Hollywood continued to rejigger its publicity plans for holiday releases Monday in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Paramount has decided to make several tweaks to the marketing materials for Jack Reacher, the gritty crime-action pic starring Tom Cruise as a hard-boiled former military cop trying to prove that an alleged sniper was framed. The film opens Friday.

The studio wouldn’t officially say what the changes are, but a source confirmed that a scene of Cruise’s character firing off a semi-automatic weapon is being cut from promotional spots.

And then regarding…

Total Film has a video of a few cast interviews from The Hobbit for us. In this video, the cast, and the director Peter Jackson talk about what they are most excited to see in the upcoming part II of The Hobbit Trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The video features Peter Jackson, James Nesbit, Andy Serkis, Aidan Turner, Cate Blanchett, Joe Letteri, Richard Armitage, and Martin Freeman.

Synopsis:

The evil wizard Gargamel creates a couple of mischievous Smurf-like creatures called the Naughties that he hopes will let him harness the all-powerful, magical Smurf-essence. But when he discovers that only a real Smurf can give him what he wants — and only a secret spell that Smurfette knows can turn the Naughties into real Smurfs — Gargamel kidnaps Smurfette and brings her to Paris, where he has been winning the adoration of millions as the world’s greatest sorcerer. It’s up to Papa, Clumsy, Grouchy, and Vanity to return to our world, reunite with their human friends Patrick…

Eagle eyed fans watching the new trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness for clues as to the narrative and mysteries of the film may notice something extra in the trailer at about 1:05/1:07 seconds into the excitement. As the camera pans towards John Harrison standing alone in presumably a brig of some kind, look to the right panels and the words “AreYouThe1701.com” appear.

Interesting. Signed up. Who knows where this is going and what it means.

One of the fun things we got with the IMAX showings of The Hobbit this past weekend was the first 9 minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness. This 9 minutes will not be made available online, or even in standard theater screenings of The Hobbit, it is exclusive to IMAX.

You should be aware that if you have not seen it, there will be spoilers.

Familiar Then Different

The prologue kicks off with the familiar sounds at the beginning of Star Trek (2009) which are very reminiscent of the original series’ bridge sounds. But instead of resolving into a Starship bridge as with the previous film,…

The teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness ‘has all sorts of interesting things to ponder for Trek fans looking for insights into the movie. As we do with all new trailers and previews, TrekMovie takes an in depth shot-by-shot look at this trailer, trying to pry out the secrets. Find out what’s inside the trailer below, but beware of Spoilers.

I sure hope you guys are geeking out as much as I am about this stuff. This is great. For you non-Trek fans, hang tight, there will be other news for us to be talking about before long. There’s just a lot of Star Trek stuff going on right now.

For those of us who went to an IMAX screening of The Hobbit, we got a taste of the first nine minutes of the film. But if you went to a standard screening, you got to see Teaser Trailer #2, which is now available online.

Stay tuned to MovieByte, I have an article coming up in a little bit on the exclusive nine minute IMAX preview. Here’s Teaser Trailer #2.

The full-length trailer for Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger released this week promised plenty of good stuff from the film: sweeping Western vistas, death-defying stunts, massive explosions, a banged-up Armie Hammer, and a weirdo Johnny Depp. One thing we won’t be getting, however, is a score from Jack White.

The former White Stripes frontman signed on this spring for what would have been his first full movie score, but has since exited the project. Stepping into White’s place now is Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer.

Who knows what happened there. Was White fired, or did he…

Season three includes some of of TNG’s most memorable episodes, including “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “Best of Both Worlds, Part I”.

Along with the 26 remastered episodes, season three bonus features will include the continuation of the “Stardate Revisited” and “Making it So” documentary.

Check out a preview of what we’re in store for.

Broken record here, but I’m excited about this season being remastered. Lots of good stuff in Season 3.