Chun-Li by Daigo Ikeno

Q by Daigo Ikeno

Akuma by Daigo Ikeno

Rocket Raccoon and Groot by Mike Mignola

GODZILLA ROAR

Le Matos - Kaneda (Remix)

GLIMPSE

It's been roughly a decade since Godzilla's last substantial big screen sighting but the King of Monsters isn't above the odd cameo appearance. Back in 2007, this imaginary sequence from Takashi Yamazaki's Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 - itself a post-war nostalgia piece based on a best-selling manga - was rumoured to be a kind of backdoor pilot for a new Godzilla film. Yamazaki was keen to keep the monster rooted in the Showa period, using CG and miniatures to recreate the sights and sounds of 1950s Tokyo. Obviously a fan of Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Yamazaki leans heavily on Shusuke Kaneko's kaiju mise-en-scene, utilising both his satanic Godzilla design and the director's ground level point of view.

KING

Gave Rise of the Planet of the Apes a rewatch this evening, I'd quite forgotten how much I enjoyed it. As soon as the first act is out the way (and James Franco is tidied off to the edges), the film is one long smile prompt for me. It's a creature film in which the monster is allowed to be the dramatic centre. It's like an Alien film in which we dispense with all the boring humans and spend time tracking the beast, seeing his moves, getting to know him. Andy Serkis and WETA's Caesar is the high-water mark in CG acting and character building - the organic rise of a king tracked through a furrowing brow and how he holds his body.

Deltron 3030 - Do You Remember ft. Jamie Cullum

Transformers (UK) #235 by Geoff Senior

Optimus Primes and Menasor by Rui Onishi

Transformers (UK) #328 by Andrew Wildman

Optimus/Rodimus by Makoto Ono

Shockwave -- Ruin by Rui Onishi

80s Rogue by Eric Koda

MARSHALL

Neil Marshall doles out some Escape from New York trivia for Trailers From Hell. Unfortunately Marshall doesn't seem to have any upcoming film projects on his plate, the director has instead transitioned into television, orchestrating budget battles for key Game of Thrones episodes. Remember the apocalyptic Battle of Blackwater episode in Season 2? That was him. He has another guest director slot lined up this season too, episode 9 - The Watchers on the Wall.

Page #12 from Transformers vs GI Joe #0 by Tom Scioli

The Sugarland Express

A couple of jailbirds, out to rescue their son from foster care, panic and kidnap a highway patrolman after their ride is pulled over. This ill-advised abduction attracts a convoy of police cars, news trucks, and well-wishers, all following at a discreet distance. Steven Spielberg's first big screen feature is the sweetly naïve tale of two parents, barely more than children themselves, who are in way over their heads. They contextualise their entire dilemma in purely emotional terms, logic doesn't even enter into it. Goldie Hawn's Lou Jean firmly believes this misadventure can have a positive outcome for her family - no-one has the heart to tell her otherwise. The Sugarland Express offers several distinct modes of masculinity, ranging from a henpecked husband willing to risk grievous injury to placate his wife, to a paternal police Captain who prefers the softly softly approach. Ben Johnson's Captain Tanner feels especially notable, an old-timer who stays his hand, using his position to ensure the couple a mostly unmolested trip across Texas. Either unwilling to risk the life of the captured trooper, or secure in his judgement that these two offer no serious threat, he plays along, hoping against hope for a peaceful conclusion. This isn't just a sympathetic idea of a cop, it's mythic. Tanner indulges the Poplins because they're essentially good. Similarly, he blows out the tires on a news van because they're parasites.

Mexican Ghost Rider by Ramon Villalobos

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - KEVIN SPACEY

House of Cards fav Kevin Spacey shows up to dump some fascism in this reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Spacey is tipped to be playing the head of an evil PMC that has a stranglehold on American foreign policy. What hasn't been clearly established is the player's role in all this. Are we one of Spacey's minions? Or a member of a local militia in one of these conquered countries?

