Lord of War

Ah, the delight of a tight, clean trailer. The voice over uses that perfect Nicholas Cage bored voice to perfect effect, reeling off facts and plot as though they are the most boring things in the world, juxtaposing some pretty rough imagery with dry, dark humor. I guess this movie comes out tomorrow in the States, but that doesn't much help me here in Japan.

Even withouth seeing the movie, I have a feeling I'll love the main character. The smug way he's smiling when making his business deals, the confidence when dealing with the authorities - he just seems like a cool-under-pressure guy in the traditions of Bogart and McQueen, but with a darker twist. The world-weariness is now a bit more cynical, the look is less strength and more behind the scenes work, but the feeling that everything that happens to this guy, he expects it. That's the same.

The music, the occaisonal use of split screen all work well, and the few funny lines in the preview are genuinely funny, well delivered, and well timed. The "thank you, but I prefer it my way" at the end gets a smile out of me every time.

Trailer (Apple)

V for Vendetta

I cant say that they haven't hurt me before.

The bros Wachowski and I have had a long and stormy relationship.

It starts, of course, with The Matrix. Awesome trailer, better film. When the early teasers were released for Reloaded, I was intrigued. When the full blown theatrical trailer dropped...well, lets just say that my Girlfriend still hasn't forgiven me for making her sit through half a hundred viewings of that one.

So, it's been with great trepidation that I have been getting steadily more excited for V for Vendetta. Yeah, maybe they didn't direct it, but i am confident they have had their fingers in the pie in a very major way.

The trailer's got a lot to like. We see how cute Ms Portman is with her head shaved. We see a totalitarian future done right (you could learn from this Aeon Flux). And who is that as our brutal overlord? Why it's none other than Winston Smith himself, Mr. John Hurt.

This could conceivably be another in the long line of filmic dreck that Alan Moore's comic works seem to inspire (e.g. the lofty but flawed From Hell, the entertaining but terrible LXG, and the punishingly unwatchable Swamp Thing), time will tell.

But does anyone else get a little chill at the end when V says "Remember, remember the 5th of November"?



Just me? Fair enough.

Trailer (Apple)

It's a good trailer. I particularly like the scenes that hint at a government gone wrong (v/o about hundreds of thousands of dead, the shot of someone spreading lyme over what we assume is a mass grave.) As opposed to Aeon (stupid) Flux which hints at a government gone wrong with one floaty scarf and what appears to be pointy grass.

The fifth of November had the same effect on me too - reminds me of the Two Towers trailer, but not nearly as potent.

-Ben

Thumbsucker

OK, so before I go on a rant about this trailer I'd like to first point out that I actually do like it. I think it's a well put together trailer. It's funny, touching, well shot, original and all kinds of other things that one would normally associate with a good trailer and thereby a good movie. However, I'm going to defy expectations. I'm worried about this movie and how it seems to be fitting into this new breed of hipster cinema that I think Wes Anderson and Garden State have spawned.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Wes Anderson's films. I adore Garden State. But I think we're in for a new style of films that Thumbsucker and Chumscrubber will be a part of. Earlier this year Jim Jarmusch contributed to it with the vastly (vastly, vastly, vastly times infinity) overrated Broken Flowers. In these films the protagonists will be completely emotionless, detached outsiders who silently look on as the world moves around them. We are supposed to feel sorry for these people because they don't fit in. However, as these films become popular they will immediatly lose their effect because the feeling of being an outsider will be appropriated and glamorized into popularity. Each of these protagonists will have some quirky little trait like sucking thier thumb (or creating bad conceptual art like in the other overrated film Me, You and Everyone We Know). They will be filled with imagery that reeks of said character's loneliness (for example, trash falling out of the sky and protagonist crawling out of it and dusting himself off). And the characters will come to learn that thier differences are what makes them beautiful and unique and triumphant hipster music will play as it does in this trailer.

I think Garden State was an excellent start. But let's face it, what made that movie was not Zach Braff's lonesome, depressed self. It was Natalie Portman. The disaffected thing was never really that interesting but just at the right time he introduced a bright, exciting character who actually MADE CHOICES throughout the film. They were not always the right ones, but were always somehow endearing. Once these films start to focus on the disaffected people who just beg the audience to love them while the rest of the world is populated with characters whose sole purpose is to understand them by the end of the film, these movies will become boring and tedious.

That said, I do like the trailer. It looks like something I'm actually going to like Keanu Reeves in. Sometimes I forget that he's been quite good before. And not just in Bill and Ted. Watch him in My Own Private Idaho and you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm excited about the rest of the cast as well. Tilda Swinton has always been really good, but after Broken Flowers and this she may be heading back to the hipster video-art world where she got her start. I've always been convinced that Vince Vaughn and Vincent D'Onofrio were somehow the same person. I don't know whether this movie will confirm or deny that. We shall see. I'll see the goddamn film inevitably. In fact, I'll probably like it unless we're supposed to feel sorry for our poor thumbsucker because he doesn't fit in and is thin and has no hips.

