Holiday Guide - Movie guide

Talkin’ trailer trash with this season’s Oscar wannabes

It’s not quite “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” but this holiday season seems surprisingly sparse for big, prestigious, award-seeking films. Arts and Entertainment Editor David Lee Simmons and film critic Curt Holman size up the trailers for upcoming films in search of both likely Oscar-bait and family-friendly hits. You can find the trailers at such websites as YouTube and Apple Trailers, and actually hear this conversation, in cutting edge podcast form, by clicking here.

??DREAMGIRLS (Dec. 25)?
Curt Holman: This is one of the big Oscar contenders that hasn’t come out yet. The Departed is probably the Academy Award frontrunner at the moment. There’s actually really good buzz around Eddie Murphy, who plays a singing star on a downward spiral.
?David Lee Simmons: How many characters does Eddie Murphy play in this?
?CH: He plays all the characters. That’s how good the makeup is.
?DLS: I could have sworn that was Beyoncé and Jamie Foxx. Taylor Hackford didn’t direct this, right?
?CH: This is based on a stage musical inspired by the Supremes, so it’s both a musical and a musical biopic in one. The musical rise-and-fall story follows kind of a formula. The singer grows up, starts playing to bigger crowds, then has drunken scenes where they’re yelling at their spouse or their manager.
?DLS: I didn’t see any heroin in the trailer, so that’s good.
?CH: This is something that I really want to see and have it be good. And you can pretend like it’s not the Diana Ross story, even though it pretty much is.

??ROCKY BALBOA (Dec. 22)</
CH: This is the sixth Rocky movie, which is in itself amazing to get your mind around. It’s like there’s one every decade.
?David Lee Simmons: Come on, is this really an Academy Award contender?
?CH: Rocky’s always the underdog, so he might come from behind and be the big Oscar winner. You know, Sylvester Stallone is 60 years old. They should bill this as “Rocky Balboa vs. The Ravages of Age.”
?DLS: You do ultimately lose that fight.
?CH: The amazing thing about the movie will be if he actually makes it to the fight and the training montages don’t kill him.
?DLS: The catch phrase will be “Oy, my achin’ back.”
?CH: Rocky Balboa: Ass Kicked. This is the movie you need to see at the most crowded theater possible on opening night, because half the fun will be the stuff that people will be shouting at the screen.

??THE GOOD GERMAN (Dec. 22)</
CH: This is the new George Clooney/Steven Soderbergh collaboration, which I believe is in black and white.
?DLS: I smell noir. Do you smell that?
?CH: Is that what that is? I thought it was something I ate.
?DLS: We’ve seen Soderbergh slip into film noir before, but this actually looks pretty interesting. It takes place in Germany in 1945, back when wars actually ended.
?CH: It looks like we see Tobey Maguire beat up George Clooney. That can’t be right.
?DLS: Him and what army?
?CH: Maybe him and an actual army.
?DLS: And there’s Cate Blanchett. I smell femme fatale. Wait a minute, that didn’t sound right.
?CH: I love Cate Blanchett. I’d love to see her in a good movie. She’s in Babel and is fine, but she’s basically just injured and writhing on the floor her entire performance. Oh, and it looks like the plane from Casablanca makes a cameo.
?DLS: This looks like the most intriguing film from Soderbergh since the first Ocean’s 11.
?CH: Every once in a while he does some film-student type stuff. He and Clooney will do weird stuff like Solaris that nobody really likes. Then do Ocean’s 11 in order to get the capital to do movies like this. I think it’s from the guy who wrote Quiz Show, so the script should be strong.

??APOCALYPTO (Dec. 8)</
CH: It’s about the Mayans, but I wonder if the title describes director Mel Gibson’s recent career?
?DLS: It looks like it has cat people in it.
?CH: It has that blue-man makeup like in Braveheart. And people with crazy piercings. People will have all kinda stuff sticking out of their faces after this movie.
?DLS: Maybe it should be set in Little Five Points.
?CH: This is a real obscure type of story, so the movie itself has to be really good to get people’s attention. I hear there’s actually a lot of chasing and action scenes.
?DLS: The point being “It’s a jungle out there?” I wonder if Gibson will make a cameo, like he supposedly did in The Passion of the Christ.
?CH: Supposedly he was the guy who drove the nails through Jesus’s hands, but we never saw his face. Maybe in Apocalypto he’ll show up at the end in a conquistador outfit. Unless this is the greatest movie ever, I don’t think Oscar voters will support it because of Gibson’s anti-Semitism scandal. And the movie just looks so strange.

