Trailers posts

“Whew... Vaughn Meader is fucked.”
--Lenny Bruce, onstage, November 22, 1963

I thought of JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader tonight. I was waiting in line at the movie theater and saw a poster for the upcoming comedy “Neighborhood Watch.” It's about a bunch of suburban dads—Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill (does that dude sleep?)—who band together and create a neighborhood watch group to get away from their families. Apparently, in the process, they uncover a plot to take over the Earth.

Here's the trailer:

In light of recent events in Florida, with the tragic death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a neighborhood watch volunteer, at the least this trailer is gone. I'm shocked it's still on YouTube. It helps that they have a black guy in the car with them—or at least a Norwegian-Nigerian by way of Britain. But the whole vibe of the thing? And Jonah Hill making his finger like a gun? No go. It's Vaughn Meader all over again. It's Peter Bogdonavich's 1968 film “Targets,” about an assassin, slated for release just after the MLK and JFK assassinations. Neighborhood watches might've been funny last year. Not this year.

Although maybe it'll do well in the South.

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UPDATE: Nearly a week later and the Fox studios are finally waking up to the problem. Apparently they've removed the first teaser poster and trailer but only from Florida, where Trayvon Martin was killed, and which passed the “Stand Your Ground” law that allowed George Zimmerman to walk. A Fox spokesperson released the following, carefully worded statement to The Hollywood Reporter:

“We are very sensitive to the Trayvon Martin case, but our film is a broad alien-invasion comedy and bears absolutely no relation to the tragic events in Florida. The movie, which is not scheduled for release for several months, was made and these initial marketing materials were released before this incident ever came to light. The teaser materials were part of an early phase of our marketing and were never planned for long-term use. Above all else, our thoughts go out to the families touched by this terrible event.”

Above all else.

The absurdity of the title is the point of the title but the point of the movie isn't absurdity. From the trailer, it appears to be the usual slow-mo, martial-arts mayhem but with a strong, 19th-century industrial and gadgetry presence. It's “Sherlock Holmes” but in America, and with a real historical (and beloved) character. Plus vampires. The ol' railsplitter is now a vampire-splitter. God save the union. 

I'm sure it'll be shite. But it's the tagline at the end that made me post this. It made me laugh out loud. Did you catch it? It says:

ARE YOU A PATRIOT OR A VAMPIRE?

Brilliant. Truly. It lays bare the absurdity of our time: the uncompromising, absolutist, bifurcated vision of our modern politics and media. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. Because there's no middle ground. America during the Bush years lost its middle class and its middle ground. We've been trying to get both back ever since.

Are you a patriot or a vampire? Someone, somewhere, is laughing their asses off.

Loki: I have an army.
Tony Stark: We have a Hulk.

If I'd seen this when I was a kid, I would've wet my pants.

Via Ross Pfund on Facebook.

I was at the Egyptian Theater Saturday for “A Dangerous Method,” which was good, and saw the usual slew of trailers. These are the ones I made mental notes to see.

“In Darkness,” directed by Agnieszka Holland (“Europa, Europa,” “Three Colors: Blue”), and Poland's official candidate for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 2012 Academy Awards:

“Footnote,” written and directed by Joseph Cedar, winner of best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, and Israel's official candidate for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 2012 Academy Awards:

It's that time of year. For the next three months, the only good new thing in U.S. theaters will be the 2011 foreign language leftovers. Which are often the best movies of the year.

UPDATE: Both films have made the best-foreign-language-film shortlist.

I saw this on IMDb.com yesterday. Can you spot the oddity?

With the left-most trailer, “Newlyweds,” I wondered if the girl with Ed Burns wasn't Melanie Laurent, but I believe it's Caitlin Fitzgerald. But that's not an oddity.

The poster for Cameron Crowe's “We Bought a Zoo” relegates Scarlett Johansson to the background, which is like putting Baby in a corner, but that's not an oddity, either.

No, it's in the right-most trailer image. I saw it and thought, “Oh, Jeremy Renner's got a new movie coming out. Cool.” Then I saw the title.

When was the last time a Tom Cruise movie ignored Tom Cruise in its marketing? Is he still that toxic?

Last Sunday I was almost moved to tears by the trailer for the film “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Thomas Horn, which will be released on Christmas Day 2011.

