Rather than continually posting in the old trailers thread, I thought I’d fire up a new one as finally there are some good movies on the horizon. For starters, I’m digging the trailer for the excellently titled The Last King of Scotland, which is of course about Idi Amin, and like everything in the 21st century, based on A True Story.
Good Movie Season Around the Corner
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clearly, a nuanced performance by forest whitaker. i’m filling out my oscar ballot now.
this reminds me–there is a bizarre documentary about Idi Amin, filmed by Barbet Schroeder in 1974 with Amin’s help. You will get a chilling sense of hearty barbarity from watching it. The best sequence concerns a cabinet meeting in which Amin rambles on pointless while not a single minister makes a noise or hazards a question–they attempt to look like they are listening but their abject fear is noticeable. It reminds me of some past graduate seminars. Oh, and Amin was not happy with the bits of the film that showed his stooges executing prisoners–so fun lover that he was, he threatened to kill the French nationals living in Uganda if Schroeder didn’t cut those sequences. Schroeder did but now they are restored to the film. It’s called Idi Amin Dada and it brought back to me vividly the sweaty decay that was the 1970s.
The Amin film is actually based on a novel, by Gilles Foden, and that novel is based on a true story. That, too, seems typical of 21st-century films. And I read recently that Whitaker, to prepare, watched Schroeder’s film over and over. I recall that doc being great.
I am keen on the new Alfonso Cuaron and Christopher Nolan films. And, if it can avoid the pretension that swamped Requiem, I think Aronofsky’s film could be pretty damn good, as well.
and what do you all think of the preview of world trade center?
I thought the preview was terrible. And I assume the movie is also terrible, though I’ll never know for sure. Unless they do this to me:
I predict Nicolas Cage will get nominated for an Oscar for it. Of course, that’s only b/c the Academy won’t have the courage to give Cage the nod he’ll so certainly deserve for his portrayal of a chain-wielding motorcycle-riding flaming skull wearing leather from Hell. Ugh.
I wish Cage would go away.
the preview of world trade center? I feel a sense of vertigo. was that me, in a one room apartment on south bentley watching the towers fall when I woke up late for an appointment and then stayed in the apartment for fear of car bombs going off in LA? what if they blew me up at the Panda Express on Sawtelle? Even the most major disasters come down to the self. Of course, I take poetic license–I would hardly have gone to the Panda Express at about 10 AM, maybe Starbuck’s which seems like an ideal place for a car bomb. killing me and the girl who played Natalie on Facts of Life. Latte everywhere. How to bridge the unreality of the gap between the (coverage of) the event itself and the first blockbuster movie of said event. No doubt we will pull for the heroes to be rescued, we will feel their individual pain as they lie in the rubble, but will we once feel the uncanny pull of history, will we have any sense of the endless selves that have divided like amoeba for five years? the reviews I’ve read have acclaimed Oliver Stone for “reigning himself in”–why not a highly personal bizarre recreation of the event? I fear that we have made this attack the Ultimate Event and hence, impervious to analysis. strange doings in the “Middle East” on one hand and sorrow for a trapped fireman on the other–with nothing in between. I mean, I don’t know if I’m ready for the mythology yet–for Christ’s sake, I was around for the event, you know?
There was a piece on WTC in the Times a few weeks ago, and it was quite good. It was suggested that Stone was more than willing to “reign himself in” due to the fact that em>Alexander had more or less ruined him, and he was thanking his lucky stars that he was given the opportunity to do WTC. The producers didn’t want the film to be JFK’d, though, so they gave him a mantra, which he used on a daily basis:
“This is not a political film…this is not a political film…this is not a political film…nam myoho renge kyo…nam myoho renge kyo…”
Oliver Stone ceased being interesting years ago. In an effort to move the conversation from him, here’s another trailer that looks…promising. Or at least better than I expected. Running With Scissors.
I didn’t like this book at all. I found it terribly depressing and thought if 20% of it was true, these people should have all been jailed. However, shine it up with Annette Benning, Alec Baldiwn and Gwyneth (and houses that look much better than the filthy junkyards descibed in the book), and you’ve got this version of a gay Me-Too to Royal Tennanbaums.
I thought Scissors looked better than expected, but then I’ve always known that mental illness and child abuse are quite charming, given the right dramatis personae.
