Director:Steve Buscemi
Cast: Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, Mary Kay Place, Seymour Cassel, Kevin Corrigan
Release: March 24, 2006
Synopsis: Casey Affleck plays Jim, a young man who, after deciding he can’t make it on his own, moves back to his hometown in Indiana — under his parents’ roof. He’s saved from his family’s dysfunction by a local woman and her son, who sees him as a father figure.

Prognosis: Positive. I went to England once.

Saw a play there.

The play was called “This Is Our Youth” and it was written by Kenneth Lonergan, of YOU CAN COUNT ON ME fame. Matt Damon was supposed to be in it but he was “on holiday” or some such thing and was being replaced by some name I have yet to ever hear again. I thought about not seeing it but I was a fan of the flick and gave it a go. Casey Affleck was in it and it was, perhaps, the best part of the production. He was, without pole smoking his ego, marvelous. I liked him and have enjoyed his presence in other things since then. He has his own style and presentation and it’s nice to see he wants to have his own identity. When I saw the trailer for this, then, I felt that same rush of intrigue I had when I saw him ply his theatrical trade in London.

“He shot himself in the head”

The opening card that announces this is a new comedy from Steve Buscemi has the above line being uttered right before we know this. Casey’s dry, straight-forward speak is well-placed for what looks like, not a black comedy, but a quiet comedy. Liv Tyler plays, in what looks like, your average small town bumpkin who is outside the ken of Casey’s well-read universe. He’s not condescending but as he explains how Hemmingway did away with himself you feel that there is an imbalance in the parity between the two of them. As we walk deeper into the trailer you also get hipped to the knowledge that Casey looks like he is just drifting through his life.

The cinematography precisely reflects the grayness that seems to hover over his head; the danger in this, though, is you could end up with a protagonist who is so blue that the audience might start to wish he really does pull the trigger on his life, ending it all.

After admitting that he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown to Liv, who really warms the climate in this trailer, Casey just absorbs the odd goings-on of his family. From his mother who seems to be cut from the cloth of every adoring mother character there is, to his strange uncle who seems equally cut from the crazy person bin of stock players there seems to be an honesty that just can’t be denied in here.

I am equally floored by how much I see hope in Casey’s frumpy, monotone persona. After telling a squad of diminutive, and equally downtrodden looking, girls that even though they are destined to lose their game but, “the past does not always predict the future.” Whoa, there, Neo, that’s a fistful of foreshadowing if I ever heard it. But, whatever, because the lilting guitars in the background, the modesty with which we’re pimped the number of film festivals the movie has played at and the ease with which this trailer makes its transitions is just commendable.

The ending is a little too cheeky for my taste, the young boy who helps to end things seems to be channeling the dark spirit of Jonathan Lipnicki circa JERRY MAGUIRE, and I really don’t care for Casey’s forced cancer-causing saccharine smile, but the pros far outweigh the cons and makes me really want to go out my way to see this movie.

Director: Terry Zwigoff
Cast: Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, Matt Keeslar, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston
Release: April 28, 2006
Synopsis: Based on a comic story in Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Art School Confidential follows Jerome (Minghella), an art student who dreams of becoming the greatest artist in the world. Arriving as a freshman at a prestigious East Coast art school filled with every artsy “type” there is, Jerome quickly discovers his affected style and arrogance won’t get him very far. When he sees that a clueless jock is attracting the glory rightfully due him, he hatches an all-or-nothing plan to hit it big in the art world and win the heart of the most beautiful girl in the school.

Prognosis: Negative. Hmm, is this a comedy?

I wouldn’t know it by first trying to take in the initial moments of this trailer. When John Malkovich embodies the spirit of an artist who is trying to teach his class the ways of being one I think, initially, he’s being serious. When he tells his audience that he wants to see something he hasn’t already seen many times over I feel he’s getting at something pretty right on the mark: when you’re an artist and trying to create for the first time, be it through words, pictures or sculpture, you sometimes call upon the muse of unoriginality. Sure, to you it’s the first time you’ve drawn a woman’s fun bags, milk wagons, her hoo-ha, what have you, but unless you find the right angle to tackle the singular subject in front of you you’re just going to be white noise compared to everyone else who has been here and done that miserably.

