I didn’t even realize until now that Steven Spielberg was an executive producer on the project. Wow. That certainly adds a bit of excitement for this film, although it really doesn’t need any help.

The teaser was awesome, the trailer below just knocked my socks off. This looks like a really, REALLY fun movie, an action-packed thriller with a who-dun-it aspect to the whole plot.

It’s out on September 26th, and it’s now one of my most anticipated movies of the fall.

Enjoy!

Filming began on the production on June 2nd in Bethlehem, PA. Details of the plot of the film are a fairly closely guarded secret (there’s some big time Transformers 2 spoilers here if you’re interested), but we know that Michael Bay is back directing and Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, and Tyrese Gibson are all coming back. We also know that Rainn Wilson (The Office) and Matthew Marsden (Rambo) are joining the cast.

If you’re interested you can also get a glimpse of the action from the set at an abandoned factory in Bethleham, Pa. TFW2005 has a ton of pictures up that were taken of the filming there.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is scheduled to hit theaters on June 26, 2009.

And now comes a new teaser for a movie he’s starring in called Eagle Eye, which looks pretty sweet. It’s a thriller with the following plot outline:

“Lebeouf plays a young slacker whose overachieving twin brother has died mysteriously. When the young man returns home, both he and a single mother find they have been framed as terrorists. Forced to become members of a cell that has plans to carry out a political assassination, they must work together to extricate themselves.”

The film also stars Rosario Dawson, Michelle Monaghan and Billy Bob Thorton. D.J. Caruso is the director, who also did Disturbia.

The teaser below is good and makes this look like an awesome spy mystery-thriller. It comes out the same weekend as Pineapple Express: September 26th.

The Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull teaser is here after a long, long, long wait with baited breath by fans everywhere. I can’t tell you how excited I am for this movie, and now that I’ve seen the teaser, I’m even more psyched.

It’s been almost 20 years since The Last Crusade. Wow.

One of the things about the movie is that with Harrison Ford being 68 years old, thinking of him running around swinging from ropes, dodging blow darts and beating booby traps seems kind of far-fetched.

But what Steven Spielberg has done is take the fact that he’s old and run with it.

You can see it in the first line Indy says in the teaser: “Not as easy as it used to be…”

And from there you see another clip of him trying to swing into a vehicle and misjudging it. Hilarious and awesome. I think it’s brilliant to use that angle in this film and it’s just going to play HUGE to fans everywhere.

The teaser is perfect. From the moment you see his silhouette put the hat on, to all the action scenes, to Shia LaBeouf and then Cate Blanchett looking sexy in a black wig…stupendous! Bravo!

The trailer is below and you can also see it in High Definition over at the official Indiana Jones website.

Before you get to the teaser, I wonder if this little screen capture I did will have anything to do with the plot of the film? You might miss it if you watch the teaser once, but I saw it on the second viewing.

Roswell, New Mexico? Interesting…

And now on to the trailer!

If you’re one of the people, like myself, who is really starting to get excited about the new movie then you might be interested in what Vanity Fair has to say in the February 2008 issue. The cover is all about Indy and it shows Harrison Ford and Shia (I really love Walgreens) LaBeouf in full costume.

Even better is the fact that the magazine has some new behind the scenes pictures and a really long article which they’ve been nice enough to post online. I took the liberty of providing the pictures for your viewing pleasure (all photographs are by Annie Leibovitz and are copyrighted). I’ve also taken some of my favorite comments out of the interviews with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Harrison Ford, and added a bit of commentary just for kicks.

The Pictures

George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Steven Spielberg on the set of the new film in Los Angeles. “Neither of them is ashamed of making audience films,� Ford says of his partners.

Shia LaBeouf and Karen Allen on set in Downey, California. Allen returns as Marion Ravenwood, Indy’s spunky girlfriend from the first film, while LaBeouf joins in�or so rumor has it�as Indy and Marion’s love child.

Set in 1957, the new film pits Indy against Russian Cold Warriors, including Cate Blanchett, whose character, Agent Spalko, looks like the toughest Soviet customer since Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb took on Sean Connery in “From Russia with Love”.

The Interviews

Steven Spielberg

“I’m in my second cut, which means I’ve put the movie together and I’ve seen it,� he says. “I usually do about five cuts as a director. The best news is that, when I saw the movie myself the first time, there was nothing I wanted to go back and shoot, nothing I wanted to reshoot, and nothing I wanted to add.�

Spielberg promises no tricky editing for the new one, saying, “I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure.�

Jason Says: See, this makes me feel good. This makes me think that Spielberg gets it. Indiana Jones isn’t Jason Bourne. We like the Bourne movies for what they are and we enjoy watching them, but we don’t want Indiana Jones to be that kind of movie. We want Indy to be the classic kind of movie that we remember the first three being…good old Hollywood filmmaking that relies on solid storytelling, music, action and adventure.

Harrison Ford

“He’s a stubborn sucker,� the actor says, “and he had an idea that he kept pushing into script form, and then they’d run it by me, and I’d usually rebel, and, finally, you know, one script came along that really struck me as being smart, not working too hard to give reference to the other films, but that carried on the stories we had told so far in a logical way. The character was allowed to age, and we found ourselves in a different period of time, and what I read was a great script, so I said, ‘Let’s go, let’s make this one.’ �

Jason Says: Harrison is talking about George Lucas. Apparently everyone wanted to make an Indy movie way back when but Lucas would only consider one idea for the story…his idea, of course. No one else wanted to do the idea. No one. To the point where everyone else walked away from the whole thing for the past 18 years. Lucas persisted and eventually got his way, I guess, since they did eventually use his idea. The bad thing is, Frank Darabont wrote a script that Spielberg loved, but Lucas didn’t like. Hmm…I wonder who is a better judge of screenplays? Needless to say, that screenplay didn’t get used.

George Lucas

“So that put it in the mid-50s, and the MacGuffin I was looking at was perfect for the mid-50s. I looked around and I said, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t do a 30s serial, because now we’re in the 50s. What is the same kind of cheesy-entertainment action movie, what was the secret B movie, of the 50s?’ So instead of doing a 30s Republic serial, we’re doing a B science-fiction movie from the 50s. The ones I’m talking about are, like, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Blob, The Thing. So by putting it in that context, it gave me a way of approaching the whole thing.�

“I know the critics are going to hate it. They already hate it. So there’s nothing we can do about that. They hate the idea that we’re making another one. They’ve already made up their minds.�

“The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. ‘Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this?’ They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it. So you just have to stand by for the bricks and the custard pies, because they’re going to come flying your way.�

Jason Says: I just don’t think Lucas gets it anymore. I’m not sure what he’s talking about with the sci-fi stuff. Let’s hope the others talked him out of doing anything too crazy. I don’t think he’s right about the critics hating it…I think they’re just aware of his recent track record and afraid that he found some way to screw this up… And the fans aren’t upset…yet. If the story is true to Indiana Jones and is at least as good as the last one then I think most people will be happy. You can’t please everyone, George, we all know that.

You can read the full article on Vanityfair.com. They also have full online exclusive interviews with: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas