Book 'em, Danno! lives as a depository for my longer work, but I am no longer reviewing per se and I am not seeking new material for review. I wish to acknowledge the crucial role of my editorial assistants - my three cats, Remedios, Frida, and Lucia, my ferret, Ronaldo, my Scoodle dog, Rocio, and my hamster, Chicharito (who is in training for Bayer Leverkusen on his exercise wheel). I assure you that nothing gets accomplished without them!
The trailers for Joss Whedon's adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing are luminous and delightful:
I complain sometimes that more big-name directors should shoot small, quick, low-budget projects as a way of keeping their creativity flowing freely - thinking, of course, of the estimable Steven Soderbergh, who does just that. Here, Whedon has made a movie with friends, at his own house, during a two-week break between the principal filming of The Avengers and its post-production; and the results are being acclaimed in virtually every review that I've read:
The last paragraph of David Edelstein's review brought a smile:
I’m sure that academics will have objections, although Whedon has stood up to far worse than the Shakespeare (or Earl of Oxford) mob. He has been to Comic-Con. I’d be pressed to imagine a more sure-footed Much Ado. When Shakespeare’s done right, you can’t imagine him ever being done wrong. The clarity is blinding.
As I mentioned in my last post with respect to The Spectacular Now, if I am going to grouse about certain tendencies (or the lack of them) in contemporary culture, then it is absolutely incumbent upon me to cheer when I spot examples of the heartening.
I will go to see any movie about business or Wall Street, so naturally, I was interested to take a peek at the trailer for Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street:
Now, that is surely crisp, but I am honestly not sure if I should expect to learn anything from this movie that I did not know before, or have any experience that I have not had before. In other words, it really doesn't look as fresh as Margin Call.
And don't we see just a little too much of Leonardo Di Caprio? Like Matt Damon, he seems to be in everything. (Although, as far as Leo living the high life, I'd rather watch this movie than The Great Gatsby.)
Amusingly, one shot in the trailer, from a deck above a swimming pool, is virtually identical to a shot in the Spring Breakers trailer. The two movies very likely have some spiritual affinities.
...which I do a lot of at the IMDB and YouTube, it is impossible not to develop some anticipations (and also to reject altogether the likelihood of ever watching certain films!).
I complain so often that today's young stars are all from the same cookie-cutter - physically perfect as regards body, face, teeth, hair, everything, sometimes smacking of having had various plastic surgeries and the services of a personal trainer before even reaching their majority. It is hard to expect other than bland performances from such bland products (I think "products" is the right word).
So it would be remiss of me not to celebrate when I come across a trailer for a movie whose leads seem utterly fresh and individual even in the two-and-a-half minute format. I give you Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller in The Spectacular Now (which got great reviews at Sundance).
Woodley, 21, has been in television since she was 8 years old, and got outstanding notices for her feature debut in The Descendants. Teller, a very youthful-looking 26, made his feature debut in Rabbit Hole in 2010, and seems to have a lot of work about to be released (I'm not surprised). The pair received a Special Jury Prize at Sundance for their work together here, and the trailer gives good evidence why. I'm really looking forward to this.
Another trailer that just went live is for Joe "Mumblecore" Swanberg's first feature with a mainstream-y cast - Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston in Drinking Buddies:
This got very good festival reviews, too, at South by Southwest. Olivia Wilde made a good impression on me in The Words with Bradley Cooper and Dennis Quaid, which I recently watched. Kendrick, of course, was Oscar-nominated for Up in the Air. And although I haven't seen Jake Johnson in anything, I've heard good things about his work in Safety Not Guaranteed and the Zooey Deschanel TV series New Girl. So I'm liking the cast. My one reservation concerns Ron Livingston. Now, don't get me wrong - I love Ron Livingston. I'll watch him in anything, both because he's a good actor and because he's exceedingly easy on the eyes. However, hasn't he been playing variations on what I see in this trailer for about 20 years now?
The answer to that question is, yes, since The Low Life in 1995 and, more prominently, Swingers in 1996. Our Ron turned 46 a couple of weeks ago. And although he looks perfectly smashing for 46, still, I've got to say, it's just too old to still be playing romantically uncommitted characters with any kind of realistic edge.
Rom-com actors in general are too old for their parts these days. It's why Julia Roberts and Matthew McConaughey abandoned the genre (just in the nick of time). Paging Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd, both 44: You've gotten too old for this stuff, as well. Grow up! (And really, why does anyone in the audience WANT to watch 40-somethings dither about in love scenarios as if they shouldn't have 20-plus years experience with them? It's a weird phenomenon.)
Speaking of which, do you buy Jennifer Aniston, also 44, as a working stripper? If not, then skip the upcoming We're the Millers (and for a whole lot of other reasons, too).
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, interesting fact about Ron Livingston: He's a Yalie who was at the university as the same time (the late 1980s) as Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti (the son of former Yale President and later Commissioner of Baseball A. Bartlett Giamatti, whom I knew slightly when I was an undergrad). The three were and are great friends. Livingston majored in Theater Studies and English, Giamatti in English, Norton in History (but he took a lot of theater courses). Giamatti is the only one of the three to go on to obtain a master's degree at the Yale School of Drama. (Angela Bassett, who was in my graduating class of 1980, did the same double.)
After graduating from Yale, Livingston got his professional start in Chicago theater, acting at the Goodman Theatre among other venues.
