On a Wing and a Prayer.

Also in this weekend’s trailer bin: Hillary Swank channels famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart in our first look at Mira Nair’s Amelia biopic, also starring Richard Gere, Ewan MacGregor, and Christopher Eccleston. And vampire-of-the-future Ethan Hawke tries to find alternatives to a rapidly dwindling blood supply in the trailer for the Spierig brothers’ B-movieish Daybreakers, also with Willem DaFoe and Isabel Lucas. They had me at Sam Neill.

Update: In a world based on the whole truth and nothing but, Ricky Gervais develops an exceedingly useful skill in the new trailer for The Invention of Lying, also with Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Rob Lowe, Louis C.K., Patrick Stewart, Jason Bateman, Jonah Hill, John Hodgman, Christopher Guest, Jeffrey Tambor, Nate Corddry, and, of course, Stephen Merchant. (And, if you stick around, you’ll get one I missed earlier: John Cusack and child running away from scary pixels in Roland Emmerich’s The Day After The Day After Tomorrow, a.k.a. 2012.)

Midnight Agents, Superhuman Crews.

Among the bountiful harvest that is the Quantum of Solace trailer crop…

  • Trailer rights to use Philip Glass and Muse? Several thousand dollars. Lawyers to haggle out an armistice among warring studios? Millions. Finally getting a Watchmen film up and made? Priceless. Costumed heroes (the Voice-of-Mastercard among them) investigate the death of a Comedian in the story-heavy second trailer for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.

    I’m all over the place on this one. There are some real red flags here — all the Snydery slo-mo shots of Malin Ackerman’s hair, for example — and some of the dialogue feels as stiff and expository as the ponderous take-a-meeting scenes in 300. Then again, as with the first trailer, I’m still having trouble just wrapping my mind around the fact that they finally made a Watchmen movie. So I’m inclined to be charitable, and the little flourishes throughout (Rorschach’s mask moves!) appeal to my inner fanboy regardless. (Also, while Jackie Earle Hale’s Bale-Batman-growl may be a tad distracting, it’s hard to imagine Rorschach with any other kind of voice.) For now, I’ll call it a push.

  • Bad Boy Kirk! Angry Spock(?)! Alluring Uhura! Villain with Ridges on Face! J.J. Abrams introduces his new-and-improved Enterprise babies in the crowd-pleasing trailer for the Star Trek reboot. I can’t say I’m expecting all that much from this venture, and this clip, particularly in its 2 Fast 2 Furious opener, doesn’t shy away from bringing the summer movie dumb. Still, I’m forced to admit this looks more fun than I’d earlier envisioned, and I’m looking forward to more of Simon Pegg’s Scott and Karl Urban’s Bones. (And Bruce Greenwood (Pike) and Eric Bana (Big Bad) are generally a welcome touch of class in any event.)

    Also out of late:

  • A stiff, robotic alien promises to destroy life on Earth in order to save it…oh yeah, and he brought Gort along too. Keanu Reeves get threatening in the new action-centric trailer for next month’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, also with Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm.

  • Speaking of threatening, Harrison Ford looks to uncork the finger of doom for the cause of immigration reform in the trailer for Wayne Kramer’s Crash-like Crossing Over. (I hope his wife and family are ok, at least.) Joining Indy on this border-crossing adventure: Summer Bishil, Alice Braga, Cliff Curtis, Alice Eve, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, and Jim Sturgess.

  • Immigration, Schmimmigration. According to the teaser for Roland Emmerich’s next forgettable summer jaunt, 2012, we’ve only got four years left anyway…and it’s all Dubya’s fault. Strangely enough, John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson are all along to surf this improbable Himalayan-swamping wave, but I wouldn’t expect much of a splash at the box office.

  • Finally, the revolution may not be televised, but it’ll soon be hitting at least a few screens here in America anyway: Witness the a international teaser for Steven Soderbergh’s Che (or, more to the point, Ches — I believe this project is still two films.) Word of mouth on this one has been highly variable, but I remain curious to see what Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro have come up with. Still, this strangely disjointed teaser — Ken Burns by way of Oliver Stone — doesn’t really get the job done.

  • Good v. Evil, Rock v. Spear, Naughty v. Nice.

    Appearing before Harry yesterday, another spate of new trailers: Al Swearingen (Ian McShane) and Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy) join forces to help a young boy defeat the insidious Evil that is Christopher Eccleston in the first preview for The Dark is Rising (from the fantasy series by Susan Cooper, which I borrowed from the library around the age of 12 and can barely remember, other than the “seventh son of a seventh son” schtick.) Independence Day director Roland Emmerich stages his own quest for fire (among other nouns) in the new teaser for 10,000 B.C., starring Stephen Strait, Camilla Belle, and Omar Sharif. And Santa’s deadbeat brother (Vince Vaughn) comes home to screw up the family operation in the trailer for the christmas comedy Fred Claus, also starring Paul Giamatti, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, Elizabeth Banks, and Rachel Weisz. (The joke mainly seems to be that Vaughn is tall and elves are short, but that is a pretty good cast.)