??CHARLOTTE’S WEB (Dec. 15)</
CH: This is the live-action adaptation of the E.B. White classic about a girl and her pig, filled with celebrity voices for the animals.
?DLS: Look at Dakota Fanning. It’s as if Drew Barrymore was put in a time warp.
?CH: “Run, Babe — I mean, Wilbur!”
?DLS: “That’ll do, pig.” Wilbur the pig sure has a squeaky voice. Is that Fred Savage again? Or some young actor with only one testicle?
?CH: I know Steve Buscemi voices the rat, Andre 3000 a crow and Julia Roberts does Charlotte the spider.
?DLS: I guess it has three local connections, with Dakota Fanning, Andre and Julia Roberts.
?CH: But does Julia Roberts really even count as local any more? When was the last time you heard about her being in Atlanta? In fact, I’m putting her on notice. If she doesn’t come do a podcast at Creative Loafing, she’s no longer a native.
?DLS: It looks like a cute movie, but I’d never admit that in public. Wait, I guess I just did.

??THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (Dec. 15)</
DLS: This is misspelled why?
?CH: Something about the spelling makes me uncomfortable. Are we supposed to pronounce it “Hap-PIE-ness?”
?DLS: Is that gray hair on Will Smith?
?CH: I’m sure it’s gray hair from a can. Wow, in some shots he looks like Jesse Jackson. He and his son end up homeless in a bathroom somewhere. Ah! He gets hit by a car! This is going to be sad and not fun to see.
?DLS: When was the last role Will Smith got props?
?CH: He was nominated for best actor for Ali
?DLS: I can see this as a sleeper.
?CH: When a big star plays an inspirational role and doesn’t suck, it usually pays off. The trailer says “Inspired by a true story.” That means “No real connection to the actual story.”
?DLS: That means they saw a headline about the actual guy.

??CHILDREN OF MEN (Dec. 25)</
CH: This is the latest by the guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Apparently it takes place in a near future when women suddenly stop having kids. It sounds downbeat, but you imagine that a lot of guys would be, like, “YES!”
?DLS: It looks like Michael Caine has a Farrah Fawcett-at-60 look going on with his long hair.
?CH: A lot of the best science-fiction books coming out today aren’t high-tech, and just ride on a simple premise. This looks like that.
?DLS: When characters walk in slow motion, you know it’s serious.
?CH: Won’t this be a little heavy to watch on Christmas?
?DLS: It looks overburdened.
?CH: It might be, but it also looks like it has potential. It looks like The Handmaid’s Tale, only good.

??THE GOOD SHEPHERD (Dec. 22)</
CH: This is a film about the history of the CIA, through the eyes of a character played by Matt Damon. It’s directed by and co-stars Robert DeNiro. And there’s Angelina Jolie, John Turturro, Joe Pesci. It’s like all of De Niro’s friends are in it. It’s like the cast of JFK.
?DLS: Maybe they’ll reveal that the CIA actually assassinated JFK.
?CH: And look, William Hurt!
?DLS: He’s really settled into the go-to character actor for any role.
?CH: Somebody once said that what you do with aging matinee idols is cast them as villains. Case in point: Alec Baldwin is also in this.
?DLS: He’s in everything. I think he’s acting in my kitchen right now.
?CH: I think he’s stalking me. I can’t see anything without seeing Alec Baldwin. You can tell that Angelina Jolie just plays the concerned-housewife kind of role.
?DLS: Do you think De Niro really has serious chops as a director? How long has it been since he made A Bronx Tale?
?CH: I don’t know. It’s the kind of thing where if the script is good enough and De Niro just stays out of its way, it could really pay off. Certainly the subject matter is timely.

??ERAGON (Dec. 15)</
CH: This looks like the best we can do now as a holiday fantasy epic. A few years ago we had The Lord of the Rings, last year we had The Chronicles of Narnia and now this. There’s a real drop-off.
?DLS: It says it’s the first chapter of “The Inheritance Trilogy.”
?CH: I think it’s always risky to say you’re the “first chapter” of anything. What if it flops? People will be asking, “Hey, where are those other chapters?”
?DLS: Is that John Malkovich we see lurking in the shadows? Maybe your theory about who to cast as villains is right.
?CH: I’ve heard that the dragon is female — maybe they should have called it Estrogen. The dragon actually looks pretty cool, but then, the trailers for Dragonheart looked cool, too.
?DLS: It looks pretty realistic for something I know nothing about.
?CH: “This Christmas, watch something from... the pagan era!”
?DLS: “Surely you won’t be struck by lightning.”