You know what looks great? Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott’s new movie. It looks like that Harrison Ford movie, where a rich arrogant guy gets a bullet in the head and learns about life, except without that film’s edge.
And I hear that the new Rocky film has a surprise opponent in the final match–Kirk Douglas! Damn, I’ll see that. Imagine the trash talk! Imagine trying to understand the trash talk!
Looks good, but I like the original better.
Oh sweet jesus that Peter Mayle/Crowe thing looks hideous. Unless fleshy-headed mutants come out of that dry swimming pool and pull Gordon Gekko down to the hell he surely belongs, I think I’ll wait and watch that one after I’m dead.
I did like the little reference to Trading Places in the stock market scene at the beginning though.
Three interesting looking previews from yesterday’s showing of Miami Vice:
1) the Borat movie looks like a lot of fun, though it is hard to imagine sustaining the humor for 80-90 minutes.
2) ‘The Departed’ by Scorsese has an astonishing cast with Damon, DiCaprio, Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and those are just the people I recognized in the preview. It is an undercover police thriller (like Miami Vice!) which is something of a departure for Scorsese.
3) Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and a shaggy Michael Caine are in ‘Children of Men’ directed by Alfonso Cuaron. A near future when the human race has lost the ability to reproduce and so is dying our. The preview looks dangerously uplifting, but an interesting concept.
BTW, when I checked Clive Owen on IMDB, it lists him as in pre-production for Sin City 2.
You know, I’ve been reading the latest “Entertainment Weekly” with the usual glee and this week’s edition is their Fall Movie Preview and I swear there is not a film in the lot that I have high hopes about. Perhaps the Cuaron, but it looks dubious. The new Scorsese looks good but the trailer is confusing as hell (I’ve seen the original so I understand but still). That Russel Crowe/Ridley Scott movie looks like a mess though I have been impressed with Crowe’s choices in the past. This trailer looks interesting but it calls to mind recent films written by Charlie Kaufman a little too deliberately (down to the obligatory ELO track). The magician flicks could be good and if so I’m betting on Christopher Nolan’s but still . . . DeCaprio saving Africa from the merciless diamond trade is also amusing but it does have the Edward Zwick kiss of death (calling Tom Cruise-san). The Clooney/Soderbergh Oscar trap in B&W seems a bit too much as well. I refuse to acknowledge Robert DeNiro as a director so you know his big holiday film is iffy at best. Right now I’m betting on Dreamgirls to take home the gold.
Yeah, well… I don’t disagree with you much. I”m hoping there are darker horses coming down the pike. I am digging the the Scorsese idea; there’s a chance David Lynch’s Inland Empire will come out this year, I hope DiCaprio’s Blood Diamonds is good (and that it destroys DeBeer’s). What else – I’ll see Science of Sleep, Babel (unless the reviews are terrible), Fast Food Nation.
Being an Ellroy fan, I’d love for Black Dahlia to be good, but of all the things Josh Hartnett might be, I’d hesitate to include “actor” among them
Previously mentioned The Fountain looks dreadful from the trailer, but Borat looks great. The Illusionist: I’ll guess it’s awful. But I’ll bet The Prestige is good. (I’m staying away from the trailer for The Prestige in fact, which is as far as I go to committing to seeing a film. And speaking of magician movies, Nolan’s seems close to the plot of Carter Beats the Devil. Why didn’t that quite good story get made into a movie?
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Ricky Jay seems to have been hired as consultant on both magician films. But he also acts in Nolan’s film.
I remember reading Tom Cruise bought the rights to Carter Beats the Devil oh so many years ago, which was a fun read but its bulky narrative would be a bitch to adapt. Yes, I have high hopes for anything directed by Brian DePalma but the trailer is crap. Babel might work but I wasn’t a big fan of the histrionic 21 Grams so we’ll see. I’m also feeling a bit dubious about The Science of Sleep; it just don’t look good (or funny). And while I like Linklater and remember reading great things about Fast Food Nation when it played at Cannes, the trailer makes it look a bit slight and it stars the strange boy from “That 70s Show.” I also worry about The Fountain seeing that Arnovsky cut the film’s budget from $110 million when Brad Pitt was attached to $35 million whne Hugh Jackman jumped on board. I fear it will be a visually intriguing mess, but I always like to proved wrong.
