This is the first trailer for the Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer joint, Prince of Persia. An early version of it leaked online last night and some movie bloggers were having a big fight over whether it’s morally acceptable to post bootleg trailers before the official release from the studio. To which I say, hey, get over (y)ourselves. It’s a commercial for a movie, not the polio vaccine.
As for the movie in question, holy God what the hell is this? I see they’ve reimagined ancient Persia as a land of spray-tanned white people with English accents. Meanwhile, cameras swoop and spin through spatially ambiguous CGI landscapes while Gemma Arterton whispers expository dialog in your ear like she wants to do you. At least in the 2012 trailer you could kind of tell what was going on (i.e., CALIFORNIA IS GOING DOWN!). In this one, Jake Gyllenhaal is running from… uh… something… and he dives… sideways? Up? Down? I don’t even know. Oh, and he’ll be speaking in that British accent the entire movie. A movie about a magic dagger that… uh… controls time*. You’ve done it again, Bruckheimer, you amazingly talented genius, you.
[available in better quality over at IGN but I don't like their embeddable player]
*And that this is also the plot of the video game it’s based on doesn’t make it any less of a stupid idea. It makes it even more of a stupid idea.
Opening this weekend:
Inglourious Basterds — If I have to explain to you what this movie is about, then I’m sorry about that coma you just recovered from. Welcome back. Now take off that hypercolor t-shirt; you look like a damn hipster.
Post Grad (trailer) — “This summer . . . look for a job . . . look for love . . . find yourself.” . . . F–k yourself.
Oh hello there, Michael Keaton. I didn’t know you were still alive.
Just the thought of Martin Scorsese directing an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel (The Wire, Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River) gives me a wicked fackin nerd bonuh (because Dennis Lehane is from Boston, you see). Shutter Island (first ever trailer below) stars Leo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Emily Mortimer, Special K Kingsley, and Michelle Williams.
The plot is Wicker Man-esque in that DiCaprio plays a U.S. Marshall investigating the escape of a murderess from a remote mental institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. And since it’s set in the 50s, the lobotimize-you-for-PMS era of psychiatry, he’s sure to find more than just an escaped crazy bitch. And since it’s Dennis Lehane, someone involved is sure to get molested, or is running from their past when they got molested, or desperately wants to start molesting. Just speculating here, but probably Leo’s character’s motivation is probably to find and molest the man who molested him.
Ben Kingsley is in pretty much every movie this year. He gets it on with Penelope Cruz in Elegy. He was in the Love Guru, but we don’t talk about that. Just this morning I posted a picture of him and his hot amazon wife at the premiere of Fifty Dead Men Walking. It’s easy to see why Special K pulls hot tail. And just this afternoon, FilmDrunkard Brooklyn drew my attention to the above clip, in which Ben Kingsley stars as Ian McKaye, the similarly bald frontman of seminal DC hardcore band Minor Threat. It comes from Mean Magazine, where many of the commenters wondered “What’s the point of this?”
Clearly, the point is that it’s f*cking awesome. But then, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially after it made me orgasm.
A day after the producers of Fifty Dead Men Walking (which also stars Ben Kingsley - that’s his POA wife in the pic) distanced themselves from dumb things Rose McGowan said, they were criticized by the guy whose real-life story inspired the script.
Martin McGartland… said that director Kari Skogland should never have allowed former IRA volunteers to provide security and creative input during last year’s Belfast shoot.
“(Skogland) should certainly not have been negotiating with the IRA to be able to film in certain areas of Belfast and she should never have allowed former IRA terrorists to be on set while filming,” he said.
Skogland and her cast last week told the media in Toronto that former IRA volunteers had helped onscreen authenticity by providing tips on how to make bombs and torture IRA informants.
McGartland also fingered the Canadian government [Hee hee!] for investing in a film that was made with the help, and apparent support, of a terrorist organization. [THR]
If you’re keeping score at home, that makes three feature stories about this movie, all covering basically the same non-controversy. I’m annoyed they’re getting so much press. Especially while my erotic yet tasteful epic, Fifty Dead Chicks Pissing, continues to be ignored by the corporate media.
