Here's the trailer for Busby Berkeley musical classic Gold Diggers of 1933.

And let's compare the two iconic dance sequences from these two flicks. Here's "We're In the Money," one of my very favorite musical numbers from Great Depression-era musicals. It's just completely psychotic and wonderful.

And here's the completely psychotic dance party from The Matrix Reloaded.

Which makes you feel more like dancing the apocalypse away?

Paramount released The Invasion of Cobra Island as viral ad for film. It features the high-tech battles fans have always reenacted with their own toys, with added special effects, and lightly mocks some of the cartoon's conventions, such Snake Eyes' awkward silence and Cobra Commander's costume changes:

[via Screen Rant]

The official title of Focus Film's new alternate reality game is the "9 Movie Talisman Challenge Clue." The image appears to be a ripped bit from something more. We are just one among 9 other sites hosting images from the site. One you find all nine pieces, it should decode a message over at www.9experiment.com. Good luck.

For once I can finally say, I've got a good feeling about this movie's ARG. Looks like Sony is investing lots of time and money creating a layered look at the tensions between humans and illegal aliens, for Neill Blomkamp's new flick.

We've already run a round up on the immense online campaign of MNU's website, plus the anti MNU bloggers (and their mysterious disappearances). Seriously, you could spend hours reading all the material D9 has provided.

D9 will be in theaters August 14, 2009.

According to these viral spots - being tracked by fake site The Real Effing Deal and Giant Effing Robots, amongst others - we should beware of Transformers crossing over from the cinema screen into reality. We'd tell you not to be so easily convinced... but how do you know we're not working for Megatron all along?

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen opens in the US on June 24th.

[Via Funkadelic Advertising and Digital Spy]

The character Charlie Frost looks like a lunatic hippie, mixed with a bit of shock jock. I know I was against Woody being involved in this ridiculous picture, about the world ending according to the Mayan calendar, but I take it all back - all of it. This was the role he was born to play or he's just not acting. Seriously, take away the hair and I this exactly what I would imagine Woody Harrelson is like in real life. Wearing ponchos, driving around in a camper, talking about government conspiracy theories - and then we'd all go get high from the remnants of his now defunct "oxygen bar." I'm for Charlie Frost and his over the top, crazy-eyes viral videos, especially when he hits on caller Linda in the "Super Volcanoes" clip. They're cute and remind me a little of Independence Day.

As for the rest of 2012, well I still don't have the highest of hopes for the struggling limo driver/writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) who has to win back the respect of his family and keep them save from the apocalypse. Seems like a lot of juggling - but it is Cusack, so fingers crossed.

Charlie Frost's Animation

Doomsday Seed Bank:

Nanotechnology:

Super Volcanoes

The Institute for Human Continuity (IHC) Lottery

Check out Charlie's website, This Is The End.

A promoter named Warren Betts with Fox Pictures writes in his story pitch to Anonymous:

Generally, I cover the world of science and technology and publicize movies with those themes, but this is a very intriguing story and in the film the characters use very sophisticated technology and optics in trying to capture this apparition on film. Next year a Japanese company is introducing the first camera (very expensive) that will allow photographers to shoot in the invisible light spectrum. This might make a very powerful tool for understanding this phenomenon and the possible scientific causes. The public is very interested in this subject and I wanted to check with you and see if you might be interested in hearing more about this? Would this possibly be something you would be interested in covering on your pages?

Look, I have no problem with product tie-ins or goofy expensive shit that people buy when they like a movie. Hell, I have a ton of ridiculously expensive kaiju dolls — some of them are from the 1970s, and who knows what they'd be worth on Ebay. But nobody sold me those dolls pretending that they were somehow a "scientific" method of making Gamera come hang out with me, or helping me reach my dead mother. Pretending that something unscientific from a horror movie IS science in order to sell people movie tickets and expensive cameras is, as Penn and Teller would say, bullshit.

And it's the crappiest kind of viral marketing, too.

Each of the 28 contestants in the contest - visualized by Mike Miller, a somewhat controversial former DC Comics artist - will be posting "confessionals" about the unfolding contest as it goes on, written by different writers from the Wild Cards books. Kevin Andrew Murphy, whose first character (Rosa Loteria) is already offering gossip about her fellow contestants, promises that if readers ask questions of certain characters, they may just answer:

Of course, the contestants are all busy with challenges on the show, but who knows, some of them might answer.

American Hero [Wild Cards Books.com]

For those of you who haven't seen it, the Joker (who also is the central baddie in the upcoming movie) goes nuts in this film and dehydrates the world leaders at the United Nations, turning them into piles of dust. Luckily, Batman and Robin save the day, but screw things up a bit when they rehydrate everyone: everyone now speaks the wrong language. Hilarity! The dynamic duo then head off, leaving the leaders to deal with the problem on their own.

I'm surprised it's taken someone this long to do a Batman mashup with the old series, but this one made me laugh pretty hard. Especially the "Like me!" shot. I don't know why I'm finding Cesar Romero speaking with Heath Ledger's voice so amusing, but chalk it up to fumes and crossed wires. If someone could make us a some high-quality Heroes, or better yet, Misfits of Science meets meets X-Men mashups, we might be okay with the current state of television.

Although the acting by "Sam," whose significant other was one of the flight attendants on the vanished flight, is more than a bit hammy, the site creators have built a lot of clues and games into his conspiracy website. You'll be visiting other sites, doing research, zooming in on photos for clues, calling phone numbers and generally driving yourself bonkers until Lost returns to the airwaves on January 31st.

Cheesy as it may be, this is as close to Lost as we've come in a long, long time, and it is successfully making us drool for new episodes. Chances are that the writer's strike might make alternate reality games and viral marketing like this the only teat we'll have to suck from until they start filming new episodes. Here's to hoping I'm not trying to track down Cylon DNA by visiting different websites in three months time if Battlestar Galactica doesn't come back soon.