Nov 20 2009 'Last Song' Trailer: Miley Cyrus Gets Her Shot at Bland Teenage Drama
Britney Spears had Crossroads; Mandy Moore had A Walk to Remember; now Miley Cyrus (or is it Hannah Montana when she's acting?) gets her shot at moving from pop songs to insipid melodrama with The Last Song. Based on a Nicholas Sparks book--like A Walk to Remember--the film seems to be about Cyrus/Montana visiting father Greg Kinnear's beach house, meeting a boy, kissing that boy, and the boy executing the fucking strangest, most puzzling romantic gestures he can muster. It's like watching a girl fall in love with a handsome psychotic:
Continue Reading " 'Last Song' Trailer: Miley Cyrus Gets Her Shot at Bland Teenage Drama "
Nov 19 2009 'Remember Me' Trailer: Robert Pattinson Has Movies Besides 'Twilight' Sequels, You Know
Pierce Brosnan is as surprised as you.
See R. Pattinson continue his bad boy boyfriend shtick while trading in sparkly vampirism for throwing things and smoking indoors (so bad!) in this trailer for Remember Me. As a bonus, you'll also get to see Pattinson get his face slammed into the pavement (therapeutic if you're really sick of this whole Twilight thing) and how a former James Bond has transformed into George Hamilton.
Nov 11 2009 'Extraordinary Measures': Rated PG for a Mild Suggestive Moment
Brendan Fraser keeps having kids with terminal illnesses. What's a dad to do? A lesser father must just throw in the towel and decide, "Alright, I'll just ride these two out and stop having children," but not Brendan Fraser. He finds Harrison Ford and tells him, "You have to do more science faster!" And Harrison Ford replies, "OK, let's make cures and inspiration!"
Continue Reading " 'Extraordinary Measures': Rated PG for a Mild Suggestive Moment "
Nov 11 2009 Tyler Perry's Trailer for Tyler Perry's Movie
Tyler Perry isn't like most people. He routinely dresses up like an old woman and films it, for one thing. He also feels the need to point out that he owns all of his movies. But at the root of all these things that make Tyler Perry such a unique cross-dresser is his special brain. It doesn't work like yours and mine.
For example, when you or I see Couples Retreat, we see a lazy, forgettable comedy about troubled couples on a beach resort. In that same film, Tyler Perry sees an unpolished gem, only in need of a month buffing in the Tyler Perry's Insane Melodrama Tumbler to become this:
Continue Reading " Tyler Perry's Trailer for Tyler Perry's Movie "
Oct 28 2009 Dramedy Named After a Cracker Gets Solid Cast
Do you like the style of comedies that are also dramas, and vice versa? Then you may possibly enjoy Town House, just such a comedy-drama fusion that has Zach Galifianakis and Amy Adams in talks to star:
Story is loosely based on Tish Cohen's debut novel of the same name, which centers on an agoraphobic man, who lives with his teenage son in a historic Boston townhouse that he inherited from his rock star father. With royalties from his father's work dwindling, the man is forced to come to terms with his life. A call girl strikes up a friendship with the man. Doug Wright and Carney adapted the screenplay.
Galifianakis as an agoraphobe? That sounds like just the kind of meaty, socio-mutanty part he can sink his beard into. Computer, purchase tickets. Two. Weekend after opening.
Oct 28 2009 'Invictus' Trailer: This Would Make More Sense If I Understood Any Element of Rugby
Eat your Oscar bait: the trailer for Clint Eastwood's Invictus. Based on John Carlin's book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation, it's a film that shows how a rugby game was able to unite a racially divided nation, and how, apparently, a rugby game can be won if the president tells the captain, "Come on, guys, win this rugby game!" Simple as that:
Oct 23 2009 'Invictus' One-Sheet: See the Poster Before It Wins the Oscars
Continuing the recent trend of airbrushed-on-the-back-of-a-jacket poster design, Clint Eastwood's Nelson Mandela + rugby film now has an official poster on Yahoo. I'm hoping this style eventually evolves into more of an embroidered-on-a-jacket look, so that I can have a good pattern for embroidering Matt Damon on the back of my jean jacket.
