So, how hot is the ad campaign for P.S. I Love You?
I'd say very hot. When was the last time you saw a romantic comedy poster that implied, you know, actual adult sex.
I mean, seriously--all they've got to do is unzip their jeans. For all we know, they already have! Nice!
I love it. Not just because I'm desperately in love with Butler and thus think all sorts of filthy thoughts while looking at it, but because it's quite mature. I'm sick of seeing sexless love stories. I never thought I would see the day when a movie about Casanova lacked a sex scene.
Let us applaud P.S. I Love You (or at least the marketers at Warner Bros) for taking such a bold step. While it's hardly treading where even The Libertine dared go, it's a start in the right direction. The characters are adults. The audience for this film are adults. Let's show some reality.
Of course, I'm sure I'm giving Warner Bros too much credit and they are simply banking on Butler's infamous ass shot in 300. In which case, it's still pretty smart. He has a nice bum. He burned up the screen with Lena Headey. Maybe Warner Bros is saying "Hey ladies--remember that? This is that guy! He's always doing that!"
(Are you, Mr. Butler? This lady reporter demands to know.)
There's more like them over at the official website, or you can visit one of Butler's numerous fan sites. The chemistry between Swank and Butler is so intense I'm quite surprised they didn't actually hook up off-camera.
The trailer for The Other Boleyn Girl is out and don't bother watching it on Moviefone, it doesn't work. Thank goodness for YouTube.
It's Hollywood's latest take on those crazy Tudors, who have been seeing an incredible glut of television series and movies. I think Elizabeth I is still in the lead, but her dad is catching up.
It's rather frustrating to watch as an amateur historian, as there are plenty of fascinating medieval personages just screaming for the movie treatment. How about Eleanor of Aquitaine? Queen Isabella, She Wolf of France? Stephen and Matilda? Aethelflaed, Lady of Mercia, or the War of the Roses? There's plenty of sex, bloodshed and drama outside of the Tudors. HBO's Rome figured that out, why hasn't anyone else?
But no. We get the Tudors. Again. One longs for someone to focus on someone other than Anne Boleyn--Jane Seymour wants to know where her movie is. A movie about her would make a chilling counterpoint, as she was literally packing her bags and preparing her wedding clothes as the cannons rang out Anne Boleyn's death.
I do blame Philippa Gregory for this, as it was her hugely successful book (which this film is based on) which led to dozens of imitators, who all forgot Henry VIII had four other wives after. And she herself has only danced around the Bolyens and Catherine of Aragon for her other novels.
But what of the trailer?
I suppose I'm being extra snarky here because I couldn't click on it fast enough, and sat there in girly delight--oh the gabled hoods! The gorgeous dresses! OMG ERIC BANA SHIRTLESS!
The cast of "The Other Boleyn Girl" is certainly top-notch and the production values look splendid. The costumes are more accurate than anything "The Tudors" has trotted out--it does my costume geek heart glad to see Anne sporting the gabled hood she made fashionable. The accents, however, are sketchy. That's especially surprising in Bana, given that he is Australian and should be better at Shakespearean English.
Eric Bana is both a delight and a problem in this role. He's far closer to the athletic and attractive Henry who looked good in his tight stockings than Showtime's bony Jonathan Rhys Meyers. But he doesn't have red hair! Hollywood is so desperate for a sexy Henry VIII that they constantly make him a brunette. Would it kill the make-up team to add some color? If anyone can be a sexy redhead, it is Eric Bana. (The onscreen pairing of Bana and Portman, who *does* have the right coloring for Boleyn, will make a red-haired daughter quite mysterious. Maybe that's how the charges of adultery get worked in!)
I find it no end of amusing that Natalie "I won't do nudity" Portman and Scarlett "when do I take my clothes off" Johannson are playing the tart and the prude, respectively. In reality, Mary Boleyn was such a whore, she was sent home from the French court. That's probably the version Johannson thought she was signing up for. Of course, the double irony is that I've never understood the Johannson hype and rather think she looks the part of a shrinking wallflower.
It goes without saying that The Other Boleyn Girl will bear only a passing resemblance to the actual history. Again, what I find perplexing about the Tudor craze is that everyone is obsessed with rewriting it, when the truth is raunchy and bloody enough on its own. I'm waiting for a version where a lady-in-waiting is beheaded in Anne's place, and she lives in quiet, anonymous solitude. Maybe it will be this one.
Despite my annoyance at everything surrounding it, I am a sucker for a corset piece, and will be seeing this. I don't expect it to be very good. I doubt even the sex scene between Bana and Johannson will be worth it--probably nothing more than the trailer's five seconds of candle-lit shoulders and hands.
The final trailer for The Golden Compass is out now and I am getting worried.
Teaser #1 had me skeptical. Trailer #1 had me convinced it was going to be really good. And now I'm right back to being skeptical again which probably means I am going to be hugely disappointed.
I love the casting of Nicole Kidman, despite that she should have dark hair. I still loathe the choice of Daniel Craig as Azreal. Every trailer and production still makes him look like a nerdy professor of Milton rather than the sort of man who can raise an army against God. I always envisioned someone like James Purefoy or Viggo Mortensen in the role--dark, sexy, scary and commanding. If it had been made about ten years ago, I would have picked Alan Rickman. Just because a man is Bond does not make him a rebel against God and it was simply cheap casting due to the success of Casino Royale.
