Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week’s seven trailers include several big-franchise sequels and (sort of) prequels (we think); check ‘em all out after the jump.
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A Little Bit of Heaven stars Gael García Bernal as a sexy doctor. Okay, maybe its protagonist is technically Kate Hudson, playing a young, loveless, high-powered executive with a knack for provocative, off-the-cuff boardroom presentations about condoms. But that got your attention, didn’t it? Anyway, probably because she’s a successful woman without a love interest, Hudson’s character learns she has cancer and proceeds to fall in love with her physician, the aforementioned Bernal. Who is half-naked and playing with a yo-yo for a while in the preview below. Just sayin’. Also, Kathy Bates is in it and Whoopi Goldberg may or may not be playing… God? The movie comes out February 4th in the UK and will cross the pond sometime this year.

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1. “In the end, Decoded leaves the reader with a keen appreciation of how rap artists have worked myriad variations on a series of familiar themes (hustling, partying and ‘the most familiar subject in the history of rap — why I’m dope’) by putting a street twist on an arsenal of traditional literary devices (hyperbole, double entendres, puns, alliteration and allusions), and how the author himself magically stacks rhymes upon rhymes, mixing and matching metaphors even as he makes unexpected stream-of-consciousness leaps that rework old clichés and play clever aural jokes on the listener (‘ruthless’ and ‘roofless,’ ‘tears’ and ‘tiers,’ ‘sense’ and ‘since’).” – Michiko Kakutani, book critic for The New York Times, really liked Jay-Z‘s book
2. Taylor Momsen will begin “an indefinite hiatus” from Gossip Girl following next Monday night’s episode. At this point is anyone going to be sorry to see Little J go? [via Deadline]
3. PJ Harvey has named her new album Let England Shake and will release it on February 14th. “I didn’t set down any rules. For some reason, we were all in a very good place, with a lot of energy, intensity and vitality in us at that time. It was a really enjoyable experience, and I think the record’s ended up full of energy and quite an uplifting experience because of it,” she says. [via NME]
4. Apple has posted an “exclusive music video” from Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming Natalie Portman ballerina thriller Black Swan. December 3rd can’t come soon enough. [via Pop Candy]
5. Gael Garcia Bernal is attached to play Roberto Duran in an upcoming movie about the legendary boxer. Ben Silverman will produce. [via The Wrap]

Bonus link: See an All-Business Obama Challenge Archimedes on Mythbusters

1. Amy Winehouse has recorded a new song! It’s a cover of Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit “It’s My Party” for the upcoming Quincy Jones tribute album Q: Soul Bossa Nostra, which is due out on November 9. [via Rolling Stone]
2. We’d watch that: JJ Abrams is working on a crime-thriller series created by Jonah Nolan, Christopher Nolan’s brother and frequent collaborator. [via EW]
3. Y tu mama tambien costars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna will join Will Ferrell in Casa de mi padre, a Spanish-language comedy that “will be told in an overly dramatic telenovela style and feature English subtitles.” [via THR]
4. The first photos of the Captain America costume are online. What do you think? [via ComingSoon]
5. House’s Jennifer Morrison is joining the cast of How I Met Your Mother and producers are calling her “the biggest female character we’ve maybe ever added to the show in Ted’s life.” [via Vulture]

Bonus link: Trekking Midtown

Director Lukas Moodysson (Fucking Åmål, Lilya 4-Ever) makes his first stab at an English-language film with Mammoth, an intricate yet flawed portrait of class and globalization.

Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal portray Ellen and Leo, a bourgeois bohemian couple living in Manhattan with their young daughter, Jackie (Sophie Nyweide), and their live-in Filipino nanny, Gloria (Marife Necesito). When Leo leaves on a business trip to Thailand, the film begins to weave a tangled web of stories that involving family, ultimately showing that every action has a reaction.

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If Roberto Bolaño’s heartbreaking work of staggering genius, The Savage Detectives, is ever lensed, casting would be a cinch: no amigo duo could top Gael Garcia Bernal y Diego Luna for sheer dynamism and flock-to-fawn audience draw. Until that fated day, we’re stuck with Carlos Cuarón’s (Alfonso’s younger brother) mediocre if occasionally amusing rags-to-riches-to-rags feature debut, Rudo y Cursi. Read More »

A few nights ago, Jon Stewart made fun of Lou Dobbs for a recent tirade against illegal immigrants, exclaiming: “Illegal immigrants? Wake up, Rip Van Winkle! D’you fall asleep in June 2008? Nobody gives a shit about them anymore!”

We agree with him in the political sense — there are so many real scapegoats on which to blame our economic problems now! — but their stories might come back into full focus in the cultural sense, as this year’s first international critical darling, Sin Nombre, gains momentum. Centered around a runaway Mexican gang youth and his Honduran girl companion as they seek to cross the border into the US, Sin Nombre — Sundance Lab alumnus Cary Joji Fukunaga’s directorial debut — has already won Best Director and Best Cinematography at Sundance [Read our original Sundance coverage of it here].

We’ve read mostly rave reviews (spoiler-free excerpts linked after the jump), and we’re excited for its limited release this weekend — produced by Mexican superstar-sweethearts Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, directed by a first-time feature-filmmaker, and promising to be a watchable un-glossy “immigration” tale (of which there aren’t many), it sounds like it could be a new favorite.

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