Moviegoings

Or should I say “watch trailer”?

 There’s some interesting stuff floating around the internet at the moment, and I have taken the liberty of drawing a chunk of it into one place. Have a look.

First, here’s a preview of the Get Smart movie coming out next June. Yeah, I know. Another old TV show adapted for the big screen? These things don’t have a very good track record. Well, watch and be comforted.

Get Smart is one of my favorite shows of all time, and I think the casting for this movie is inspired. Steve Carrell as Maxwell Smart, Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, Alan Arkin as The Chief and . . . The Rock as Agent 23 (but I approve of The Rock in satirical roles). Also, I note from the cast list that recurring characters Siegfried, Shtarker and Larabee play some role. It speaks of a certain respect for the source material, and I think this will be a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, I missed the trailers that ran in front of Ratatouille the second time I went, but my wife kept talking about a title she couldn’t remember (in fact, none of the several people I was there with could) . . . something like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with toys instead of candy . . . starring Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman.

Well, it wasn’t too much trouble to locate the trailer for Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (language advisory in the surrounding text, the link is from Ain’t It Cool News). Due to technical difficulties, I have not yet seen it with sound. I’ll try to watch it when I get home later. It looks really cool (in a whimsical sort of way), but I’ll withhold judgment until I can actually hear Hoffman’s eccentric performance and get some idea of the plot.

Meanwhile, fantasy films are still very much in vogue, but are they any good? Well, an adaptation of The Dark Is Rising, the 2nd book in one of my favorite fantasy series, will emerge in early October. I’m leery, at best. Jeffrey Overstreet has a link to a trailer and a link to an interview with the screenwriter, describing and justifying his sweeping changes to the original.

Whenever I hear a filmmaker talk about the difficulties of making “internalized action” cinematic, I have to wonder how many good movies they’ve slept through. Heaven forbid we should give the computer less to do and just get the actors to act instead.

Finally, here’s a trailer for The Spiderwick Chronicles, due out next February. This is based on books I haven’t read (and named after the entire series a la A Series of Unfortunate Events), but my wife loves them. We shall see.

 And that’s it for now. Happy trailering.

~ by Jared on July 13, 2007.

Posted in Referrals