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)