Ah, fall. The fall movie season is when we film lovers do our very best to shake off a summer’s supply of Transformers, ‘80s remakes, and wilted comic book heroes, and open our arms to the “prestige pictures”: the smart movies for grown-ups that studios trot out as close to Oscar time as possible, so that they can pretend like these are the kind of movies they make all year long.
Of course, those studios still have bills to pay, so it would be a mistake to presume that quality and intellect will be the sole flavor of the season. Too often, your fall movie previews tend to focus on the most promising releases, as though Oscar bait is all we’re going to see this autumn. Make no mistake: there will still be plenty of dumb comedies, mindless action, and copious amounts of 3-D. So in order to present the most complete picture of fall 2011 at the cinemas, we’ve assembled a comprehensive list of the major fall releases, good and bad alike. Of course, that’s quite a big list of movies, so we’ve boiled our comments down to the basics: who’s in it, what it is, who it’s for, and if we’re in or out. Break out your calendars and join us after the jump.
Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week, we’ve only got six new ones — perhaps due to last week’s trailer overload — but there are two very big superheroes among them. Check ‘em all out after the jump.
Now that hype for David Fincher’s American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has reached fever pitch, a new poster for the film is spreading from blog to blog, like stomach flu. Slashfilm says the French-captioned image “appears to be a Canadian teaser poster” and cites a Hollywood Reporter piece from a few months ago that describes the poster as “black and white and beautiful, but there’s no way in hell any studio will ever let Fincher use it, as he knows. Because Mara is naked from the waist up.”
It takes more than a bit of nudity to get us riled up. In fact, we’d usually be similarly annoyed at the idea of a tasteful, well-shot movie poster being censored for showing torso and a hint of breast. But we have to admit, we think the poster is in pretty poor taste, purely because it so blatantly misrepresents the characters. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about a survivor of rape and other abuse who has grown tough and seeks revenge. The dynamic in the poster suggests that Rooney Mara’s Lizbeth Salander is sexily vulnerable and in need of Mikael Blomkvist’s (Daniel Craig) fully clothed protection. Does anyone else find this a bit worrisome?
Over the weekend, a trailer for David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, appeared on the internet. (If you haven’t seen it already, watch it after the jump.) Judging by the skewed framing and the fact that it’s been showing in European theaters, most have assumed that the video is a pirated leak. But Slate’s Brow Beat blog points us to an interesting theory — that due to the high-quality audio (yup, that’s Trent Reznor and Karen O covering Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”) and video, and the fact that it opens with an American MPAA red band, some now suspect the clip actually came straight from the studio. Based on our memory of a bootlegged The Tree of Life trailer that popped up shortly before that preview made it to the internet, those points seem valid. Sony has, of course, denied that they’re the source of the leak, pointing out that the trailer did screen in select US theaters this week — although, as Brow Beat notes, it’s interesting that the company knows the video is out there and hasn’t asked YouTube to take it down.
1. Rachel Weisz and director Darren Aronofsky — one of our favorite Hollywood power couples — are separating after nine years together. She has recently been linked with Daniel Craig, who has way less indie cred. [via Jezebel]
2. Good news: Thanks to great ratings out of the gate, AMC’s new zombie show The Walking Dead has already been renewed for a second season. [via MTV]
3. Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer are in negotiations to star in New Year’s Eve, New Line’s follow-up to its ensemble romcom, Valentine’s Day. Hilary Swank and Ashton Kutcher are reportedly interested in roles as well.[via THR]
4. Watch Kanye West give an in-flight, a cappella performance of “Gold Digger” to his Delta co-passengers on a flight from Minneapolis to New York. [via Gawker]
5. Ever the philanthropist, Courtney Love bid $17,000 to have tea with Adrien Brody at Paul Haggis’ Artists for Peace and Justice fundraiser for Haitian schools on Friday night. [via NYP]
1. Matthew Vaughn’s comedy about superhero-obsessed teens, Kick-Ass, will open this year’s SXSW Film Festival on March 12. [via Variety]
2. Sam Mendes — who already worked with Daniel Craig on Road to Perdition — is rumored to be directing the next James Bond film. Wethinks this doesn’t bode well for the Bond girls. [via Variety]
3. Production on Spider-Man 4 has been delayed after script clashes between director Sam Raimi and Sony over what direction he’ll take the villains in. [via THR]
4. Because you’re busy: Everything you need to know about the past 98 hours (and five seasons) of Lost in just 8 minutes. [via GQ]
5. Are you ready to bring 3D entertainment into your own living room? Discovery, Sony, and Imax are banking on it. And so is ESPN. [via USA Today]
1. Don’t believe the trending Twitter topic: Kanye West is not dead. [via NME]
2. Yesterday Barnes & Noble launched an unfortunately-named but rather cool e-reader set to rival the Kindle: the Nook. [via LAT]
3. Hugh Jackman, Daniel Craig, Jude Law, and James Gandolfini are largely responsible for one of the strongest fall seasons for Broadway ticket sales in recent years. [via NYT]
4. Tom Cruise’s publicist has responded to Cousin Balki’s accusations of the star’s homophobia on the set of Risky Business. [via TV Guide]
5. A bathroom run disqualified Dave Chappelle from topping Dane Cook’s record for longest set at the Laugh Factory — seven hours, 34 minutes remains the number to beat. [via AP]
1. Flea will be part of the band that performs Thom Yorke’s solo material. [via Pitchfork]
2. A new book reveals that Bush administration officials refused to give JK Rowling a presidential medal of freedom because the Harry Potter books “encouraged witchcraft.” [via The Guardian]
3. Sarah Palin’s memoir Going Rogue — which took her four months to write — will be out November 17, just in time for holiday gag gifting. [via NPR]
4. When a preview performance of A Steady Rain was interrupted by a cell phone, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig taunted its owner. (video) [via The Guardian]
5. Charlie Cox, Donald Sutherland, Gillian Anderson, William Hurt, and Ethan Hawke will star in a $25.5 million made-for-TV movie version of Moby Dick. [via Variety]
We just stumbled across this year’s Vanity FairBest-Dressed List thanks to an item in the LA Times about the number of art world personalities who made the cut. And it’s true: Cy Twombly, Bruce Weber, Ike Ude, and Count Manfredi Della Gherardesca are all there, mixed in with Hollywood royalty, New York socialites, political types, and the kind of random fabulous people you usually find on a list like this. Business as usual. And then we spotted the rather surprising user-generated ratings for these bold-faced names. What we discovered about style and popularity, after the jump. Read More »