Well, besides the ones named: the Korean film The Host, with great Cannes buzz and by the guy who did the wonderful Memories of Murder; Little Children sounds more interesting, now that I know Todd Field was involved; I’m always game for Bond, particularly this new guy; and I wouldn’t be surprised if All the King’s Men, with that knockout cast and Zaillian behind the camera, was good. I’m also confident that Cuaron’s film will be at the very least interesting–the guy made Harry Potter seem interesting to me, so I’m more than willing to assume the strengths of this one.
And of course Jason Strathan in ‘Crank’ will be glorious.
has anyone seen or heard anything about the latest Svankmajer film, Sileni (Lunacy)?
Is The Host scheduled to open before the end of 2006?? I couldn’t get fifteen pages into Little Children and found In the Bedroom overrated, but if the reviews are there I’m willing. Bond . . . maybe. I’m dubious about all the rationalization being thrown about as to why All the King’s Men missed its Oscar worthy 2005 release date, but perhaps this will be the exception that proves the rule. Finally, I can only wish that this film is as good as it looks (and as good as I want it to be . . . Jeff Bridges is god or at least should be). And what’s up with Catherine Hardwicke directing The Nativity Story. When I think of the little baby Jesus, the 8lb, 7oz little baby Jesus, the first name who comes to mind is the director of Thirteen and The Lords of Dogtown. I know it has to suck to be a female director in Hollywood but Catherine please don’t let the Virgin Mary be a sk8er slut.
Michael – Lunacy was reviewed today in LA Weekly:
LUNACY At once the most visceral and cerebral of Czech absurdists, Jan Svankmajer weighs in again with a horror-movie treatise on how not to run a lunatic asylum and, by implication, a society. Drawn from two stories by Edgar Allan Poe and philosophically under the influence of the Marquis de Sade — a mad ecstatic if ever there was — Lunacy tracks the adventures of Jean Berlot (played by Pavel Liska, who, so far as I could see from this year’s Karlovy Vary film festival, props up Czech national cinema), a Candide-like naif with nightmares who is “rescued†by a Marquis (the excellent Jan TrÃska) with a hyena laugh and dragged through therapies that range from illusory freedom to extreme coercion. Much zealous depravity ensues, Catholicism takes a drubbing and the sets, upsetting the always fragile balance between real and surreal in a Svankmajer film, crawl with the director’s signature animated raw meat. As always, Svankmajer prefers inventive blasphemy (in his book, as in Sade’s, an honorable form of truth telling) to orthodoxy. Point taken, but compared to the focus and vital spontaneity of Svankmajer’s 2004 masterpiece, Little Otik, Lunacy feels programmatic, the repetitive working through of an idea that had me checking my watch. (Nuart) (Ella Taylor)
Pusher looks pretty damn good, ‘though not technically new. Or, rather, it’s three films, one of which is actually on Netflix (and just leapt up my queue) and the last just now arriving.
The new Borat trailer also made me laugh very, very hard.
Oh–and, yes, The Host has a 2006 release date, in October, says “Premiere.” Maybe then it could hit MSP by… oh, say, January.
Actually, The Host is playing the New York Film Festival in October. I’m not sure if it will then open in New York and LA or not, but I did find a reference that said it will open in America spring 2007. The argument being it plays the Toronto and NYC Festivals and then the distributors can figure out how to best market it for a 2007 release. Nightwatch got some great press and there was a really well structured PR to capture audience awareness. Fox Searchlight’s use of the subtitles in that film should be notice to all distribution companies; the clever use of text on screen can be a dynamic storytelling device, but I digress. So, Night Watch was, at best, a modest success. Can The Host really be any more marketable?
The Host has a big monster. Trailers are up at YouTube; admittedly, Night Watch also had a really strong trailer, but it also was a more-niched audience: fans of epic horror, fans of grungy Matrix-y style, vampire stuff. A big monster will be an easier sell. And its critical press is far, far better–so, yes, I think it is more marketable.
That said, I’m going to keep trying to buy it on ebay.
Yes, I do see how fans of vampires, horror, and the epic struggle between the forces of good and evil (all wrapped up in Matrix-worthy spectacle) would be considered a niche market. Monster movies really do cut across a wide variety of demographics and are very popular in America, and, of course, Korean films are a hard sell for you. One can only hope it reaches the dizzying highs of Brotherhood of the Wolf. And I do know that the tonal shifts so common in many contemporary Korean films will play like gangbusters with the American public. I’ll see it, that’s for certain.
ps: Come on Mike, I just watched the trailer and somebody’s going to have to do a lot better than that to capture the American public’s attention. I have followed the buzz on this film as strongly as you have (and I know its going to be a fun film) but the Korean trailer is ass. Who bought the North American rights to this tadpole on steroids flick?
