Playing original silver age Spidey villain The Sandman, Church is going to opposite way to Danny Elfman, and speaks very well of his director, Sam Raimi. "Sam and I started having really involved sessions about who the guy was," Church says. "Clearly, it's taken from the fourth issue of 'Spider-Man,' which was when Sandman was introduced and which I now have framed on my wall."

However menacing he is as Sandman, Church is still overwhelmed when it comes to the rabid army of comic fans that are a part and parcel of being in a superhero movie: "They gave me a stack of printed out [posting-board mentions], and it was too much. We were all sitting around like going through it and it was all like, 'Dude, that picture of Sandman rules! Church is perfect for the part!' [It makes me] think it's really the biggest superhero franchise."

But what people will take note most is Church's official revelation of the web's worst-kept secret about Spider-Man 3: the controversial appearance of the wallcrawler's arch-nemesis, Venom. As Church explains, "He [Raimi] has been showing me stuff since the beginning of last summer. 'This is what we are going to be doing in this sequence, this is what Spider-Man is going to be doing and this is what Venom is going to be doing.' It is a massive, massive process."

Find out how massive when Spider-Man 3 opens in May 2007.

Glastonbury is a mash-up of 1, 500 hours of professional and amateur footage shot each year at the festivals between 2002 to 2005, and features band such as Bjork, The Velvet Underground, Primal Scream and Coldplay (Booooo!). According to festival honcho Michael Eavis, who sounds really chuffed with the film, Temple has "really captured the festival - the good times and the bad times, but most of all, the many important things that the festival has come to represent over so many years." Whether he's going to represent the heavy amount of drug usage and thievery that the Festival is as famous for as it is for music, who knows.

I like the concept of Glastonbury, but to be honest it's never attracted me, simply because they always have the most terrible wuss-indie acts there. Sorry, but I have no desire to pay a ludicrous amount of money to hear Chris Martin or Robbie Williams. But I'm looking forward to seeing the film regardless.

Glastonbury has no US release date yet, but it's released in the UK on April 14th in a limited run, so you'd better hurry.

It's not too bad I guess, it just doesn't sound any different. Which in itself seems a bit odd, since the movie is being scored by Michael Giacchino, the genius who composed the music for The Incredibles, and who I'm willing to bet was hired due to his 60s John Barry emulation. That's why I'm looking forward to the music from this movie, so I'll hold out hope that there's a jazzier version of the theme out there somewhere.

There's also another song by West, a vocal track featuring West, Twista and Keyshia Cole, two artist I've never heard of. I'll be perfectly honest, I don't like Kanye West much, and while the vocals from Ms. Cole are very good, the song is a pile of wank. Someone drag Eazy-E out of "retirement" and get him to show the pretenders what real hip hop is like. Hell, he'd make an amazing M:I theme. Granted, it would be all about how the life of an IMF agent is rife with guns, bitches and death, but then again it can't be any worse than Tom Cruise's current situation, publicity wise.

Click here for the M:I-3 theme.
Click here for "Impossible."
Click here for a cool look at the scoring at Soundtrack.net

Mission: Impossible III is released on May 5, although there's no release date for the soundtrack set.

So what's Ridley's brother up to now? Scaring the shit out of the Coast Guard with nautical explosions, that's what. The geek squad over at AICN has nabbed a couple of photos from Scott's latest editoral nightmare, Deja Vu. In it, Denzel Washington plays a federal agent that travels back in time to save the woman he loves. And somewhere in the space-time continuum, Denzel will do battle with a terrorist Jesus Christ in Jim Caviezel. There's something brilliant in that bit of casting.

A decent to great supporting cast is also on hand, with the likes of Bruce Greenwood, Adam Goldberg, and Val "OMG GAY PERRY!" Kilmer.

The Jerry Bruckheimer produced film (this should reinforce the notion that the above explosion is one of about three hundred random ones), written by first-time scribe Bill Marsilli, is set to open in North America this November.

To see the two pics big and without my no doubt hilarious text addition, click here.