Perhaps we'll hop between these two ideologies, as in the ill-fated PS3 exclusive Haze? That game teased a moral back-and-forth, but delivered something primitive and clunky. Sledgehammer Games are well placed to at least deliver the usual Call of Duty competence. I must say, I'm pretty disappointed with the tech avalanche on display here. After yesterday's VICE ad I was expecting a near-future grime war, not another round of Black Ops 2 gyrocopters.

Forth Wanderers - Paw / Caramel Emotion / Sip Neigh

Call of Duty - PMC

Sledgehammer Games' first solo attempt at a Call of Duty looks set to continue the series recent preference for speculative, near future warfare. This VICE clip, produced in association with the forthcoming game, hints at a premise very similar to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - namely a private military contractor growing so large it becomes an independent superpower. Call of Duty 2014 is being made by Sledgehammer Games, a group of developers whose previous credits include 007: From Russia with Love, Dead Space, and the multiplayer component of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

EVEN BREAK

Footage from Duel was used to beef up an episode of The Incredible Hulk TV series, entitled Never Give a Trucker an Even Break. Steven Spielberg was so unimpressed with his first feature being gobbled up for stock footage that the director insisted that all further work contracts contain clauses protecting his films from similar indignities.

Duel

David Mann is a fussy neurotic who makes the mistake of discovering his dick on an anonymous Californian highway. Stuck behind a massive tanker truck that looks like a scaled up toy, Mann overtakes, enraging the vindictive lorry driver. Steven Spielberg's theatrical (in Europe at least) début is pure incident, building a pressure cooker narrative out what would otherwise be a dull car journey.

Duel is built out of these long haul rhythms, beginning with a disengaged drive. The radio splutters away, registering low in the sound mix, a grade or two beneath the consistent, relaxing sounds of a car maintaining a steady speed. Duel's opening minutes stress safety, conjuring up sights and sounds last experienced when you were very young and in the back of your parent's car, sleepy and safe, on the way to some distant holiday destination.

A vague sense of paternal security is established, then ruthlessly vandalised. First, Mann's masculinity is undermined by a quick collect call to an indifferent wife. Mann feebly apologises for failing to defend her honour at some drunken ass-grabbing party. Mann's wife reads as bored - this particular failing well known to her. Back on the road, Mann is hounded by the truck driver he overtook. The harassment is petty, it seems emotionally driven. It's not a monstrous other trying to gobble up prey, that would imply a distinct purpose and economy of action. Duel's encounters are instead a sustained kind of bullying, designed to emaciate Mann, making him feel worthless.

Power and agency are denied to him, any attempt to equalise or thwart the chase are batted aside by the inescapable, omnipotent truck driver. Mann is completely powerless. Away from these impotence set-pieces, Richard Matheson's script and Dennis Weaver's performance combine to create an impressive sketch of frail, withered masculinity. When Mann attempts to take a time out in a roadside cafe full of truck drivers, it's clear he's an interloper.

Mann has difficulty even navigating the space - there are just too many men in there, radiating their louche, cowboyish power. Mann dithers, unsure how to proceed. Locating a table in an empty corner away from the 'real' men, he stumbles over his lunch order, failing to match the politeness his waitress shows him. Every idle glance is contextualised as a threat, Mann driving himself mad imagining ways in which he can placate this room full of tormentors. Buy them booze? That's what these people like, right? In Duel everything is a threat, the hero doesn't even want to meet the challenge, he just wants to escape.

Amblin'

Like most début shorts, Steven Spielberg's Amblin' isn't particularly concerned with delivering a tight narrative experience. Instead it's an elliptical brochure documenting Spielberg's breezy, Abercrombie idea of counter-culture. Amblin' is handsome and pleasant, detailing the incidental adventures of two hitch-hiking lovebirds. As a sales document, Amblin' demonstrated that Spielberg had the ability to slip effortlessly between farcical physical comedy and an advertisers eye. It's sort of like Pierrot le Fou meets The Monkees.