Fucking Hipster.

Trailer (Apple)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

I wonder what the purpose of my life is. I wonder what my purpose in this world is. I wonder what the purpose of most of the components inside my computer is. I do not wonder what the purpose of a movie trailer is. The purpose of a movie trailer is to make me want to buy a few scanty hours in the theatre with a given film.

This trailer does not do that.

This trailer highlights some jokes that aren’t all that funny, and some characters that aren’t all that lively, and some plot points that seem both tired and unrelated. I notice that by the end of this trailer, it seems to have forgotten the initial device: a small time crook accidentally gets cast in a movie. If the voice-over (dreadful, incidentally) were to address that, it may sound something like this:

“Harry was a small time crook….who got cast in a movie and then did some other things that were totally unrelated to this initial plot hook.”

Based on other things I’d seen and heard about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang I was under the impression that it was going to be a fairly likable film. I was looking forward to it. This trailer heaps some evidence on the “crap pile,” so to speak.

Of course there are some comical explosions and accidental deaths, all things we should expect from “the creator of Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight.” Shane Black, it would seem, finds high comedy in unlikely pairings with tragic results.

Ultimately, this just feels like a retread of the things he did in the Lethal Weapon movies (of which there were four, in case anyone reading this wants to compile them for a weekend film fest that will start funny and end tragically). [As an aside, anyone looking to define the phrase “phoning it in” needs only to watch Lethal Weapon 4] You have two characters who are put together in difficult circumstances and yell at/punch each other ‘til the problem is solved. Sounds like Americana to me.

Trailer (Apple)

Good Night and Good Luck

OK, so this is my first time posting on a blog ever so it's going to take me a little while to get the hang of it. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what this particular blog is all about. Are we discussing the trailers themselves? Are we discussing whether or not we think the movies will be any good? I mean, the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. The trailer for The Skeleton Key was amazing, but the movie, well...the movie hurt my face on the inside. And like Ben mentioned about the Bourne Identity in his previous post, the trailer was horrible. In fact, so horrible that I haven't seen the movie no matter how wonderful everyone else says it is.

Wait a minute. This brings up a few more questions about blogging etiquette. Who reads this? When we write, are we addressing the anonymous reader who has traversed cyberspace to find out what us three idiots think about the most recent ad campaigns for upcoming motion pictures? Or am I addressing you, Ben and this other person I don't know. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, I don't know whether we're supposed to address each other by our real names or by our Blogger Code Names. You see, I have conveniently created a username which is quite identical to my real name. Some may say I lack originality, but secretly I'm only doing it for your peace of mind. However, I don't know if I've blown Ben's (Spiffae's) cover now. I don't know if it's a secret and now we'll be on some government list and we examined in great detail by the FBI depending on our trailer preference.

I will use that as a brilliant segue into my choice of trailer today. I would like to discuss for a moment why I think Good Night and Good Luck is now on par with Jarhead as my most anticipated movie of the year. It's really an incredible trailer. This movie came out of nowhere for me. I hadn't read about it or heard about it and all of a sudden there was this trailer online. I'm a huge fan of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney's directorial debut. In fact, the more I think about it George Clooney has really been doing interesting work throughout his career under the radar of his movie stardom. He was the one who pushed so hard for that live episode of ER when he was still on the show. And after that he produced that live version of Fail Safe that was on TV. Live television like that hadn't been done in decades. He's proved to have a great deal of range and comic timing in the movies he's done with the Coens and Steven Soderberg. Basically what I'm getting at is that I had no idea how huge of a fan I was of George Clooney until this moment. There are directors who make good movies and then there are those that really work hard to break boundaries and change cinema. I think that Clooney may become on of those people. He should just make sure he keeps hanging out with Steve-O (Soderberg, that is).

So yeah, George Clooney is awesome. We got that down. But let's take a look at how daring this movie is in almost every way shape and form. First of all, there's the black and white. Nobody shoots in black and white anymore. It's thought of as a box office kiss of death. When Man Who Wasn't There came out, the studio made them shoot it in color and then process it in black and white in case the test screenings were bad. Oh, and Sin City doesn't count as black and white. I mean, maybe it counts as black and white. It just doesn't count as a movie. Really it's better described as an appropriation/bastardization of a truly classic movement in cinema used to punish it's viewers for Frank Miller's feelings of insecurity about his own masculinity. But maybe I shouldn't get into why I think Sin City is the symbol of the death of American civilization.