I love Eva Green as Serefina though and Sam Elliott is the PERFECT Lee. If they actually get all the way to "The Amber Spyglass," I'm going to be crying buckets.
But this is all incidental and unrelated to this final trailer. What sends my alarm bells going is Lyra. Where's the girl who enchants the Gyptians, commands a bear, climbs the roofs of Oxford and is so determined to find Roger that she takes on the entire church? In the trailer, we get a girl who gapes blankly every other scene and offers a "Wot's it for?" when offered the Golden Compass. There's no spark, no mischief. The wild child who terrorized Oxford is now prettily dressed and stands around waiting to be led by all the other characters.
I'm apparently not the only one who sees it. Lyra has been entirely cut from the television ad campaign, making the movie look like a fantasy battle solely between Kidman and Craig. That's pretty odd given Lyra is the main character AND the main audience for this film will be children and young adults. You want to entice them with a character their own age...don't you? Unless that character has now become such a blank cipher that you have to try and lure them in with CGI. (I highly doubt that the tv campaign is trying to entice adults, as it is still too glittery to appeal to any adult who hasn't read the book.)
In addition, the CGI also looks absolutely rank. I kept giving it a pass "It's only the trailer, they'll be tweaking it until the release date." But it's NOT getting any better. Iorek the bear looks exactly the same as he did in the earliest test footage. The daemons look like something from Shrek or the wretched Beowulf. This is not the sort of computer animation we should see in a post-LOTR world.
I'll still be lining up to see this in December, but I'm going in with absolutely no expectations.
Summit Entertainment has sent me loads of goodies to promote their new thriller (and first major film release) P2. It opened on November 9th to a mass of good reviews.
I've had a fear of parking garages ever since Witness and I don't think this film will help matters any.
I wonder if Wes Bentley ever gets dates anymore? He certainly won't get anyone to ever attend his Christmas party after this!
The trailer is well done, with holiday music never sounding so spooky. It looks like a tart alternative to the fluffy Fred Claus fare.
What follows is the official press release, trailer, and a few stills from the film.
“Swift and stealthy. Taking the bus to work suddenly seems like a very good idea.” - The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis
“One of the scariest movies of the year! ‘P2' does to parking garages what ‘Psycho' did to taking a shower and what ‘Jaws' did to swimming in the ocean.” - FOX-TV, Shawn Edwards
“GIRL-POWER revenge story not often seen on screen.” - US WEEKLY, Jeffrey Epstein
“A thriller that actually thrills.” - AIN'T IT COOL NEWS, Moriarty
“Slasher ‘P2” finds new level of horror.” - CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Roger Ebert
It's Christmas Eve. Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols- “Alias” and CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR), an ambitious young executive, works late before she leaves for her family's holiday party. When she gets down to the parking garage, she discovers that her car won't start. The garage is deserted and her cell phone doesn't get a signal underground.
When Thomas (Wes Bentley- AMERICAN BEAUTY), a friendly security guard, comes along and offers to help, Angela nervously accepts his gesture of good will. Soon after a failed attempt to start her car, he invites her to stay and share a small Christmas dinner he's preparing in the parking office, but she laughs it off. Angela doesn't realize this is no laughing matter – Thomas has been watching her closely...for months. His dinner invitation is not optional.
If Angela wants to live to see Christmas morning, she must find a way to escape from level P2 of the parking garage.
This is the backdrop for Summit Entertainment's new thriller “P2,” a suspenseful nail-biter exploring the fears of being trapped in a dark place and stalked by an obsessed voyeur. In the vein of suspenseful cat-and-mouse thrillers such as WAIT UNTIL DARK, “P2” takes the fear of the underground to a whole new level.
Under the direction of Franck Khalfoun, this taut suspense thriller combines the creative team of producer Alexandre Aja (THE HILLS HAVE EYES - writer/director), Gregory Levasseur (HIGH TENSION - writer), Patrick Wachsberger (MR. AND MRS. SMITH - producer) and executive producers Bob Hayward, David Garrett, and Alix Taylor.
Well, the title is lame and thus something I will be saddled with until the end of time. But since every chick with a laptop has claimed a variation of Femme Fatale or Movie Chick for her film blog, I shall be Movie Raider. It pays homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark and my heroine of choice, Lara Croft.
Seeing as I've been unceremoniously chucked from the writing staff of Film Ick, this shall be where I post my reviews, rants, all promotional materials e-mailed to me, and probably whatever Gerard Butler news catches my eye.
If you have a film you wish to promote, feel free to e-mail it to me. I'm not picky and I'll post anything.
Meanwhile, you can check out my past reviews here:
A bleeding-heart, feminist tree-hugger, I spent too long in college studying history and English Literature. I have acquired a frightening array of facts about Bolsheviks and medieval England. I gave up academia for writing about film. I think I know all of L.A. Confidential by heart, and two days ago I saw a vehicle that could haul that tanker. If you want to get out of here, you talk to me.
