I think that when, the Coen Brothers are on their game, they're as good as any filmmakers on the planet. And novelist Cormac McCarthy is, to me, as close to a national treasure as we've got these days. (If you don't believe, just read his most recent novel, The Road.) So when the Coens' most recent film, an adaptation of McCarthy's Western neo-noir No Country for Old Men, received rave reviews after its Cannes premiere, I got excited.

Then, when I saw this trailer, I got really, really excited. Let's hope that in 2007, Oscar season actually means some great films, and not just "prestige" mini-major hype jobs. Based on some of the trailers that have surfaced in the past month or so (most notably There Will Be Blood), my hopes are kind of high.

For now.

Now that the technology for producing high-quality special effects isn't confined to Skywalker Ranch, web series set in space are more possible than ever. But how many of them promise to be interesting character-based dramas as well? Well, there's at least one, if Shane Felux's Trenches lives up to the promise of its trailer.

Focusing on the front-line drama of an intergalactic war, the special effects are tight and the actors engaging -- the perfect solution for all those Battlestar fans jonsing for a fix. In short, it looks like Starship Troopers, without painfully fascist -- and it was produced on a shoestring budget by Stage 9 Media. We'll have more about this when it premieres this fall, but in the meantime just start getting excited.

Zowie. Robert Zemekis follows up his motion-capture family extravaganza The Polar Express with the motion-capture fantasy spectacular Beowulf. The fact that those two projects are bookended by the basically-one-man-show Cast Away and the planned motion-capture remake of A Christmas Carol start to make you think maybe Zemekis just doesn't like working with live actors all that much. But this project looks mighty damn cool.

With the increasing dominance of CGI in the fantasy film genre, it's amazing no one's really run with this concept before. Mo-capping the actors gives them the same visual texture and intensity as the backgrounds and effects, making the whole world blend together seamlessly. It's really pretty gorgeous.

And to those who say mo-capped actors look plastic and creepy, I say puh-leeze. Like Angelina Jolie didn't already look like a goddess crafted from Sculpey anyway.

What exactly happened with Wes Anderson? Rushmore is still one of my favorite movies, but I lost my taste for his particular brand of whimsy when his movies became more focused on the footwear than the storylines (not to name names or anything, Life Aquatic).

I want to say that the trailer for his latest film, in which Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrian Brody play brothers attempting a spiritual journey through India, seems like a return to form. And there's certainly a lot to like about it -- funny dialogue, beautiful cinematography, and Adrian Brody (he can rescue me from a giant ape any day). But somehow I'm still left a bit cold. Maybe it's just because even in these two and a half minutes, I feel slapped in the face by how clever Anderson thinks he is being. Nothing wrong with letting your characters smile a little, Wes. Nothing wrong with it.