"Wait a second," you say. "Wasn't that movie called Harold and Maude?" Well, yes, but now it's been adapted and finessed and sweetened by Gus Van Sant, producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, writer Jason Lew and the Sony establishment as Restless. Click through at your own risk: You'll twee your pants.
When you read that HBO was teaming with Judd Apatow to give writer/director/performer Lena Dunham her very own television series, only one thing probably ran through your mind: Who's Lena Dunham? Allow the new trailer for her South by Southwest hit Tiny Furniture to helpfully provide an answer.
Sure, Danny Boyle's brutal one-man survival show, 127 Hours, is getting plenty of critical praise, but do you know what it's missing? A high concept bank-robber-with-amnesia angle. Which brings us to the trailer for Wrecked, in which Adrian Brody wakes up to find himself stranded in a wrecked car that seems to have been dropped in the middle of a huge forest. He cannot remember his name or how he got there...but he has a gun. Your reaction to the trailer will first depend on how you feel about spending an entire movie with Brody. Besides a few flashbacks, it seems that his main co-stars are miles of wilderness, that car and the pistol he wakes up with.
The Drive Angry trailer doesn't pull any punches. Within the first fifteen seconds, Nicolas Cage blows up a car with a shotgun while sporting sunglasses and amazing/horrible, apparently Celtic blond hair. Then a booming trailer voice explains that he broke out of Hell. Hell like...A depressing time in his life? A terrible office job? A brutal prison? No, he literally died, went to Hell and then broke out. I think it somehow involved really fast cars. It gets even better (or worse) from here.
"The truth is hiding," says the Big Voice Guy toward the end of the trailer for All Good Things. In actuality, of course, the movie is hiding. Or was. Andrew Jarecki's "based on true events" tale of martial strife, deception and possible murder was sitting on The Weinstein Company's shelf for over a year before he purchased it back and sold the rights to Magnolia. A happy ending for sure, except for the fact that All Good Things looks not so good.
Kanye West is currently touring the world, screening a 40-minute film Runaway, which he shot for four days in Prague and directed himself. During a screening in Sydney, West apparently took a stab at humility when introducing the film to the crowd. I'm no Fellini," he said to the confused masses. Thanks for the disclaimer, Kanye.
Is America ready for a comedic romp about four bumbling extremists planning a terrorist attack? Newly formed distribution company Alamo Drafthouse Films hopes so. And actually with such a hilarious trailer and promising talent behind the film, they may not be out of line.
I admit I shouldn't be parsing the effectiveness of marketing materials for movies I utterly despise, but even a hater can and should be fair: The trailer for Blue Valentine is adorable. It makes great use of arguably the best scene in the entire film, splitting blips and threads of the rest in a manner echoing the story's fragmentation. You will laugh, you will cry, you will not be admitted if you are under the age of 17. Any questions?
Normally, you expect limited release December films to be stuffy awards bait, but Peter Weir is determined to change that. OK, yes, the trailer for The Way Back -- Weir's prison escape epic hitting theaters in Los Angeles on Dec. 29 before going wide in January -- hails the film as being "From Six Time Academy Award Nominee Peter Weir," but that doesn't mean you'll need to bring a pillow. A tolerance for Boris and Natasha-like Russian accents, maybe. But, no pillow. Seriously, check out those wolves!
With copy boasting that James Franco gives "one of the greatest performances of all-time," the full-length trailer for 127 Hours arrives to officially welcome its star to the Oscar party. Not that he needed any welcoming -- Franco sits third on the list for Best Actor in this week's edition of Movieline's Oscar Index -- and, sure, he's trailing Jesse Eisenberg and Colin Firth in the entirely-too-early-to-call race for Best Actor, but do those men have their trials and tribulations scored with Band of Horses?
I've suspended disbelief for years of revenge movies, but for some reason one question wouldn't leave my mind during the Faster trailer: Why do murder gangs always mess with the families of ex-cops, ex-marines, or guys as huge as Dwayne Johnson? Do they get some masochistic thrill from the challenge? Or is it sheer stupidity? Any guesses? Whatever the case, in Faster an apparently huge gang kills Johnson's brother, and so they must die. One by one.
I imagine most of America would buy a ticket to see Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie run around Europe in cool clothes while reading street signs out loud. But not only does The Tourist feature the two mega-stars in a beautiful setting, it also adds guns, romance, intrigue, some very funny dialogue, and Johnny Depp in his pajamas. My natural inclination when movies look this irresistible and universally appealing is to resist. If it's too good to be true it probably is! But preliminary research suggests that resistance is actually impossible.
The makers of Paranormal Activity have undertaken the inevitable franchising of their blockbuster horror title not only in America, where it's arguably still scary/creepy, but also in Japan, where a hilariously banal new trailer features legions of petrified young Japanese women reduced to puddles of tears. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
Ick. On a list of things that make me uneasy, the human organ black market would definitely be top five. Maybe Diane Kruger and Dermont Mulroney's characters in Inhale feel the exact same way. But their daughter needs a lung! They are somewhat wealthy, but not rich enough to bypass the waiting list in the U.S. And did I mention that their daughter is going to die without this lung? So it's a tough spot to begin with, but when Sam Shepard and Rosanna Arquette come along with some intriguing news about organ availability in Mexico, things start to get really messy.
Unless you have DirecTV or know someone who does, you won't be able to watch the final season of Friday Night Lights until it airs on NBC next spring. Speaking as a member of the show's ardent fan base: Boo! (Psst, DirecTV, send me the screeners.) For now then, this new promo for Friday Night Lights is the closest thing we'll get to game action for a few more months. Which makes you wonder: Just what show is being sold here?
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