I've spoken before about how old it makes me feel now they're finally remaking films from my formative movie years instead of the more mysterious epochs from before my coming of age, but it was with even more trepidation than usual I read about a forthcoming remake of An American Werewolf in London. If there's a chance the director who ends up doing it happens to read this, please watch Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead and use its desire to please fans by using in-camera effects as your yardstick. Don't rely on CGI for everything. Don't dumb it down to PG level. Remember you're making a horror and not a teen movie.

Maybe I'm asking too much...

Interesting news from the dark side of movie distribution, with a Swedish gaming software company buying the notoriously anti-establishment Pirate Bay bittorrenting website. Will this be the first step in an oft-repeated process (see Napster, et al) where the law lops a technology off at the knees and leaves it up to some geek to create the new defacto standard in piracy technology?

I saw the new 2012 trailer recently, and my fears of a 10,000 BC -style disappointment were mostly allayed. After shunting the movie from a midyear to a November release, Sony made me think there wasn't as much in the film as the world-destruction themed teaser had promised. But with scenes like a plane escaping through a rain of collapsing buidlings and a huge wave rolling an aircraft carrier over the top of the White House, the signs are good. I know, director Roland Emmerich has done it a million times before, but I'm a sucker for big scale spectacle.

In all the attention over Michael Jackson's passing, the death of actor Karl Malden barely made a whisper through the week, and in the most bizarre video game movie news so far, Universal won out in a bidding war for the rights to – wait for it – Asteroids.

The trailer for Australian drama thriller Balibo, from Robert Connolly (one of Australia's only truly commercial directors and one of my favourites) arrived, as did the buttock-clenchingly exciting trailer for District 9. From humble beginnings as a YouTube short taken under the wing of Peter Jackson, it looks like it could be the coolest film of the year.

Casting news as Ryan Reynolds steps up to the plate as The Green Lantern. As one of my favourite actors I hope he doesn't let all these top-tier blockbusters go to his head and lose his endearing edginess now he's becoming firmly A list.