Talking about how broken blockbusters are is super fun—okay, maybe not when I do it, but certainly when these guys do. But as we near the end of summer, studios are eager to have us switch gears from dumbly gawping at big, loud, stupid stuff to delicately applauding for small, quiet stupid stuff. In a few short months, it'll be Oscar-hunting season!

Given the subject matter and the probability that Benedict Cumberbatch is going to be great in it, I have hope for at least one of this year's upcoming Oscar-bait movies, The Fifth Estate. I mentioned this one in my review of Alex Gibney's doc We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, which covers a lot of the same ground, and I'm still intrigued by the subject matter, even if its trailer is fairly obnoxious in that "music-soaring-as-people-utter-dramatic-soundbites" sort of way.


I can't imagine that director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Twilight) won't be pretty heavy-handed with this thing, but still: CUMBERBATCH. Cumberbatch with seeeeecrets.

In other Oscar-y news, here's another sappy trailer, this one belonging to the slightly different but definitely related genre of "music-soaring-as-people-make-grandiose-speeches." 12 Years a Slave is the first stab at mainstream success from director Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame), and it features a pretty remarkable cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, and—wait! Cumberbatch? Dude is everywhere.



Anyway, enjoy summer while we've got it! Fall will be here all too soon, and fall is srs bsns.