Oct 23 2009 'Uncertainty' Trailer: Which Unwatchable Movie Will Joseph Gordon-Levitt Star In???
Uncertainty! It's like Sliding Doors, except instead of seeing a closing train door determine Gwyneth Paltrow's life with two different guys, you see a coin flip decide if Joseph Gordon-Levitt will star in an boring indie melodrama or a ridiculous, cell-phone-based thriller (à la Eagle Eye and Echelon Conspiracy)! That should be the tagline. Here's the trailer:
Oct 14 2009 'Dear John' Poster: Where Is Judd Hirsch?
Possible inspirations for this poster:
- Herpes medication commercial imagery
- '70s teen romance novel covers
- The ancient myth of the Two-Headed Asshole From High School
- A Getty Image search for "romance"
- True (clichéd) love
- Whatever would be most likely to get your fucking boring girlfriend excited
'Dear John' Poster [IMPA]
Sep 23 2009 'Afterschool' Trailer: Watching Prep School Girls Die By Rat Poison Seems Traumatizing
If Dead Poets Society still has you wishing you'd had the opportunity to enjoy the camaraderie of a prep school (God, I wish I could have stood on my desk and defended Robin Williams the Teacher), here's just the film to make you realize the darker side of prep schools. The side where some girls ingest a mixture of narcotics and rat poison, you end up accidentally taping their death and watching them die in your arms, and then you have to make a memorial video:
Sep 22 2009 John Malkovich Playing a Jockey?
That doesn't make sense, does it? He's 6'1". Yet still:
John Malkovich is set to join "Secretariat," the Randall Wallace-directed drama for Disney.Malkovich will play Lucien Laurin, the former jockey who became the trainer of the 1973 Triple Crown-winning racehorse. At the core of the film is the relationship between the horse and his owner, Penny Chenery (played by Diane Lane), a housewife who knew little about horse racing when she took over her ailing father's Virginia horse farm.
Disney, if I want to watch a film about the relationship between a racehorse and its owner who knows little about the sport, I'll stick with with Hot to Trot. That way I also get the added benefits of a full monthly dose of talking horses and Bobcat Goldthwait voice.
Sep 14 2009 'New Moon' Trailer: Being a Teenage Girl Torn Between Vampire and Werewolf Boyfriends is Rough
The Twilight saga continues! And now there's a vampire king or something! Which is a bit ridiculous, because it isn't Dracula. If a vampire king is named, it's obviously going to be Dracula. Who's going to run against Dracula in a vampire king election? Get with it, Stephenie Meyer.
Anyway, here's the new New Moon trailer, Twilightiacs.
Sep 9 2009 'In the Air' Teaser: Live Like a Well-Dressed Hobo
Hey, it's the first trailer for Jason Reitman's In the Air. The teaser is built around a motivational speech by George Clooney's character, who endorses a traveling lifestyle free of the burden of material possessions and personal relationships. His viewpoint really rang true for me, since I can't afford owning things, and I'm too obnoxious to have friends. But does it still count as following his philosophy if, instead of flying place to place, I just kind of shuffle around muttering?
Continue Reading " 'In the Air' Teaser: Live Like a Well-Dressed Hobo "
Sep 4 2009 Tyler Perry Adapting Play for a Very Specific Demographic
New Tyler Perry! Only this time T.P. isn't directing something from his own melodrama-and-sass-filled mindscape. Variety reports America's favorite comic transvestite is adapting For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf for the big screen. Wikipedia describes the play thusly:
For Colored Girls is a series of 20 poems, referred collectively as a "choreopoem", performed through a cast of nameless women, each known only by a color: "Lady in Yellow", "Lady in Purple", etc.. The poems deal with love, abandonment, rape, and abortion. The performances of the seven actresses are focused on their specific stories; i.e., Lady in Blue's visceral account of a woman who chooses to have an abortion; and Lady in Red's tale of domestic violence.
Well, that certainly sounds like a Tyler Perry. So long as there's also a Lady character known as "Lady in a Fat Suit and a Wig, and the Lady is Actually a Man."