Today, I read this column by Jeff Wells, in which various best picture contenders are examined and dismissed (“The Descendants,” “Moneyball”), and which concludes with these paragraphs:

...when Gabe The Playlist begrudgingly said there “wasn't a dry eye in the house” toward the end of a recent NY screening of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I felt a little button-push sensation in my chest. I thinking it might be the one....maybe. He said he's not a Stephen Daldry or a Sandra Bullock fan and that he didn't care for the Asperger's kid, but he still recognized or acknowledged that it delivers the emotional payoff that it set out to deliver. ... So it's looking like Extremely Loud might have an edge at this stage.

Then I looked at my review for last year's best picture winner, “The King's Speech.” It begins with this admission before I dismissed the film as a minor film:

When I first saw a trailer for “The King's Speech,“ I was almost moved to tears.

So it looks like ”Extremely Loud" is on the right track anyway. Its trailer nearly moved me to tears. Now let's see if the film is the right kind of sappy for the Academy.

I saw the trailer for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” the other night before seeing Ryan Gosling in “Drive” (more later). Now I knew “TTSS” had been getting good notices—strong best picture candidate, etc.—and I knew it had some heavy hitters in it, Gary Oldman and Colin Firth and the like; but I was shocked, shocked, pleasantly shocked by just how much talent is in this thing. One good actor after another showed up in the trailer. “Hey, John Hurt ... Wow, that looks like Tom Hardy. Really? And Ciarian Hinds is in this, too?” Add Toby Jones and Mark Strong. Plus directed by Tomas Alfredson, who directed “Let the Right One In.”

Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere is particularly impressed with Oldman:

I don't want to get into this too deeply because the film doesn't open for another nine or ten weeks but I can at least say that Gary Oldman's performance as George Smiley has to be considered...no, trumpeted as Best Actor-worthy. I've read a couple of reviews that claim he's not aping Alec Guinness's performance as Smiley in the 1979 British miniseries version. Well, he does seem to be doing that. To me, at least. Oldman barely moves in this thing, but oh, how he delivers! The man is an absolute pleasure just to watch...to simply regard. The stillness of him is sublime.

Opens December 9 in the U.S.

Let the master acting class begin.

They named it for a president. They made it soft and cuddly. But then the claws came out...

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a great trailer like this, that promises a “Summer 2011” release, but then you can't find a release date on IMDb. I'm just saying that I hope somebody releases this thing soon because we need it. Caught between “Final Destination 5” and “The Help,” I'll take the action-adventure movie “The Teddy Bear,” starring Jordan Muschler and Ryan Muschler, thank you.

It was after I watched this talk by Harvey Weinstein on Jeff Wells' site, in which he made passing reference to the movie “Submarine,” that I saw the trailer for the movie on IMDb.com. Curious, I checked it out. It looked good. Although this shot seemed somehow familiar.

Even more so the wallpaper in this shot.

By the time the protagonist walks by the swimming pool in this shot, I was thinking, “OK, that's enough.”

I still hope the movie is good on its own and not simply derivative of Wes Anderson. June 3rd release in the states.

"Grandmother, melancholy grips my heart when I think of your old violin."

—Opening words of a trailer for a film playing at SIFF, the Seattle International Film Festival. I'm a SIFF fan but this is almost a parody of an overly precious SIFF film.

My mother and my friend Jim both love horses and horse-racing movies, so they're both happy it's Derby day, and they're both looking forward to Disney's "Secretariat," about one of the greatest horses who ever raced. This morning, Derby morning, I watched the "Secretariat" trailer for the first time. The movie stars Diane Lane as the horse's owner, John Malkovich as the horse's trainer, and Margo Martindale (who played the American abroad narrating her Paris adventures in horribly accented French, in Alexander Payne's sweet, melancholy vignette in "Paris, je t'aime") as the horse's namer. Good cast. But it looks awful. How do you make drama out of a horse winning the Triple Crown by 31 lengths? ("He's moving like a tremendous machine! Secretariat by 12! Secretariat by 14 lengths at the turn!...") You make it all about the horse's owner. Hopefully they'll still give us Chic Anderson's great call that day. October release.

Secretariat by a nose.

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