Trailer Alert: Robin Hood

(Russell Crowe as Maximus... or Robin Hood)

It's about time Russell Crowe, an Oscar winner, actually starred in a movie people wanted to watch. I mean Gladiator was 10 years ago!

Robin Hood is due out in May. In it, Crowe plays a character that looks very much like Maximus. We're hoping the script includes the lines -- "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

Trailer Alert: The Last Airbender

New trailer for the live-action adaptation of the Avatar series, M. Night Shamalan's The Last Airbender, is out. I'm still unconvinced about Dev Patel as Zuko, but this trailer -- the third so far -- looks kinda hot.

Under the Radar: Taraji P. Henson

Taraji P. Henson got an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button a year ago. But even then, most people didn't take her nomination seriously. They understood it to be some due recognition for a day player who's proven herself time and again in smaller roles -- as the pregnant prostitute in Hustle & Flow, for example. But nothing more.

Another role, however, something that came later than Henson's Oscar-nominated work as Brad Pitt's adoptive mother, proves this actress has some ridiculously serious chops.

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself gives what is perhaps the most complete study of a black female lead in transition that has ever been filmed. And Henson, giving a superbly rich, thoroughly realized performance, carries the weight of this complicated movie -- a movie, mind you, that deals with family, and past trauma, and spirituality, and redemption with some of the same poetry and -- hell, I'll say it -- Negro Truth that I've found in the novels of Toni Morrison.

I kept asking myself: If this were not a Tyler Perry movie, would there have been more buzz about this performance during the season? A better question -- a much more subversive question (and fitting in a year when the first woman director and first African American screenwriter were honored by the Academy): If Perry's movie were about, say, a poor white woman working through her demons and not an attractive, middle-class black woman, would America give a damn?

Just wondering?

Oscarwatch: Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique

With her victory at the Indy Spirit Awards Friday night, Mo'Nique has nabbed every single major award for which she was nominated. For her work as Mary Jones, a supporting role in Precious, Mo'Nique has been honored with the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild awards, in addition to being recognized by every critics association of note in the country. I imagine she's already made space on the mantel for Oscar.

Side note: Congrats to Gabourey "Gabbie" Sidibe for her Indy Spirit win. The likelihood that Gabbie will derail the Sandra Bullock freight train to the Oscars is slim, so I'm happy she got her props before a live, general audience at the Spirit Awards.

Ditto for Lee Daniels, for directing. I don't think he'll get an Oscar, but the Spirit Award is well deserved. If you haven't seen it already, Precious comes out in DVD on Tuesday.

Wolverine 2 On the Horizon

The Collider.com reports the sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine starts shooting in January 2011. Some critics didn't like the first film, but I thought it was kick-ass. What's more, the guy hired to script this adaptation of Claremont and Miller’s Wolverine tale wrote the first X-Men film.

Check out the synopsis at the Collider.com

Oscarwatch: Best Actress -- Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock deserves her Oscar. She's that good in The Blind Side. Her performance is over-the-top when it needs to be, but there's subtle craft at work here. Physically, she's closer to Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich; however the more appropriate comparison would be Helen Mirren in The Queen. Not the look, obviously, but the control that Mirren displayed in that Oscar-winning role. You never quite forget your watching Sandra Bullock. Generally you don't when actors of her fame are on the screen. But she's in rare form, better than she's ever been, essentially carrying the weight of a damn good film on her shoulders.