Watch any of the Star Wars Prequels again. I know you own them. Add The 'Imperial March' to any scene with baddies in. Add the 'Force Theme' everytime there's a Jedi. I guarantee you the film will seem 100 times more emotional to you. The script will ramain exactly the same, and won't make a blind bit of difference. You can try this at home - take your favourite action scene from any movie, turn down the volume and play different songs over the top: Tom's Diner over the Burly Brawl; Enya over the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now. Now, as a control, put nu-metal over any scene from any film and watch it turn to liquid shit.

Certainly, many composers are just skilled craftsmen for hire, following the director's notes, churning out 'action scene score #3654' or 'love theme (tragic undertones)#5892' to fit with already edited scenes. But if they are smart with their musical choices, if they have a clear effect they want to achieve, a good composer can bend any scene to his will, no matter what those silly actors are actually saying.

Sergio Leone knew this, and would have Ennio Morricone's score playing on the set as they shot. For him, everything came from the music. Sergio Leone's films are really, really good, even though the dialogue is often really, really bad. The music is often far louder than any of the sound effects.

Then take the standard modern example of bad: The Star Wars prequels. In the Geonosis battle in Attack of the Clones, George Lucas chopped and hacked at the score to make it fit with his images. The score is a mess and the battle is a mess too. Once the thrill of the eye-candy is gone, the scenes are almost unwatchable. Add this to sound guru Ben Burtt's desire to bury the music underneath all the sound effects he made up by putting a microphone in a cat in a washing machine, and you get films lacking that emotional core the first films had. We've all had arguments that maybe the originals weren't that good either, and that their emotional pull is only nostalgia. Well, they're not, but watch them again and this time listen. It's not nostalgia you are hearing, it is a truly great score.

Charlotte's Web

Paramount and Walden Media's revamp of the classic E.B. White story looks to be an odd one. Like the 70s cartoon (which I watched the other day and found it totally doesn't hold up, at least as an adult) it features cute talking animals that are also relatively anatomically correct. That means Charlotte A. Cavatica, as seen in this trailer, is a real spider, or at least a CG facsimilie of one, which is kind of weird. The trailer is what you'd expect; Dakota Fanning being sad and cute, cows farting, a ton of annoying celeb voices, all over the Edward Scissorhands music. I don't want to see it at all, but I'm willing to for the routine of the two crows, played by Thomas Haden Church and Andre 3000, which is a pretty irresistable element. But I imagine it'll be enough for the mainstream.

C-

The Simpsons Movie

We all heard the rumours, and the cast and crew have been talking about it since the show began, but who actually thought there'd be a Simpsons movie, and it'd be appearing so soon? Safe to say, when news reports began circling on Friday about there being a short teaser in front of Fox's Ice Age 2, the internet (by this I mean Ben and I) was awash with activity. And here it is. Mocking the upcoming Superman Returns, the teaser is only twenty-five seconds long, with a close-up of the S-shield doing the usual 'the world's greatest hero is coming to the big screen,' pulling out to see Homer on the couch with a Superman shirt. It's not especially funny, and it reminds me of the South Park movie trailers, but it serves its purpose: to prepare us for the coming of the movie. I just wish it did that with a little comedy on the side.

D

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

I don't really know what to say about this, apart from the fact that it looks total shite, but ensured my ass in the theater seat in the first few shots, namely due to a lot of hot Japanese women. The trailer itself is ludicrous. I didn't see the first two movies, so I don't know how close this is to them, but to me it just looks like an even dumber rip-off of the fun but dumb Hong Kong movie Initial D, which was about the same kind of thing. I'd say it's scary to think the director of this was going to make the Old Boy remake, but then the directors of Initial D made the infinitely superior Infernal Affairs. I'm sure the Tokyo Drift trailer sends the general public into convulsions, but here, it just sent me to sleep.

D-

Mission: Impossible III

I'm not sure whether this is a final trailer, or an alternate one or what, because I've never seen it before, but it seems very short to be a theatrical trailer. In any case, this is Tom Cruise looking for a route back into this world as everyone's favourite secret agent, as opposed to everyone's favourite raving fucking lunatic. The good things about this include the fantastic Michelle Monaghan, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laurence "Larry" Fishburne. Unfortunately, the bad things seem to be more ludicrous action scenes that look dumb, Hoffman's terribly cheesy writing/performance and Tom Cruise trying to look intense. Honestly, I fucking love Hoffman but by all accounts he looks terrible in this movie, like Lester Bangs trying to be menacing. I never really saw Alias, so I don't know what J.J. Abrams' work is like. Some people worship him, but then we all know people worship Joss Whedon and George Lucas, so that's not saying much. All I can say is that I hope M:i-III is better than his Superman Lives script.

