Rango

While we may be a couple years off from another Jack Sparrow adventure, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Johnny Depp (as well as original "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski) have reteamed to take on a similarly iconic property (in similarly bombastic summer movie form) – "The Lone Ranger." While the previous trailers for the film (and an extended 20-minute preview) had us pretty excited for the movie, a new trailer emphasizing the film's action set pieces, is leaving us positively jazzed. While a big Hollywood western is anything but a sure thing, "The Lone Ranger" looks like it's got the goods. While Disney is taking great pains to draw the comparison between "The Lone Ranger" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," this footage reinforces that it's another Verbinski/Depp vehicle that makes for a more easy comparison – Verbinski's Oscar-winning animated feature "Rango." Things like the Lone Ranger's white horse in the reflection of the train's windows and a band of...

In the crush of new releases that slammed the multiplexes in the fourth quarter of 2012, it was easy to forget what a heavily hyped and disastrously received movie DreamWorks Animation's "Rise of the Guardians" was. The last film released under DreamWorks Animation's distribution pact with Paramount (who is planning to ramp up its own animation production after the financial and critical success of "Rango"), it should have been kids movie catnip – a team of super-heroic mythological creatures team up to fight evil, like "The Avengers" of bedtime stories. But, the failure of "Rise of the Guardians," while an adequate hit overseas, still cost DreamWorks Animation north of $100 million. And now the fallout: "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" moves from fall 2013 to spring 2014 (getting the fuck out of the way of Disney's "Frozen"), "Me and My Shadow" gets shelved, and an unspecified number of layoffs will...