for The Lego Movie has arrived online this week and it makes it pretty clear that we can expect a ridiculously self-aware plot with plenty of pop culture references. I’m okay with that, but I’m curious to see if the whole movie will emulate a low-tech stop motion animation style or if they’re just playing it up for laughs in the trailer. The Lego Movie features the voices of Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Will Arnett and Liam Neeson and it hits theatres on Feb. 7th, 2014. Check out the trailer after the jump and let us know what you think.

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As the video game and movie industries continue to converge, we are seeing plenty of talent from both sides crossing over to try something new. Movie directors and screenwriters have been playing in the interactive sandbox for years now, but lately Hollywood is starting to take notice of some of the game industry’s biggest auteurs as well. After a couple of failed attempts at getting a Logan’s Run remake off the ground, Warner Brothers has been desperate for someone to take another stab at updating the 1976 sci-fi flick for a new generation. This week they have decided to hand off the long-gestating project to one of the most recognizable names in gaming: Ken Levine, creator of the Bioshock series and co-founder of Irrational Games. An interesting choice to be sure, but will his knack for writing games translate to the big screen?

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I first heard about Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess shortly after it premiered at Sundance earlier this year, and at the time, I couldn’t quite get a handle on what it was supposed to be. All I knew is that it was some sort of period mockumentary that involved socially awkward humans playing chess against computers (which was obviously that was more than enough to get me interested). The movie went on to win the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, which is awarded to a noteworthy film dealing with science or technology as a theme (previous winners include Primer, Sleep Dealer and Robot & Frank).

Kino Lorber ended up acquiring the film and they have since released an official trailer, which is somewhat puzzling and yet intriguing at the same time. The comedy seems pretty subtle but the period detail is impressive (the movie was shot on vintage Sony AVC-3260 video cameras from the late ’60s). Since Bujalski is also one of the key players in the mumblecore movement, I really have no idea what to expect but I’m definitely interested in tracking this one down. Computer Chess hits select theatres on July 17th; check out the trailer after the jump and let us know what you think.

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Kind of a bogus week for DVD and Blu-ray shopping as we are starting to get into some of the March theatrical releases with the biggest being Bryan Singer’s humongous bomb Jack the Giant Slayer. Other new movies in stores this week include the poorly-received horror sequel The Last Exorcism: Part II, teen comedy 21 & Over, and Peter Farrelly’s failed anthology comedy Movie 43. The one saving grace is the release of Chan-wook Park’s Stoker starring Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska. The second season of the FX series Wilfred is also out today along with a handful of noteworthy genre flicks on Blu-ray including Joe Dante’s The Howling, Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce and the Criterion release of H.G. Wells’ Things to Come. Will you be buying or renting anything this week? Check out the full list of releases after the jump.

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Although Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium doesn’t hit theatres until August, the movie has been completed for months now, having originally been targeted for a March release. Instead of just kicking back and taking a breather, however, Blomkamp is already getting the ball rolling on his third feature film and now we’re starting to get some concrete details on the project. He first talked about it at Comic Con last year, revealing that it was a sci-fi comedy called Chappie and that it would once again be shot in Johannesburg. Then this past April it was announced that Sharlto Copley would be reteaming with Blomkamp for the film. Now the latest word is that the movie is essentially based on another one of his short films. Hit the jump for more details.

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Although Warner Brothers just released the first trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire last week, the movie had already been pushed back to 2014 one month earlier. Now Dimension Films has announced a delay for the other Frank Miller sequel that was scheduled to hit theatres this year: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Miller is once again co-directing with Robert Rodriguez and the movie was originally slated for an Oct. 4th release, less than a month after Rodriguez’ Machete Kills. Unfortunately, that may be part of the reason why we won’t get to see the Sin City sequel until next summer. Hit the jump for more details on the delay.

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If you head to the theatre to see Monsters University this weekend, you can probably expect to see this trailer attached to it. Frozen is the latest Disney animated film from the same studio that did Wreck-It Ralph and Tangled and it is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen. It is also supposedly part musical, but you wouldn’t know it from this trailer, which simply features a snowman fighting a reindeer for his nose. Frozen features the voices of Kristen Bell and Josh Gad and hits theatres on Nov. 27th; check out the teaser trailer after the jump and see what you think.

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By now it’s no surprise when a movie studio officially announces a sequel prior to its predecessor hitting theatres. We all know that studio execs have to plan their franchises years ahead of time, banking on the fact that the audience will still be there. The news can also be a part of the marketing lead-up to a new movie, a way of proving just how confident they are in the final product. For example, last week Warner Brothers announced that they were fast-tracking a Man of Steel sequel just days before Man of Steel hit theatres. Now this week Sony has come out with a supreme vote of confidence for The Amazing Spider-Man series, announcing not one but two additional sequels, even going so far as to set release dates for both. Aside from Marvel’s interconnected films, this has got to be one of the most extreme examples of advance planning we’ve seen yet from a major studio. Are they getting a little bit ahead of themselves here?

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