Awards season continues to putter along without really ramping up (that’s for November, in the main), but that’s not important: what’s important is that the Chicago Film Fest begins on 10/5, along with the delayed release of two 2.5 hour prestige epics. It’s going to be a fun weekend. Anyway, look for the CIFF preview shortly.
5.10.2007
I’m not even sure what’s supposed to be the big new release this week, because everything seems a little pokey. I’ve personally seen more ads for the remake of The Heartbreak Kid, reuniting the Farrelly brothers with Ben Stiller for the first time in almost ten years, and I must say that they make it look more than a little shrill and uninteresting (the trailer includes with a bitterly unfunny gag that is apparently such a huge selling point that it’s referenced twice). The other candidate is the kid-lit fantasy adaptation The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, based on a book series that I once had some affection for, and apparently making a complete hash out of the source material, based on interviews with the producers that mention how disinterested they were in making an accurate adaptation. Nifty!
Even the counter-programming looks pokey: The Good Night, some sort of relationship indie directed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother Jake and starring the idiosyncratic blend of Paltrow, Martin Freeman, Penélope Cruz and Danny DeVito.
12.10.2007
Now this looks a little more like it! First up, a sequel to a 1998 Best Picture nominee, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and I’m terribly sympathetic to the buzz that it’s got a meandering and pointless story, tired performances and no reason for existing, but the footage in the trailer, as shot by Remi Adefarasin, looks real damn pretty. And sometimes, real damn pretty just wants to be seen on the big screen and to hell with “quality.”
Next: Michael Clayton, what appears to be a ’70s-style paranoia thriller starring George Clooney, written and directed by the screenwriter for the Bourne movies. Does not look pretty, but should at least be a diverting entertainment, one can hope.
Then: Kenneth Branagh and Harold Pinter’s remake of Sleuth, because…just because.
Finally: Ryan Gosling fucks a blow-up doll.
19.10.2007
I should back up a bit: there is some Oscarbait this month, it’s just not good Oscarbait. As violently proven by the simultaneous release of Rendition (a drama about a woman whose husband is taken by the US government for torture questioning) and Reservation Road (another In the Bedroom clone), of which between the two of them, I have nothing nicer to say than the latter will probably be well acted. And I guess Things We Lost in the Fire is Oscarbait, but awfully silly-looking, about blah blah blah coping with loss. And Halle Berry.
Of course the “big” film will be the Arctic vampire story 30 Days of Night, starring that Hartnett boy, and I don’t care how good the comic is, “Arctic monsters” is embarrassingly well-trod cinematic ground.
It’s a sad weekend when the film I’m most looking forward to is a Mystic River rip-off directed by Ben Affleck, but there it is: Gone Baby Gone.
26.10.2007
Seriously, you have to check out the trailer for Dan in Real Life. Is that not the most goddamn hackneyed thing you have ever seen? I’m not sure if the barbarically literal narration or the unironic use of “Let My Love Open the Door” is the most amazing part, so instead I’ll just marvel at how quickly Steve Carell has become a soulless studio whore.
Saw IV is also opening. I have nothing to say about that besides acknowledging that it is so.