Once (or Twice) in a Lifetime.

“A man only gets a couple of chances in life. It won’t be long before he’s sitting around wondering how he got to be second-rate.” Lots of choice stuff in today’s trailer bin: First up, President Josh Brolin braves pretzels, Poppa Bush, and enough JD to kill a small horse in this fun extended trailer for Oliver Stone’s W. (I can’t wait.) Elsewhere, Frank Miller borrows from Robert Rodriguez, who, of course, borrowed from him, to mine Will Eisner’s back-catalog in this short new teaser for The Spirit. (I’m still not sold.)

Also up recently, Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio forsake the Titanic to suffocate in the suburbs in the first trailer for Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road. (Ok, altho’ it looks Little Children-ish.) Tom Cruise leads an all-star team of character actors in a plot to kill Hitler in the second trailer for Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie. And Brad Pitt moves from age to wisdom in the second trailer for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. (Not as haunting as the teaser, but close.) I gotta say, it’s good to finally hit the Oscar stretch for 2008 — I haven’t seen nearly enough movies this year.

Update: One more, via LMG: Philip Seymour Hoffman puts on a play — and gets stuck waiting in the wings — in the trailer for Charlie Kaufman’s much-anticipated Synecdoche, New York, also starring Hope Davis, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Emily Watson, and Michelle Williams.

Update 2: Ok, what with Marky Mark, Ludacris, Bridges the Lesser, the lousy whiteboy angst-metal, and the highly Matrix-derivative gun-fu and explosions throughout, the recent trailer for John Moore’s Max Payne looks Skinemax bad. But, then again, it does have The Wire‘s Jamie Hector (Marlo) briefly playing Exposition Guy with an island accent, so that’s enough for a link. Hey, I’m easily amused.

Blithe Spirit.

The trailer for Frank Miller’s take on Will Eisner’s The Spirit leaks, and it’s a strange one, seemingly combining the visual atmosphere of Sin City with the gender economy of Dave Sim…and that doesn’t even get into Nazi Samuel L. It looks like it could be a trainwreck, but I’ll put this on the maybe pile.

A spirit of health, or a goblin damned?

In the trailer bin of late, veteran comic writer Frank Miller (possibly soon of Hardboiled) jumps to the silver screen in the new trailer for Sin City…uh, The Spirit. And Steve Coogan spreads the Gospel of Sexy Jesus in the recent redband trailer for Hamlet 2, i.e. one of the South Park guys’ take on Waiting for Guffman. This looks like it might try too hard, but I’ll probably see it for Coogan (and that scene with the cat.)

Also up as of the weekend, courtesy of NY Comiccon: lots of spoilers for Indy 4 and a description of the next Dark Knight trailer. (I’m trying to avoid them both, although I may have snuck a peek at the latter.)

Jokebat Mountain?

Along with word of an unfortunately actioned-up Watchman script and news of some stranger-than-usual comic adaptations (The Doom Patrol? Frank Miller on Will Eisner’s Spirit? Benicio Del Toro’s Deadman?), Latino Review — the site that first announced Brandon Routh as Superman in 2004 — discloses that Heath Ledger has an offer to play the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman flick. Hmm. An interesting and slightly-out-of-left-field choice…He wouldn’t have been one of my top picks for the part (Adrien Brody, Sam Rockwell, Paul Bettany, or how ’bout Ralph Reed?…His calendar’s open), but he’s definitely better than some names that were floating around (Crispin Glover, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, Sean Penn.)