Now that Angelenos are getting our own “Law & Order” show and are coming out the other end of killer heat wave, I guess it makes sense that we get our first big movie alien invasion since, I think, the 1953 version of “War of the Worlds.”
This is supposedly a lowish budget affair and is impressive. I kind of dig the “District 9“-esque effects, and there are some decent low-budget actors here as well. Might not be bad.
H/t /Film.
The Coen Brothers certainly have been no strangers to the American West or movie Western iconography. Still, there’s a difference between borrowing Western tropes for such more or less contemporary tales as “Raising Arizona” or “Fargo” or “No Country for Old Men” and making an actual western with six-shooters and cowboys and all of that. Hence, this teaser for “True Grit” makes me very, very happy.
H/t the Film Drunk, who very correctly reminds us that this may perhaps be more fairly described as a new adaptation of Charles Portis’s novel. I haven’t read the book yet — at least I don’t remember ever reading it — and its been decades since I’ve seen the hit John Wayne/Henry Hathaway version from the sixties, but I understand from people in the know that, surprisingly, that version was mostly very faithful to the book.
A preview that’s been on all the ‘net, but not here yet.
Even though he was king during the time of England’s greatest troubles, King George VI tends to be overshadowed by his older brother, the famously abdicating and fascist-leaning King Edward, his long-reigning daughter, the present Queen Elizabeth II who’s been on top since 1952, amazingly enough, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who actually ran the government during the war. Maybe one reason George VI is so little discussed today is that he didn’t exactly have a natural flair for public speaking.
And therein lies the tale that won the audience award a couple of weeks back at the Toronto International Film Festival and which may well be a player at Oscar time because, like so many of us, the Academy are suckers for English accents.
I admit it, I’m eat this stuff up with a spoon. Great cast led by the ever-better Colin Firth and an impish Geoffrey Rush, interesting topic — stuttering is still a difficult to solve problem for sufferers — probable poignant feel-good conclusion and what appears to be just a bit of cinematic imagination and some really great looking period detail. My cinematic Anglophilia is officially on high alert.
Though there’s been some bombshell television news today, it’s been a blissfully slow news 48 hours regarding the movie world. True, Mike Fleming had a couple of scoops yesterday. His short list of possible “Superman” directors is fun — I’ll take Duncan Jones please, though Matt Reeves would be okay, too. Also, though I remain impressed by her work, having just seen another terrific performance by Chloe Moretz at a screening last night of “Let Me In,” the fact that she’s got another nice gig as “Emily the Strange” is interesting but not exactly earth shattering. So, I’ll forgo the end-of-week movie news dump.
Instead, we’ll spotlight what have to be the trailers of the day, if not the week. According to Anne Thompson, it apparently started from a tweet by the very busy former “Lost” showrunner Damon Lindelof, who’s heading to India and will be checking out what has to be one of the most lavish Bollywood films ever in terms of effects. It’s a superheroic science fiction tale involving, well, a robot, a giant snake thing, an enormous number of guns, and, of course, big time musical numbers! Here’s the short trailer and some brief TV spots Thompson ran.
Also, just about the time Thompson put up her post, I was alerted by friend-of-the-blog-and-blogger Randy R. to a another, slightly more musical comedy oriented trailer that was running on the site of Ms. Thompson’s comics counterpart, Heidi MacDonald.
Gotta love Bollywood: something for everyone.
Just for the record, “Robot” is directed by Shankar (though it’s such a common name I’m not 100% sure if this is the same Shankar who crafted the hugely popular “3 Idiots,” though it seems like a reasonable bet) and stars Aishwarya Rai and Rajnikanth who I gather is known as simply Rajni and is a superstar. The music is by A.R. Rahman who is easily the best known composer of Bollywood music here in the West for his terrific work on “Lagaan” and also as the double-Oscar winning composer of the music for “Slumdog Millionaire.”
It know it’s crazy but I still haven’t read the final Harry Potter book and so I refuse to watch the trailer below, lest it spoil the first 100 pages for me or something. But, since it’s everywhere else on the ‘net, it might as well be here, too.
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