(So where the hell is the winner for the Darren Aronofsky signed FOUNTAIN poster contest? Good question and one that will be answered with a very special, after school edition, of the Trailer Park. Next Friday’s normal column will be supplanted with the entries that I received as Monday, this Monday, you can catch a fresh interview I did with Golden Globe nominated, and Chicago Film Critics award winning, composer Clint Mansell of THE FOUNTAIN, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and PI fame. I would thank you for your consideration in this matter but I know we’re all adults here. Some with more pubes than others but adults nonetheless…)
Now, I’ve regaled you with numbers 10-6 and now it’s time to finish out this list and toss you some fresh reviews while I’m at it.
5. 300
Of all the panels that I wasn’t expecting much out of during the 2006 Comic-Con this was one I didn’t have any preconception of prior to the lights going out and having my brain put through an adrenaline blender.
The Nine Inch Nails score does a lot to carry the action of this flick forward but, really, it’s the trailer’s ability to capture the raw masculinity that makes me, first, question my sexuality if for a brief moment when Gerard “DEAR FRANKIE†Butler kicks some sap down a very large well while being all bombastic and, secondly, it’s the ladies that were initially topless in the Comic-Con footage but appropriately dressed here that pulls me back into where I really belong: on the front lines of a battle where I wouldn’t mind swinging a battle ax or two.
There is so much to drink up as we barely, barely, get any sort of contextual basis for where the plot is going but I can honestly state that I don’t care that I don’t know what’s happening by the end of this thing. It’s the road to the destination that’s so engrossing here.
From hordes of armies that I can’t keep straight about who is a friendly and who is an aggressor I get the distinct impression that it’s every man for himself. It’s a long lost, and forgotten, piece of our natural history about how we’ve come to where we are today but what’s shown here seems like a demonic mix of the absurd and the very real.
I’ll be there with a heartily reinforced codpiece.
4. BORAT
I saw the trailer and knew what was coming just had to be good; the opening sequence was what really caught my attention. No voiceover, no quick cuts and no snappy soundtrack. In fact, this trailer eschews every modern hook to attract attention to itself and it’s this sticking to its uniqueness and knowing that is something different, refusing to sell itself any other way, that made me an interested suitor.
It’s Sacha’s admission “it’s nice†about his home country of Kazakhstan that really got me wondering what in hell I was watching. Was this a mockumentary? A comedy? Both or just some odd hybrid that made ALI G IN DA HOUSE so shitty? It’s the latter that scared me just enough to keep watching and try to gauge whether this was going to be something worth paying for.
His tour of his home, just a few seconds worth of the overall running time of this trailer, was what sold me immediately; it was what put this trailer on my top 5 of 2006 without ever seeing whether the movie lived up to the insanity. If you can’t see Sacha’s dedication to this character in that brief moment, his verbal cadence, his rhythm, the way he makes him genuine enough to believe he’s telling the truth, then you were probably a person deserving of the kind of treatment so many are now suing him for.
The ending, with him telling us that he’s planning on coming to America, was enough evil portent to tell me that this was the basis for what was, no doubt, going to be Sacha’s foray into American culture. He did it so well in his HBO series and, coupled with this trailer, it’s the promise that there was more to follow, leaving me wanting more, that made this trailer so spectacular.
Sometimes great movies can transcend our own lives in their own way, be it the ones that win awards or the ones that just mean more than any prize given to it.
3. THE FOUNTAIN
This film got me twice in the same place.
There is a moment in this film that is so brutal, so honest and so effective that I believe it’s downright deplorable the movie didn’t make it onto anyone’s Top of 2006 list.
The trailer was one of the best indicators that this film was not only to play Yahtzee! with your sensibilities but it was also going to reach. It was going to reach beyond what so many other films feel comfortable being corralled by and there isn’t anything standing between Darren’s promise of what will be and what is being sold.
Such a rare delicacy to have someone’s unfettered presentation about what a film is going to be about without there being any kind of sugar coating but it’s frightening that we’re given just that. A real peek into what we’re going to have served up to us.
If you can take the time to notice, as we transition from the 16th century to the 21st, there is a definite tonal shift that cleaves the two time periods perfectly. Even not knowing what was about to happen with this movie is irrelevant as the assumption that this was going to be a movie about the same guy, same woman, and spans hundreds of years, it would be perfectly correct and incorrect at the same time. The trailer doesn’t obfuscate even as we’re thrust into the year 2500. Even when I saw this trailer, and even the movie, you’re not sure what’s really happening until you get some context. The trailer, in retrospect, was being completely open and forthright; it wasn’t selling itself as being something it wasn’t.