Anyway, bold choice Mr. Clooney, that black and white. Also the choice of casting. He could have easily put a big movie star in that role who would have been a magnet for heaps of awards. The Academy would have been like "Keanu Reeves as Edward R. Murrow? Wow, he's showing such range. Impressive." If he put on some kind of prosthetic nose he would have been a shoo-in. Because making yourself ugly for a part is the new acting. In any case, I've always thought David Strathairn was one of those great actors who has never really gotten an amazing part to sink his teeth into. And my guess is that most of the world doesn't even know who he is. I'll have to wait to see this trailer in the theaters to see if there are gasps of "Oh, David Strathairn is in that film. You know, The River Wild changed my life." Anyway, about everyone else. I've decided that Patricia Clarkson should be in every movie ever made. And she's not doing too badly at this point. Now she's just in every independent movie ever made. I could still see more of her. And it's nice to finally see Robert Downey Jr. in movies again. It's been a long time. I missed you Bobby.

But let's face it. It all boils down to this: finally, there's a movie coming out that seems like it will ferociously and gracefully tackle our current political situation. All year films have put forward half-hearted attempts at containing political messages. There was George Lucas tossing in a line about "only a sith thinks in absolutes." But Georgie will jump on any political bandwagon if it will make people think his films are more than just a geeky fantasy. A few years after Star Wars came out he "revealed" in interviews that Darth Vader was supposed to be Richard Nixon. But really he was just a little jealous of his buddies Copolla and Scorsese and all of them tackling very difficult and political subject matter. Then there was War of the Worlds which tried to be "thought provoking." At least in that HG Wells' story was originally an indictment of imperialism and Speilberg somewhat disgustingly appropriated imagery from September 11th. It would have been OK if he'd followed through with it, but ultimately the film just became a highlight reel from his earlier movies. Then you have Batman, which actually was quite excellent and very forcefully dealt with the concept of fear, but very vaguely dealt with how that relates to what's going on now and what we should think of its message. Should we fear a corrupt government that is run by the ruthless immoral businessmen? Or should we fear Liam Neeson with a strangely Arab sounding name running a moving object filled with poison gas into the major building of our city. I don't know and the movie didn't either. Although maybe its ambiguity was what made it so good.

But finally we're getting a film that will point out the strange similarities of what's going on now to the Red Scare in the 50s. I'm thrilled that Clooney is tackling such material and that films like this are finally going to start coming out. I bet it'll win tons of awards. Here's my prediction for the nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (which Clooney WROTE too. That man's a monster!), Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Cinematography and a few other random awards here and there. It won't win 'em all, but I'll give it two or three. But that's enough of that. I think I'll just sit here and wait for the film to come out for a little while. Until then,
Kevan.

Trailer (Yahoo)

Aeon Flux

Come on now. Coming from an awesome cartoon with very little story and - if I remember correctly - no spoken lines, we get a stupid, talky trailer? This trailer is stupid. It's really stupid. It's boring, poorly edited, has a terrible voice over ("People disappear as though they never existed" - is that even a sentence?), and full of terible sound effects ("Government control is total. BANG BANG).

The worst part, the thing I can't get past, even if I were to overlook the fact that entire trailer is stupid (hard to do, trust me), is that Charlize is simply not an action actress. There isn't a single shot, not even a single frame, where she looks like she's actually kicking ass. And for "a ruthlessly efficient" "perfect assassin," that's a problem.

I remember thinking the same thing when the trailer for The Bourne Identity came out, and I was wrong then. This time though, every bone in my body says this is going to be a stinker.

And the music is so terrible, so bland and generic that I'm not going to post it.

Yeah, I never saw the show but the trailer definitely sucks. I would like to remind you, however, that the movie was directed by the woman who did Girlfight, which was an excellent film. She's also a Brooklyn resident.

BROOKLYN!

That said, I'm not exactly dying to see the movie. But I'll at least wait until the review to come out before I make my final judgement. And besides, I know the woman who edited the movie. She worked at Indigent when I was there and she was really cool and friendly to me. I hope she didn't edit this trailer though. Or is reading this. Oops.

- Kevan.

Come on guys! Am I the only person who watched the show Aeon Flux?
Well, it looks that way. The show did have dialogue, Ben, but most of it was as incomprehensible as the plotline.
Peter Cheung (creator of Aeon flux and, in my opinion, the vastly superior Phantom 2040, as well as the largely unseen Reign: The Conquerer) seems to not have had any involvement with the film. This could be a good thing or a bad thing.
The trailer makes me think it was probably a bad thing. The film looks to have none of what made the show great: extreme stylization, grotesque sexuality, or the bizarre incidental music. It’s a shame.
- A.D.

Night Watch

Whoever is cutting these trailers knows what the hell they are doing. I don't know the first thing about this movie, but the combination of some pretty incredible and original CG along with a perfect soundtrack make for two and a half well-spent minutes.

Will the movie be good? I doubt it. It looks like all the cool stuff is in the trailer, though you never know. Those Russian-action-horror-special effects bonanza directors truly are an unknown quantity here, as the Russian-action-horror-special effects bonanza is truly an untested genre.

The music for the second half of the trailer is "Unrecorded" by M83, if you were wondering.

Trailer (Apple)