Hasta La Creative!

After a bevy of requests from fans, Screen Junkies has finally released an Honest Trailer for Les Misérables, and it … sucks. Well, it doesn't quite suck, but it definitely runs afoul of imitation fallacy. Singing the whole review dragged it out way longer than necessary, especially since they don't add any fresh insights to the discussion (Russell Crowe's voice is bad! Zing!). I'll stick with Orange Cassidy's movie reviews, thanks.

Considering how much you hear about drones these days, it's surprising we haven't seen more marketing stunts using remote-controlled hoverbots. But Paramount Pictures pulled off an interesting trick this weekend by using glowing quadrotors to create a Star Trek logo over London. The promotion, for the franchise's latest film, Star Trek Into Darkness, was timed to mark the end of the World Wildlife Fund's annual Earth Hour, which encourages cities to turn off nonessential lights for environmental awareness. As the hour of darkness ended, the 30 drones' LED lights (charged through renewable energy sources) turned on to form the insignia of Star Trek's Starfleet. Created by Ars Electonica Futurelab and Ascending Technologies, the result is pretty impressive—when viewed from the right angle, at least. Check out a video below, and enjoy the moment at 1:20 when two of the drones at the bottom of the frame seem to collide, sending one plummeting out of the sky.

“The Croods” and “Olympus Has Fallen” led the weekend’s movies, rare commercial triumphs in a slow season.

Junie Hoang, 41, argued that the database illegally used information to obtain her real age, exposing her to age discrimination in Hollywood.

Showbiz’s leading man of the moment is Ben Affleck. It’s a big turnaround from tabloid punch line to cinematic artist, showing that, in today’s industry, being serious is serious business.

The Web site moviereviewintelligence.com, which compiles reviews from newspapers, magazines and Web publications, will stop operations at the end of April, its founder said.

Fanticipation, from Fandango, the online seller of movie tickets, will rank upcoming releases based on a formula that includes social media data and advance ticket sales

So, you really love your girlfriend, and you want to ask her to marry you. But the old ring-in-the-champagne-flute has been done to death. What to do? Obviously, you try to scare the hell out of her by splicing her photo into a mashup of bloody-knife-fight-in-the-snow footage from thrillers like The Grey and The Bourne Ultimatum, then tack on some footage of yourself stalking her at the local movie theater, while getting said theater to run the whole package as a trailer before the movie she's out to see for girls' night. Then, you show up with a bouquet of flowers and microphone in hand, pop the question and waltz into a state of eternal happiness. No sweat. Of course, the weird wedding proposal is an already rich genre: You've got your banner ad proposals, your infographic proposals and your crowdsourced proposals, not to mention your fairly run-of-the-mill highway billboard proposals. This new one raises the bar for effort, and also for not being totally, nauseatingly saccharine in a really public way. It's really not a fair comparison, though. Every proposal would be better in tortured Liam Neeson voice. Via Mashable.

The company, owned by Disney, says it will pursue a “new direction” in animated programming based on the Star Wars narrative.

So, you're feeling kind of blah and waiting for the elevator and sipping your latte, and the door opens and some guy is choking some other guy on the floor, and you're just like, Whatever, it's probably some stupid marketing stunt for some indie gangster movie because oh my god even these nontraditional ads are getting so tired.

Viral marketing agency Thinkmodo—the professional ambushers who also did the Beauty Shop Scare video that we posted last week—says this latest clip shows regular bystanders, not actors, happening upon what appears to be an attempted murder, and that every precaution was taken to ensure the safety of all parties involved. The clip, promoting the movie Dead Man Down, your average underworld revenge fantasy rom-com starring Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace, features such choice responses to the crime-in-progress as beating the attacker about the head with a bouquet of flowers and spraying both him and his victim with a fire extinguisher. Because everyone knows if you see a person being strangled, don't panic—just reach calmly for the nearest fire extinguisher, remove the pin, stand eight feet back and aim at the base of the strangling while squeezing the handle and sweeping the hose from side to side.

There's also a lot of staring awkwardly and then scurrying away, and one guy who takes a picture—all masterfully emphasized to produce amused incredulity and Internet bravado among the YouTube masses.

Despite the creators' claim that it's not manufactured, it's pretty hard not to imagine the movie's lawyers getting a nasty ulcer over this—unless it was staged. As one random, surprisingly level-headed YouTube troll put it: "I hope you guys did this experiment in a state that doesn't allow concealed carry, I would have shot that mother fucker." Because where's the fun without a little debate.