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19 Oct
| One of my favorite low-key films this year has been That Evening Sun, a sort of deep Southern gothic drama that pits two men against one another in a battle of wills. Written and directed by Scott Teems, the film stars Hal Holbrook and Ray McKinnon as the two men. Holbrook’s performance is deep, nuanced and determined. The film is part of a trio of recent films about old men and their willpower, alongside Gran Torino and Get Low. It’s refreshing in this day of awful young male model ‘leading men’ to see old guys lighting up the screen. Now That Evening Sun has a distributor and a new trailer, which you can check out after the break. The distributor has been set for a few weeks now, but the pickup, by Freestyle Releasing, got by me somehow. No matter; at least the film will get seen, even if Freestyle’s relatively … |
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19 Oct
| And with this, Timur Bekmambetov takes the next step towards becoming the Russian Luc Besson. The director is producing Black Lightning, a film that he’s described as “the Russian response to Transformers and Batman.” Which, watching this full trailer for a film about a kid who becomes a superhero after buying a flying car, I suppose I can see. Though I’m thinking more Christine meets The Greatest American Hero, but whatever works for you, Timur. This trailer features no English, but isn’t too difficult to decipher. Seems to be basically: boy wants girl; girl likes guy with hot car; boy buys crappy used car; crappy used car can fly; boy becomes superhero. All of these things naturally follow one another. Indeed, the (poorly translated) plot synopsis is: |
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17 Oct
| While we were previously privy to a clip from Paul King’s Bunny and the Bull, the full trailer for the film has now been launched, and you can see it embedded below the break. This is the first film from the director of The Mighty Boosh and features several alumni of that show in the cast, including hipster heartthrobs Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. It also looks rather like an episode of The Boosh, which isn’t a bad thing. Here’s the trailer: I’m expecting a great deal of you will be invoking the name of Michel Gondry now. Of course, while Gondry has a far wider aesthetic style on display across his oeuvre than the whole cardboard kaleidoscope thing, he has pretty much laid claim to that look entirely. This could be either a blessing or a curse for King. The official synopsis might help contextualise some of the more extraordinary effects in … |
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16 Oct
| Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? Oh My God Trailer [The following write-up is based on this new extended trailer at IMDB, although you can view the theatrical trailer above] I couldn’t be more excited for … |
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16 Oct
| There’s a new Japanese trailer for A Christmas Carol, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey. But this clip, which uses quite a bit of new footage, is wildly different from the US trailers. Notably, it appears to be advertising a movie I might actually want to see. Essentially, this trailer downplays the slapstick elements that are highlighted in the last full US trailer. Instead, there’s more of an air of mystery and melancholy, with an emphasis on Scrooge’s growing disquiet as he sees the truth about his existence. Which is to say this isn’t two minutes of animated Jim Carrey screaming as he flies through the air, slides down a pipe and rides an icicle along a rooftop. So which movie is A Christmas Carol really going to be — the Miyazaki-ish folk tale implied by this new trailer, or the slapstick adventure promised in the US one? Probably … |
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16 Oct
| When the claymation film Mary and Max premiered at Sundance in January, it was met with great acclaim. (It’s currently at 95% at Rottentomatoes.) The film marks the feature debut of Adam Elliot, who won an Oscar with his short film Harvie Krumpet. It tells the story of an unlikely friendship. Mary is a young Australian girl with no friends. She becomes penpals with Max, an aging and obese man from New York who has a great number of neurosis and insecurities. The film’s style is a bit visually goofy but also touching and surprisingly effective. There’s a new trailer for the film, which is now available On Demand; watch it after the break. The film’s primary voices are by Toni Collette (Mary) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Max) but you’d have a difficult time pegging either one right off, as they’re both deep in character. (Hoffman is a bit easier to … |
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15 Oct
| Warner Bros. has released the trailer for Edge of Darkness, featuring Mel Gibson’s first starring role since 2002. Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale) directs the movie, which is a remake of the very highly regarded UK mini-series from 1985 that Campbell also directed. Sadly, the trailer mostly looks like a routine potboiler, but it has a few moments that shine through. Check it out after the break. Originally Robert De Niro was cast as the character now played by Ray Winstone, so my first viewing of this trailer was all about reconciling how I’d once imagined De Niro working that role in comparison to Winstone’s work. I like Winstone a lot, and he gets a couple of my favorite moments in this clip. And, really, things are going pretty well in this trailer as it sets up the story of Gibson’s murdered daughter, a possible conspiracy and presents what looks like an … |
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13 Oct
| Update: It looks like the studio is hunting down this trailer online and removing it from various sites. We’ll see if we can get another version of it up soon. You will watch this trailer and believe you’ve been transported to another decade. This three minute promo for The Expendables—Sylvester Stallone’s latest project as writer/director/star—has pretty much everything you’d want from a cheesy as all hell ’80s action flick. A group of tough guys gathered to take out some military leader, check. A mysterious female contact who they can’t trust, check. Explosions and said tough guys leaping away from those explosions in slow motion, you bet your ass. And perhaps most telling that this film knows exactly what it wants to be, you have Dolph Lundgren referencing Showdown in Little Tokyo with “Bring it happy feet!”—this time with Jet Li in the place of the dearly departed Brandon Lee. I suppose at this … |
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12 Oct
| [Update:The real trailer is now online at MySpace. You can check out the embed below, or head there for an HD version.] I’m sure this isn’t meant to be on YouTube quite yet, but the full Toy Story 3 trailer is up now…we’ll see how long this version lasts. But while it does, the trailer looks and sounds great, even to an old Randy Newman-dismissing curmudgeon like me. Check it out after the jump. If you’ve not been following news on the film, it has been fairly well-known that the story would follow what happens to Woody, Buzz and the other toys when Andy goes to college and his old box of toys is donated to a day-care center. That’s the basic thrust of this trailer: we get a nice little time-capsule montage of the toys’ life with young Andy, and then a cut to a really beautifully animated version of young … |
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9 Oct
| Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? More Than A Game Trailer So, if you’re sitting in the front row when LeBron James tosses his rosin up in the air like some sort of ass clown … |