I’m having trouble working up energy to argue about marketing, and whether the film will sell.
But: monster movies do sell, especially when stripped of pretension — open any movie, advertised with some big thing chasing people, and it’ll have a good weekend at least. You don’t need to commit lots of narrative energy (unlike those other two films); it isn’t hard, even in Korean (or, as I did, with the sound off), to follow the plot here. And, as I like watching big bugs and creepies chase and then eat people, the trailer struck me as fun.
Where it might sell beyond that big burst of a teen audience is art houses, where the critical buzz is busting out. The trailer does NOT sell to those folks, except for the hints of 9/11-ish shrines and distraught survivors. But I imagine that, unlike Watch, Host will be sold in varied ways… which is why I think it’ll do better than Watch or Wolf, both straightforward horror flicks. They had to seduce the kids into the theaters for subtitles; this flick will go for a big fast hit to the kids then hang on well past the sell-by dates for either of the others. Two savvy campaigns: one with the trailer linked above, one with a trailer emphasizing “creepy” and political subtext, with Manohla Dargis and Cannes buzz plastered in large text throughout.
Again, why am I arguing this? I honestly could give a shit; I am mostly signalling my anticipation. That bug run real fast! YEEEEE haaaaaa!
I found a much more interesting trailer for The Host, which I think does it better justice than the YouTube version.
Maybe you guys can read Korean and that movie looks good, but it really doesn’t look great to me.
However, going from Great Dane gallumphing bugs down to bugs so small no one can see them, well, this trailer actually makes my skin crawl a bit.
though it may be because I’ve been fighting bugs coming from under my house from a broken pipe for a month and these scenes ring true to me. It’s William Friedkin’s Bug, by the way.
Tracey Letts wrote Bug for the stage and it was definitely a profitable crowd favorite a couple of seasons ago in New York. I think the trailer looks great but William Friedkin is hit and miss.
The Host has been picked up by Magnolia pictures. And apparently the big galumphing critter (nice, Mark!) steals a kid. Awesome! Monsters who kidnap–America will friggin’ eat this up!
Yes, but is the kid bight and shiny with blonde hair and blue eyes and dimples and just the right amoung of sexy innocence? Will Kincaid write another diatribe for Slate?
I’m not too sure about this one. It looks a little too dystopically utopic, though the use of Sigur Ros is always welcomed. That being said, I can’t even get through this trailer. Now why is that?
The opening line of The Guardian’s review of ‘Crank’ today:
“I have Jason Statham pencilled in for the governorship of California around 2020. He’s the star of this enjoyable and insanely frenetic action movie with all the nutritional content of a packet of crisps.”
Crisps are potato chips. Thank goodness I’m on sabbatical this year so I don’t have to wait for the weekend to see this soon to be classic. And if Statham may one day be in politics, I think the ticket is a business expense.
Aside from Crank, some other films previously not on my radar screen popped up in this weekend’s NYTimes:
The Architect has an interesting storyline and two great, underrated actors at its center: Anthony LaPaglia and Viola Davis.
Paul Feig’s movie Unaccompanied Minors is the sort of thing I’d gloss right over, if not for Feig (who was behind the great Freaks and Geeks).
Richard Gere’s 2 films (The Flock and The Hoax) both seem kind of interesting… and he’s an actor who, since Internal Affairs, has always struck me as radically under- and mis-used.
Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower also looks just astonishing. So did the last couple, but… hey, this one’s got Chow Yun Fat.
Notes on a Scandal has Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, and a script by Patrick Marber….
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth recalls his small gem The Devil’s Backbone more than Hellboy, and it’s getting all the horror/fantasy freaks riled up.
Toronto denies.
David Lynch interview in NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/movies/01lim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Is this a “good movie” preview? Hell yeah.
Looks like Carnahan took the smart deal after stepping away from M:I:3. Great trailer.
Saw a preview for the ‘Golden Compass’ which looks great. Has anyone here read the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy on which this first movie is based? Children’s books, but really quite remarkable, both for the world Philip Pullman creates and for the central theme that religion is the source of most evil. It will be interesting to see how much of that survives in a big budget movie.