In July, the very first teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises whipped audiences into a passionate, applauding fervor despite featuring a bare minimum of footage and revealing virtually nothing on the ultra-secretive finale of Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy.  At that point, the production still had about four months of shooting left, so the brevity makes sense.  By December, though, The Dark Knight Rises will be in the midst of post-production, and last week, a rumor asserted that a six-minute prologue for the sequel would be attached to IMAX prints of this winter's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.  Today, that rumor, already generally accepted as true, gets an official confirmation and a caveat.

For three years now, Warner Bros has been developing a live-action remake of Akira, the 1988 anime classic adapted by Katsuhiro Otomo from his own epic manga series.  For a while there, it looked like budgetary concerns for the Americanized Akira would keep the project moribund, but just last week we learned that director Jaume Collett-Serra, who joined the project in July after Albert Hughes departed, had wrangled the budget, getting Akira a green light.  Now that it appears the project is moving forward, casting is the focus of attention, and a new rumor asserts that British thespians Gary Oldman and Helena Bonham Carter have both been offered crucial parts in the film.

A month ago, Occupy Wall Street began in Manhattan as a protestation of the ever-expanding economic disparity in America and the institutions responsible for the current financial shamblefest.  It subsequently bloomed into a full-bellied global movement.  Now, participants in the New York protests might (maybe) be used as background scenery in a hugely-budget franchise sequel funded by one of the biggest multimedia conglomerates on Earth.  The Dark Knight Rises, currently nearing the end of its stay in Los Angeles, is heading to New York for the final leg of production, and apparently Christopher Nolan might incorporate protesters into his pastiche Gotham City.

A new trio of videos from the Los Angeles portion of The Dark Knight Rises production have made their way online, this time from night shooting over the weekend.  None are terribly revealing, but they are cool and show off a certain sense of scale to the sequel's action sequences.  That said, they could also be considered just a tiny bit spoilery, so if you're sensitive in the slightest, best to skip all three.

At the conclusion of The Dark Knight, you'll recall Christian Bale's Batman taking the hit for the murders carried out by Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and becoming public enemy number one, forcing his good buddy and champion mustache-wearer Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) to publicly pursue him.  These videos, probably from very early in the new film, demonstrate that the Gotham Police Department is pretty serious about catching Batman, as a ridiculous number of police vehicles give chase to the Batpod.

Hey, SPOILER alert.  Most superhero sequels would just introduce a new and improved costume for their central figure, but 2008's The Dark Knight impressively incorporated the need for a more functional Batman outfit into its plot, allowing for a nice bit of continuity between the regalia worn by Christian Bale's cowled ass-kicker in Batman Begins and its sequel (neither involved wearing hockey pads).  We've been hearing for months now that The Dark Knight Rises will loop back into the first film in Christopher Nolan's trilogy, and a new rumor suggests that the trilogy continuity will be upheld by the appearance a member of Batman's rogues gallery will show up in the final installment.  Again: potential spoilers be here.

Bi-coastal The Dark Knight Rises update now: the finale of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is currently approaching the end of its month-long stint filming on location in sunny Los Angeles, California, after which the production packs up and heads to New York, New York, for two weeks of photography.  With a month until the shooting begins in New York City, though, the production is currently seeking extras to fill out the fictitious city of Gotham, where Christian Bale's Batman once again throws down against criminality.  Not only that, but from there's also yet another new batch of set photos from L.A. showing Anne Hathaway slinking about in costume as Catwoman.

While the Pittbsburgh portion of The Dark Knight Rises production was accompanied by an almost daily procession of unofficial images jam-packed with spoilers major, minor, and downright puzzling, the Los Angeles set has been on a tighter lockdown.  That's not to say that Christopher Nolan's perfectly-justifiable desire for secrecy has been carried out in the City of Angeles, since nothing short of a nuclear blast would curb the desire of Bat-fans to get a peek at their figurative presents.  You'll remember a set of pictures featuring Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway in costume as Batman and Catwoman, respectively, from just a few hours ago.  Now, another set of spy photos gets the spoilers going, including looks at some Tumblers, Nolan on set, Bat-tech, and...something else.  Something...spoilery.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the adaptation of John le Carre's classic novel of Cold War-era espionage and intelligence agency treachery, has yet another brand new trailer, and it is a doozy.  The film played the Venice Film Festival last week, and the ensuing reviews were roundly enthusiastic, praising an unstoppable cast of British thespians, taut direction by Tomas Alfredson, and a solid story effectively condensing le Carre's labyrinthine novel.  This trailer suggests that theses reviews are not incorrect; it's a remarkably confident and controlled bit of marketing that promises a smart, grown-up spy thriller refreshingly free from pithy one-liners or sharks with laser beams affixed to their heads.  Dither no longer, watch the new Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy trailer.

An adaptation of one of author John le Carre's many spy novels, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy promises to be the sort of espionage film in which intelligent, paranoid operatives attempt, by means of deduction and subterfuge, to root out a mole in MI6.  Basically, it's not the sort of spy movie in which a megalomaniac commandeers a nuclear weapon and lots of henchmen with terrible aim are easily dispatched by a suave secret agent.  As such, the poster campaign has not involved heroic poses and guys holding guns.  Instead, we've been consistently treated to the faces of awesome British actors rendered in Cold War era code.  The latest poster is the second to feature the impeccable Gary Oldman as George Smiley, and this time he's looking right out at you. 

An essential, often overlooked ingredient in any proper Cold War spy thriller is the presence of frequent and well-chosen code names, along with innocuous phrases loaded with hidden meaning for the agents of espionage playing out the film's story.  The first clip from the upcoming John Le Carre adaptation Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is absolutely loaded with such code words, as John Hurt, who plays a Circus (a sly title for the MI6 intelligence service) director codenamed Control, lays out a list of potentially traitorous moles within the organization to Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux, who conspicuously lacks a codename.  That's okay, though, because the suspects are known as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Poor Man, along with also un-monikered George Smiley, the principal character played by the great Gary Oldman, who is also seen briefly in the clip.