Wednesday, November 08, 2006

"The internet, that's the one with e-mail, right?"


A short post about some movies that we are--or, in some cases, are not--looking forward to.

1. Making fun of Hollywood is sort of like making fun of ... oh, I don't know ... something that's hard to make fun of because it's so absurd to begin with. Um, anyway, we're looking forward to the latest offering from Christopher Guest and his crew, For Your Consideration, in which he makes fun of all the hype surrounding the Oscars. It will no doubt be much funnier than it ought to be given the subject matter. (I hate to break it to you, but if Fred Willard with a faux-hawk doesn't make you laugh out loud, you have no sense of humor.) Click here for the trailer.

2. In our continuing fascination with the myriad ways in which Hollywood can take a perfectly good story and ruin it, today's item is "The Good German", an excellent novel by Joseph Kanon that takes place amongst the rubble of Berlin in the immediate aftermath of WWII. If you like the kind of stuff that Alan Furst does, I suspect you'll like this book. And while it's probably slightly unfair to judge a movie based on its trailer--though, as a trained social scientist, I would guess that 99 percent of the time, if the trailer blows, the movie will too--the trailer for the Steven Soderbergh film is awful. (Or, as the smartass from I Watch Stuff puts it, "It's more German than good.") This must be Soderburgh in minor mode. We might have to skip this one.

3.We'll call this one an outlier. Here's a case--one which violates the empirical proposition I stated in the previous paragraph--in which the trailer is a little weak but the movie is going to be great: Zhang Yimou's "Curse of the Golden Flower." Though I don't get to watch them very often because my wife hates anything with martial arts in it, Zhang's Hero and House of Flying Daggers are brilliant, visually stunning movies. We are anticipating more of the same here. And, like those silly hobbit movies, this one is probably worth seeing on the Big Sreen.

3. As regular readers know, we pretty much like anything with spies in it. With that in mind, The Good Shephard--with Matt Damon and Bobby DeNiro--looks pretty good. (Click here, if you so desire.) Lots of old buildings. And cigarette smoke. And Alec Baldwin. What's not to like? That said, and I realize this may be controversial, but I'm beginning to think that Angelina Jolie is a terrible actress.

4. Judging by the trailer for 300 (based, apparently, on an "epic" graphic novel by Frank Miller), there was a lot of yelling in ancient Sparta. I'm wondering whether the comic geeks in the audience think this looks interesting or not.

5. Oh, and have I mentioned Casino Royale?

Posted by jwb at 6:00 PM   

4 Comments:

Blogger Bram said:

Hm. Never actually read 300. Got the first issue when it first came out at a signing and I'm not sure I've opened it since. Meant to, but was never that compelled.

Think the movie looks interesting, pretty wild, good fun. Not enough that I'm going to necessarily seek it out in the theater. But it does look like it might follow Miller's spirit — without falling into the trap of following it slavishly that ruined Sin City.

Wait — who you callin' a geek?
at 6:09 PM     

Blogger Bram said:

Re: 5. Almost enough to make me hopeful. Probably not enough to get me to the theater.
at 6:53 PM     

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