Aug 31 2009 Clive Owen Apparently Doing Hallmark Channel-esque Movies
Since he didn't become Bond, looks like he decided to become a male Bette Midler instead. When this comes out, I'm going to have such a good cry that I probably won't come out of my bath all night.
'The Boys Are Back' Poster [IMPA]
Aug 26 2009 Susan Sarandon is Your Mom, Dude! (Dude Being Shia LaBeouf)
Good news, Susan Saran-fans (as you call yourselves)! The 62-year-old actress has been cast as Shia LaBeouf's mother in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, and it sounds like Michael Douglas will be kissin' her:
Sarandon will play the mother of a young Wall Street trader (Shia LaBeouf) who falls under the seductive influence of Gordon Gekko. Michael Douglas and Frank Langella also star. Production begins next month in New York.
So Sarandon will have birthed 23-year-old LaBeouf at age 39? I suppose that plays, so long as they add an updated quote where Gekko says, "Greed is good. As are the wonders of modern fertility drugs."
Susan Sarandon goes to 'Wall Street 2' [Variety]
Aug 6 2009 Tyler Perry's 'I Can Do Bad All By Myself' Poster Trilogy Concludes Logically
The first Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself poster featured star Taraji P. Henson's face arbitrarily photoshopped onto a yellow rose. The second showed Madea doing a strange, unlikely parody of the Straw Dogs poster. Naturally, the third depicts Henson drowning in an ocean of pastel light as the ghosts of Madeas and R&B stars past hover around her. Really, it was the only logical way to complete the trilogy. In Return of the Jedi, you expect to see Vader die; in the last I Can Do Bad All By Myself poster, you want to to see a woman in an Easter-themed nightclub surrounded by souls. Just common sense.
Exclusive poster premiere: 'I Can Do Bad All By Myself' [Hitfix] (via IMPA)
Aug 5 2009 'Lovely Bones' Trailer: To Catch a Stanley Tucci
I've grown so used to having Dateline NBC's Chris Hansen around to stop all the world's predators, it's hard to remember a time before that--a pre-Hansen era when crimes against children still existed. Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones takes us back to that time, the early '70s, when Hansen was still in school and Stanley Tucci was still able to rape and murder a girl without a camera crew busting in with some chat transcripts. The trailer has just been released, and it looks like the must-see dead-girl-watching-from-Heaven-as-Mark-Wahlberg-solves-her-murder film of the year.
UPDATE: Alright, I guess it's not on YouTube anymore. It's on the Apple, though.
Aug 4 2009 'Blind Side' Trailer: Sandra Bullock is Our Greatest Trophy Wife
Trailer for The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock as a rich suburbanite with a spotty Southern accent who takes in a giant inner city kid, providing the disadvantaged youth with his first bed, and first rugby shirt.
Sample dialogue:
"You're changin' that boy's life."
"No... He's changin' mine."
If you still, for some reason, want to continue on, even with the knowledge that S.B. will have that sickly sweet exchange, here's the trailer. Try to explain to me what circumstances might lead to the scene where foster son and biological son give each other a high five over a table covered in condiments:
Continue Reading " 'Blind Side' Trailer: Sandra Bullock is Our Greatest Trophy Wife "
Jul 30 2009 'Serious Man' Trailer: It's a Coen Brothers, So Just Watch It
For their last film, 2008's entertaining if comparatively forgettable Burn After Reading, Joel and Ethan Coen filled the cast with notable talent like John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and two-thirds of People Magazine's sexiest members of Ocean's Eleven. Always changing up their style, this time the brothers have cast little known actor Michael Stuhlbarg in the lead, playing a man whose marriage, family, career, and health are all in the midst of the kind of rapid deterioration that so often leads to a Falling Down scenario.
Judging by the just-released trailer, it doesn't appear our hero ends up shooting anyone up, but, just as good, he does get his head repeatedly slammed into a chalkboard, providing a disarming back-beat for one of the best edited previews of the year. And I should know about best edited previews of years: I do almost nothing but watch movie trailers all day--a lifestyle choice that has rendered me nearly soulless.
Continue Reading " 'Serious Man' Trailer: It's a Coen Brothers, So Just Watch It "
