New Sorcerer’s Apprentice trailer with cooler action, F/X

In the new movie—based on the animated segment of Fantasia—Jay Baruchel plays the apprentice to a sorcerer (Nicolas Cage) in present-day New York.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was directed by Jon Turteltaub and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, opens July 16.

See the trailer here.

Stan Lee’s smashing Thor movie cameo revealed

According to an insider on the set of Kenneth Branagh’s movie, Stan Lee is going to get hammered:

Thor’s hammer ( Mjolnir ) is found lying inside a crater in the middle of the road by the U.S. Army. The army tries to move it but can’t because it’s too heavy. They decide to bring in a truck for assistance. The soldiers tie Thor’s hammer to the back of the truck with chains. The truck driver accelerates to pull Mjohnir. The back half of the truck falls apart as the front keeps moving. Finally, the camera cuts to the driver who happens to be comic legend Stan Lee.

See the compilation of his appearances here.

James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora

On Thursday, which is Earth Day, Fox will release “Avatar” on DVD and Blu-ray, but James Cameron says a longer version of the film will be back in theaters in August — and that the franchise will return with a seagoing sequel. Hero Complex contributor Patrick Kevin Day recently spoke with the filmmaker.

PD: When you embark on your next film project, do you know what the challenge will be? Something on par with filming underwater for “The Abyss” or perfecting the performance capture technology in “Avatar”?

JC: Well you’ve already defined what the challenge will be on the next “Avatar” picture, which is to do what we did before at half the price and in half the time. Again, that’s an impossible goal, we won’t accomplish that, but if we can reduce by 25% in both categories, we’ll have really accomplished something. We know our methodology works. We also know it took two years to come up with. It didn’t even become efficient until the last two months of the production. So we were four years into a project before we had this machine running smoothly. So we take a snapshot of that moment in our production and say that’s what we look like on Day 1, we’re going to do better. Now, none of that has anything to do with coming up with a great story or great characters or great new settings and so on. That all is a given. That’s not to say that it’s done yet, it’s a given that we have to do that. But for me, the technical challenge is in improving the process having proved that it works.

We created a broad canvas for the environment of film. That’s not just on Pandora, but throughout the Alpha Centauri AB system. And we expand out across that system and incorporate more into the story – not necessarily in the second film, but more toward a third film. I’ve already announced this, so I might as well say it: Part of my focus in the second film is in creating a different environment – a different setting within Pandora. And I’m going to be focusing on the ocean on Pandora, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won’t be a rain forest. I’m not saying we won’t see what we’ve already seen; we’ll see more of that as well.

Read the complete interview here.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is looking good. Are you looking forward to seeing that movie?

LOL@Stan Lee. He’s everywhere.

What do you think of an Avatar sequel?