Volume 6: Jesse’s Got a Gun
30 Minutes or Less
Dir: Ruben Fleischer – Planned release date: August 12
Many anticipated that David Gordon Green’s Your Highness would turn out to be the official pseudo-sequel to 2008’s hilarious Pineapple Express. Unfortunately, it a) bombed at the box office, and b) is terrible. Yet there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light comes in the form of 30 Minutes or Less. Directed by Ruben Fleischer of Zombieland fame, this film looks like it might fill your “stoners with weapons” void quite well. Plus, its two leads are Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari. This, my friends, is casting that seems directly pitched at me. Throw in several moments of Danny McBride being Danny McBride and I am sold.
On a tangential note, I’m not sure how the trailer’s opening scene was allowed in the green-band version, as it leaves little to the imagination. That said, trailers do seem to be getting raunchier these days. (Particularly in the language department.) I am not personally offended by this, but if this trailer were shown before a PG-13 movie I took my kids to I wouldn’t be very happy about it, and I feel sorry for the parents who have to explain what the first several seconds of this trailer are implying. Despite all this, 30 Seconds or Less is a project that seems to have quite a bit going for it. More importantly, it gives us an opportunity to see Nick Swardson in a non-Adam Sandler film. He is an occasionally funny guy who needs his freedom from the tyranny of Happy Madison.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Dir: Tomas Alfredson – Planned release date: September 16
Based on a 1974 novel by John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seems to be old-fashioned in every way. And that is fine by me, especially with all these fantastic British actors stepping into the fray. Everything from the dark ’70s-esque atmosphere to the screechy score suggests a kind of thriller that hasn’t been made in a while. This is a genre that is right up my alley. And who exactly is in this cast? No less than Gary Oldman, a freshly-Oscared Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, and the awesomely-named Benedict Cumberbatch.
Interestingly—and again, awesomely—this film was directed by Tomas Alfredson, who made the terrific Let the Right One In back in 2008. What he did with that film was incredibly impressive; he took a story about vampires and turned it into something that was violent, suspenseful and—in a strange way—touching. I highly doubt Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy will be so childlike in its approach, but Alfredson’s ability to juggle the heavy stuff with the emotional moments should come in handy for several films to come. I have not read the original novel, but this is a film that has got my attention.
The Three Musketeers
Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson – Planned release date: October 14
One of the more facepalm-inducing trailers I’ve seen this year (along with The Smurfs) is the preview for Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers. Anderson is known for making trash (and for being married to frequent collaborator Milla Jovovich), so there is little to suggest this film will be good. At all. In fact, there’s almost no chance I see this film unless a ton of people tell me I have to. As faithful to Alexandre Dumas’ book as the movie surely is, it seems like a mixture of everything I hate about this brand of filmmaking. Of this summer’s reboots, this is one that I am willing to throw in the trash pile just on looks alone.
It’s a shame, though, considering how much I like most of the cast. I can give or take Jovovich, but the likes of Ray Stevenson, Christoph Waltz, Orlando Bloom and Mads Mikkelsen all deserve to be in material far greater than this. The case of Bloom is particularly saddening, as he hasn’t been in a film of note since 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. This is a guy who should be a full-fledged action star, but his career seems to have hit something of a speed bump lately. The good news is that he has signed on to be in both of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films, so perhaps that will give him a chance to return to the forefront.
A Dangerous Method
Dir: David Cronenberg – Planned release date: November 10
Ah, David Cronenberg. It’s been several years since you’ve made us all squirm with your special brand of psychosexual tension. Now, with A Dangerous Method, he seems to be going right back to the ol’ fetishistic well. The players this time are famous psychologists Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), among others. A Dangerous Method’s angle certainly seems to be a sort of contrast between the stuck-up, formal exterior of people in the early 20th century and their filthy inner desires. Of course, with Freud in the picture the topic of inner desires has to come up at some point. And hopefully the twist ending is that everything’s been a phallus the whole time.
However, in a strange way A Dangerous Method almost seems normal by Cronenbergian standards. While you can only put so much in a trailer (unless you’re 30 Minutes or Less), this film seems not to be trafficking in the brazen weirdness of his earlier work. Instead, we’re talking about normal people being strange in a relatively normal world. Still, it’s hard not to make a face when Knightley screams about how she liked when her father spanked her. In other words, bring the kids.
Boardwalk Empire: Season Two
HBO – Returns this fall
I’m breaking the rules a but here, but I think this is a teaser that merits discussion. The first season of Boardwalk Empire was not, as some believe, a disappointment. Some just raised their expectations inappropriately high, and as a result they felt as if the show wasn’t the thrill-a-minute ride they expected. The pace—like many HBO shows—was slower and more deliberate, and as the season went on the full picture began to crystallize. That said, the show did not reach its full potential in season one. Not even close. The pace was often too glacial, and the symbolism was often—to put it politely—obvious. Boardwalk Empire tried to be poetic when it should have been working harder at delivering the mobster goods.
In my not-so-expert opinion, this show could be all-time great if it started putting its foot on the gas. In the first season, victory came a bit too easily for Steve Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson, and I’m anxious to see what happens if the walls start closing in. This early teaser suggests that the urgency has been ramped up in season two, and that there’s a whole lot more raiding and threatening going on. I’ll admit that it’s only a one-minute trailer meant to represent a dozen or so episodes of television, and you could likely intercut footage of me doing laundry with an armed Klansman and make it seem exciting. But what’s important is that people have guns, and when people have guns exciting things start to happen. (Michael Scott taught me that once in an episode of The Office.) Nonetheless, I remain one of the staunch defenders of Boardwalk Empire, and I expect the second season to be a substantial step up.
Programming note: Due to the travel that exists in my future, two of the next three weeks will be without Trailer Trash posts. There will be none next week, but it will return the week after that (July 15). After this post there will be another week off, but we will return to out regularly scheduled programming in August. There will still be other posts, but removing Trailer Trash will take a bit off my plate. Sorry if this offends you, but if it does you need to rethink a few things.
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