I got all of this just by his opening remarks, true dat, but I got uneasy when the jaunty voiceover starts telling me all about this artiste university, how artisans can explore their creativity (as you see some dude putting the finishing touches, literally, on some ice cream sculpture) and you have one guy in an audience Q&A asking what advice one can give to someone just starting out to which is said, “That is such…a stupid question.”

The Tex Avery wolf jaw plunking down to the ground, that metallic sound clanging off-screen, is what happened at this point. So, I ask again, is this a comedy? I guess it is as the following images, one after another, keep getting more and more obnoxious.

What’s more about this abrupt change is that, in another scene, one guy has his wrists tied with rope with alligator clamps attached to his nipples, leading to a car battery. It’s funny, to be sure, but as soon as he asks someone to hit the juice, he starts screaming and we are jerked, violently, to a woman who is about to disrobe in order to be painted as an artists’ model. I think there could have been a better way to snap from one image to another but this was not the way to do it. The flow is awful.

To add even more mediocrity into the mix we have our protagonist trying to score with some of the art school chicks. This should have been one the best parts of this trailer as we explore all the “wacky and zany” oddballs we can all collectively imagine that inhabit art schools but it’s just executed with the kind of grace that’s usually just reserved for showboating, women’s Olympic snowboarding. To prove my point you have no less than two needle scratch sound effects being employed to get the point across that these ladies are well-beyond the normal purview of women who would, in real life, attend these kinds of schools.

I mean, I get it, wild and crazy chicks are funny to mock and to get a guffaw or two out of them but this is just lazy trailer creation. One of the girls, oddly enough, exemplifies the stereotypical Bettie Page Syndrome I made mention of a few weeks ago; these girls with the retro black hair and sharply cut bangs are always a good go-to for a quick laugh.

I expected more from the dude who brought me BAD SANTA and I feel a little let down. I am just hoping this was a matter of giving this movie to the wrong agency in making the trailer.

Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Cast: Enrique Arreola, Daniel Miranda, Diego Catano, Danny Pereat
Release: March 10th, 2006
Synopsis: Takes you into one particular Sunday morning in the lives of two fourteen-year old boys, Flama and Moko. With their neighbor Rita and pizza delivery boy Ulises, they create their own adventures to overcome their boredom. “Duck Season” explores the loneliness of childhood, the effects of divorce and the curious power of love and friendship.

Prognosis: Mucho Posi-TiVo. I am a fan of memes.

Whether it’s finding out who might be in contention for viral video of the week, the bottle rocket kid shooting one out of his arse was a good one, or that the odd digital short I turned off prematurely one night while Saturday Night Live, Lazy Sunday (And thanks to SNL finding that people actually liked something they’ve done they’ve decided to try and beat the living piss out of these digital shorts by including them in damn near every episode since then. Great idea, peeps.), would have me so hooked after I played it a few half dozen times. The Chuck Norris meme of the moment is good but none of these are possible unless you have 13 year-old boys like these dudes here to pass it along to their cronies.

What I enjoy about this trailer, primarily, is the strength of its opening. I am always amazed that for as many times as I’ve done this there are dozens of new approaches to get things started. Here it’s the black and white static shot of a mother walking out of an apartment door and pushing the elevator door as two boys look on. The musical cue comes in, a funky 70’s ba-wanka beat, and the screen goes black. The boys cheer in delight as their adult overlord has unmanned their post for a while, they crack open the Coke, sit their asses down in front of the television and go to town playing Halo. The music is crackin’ and the frags are poppin.

The power cuts out.

The mood sours as things get silent. Like true boys, they languish in their unfortunate situation by just sitting there.

Things turn strange when a girl from next door stops by for reasons we’re not sure of nor are we sure why an odd pizza delivery guy makes himself at home; if I had money on it, though, I would say it would to be to kill the three of them but that’s just my experience talking.

The lives of these four people start to fuse together as they delight in doing the kinds of things that kids are known for doing: inciting indirect mayhem by just having too much time, and imagination, on their hands. The music that lilts behind the cut scenes of these people getting goofy fits perfectly; it’s fun, it’s jaunty and makes no sense. You get a cadre, a lot, of different award props. There seems to be a couple of dozen that fill up the screen but you get the point, and they are cheeky about doing it, that while this is a seemingly wistful movie you’re going to get something more.

I cannot explain why watching this trailer is so soothing and enjoyable but in an arena where loud and brash are the tools of the trade I give this trailer positive vibrations solely for setting a nice mood.