You get the entire movie’s emotional weight packed right in there but, like a Rubik’s Cube, if you don’t know how it all fits together you’re just grasping at something that’s not there. This trailer rewards the newest viewer and even amazes those who have even seen the film.
Life and death have never been captured so effortlessly and with as much brevity than within these moments here.
I can’t tell you how many piss poor reviews I read on this film.
The words flop have only been used more in an Orlando, Florida Waffle House than were used to pinpoint the correct word to sum up years worth of work Singer did on this epic flick. I can tell you that the bad word-of-mouth kept me away from the theater and that I didn’t catch it until it made its way on DVD. I can see why my hesitation served me well.
The trailer, though, definitely gets my vote for a film that had everything going for it and could not have been marketed any better,
There was the hint that this film was going to break down walls and pummel humanity with this envisioning of a new Superman, one that was going to bring the pain, bring the noise, bring back a mannequin style of acting not seen since that Jake Lloyd kid did a number on us from PHANTOM MENACE. But you never would’ve known the latter based on what’s here.
This film sings right from the beginning of this trailer, the second in the series that really bursts with pleasure, and it’s the hazy sequence where Spacey intrudes into the Fortress of Solitude and Supes snaps awake from his meditation where there was the indelible promise that there was going to be a fight here, a raison d’etre. Without making a smarmy remark about what we DID get, we put aside the usual accoutrements of getting more explosions stuffed in there and get a real serious look at the human side of this alien from another planet. With John Williams’ score underneath it all you, for once, felt this movie was going to marry the very serious with the very spectacular.
Who knew?
I mean, shit, the shredding of bullets on his chest, the ripping apart of a falling jetliner, the kinesthetic sense of physical weight as he stops himself on the ground, splitting it as he does so, this movie sold itself well as it could have for what we all ended up seeing on the screen.
There are so many things that could have been changed about the eventual version we got but no one can deny the superiority of this trailer.
1. SPIDER-MAN 3
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Dylan Baker, Elizabeth Banks
Release: May 4, 2007
Synopsis: A strange black entity from another world bonds with Peter Parker and causes inner turmoil as he contends with new villains, temptations, and revenge.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Best There Was In 2006. Pardon me for a moment while I wipe this explosion of geek goo out of my underwear.
Sam Rami really knows what he’s doing with these films. Much like Peter Jackson and unlike Brett Ratner Sam realizes what makes these movies fill an economic and social niche at the multiplex. It would be easy, real easy, to write these films off as just fodder for a pyre that’s all too willing to use cultural hallmarks as burnable properties. Sam has had to tow a line that needs to be respectful of the mythos of Spider-Man while being accessible by throngs of people who want to be dazzled and entertained.
His style of storytelling and filmmaking for SPIDER-MAN 1 and 2 have set records because he unlocked the barrier for entry for folks who would otherwise see a dude in blue and red tights and say “Pass.†Respect for the material and for the dweebs who have spent their hard earned lunch money bridged the other 50% of the equation to make these movies more than just hits. There could have been big issues if Sony decided to pull a X3, like New Line has now done with Jackson and THE HOBBIT, because there is something to be said for films that bookend and possess a definitive voice. Things from the 1st film carried over into the 2nd and, obviously, now in this 3rd chapter we need resolution and if Sam didn’t keep to his vision it would have been like reading a book with the final chapter scrawled in by someone who wasn’t the original author; it would be disconcerting to say the least but Sam realizes this and he explodes right back into things.
What I like about this trailer the most, then, is that we come into this movie knowing there aren’t going to be the requisite gun battles and violence that is present in other films in mass quantities but this about the story and we get right into things without any needless exposition whatsoever.
Sure, there’s a hokey pro-Spidey party going on when we begin but, you know what, there’s no Macy Gray, and that unto itself is a good thing. Also, we get all the players’ shining mugs as if to say, “Yes, they’re all back and, hey, we got Topher Grace.†Oddly, there is no sign of Ms. Bryce Howard, which I am confounded by, but it’s not addressed, either in any fashion.
We get Pete trying to get his swerve on by laying his lady in his man-webbing, his voiceover letting us know he wants to get married. What’s great about this moment is that Pete’s next evolution of being Spider-Man lends itself quite nicely with the responsibilities of being a husband and it’s delicately addressed by Aunt May, the one constant that I’ve really enjoyed through the first two parts of these movies; she is the anchor that centers Pete and it is her moments that are especially inspiring as we go further on in these films.
