Some Jobs are Better than Others.

“All he wanted to do was go to the movies.” In the most recent trailer bin, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) has a little too much fun as Public Enemy #1 in the second trailer for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, also with Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, and Billy Crudup. Siblings Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo ill-advisedly go for one last — complicated –heist in the trailer for Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom, also with Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi, and Robbie Coltane. There’s more trouble at work (this time of the factory variety) for Michael Bluth and Office Space/King of the Hill creator Mike Judge in this first look at Extract, starring Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck, Kristen Wiig, Beth Grant, and Clifton Collins, Jr. And writer-director Robert Rodriguez continues in the Spy Kids vein in the cloying new preview for Shorts, with a gaggle of kids, Jon Cryer, James Spader, and William H. Macy.

Last but not least, seemingly content they’ve got a winner on their hands, J.J. Abrams and Paramount begin an early publicity rollout for their big summer tentpole with this collection of new clips from Star Trek. Still unsure about both SylarSpock and the general tone of this thing, but Chris Pine’s Kirk and especially Karl Urban’s Bones look like they’ll be good fun here.

Escapades out on the D-Train. | Snikt.

Stand clear of the closing doors, please: In the trailer bin of late, it’s Tony’s Scott’s remake of The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 (and if you want a doo doo rhyme, then come see me), starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini, and Greg from Flight of the Conchords (a.k.a. Frank Wood). The trailer here has got a good bit of ADD Tony Scott shakicam, and what looks to be the ending mano a mano — so save yourself ten bucks and two hours and just watch this, if you’re so inclined.

Along those lines, there was a great to-do yesterday over the leaked release of a workprint of Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine onto the tubes. So, if you want to catch that, it’s flitting about the ether also. For my part, I don’t think I care enough about this movie to even spend the requisite time downloading it, much less watching the durned thing. And that goes double after the botch job that was X3 and Fox mucking about with Watchmen a few months ago.

Sure, Fox Searchlight still distributes some quality films, but Fox itself of late has been where once-decent properties (FF, Die Hard, X-Files, Aliens, Predator) go to die. (Let’s hope James Cameron is keeping the studio’s greasy hands away from Avatar.) The hackmeister currently in charge of Fox, Tom Rothman, is once rumored to have quipped “F**k the fans. We already have their money anyway.” Well actually, in this case, you don’t.

GOBah Hex, etc.

In recent casting news, Will Arnett and Michael Shannon saddle up for Jonah Hex, already with Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, and Megan Fox. “It’s the story of Hex (Brolin), a scarred bounty hunter tracking a voodoo practitioner (Malkovich) who wants to raise an army of the undead to liberate the South. Arnett will play a Union soldier who enlists Hex and is blindsided by the dirty fighting style of his enemies. The role is not inherently comic. Shannon plays Doc Cross Williams, the bizarre ringleader of a brutal gladiator circus event. The character might appear in sequels.“

Also on the comic-to-film front, Idris Elba and Zoe Saldana join The Losers, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and based on the Vertigo comic. (Or, put another way, Stringer Bell and Uhura are teaming up with the Comedian.) The comic “follows a Special Forces team betrayed by its handler and left for dead. The ‘losers’ regroup in the interest of revenge, the opportunity to remove their names from a secret CIA death list and to conduct covert operations against the CIA and its interests.” Well, ok then. The only comic Losers I’m cognizant of are the WWII tank crew who bought it in Crisis, so I have no idea if this’ll make a good movie or not.

And finally, the cast for Christopher Nolan’s Inception fills out, with Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, and Ellen Page all in talks to join Leonardo di Caprio in Nolan’s “contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.” (Murphy is the sole Nolan veteran of the three, having played the Scarecrow in both Batman films.)

Opie and the Old Ones.

Word comes down from the gibbering many-eyed oracles of Hadith that Ron Howard will be directing The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft as his next project after Angels and Demons. “Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, [the] book borrows elements from Lovecraft’s life, such as his family’s struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer’s block, and transforms the young writer’s darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world.“

Hmm. On first glance, I’d think Ron Howard is exactly the wrong director to handle the depraved tentacled deities and slavering profane minions of the Cthulhu mythos. Then again, his last movie was Frost/Nixon, so perhaps he’s developed a taste for it.

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk?

Is April Fool’s here a week early? Or are Sean Penn, Jim Carrey, and Benicio Del Toro really hunkering down to play Larry, Curly, and Moe respectively in the Farrelly brothers’ Three Stooges? “The film is not a biopic, but rather a comedy built around the antics of the three characters that Moe Howard, Larry Fine and [Jerome] Howard played in the Columbia Pictures shorts.”

Into the Wild.

“I didn’t want to wake you up, but I really want to show you something.” The teaser for Spike Jonze’s long-awaited adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are appears on the Interweb (after debuting on Ellen this morning.) Along with Max Record, Catherine Keener, and Mark Ruffalo, WTWTA includes voice-work by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Lauren Ambrose, and Chris Cooper.

Game Over, Man! Game Over!

Move over, dogs-playing-poker. A New Zealand ad company promotes the airing of the weaksauce AvP movies on SkyTV with some classic-yet-forgotten Alien v. Predator duels of yore. (See also the tetherball and chess matches — Hopefully table tennis, foosball, and poker will get their day as well.)

The Haddocks go Thompson.

In honor of the character’s 80th birthday (or 560th, if we’re talking about Snowy), fans and future trilogy directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson brandish Thompson hats and umbrellas while talking Tintin. Now that Zack Snyder’s Watchmen has come and gone, I suppose it’s Tintin that’s the next “I can’t believe they’re really making a big-budget film version of this” beloved property of my youth. (Which probably means that, sometime around my 40th birthday, David Fincher’s Mr. Men will be hitting the multiplexes as well.)

The Summer Contenders.

“I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life, this day of reckoning.” Some choice offerings from the rest of the Watchmen trailer bin, which are now online: Harry digs deep into the memory hole to Anakin up He-Who Must-Not-Be-Named in the second preview for David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (To be honest, I think I might’ve missed the first trailer from last November (at the same link) — that one’s not bad either.) Iowan ne’er-do-well James Tiberius Kirk straightens up and flies right in a preview for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek of epic scope. Hugh Jackman dons the claws once more in another look at Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (Meh, bub.) And an animated Ed Asner braves floating houses, boy scouts, and talking dogs in the newest trailer for Pixar’s UP. Pixar will go wrong someday — this doesn’t look to be it.

Midnight.

“Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.” At Midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crews go and round up everyone who knows more than they do…