You’ve got a foreign langauage film, strike number 1, plus you’ve got a movie about kids, strike 2, and your sole goal with this trailer is to garner some interest without using too much of your native dialogue, strike 3. I don’t envy this marketing department at all because foreign flicks ARE a hard sell to us Americans. We like to think of ourselves as melting pots of humanity but we likes our entertainments en ingles thank you very much.

This trailer manages to overcome all of these things by not being afraid to make it all money shots, and it hurts to see the flicks that have to resort to that in their adverts, and present the movie as it is supposed to be seen. It’s one of those things where, as good or bad as the movie may be, you’ve got to admire their one shot to reach the American audience takes this form.

Carl Taylor: “Golf clap?”

James St. James: “Golf clap.”

Director: Frank Coraci
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken
Release: June 23, 2006
Synopsis: CLICK focuses on a workaholic architect who finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.

Prognosis: Depends on how mainstream I’m feeling that week. Let’s have an open discussion, okay, a one-sided discussion with your delayed thoughts to follow later, about the place where Adam Sandler movies fit in the filmic landscape.

The knee-jerk response that he has a built-in audience won’t cut it for this argument and neither will that he has his own brand of humor that people seem to come out to watch in droves. I just can’t figure out what it is about his kinds of films just seem to exude. I am sure that the director of WEDDING CRASHERS, David Dobkin, who just got bounced from Sandler’s latest creation I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY, could give us a clue but since all I have is the trailer for his upcoming movie I will just break it down thusly. Now, since every movie deserves to be judged fairly, I’ll be impartial and just stick to what’s on the screen.

“Do you ever feel there is not enough time…”

I wish I could say this movie spells doom from the start but the choice of running with Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” as the sound bed to open this trailer is nice. I like the song and it somehow gets me in the mood for something safe, basic.

I’m not disappointed here as the sight of Kate Beckinsale walking her husband out of the house in the morning is a lot more un-common than it is real but it sets up the following scene of Adam being portrayed as a father who works too hard. The concept is as beaten and worn as anything else there is, David Hasselhoff not helping matters by being the prototypical boss who demands nothing less than obedience and hard work without regard to anything else. By David giving Adam this near-impossible assignment of coming up with something “great” over the 4th of July weekend you not only establish your characters’ motivation and problem but you have the added bonus of knowing, quickly, what the issue is at hand: he works too damn hard.

The effect is at once brilliant and yawn-inspiring. On the former, it’s brilliant because you manage to set things in motion quickly, not dwelling on stupid details that eat time and waste attention spans. On the latter, it’s lame because the premise is so cookie-cutter that it defies any kind of real sense of originality. In the subsequent scenes we are also led to believe he is so out of touch with his kids and their world by not being able to differentiate between any of the, da-da-da-dum, remote controls in the house. He’s turning on a ceiling fan, race cars, everything else but the television. He’s so wackily frustrated that he goes out to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get a universal remote; the store’s name is so prominently displayed that I am not sure there has ever been a product placement so boldly advertised in a trailer before. Kudos, trailer people.

Of course, this is when the crazy crap starts to happen. He hooks up with leader of the cow bells, Christopher Walken, and this is where I am sure hours and hours of time spent in a little writer’s room eventually led: Adam gets a remote that works on life. (Gasp!) I know, all you dopes who spent copious amounts of time in college to learn how to write are all wasting your time; no one can compete with these big league thinkers.

The application of this “remote” is prominently run though as we get Adam fast forwarding through fights with his old lady, which will no doubt get laughs from the ladies as well as the dudes who they subjugate; his boss, who he puts on pause so he can physically abuse and will earn the laughter from dudes who “so wish they could do that”; and the pause effect he applies to some woman wearing a tank top as she jogs, giving us all slo-mo boob floppin’ delight. The man is a genius. I want to dislike this trailer in so many ways but when, lo-and-behold, the remote breaks and he finds himself fast forwarding unwillingly through his life, his daughter quickly going through the stages in her life, I find myself being curious to know where things are leading.

I can’t figure out Sandler’s angle on most of his movies but I can see where he knows how to play the game of being able to reach multiple types of people with this movie. Good, bad or indifferent you can’t fault the guy for being a shrewd moviemaker.

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