C

United 93

As expected, there's been a lot of controversy with Paul Greengrass' United 93 (formerly Flight 93) which is vying with Oliver Stone's World Trade Center as the first movie to tackle 9/11. While I appreciate Paul Greengrass, and his ability to tackle real-life tragedy has been proved, albeit on a smaller scale (Bloody Sunday), I still think it's kind of strange an Englishman is tackling this. But as far as the trailer goes, I'm torn. It's undeniably powerful, but it's also, well, a tad cheesy, something I'd hoped someone like Greengrass would have avoided (although this is only the trailer). But to be perfectly honest - and I feel bad saying this - the biggest emotion the trailer squeezed from me was laughter. Why? Because of the 'White Zone' dialogue. Now I don't live in the States and have only been there once, so I have no idea if it's just recorded dialogue used in every airport, but what kills it is that it's EXACTLY the same as in Airplane! I couldn't help but chuckle and wait for the 'Listen Betty, don't start with that White Zone shit again,' shtick. I'm sorry. But aside from that, it looks powerful. I just hope it doesn't go towards the way some elements of the trailer are sending it.

B

As you can see, here we have Magneto, Pyro and Mystique standing with one of the movie's new villains, Jamie Madrox a.k.a. Multiple Man. There's not a lot to say to be honest; it's a rather dull image, with only Mystique's appearance of either wearing clothes under her skin or having put on a few pounds or Magneto looking like Milhouse without his glasses really catching the eye. SHH also has a new banner for the movie that makes - shock, horror - Beast actually not look half bad. For all the complaints, there are actually a few shots where he looks okay, as opposed to Colossus, who looks like he was created by a ten-year old in Maya 3D.

On the other shoe, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown has become the first movie in 2006 to pass the $100m mark, currently sitting pretty at $116. I know most nerds out there will see this as a sign of the apocalypse, but Ice Age is one of the least offensive of the new wave of CG animation that seems to be in vogue. And hey, it's not Shrek. It's not like it's a difficult thing to predict, after all Fox strategically released it in the Easter period when kids aren't at school, and let's be honest, the better likes of these movies usually make a bundle anyway.

In terms of other movies, Antonio Banderas helped bring in a fairly respectable $12.7 for hip hop/ballroom comedy Take The Lead, while Mo'Nique's fat-and-proud comedy Phat Girlz jiggled its way into the #9 spot with $3.1m. Geek-favourite Slither drops off the chart after one week as does Sharon Stone's latest and greatest, Basic Instinct 2, although hot indie Thank You For Smoking climbs into the top ten, no doubt due to the great buzz it's been getting from people everywhere.

Looking to the future, next week sees the debut of how-the-hell-did-it-get-to-star-trek-numbers Scary Movie 4, Kiefer Sutherland-voiced CGI cute animal movie The Wild, Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page, and the latest pretender to the Full Monty box office crown, Kinky Boots. Page looks interesting, and Gretchen Mol looks stunningly hot as the queen of pinups, and Kinky Boots is worth trying to see for Chiewetal Ejifor alone, but after what happened this week, expect SM4 and The Wild to bring in big money. After all, everybody loves Craig Bierko, right?

April 11th, 2006 - The Scourge of Saint Todd.

Mission: Impossible 1 & 2

I'm a fan of MI:1. Depalma makes an overly complicated, yet thoroughly enjoyable blockbuster. And I love the casual "fuck you" of having the character from the series be the bad guy. While the humble folk at Paramount have given us a new anamorphic transfer and pile of Tom Cruise-centric extras, it looks a little light. Each flick costs no more than a ten spot and 20 for the deuce in some kind of siamese edition. Your friendly correspondent warns you off MI:2 unless you enjoy seeing Tom Cruise's hair in slo-mo.

Wolf Creek