“DANGER Particle Physics Test Facility KEEP OUTâ€
Okay, yes, that sign that Thomas Hayden Church passes by as he scales the fence as he tries to evade the cops is a bit obvious. I mean it’s really obvious. Have you ever seen a government facility keep its signage that gleaming white? Neither have I. But, as such, it does help the other people in the audience “get it†and the shot of Thomas losing his shit to that tri-beam is pretty fucking sweet. As is Spider-Man’s punch to his mid-section in mid-robbery only for Hayden to pump up that fist, with accompanying squishy sand sound, and knock the ‘Man right out of the getaway vehicle.
“Revenge is like a poison…â€
The sound of the symbiote oozing its way onto Spider-Man’s body and the visual gooeyness of the Black Death is nothing short of brilliant. The contrast, the weight it seems to have, the sense that it has life, makes going to see this movie if only to witness what this is going to do all worth it. Can I get an amen?
I don’t know what to make of The Sandman as Bag Lady in the subway or the black McFly hair slick that Parker is sporting after his “infection†but I can only shrug and be consumed by the other, other sub-plot of Franco coming correct in his quest to avenge his father’s death. That looks like it’s not going to have a pleasing ending but, really, if we want to stay true to the reality of the first two films then it won’t be sugar-coated.
The quick cutting of all sorts of insane visual effects does a body good, namely mine, and while I can only wonder where Venom is or where Gwen Stacy fits into this picture (Um, isn’t this going to be a large part of the plot?) the trailer that we’re given is just a shot of adrenaline that’s been shoved past our chest plate and injected into the heart.
Consider this the first real shot heard across the world.
Director: Michael Katleman
Cast: Dominic Purcell, Orlando Jones, Brooke Langton, Jurgen Prochnow
Release: January 12, 2007
Synopsis: In one of the most remote places on earth, a bloodthirsty serial killer has claimed over 300 victims, and is still at large to this day. Now, inspired by the true story of the world’s most prolific killer, comes PRIMEVAL, a nail-biting horror-thriller that follows an American news crew determined to capture this terrifying murderer alive. The danger begins as producer Tim Freeman (Purcell), cameraman Steven Johnson (Jones) and their rag-tag team set out on a journey up-river in search of their subject. But the deeper they probe into the mystery of this elusive assassin, the deadlier their trip becomes.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Worst There Is (So Far) In 2007 Lame.
What kind of world do we live in where this constitutes a respectable horror trailer?
Right, it doesn’t, because this one sucks high tit. It’s not so much the spooky skulls that are prominently displayed in this trailer, because there are, but it IS so much the wasting of my time as I wait for something, anything, cool to happen. There isn’t anything to really be stricken by as this thing rolls on and on and on without so much of a blood dripping corpse.
It pains me to say that the very beginning of this trailer may be the one reason why I’m not parting with my cash. The “Inspired by a True Story†is a respectable swing at the piñata which is my frontal lobe but it completely whiffs as we then open up onto a resplendent safari landscape. What the hell? Is this a movie of slasherific goodness or is this Sunday morning on the nature channel?
Unfortunately, I can’t appropriately answer that question because the tweet-tweet of the birds, fuckin’ rhinos, fuckin’ giraffes, fuckin’ gazelles and, ooooooo, a thunder clap.
“In one of the most remote locations on earth…â€
Yeah, so is my Johnson because I’m married, you douche.
“Lives the world’s most prolific serial killer.â€
Nope. You’re forgetting about McDonald’s and their sinister ingredients, to say nothing of their guerilla marketing tactics as they rope kids into their incestuous fold.
Oooo, again with the pseudo spookiness, but this time it’s the close up of a dirty skull.
“He has claimed over 300 victims.â€
Lightweight.
“Looks like another mass grave…â€
Um, have any of you read the history books about what Slobodan Milosevic perpetrated on the world stage? Tard.
I could just go on and on with the far-reaching statements and superlatives that are tossed out there like balls hoping to make it into Bozo’s Buckets but it doesn’t work. The creepy voodoo guy conducting a ritual of some sort is a little cool, I have to admit, but where does that move the story? What does any of this have to do with the plot? Absolutely nothing, friends.
In fact, as the trailer rolls on and on we aren’t allowed in anywhere close to knowing why any of us should pay to see this movie. There’s a lot of running through underbrush, we get a lot of ADD inspired quick clips and there’s even one of those dramatic pauses by Dominic Purcell that I am guessing is supposed to be “spooky.†It’s not, I’m bored and I am moving on to my cell bill; that’s a lot scarier than what may be in this movie.
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