??WE ARE MARSHALL (Dec. 22)</
CH: This is the new film from McG. He did the Charlie’s Angels movies, but this seems like one of those stand-up-and-cheer sports movies Hollywood churns out so efficiently
?DLS: Listen to Matthew McConaughey’s Southern accent. He’s a mimic for the ages.
?CH: The football team dies in a plane crash, and then they have to assemble a new one. It’s tragic at first, then they start kicking ass.
?DLS: It looks sort of like Major League for the inspirational set.CH: Everyone’s shouting “We-are-Marshall!” That must be the catchphrase.
?DLS: I thought it was “We-are-gay!”
?CH: What’s the conflict here? Why wouldn’t we want these guys to get it together and win?
?DLS: Do you think they will win?
?CH: When don’t they win in movies? Do the underdogs ever lose in movies any more?
?DLS: The only time was The Bad News Bears. I don’t think anything about that suggests Oscar.

??NOTES ON A SCANDAL (Jan. 5)</
DLS: This looks like a stalkery kinda movie, sort of like Judi Dench’s Single White Female.
?CH: Single White British Old Female.
?DLS: It looks like she starts stalking Cate Blanchett. That handshake between them sealed the deal. You’re toast, Brit.
?CH: Bill Nighy plays Cate Blanchett’s husband. He’s in everything now. It looks like Judi finds out Cate’s sleeping with a student.
?DLS: Didn’t this happen in Tampa?
?CH: I Know What You Did Last Summer.
?DLS: I smell a boiled rabbit.
?CH: This is going to be the kind of film that ends with some kind of horrible death, like an impaling, and people will cheer.
?DLS: I don’t know whether I should cheer for Cate Blanchett if she’s playing a child molester.
?CH: This could probably get acting nods. It looks sort of like Judi and Cate doing Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

??BLOOD DIAMOND (Dec. 8)</
DLS: This stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou in a drama about the African diamond industry. It’s directed by Edward Zwick, who always seems like he’s aiming for the Oscar.
?CH: This is your “movie star with an accent” movie by the way. Listen to Leonardo Di Caprio, who plays some kind of South African mercenary type.
?DLS: Oh my god. Wow. What is that, Russian?
?CH: He says to Jennifer Connelly, “Out here, it’s bling-bang.” That must be the catchphrase. I’m going to get “bling” tattooed on one knuckleand “bang” on the other.
?DLS: That is one pissed-off Djimon.
?CH: He’s always angry in films. Wouldn’t you like to see Djimon Hounsou in a Martin Lawrence-type comedy for a change?
?DLS: Edward Zwick’s films always seem too amped-up for what’s going. He did Glory, Courage Under Fire and The Last Samurai.
?CH: I liked Glory, but his movies are usually just OK. This is an “issues movie,” but from watching the trailer I’m wondering, “So the issue is what, exactly?”

??PAN’S LABYRINTH (Jan. 19)</
CH: Guillermo del Toro, who directed Hellboy, also directed this, which did well at the Cannes Film Festival. It takes place in 1944 in the mountains of Spain, after the fascists have won the Spanish Civil War.
?DLS: It looks like a fairy tale for grown-ups with a lite horror story.
?CH: This is so not for kids. There’s all kind of wild special effects, but that’s only about 10-15 percent of the movie. The rest takes place in the real world. It’s like the real world is harsh and unpleasant, and the fantasy world is creepy as well.
?DLS: It looks like someone’s about to get their leg cut off.
?CH: You know you’re in trouble when your doctor gets out the hacksaw.
?DLS: Well, without whiskey.
?CH: This doesn’t come out in Atlanta until January but I’ve already seen it. It’s my favorite film of 2006 so far.</
All release dates are subject to change. Tom Defreytas contributed to this story.</
Multimedia[]: Listen to David Lee and Curt talk trailer trash on the Holiday Movies Podcast
?Part 1 [mp3]
?Part 2 [mp3]
?
?For those of you listening to the podcast, Curt did say “Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the spider” in Charlotte’s Web; he meant to say Julia Roberts.

??Survival of the Hippest

??CL’s Holiday Guide 2006

? ?

?






Atlanta Festivals
Events Calendar
2024 Holidays