Against The Hype

What do the two best trailers of the year (so far) have in common, other than that both movies are entitled “A S___ Man”?

• A dorky protagonist in thick, black-rimmed spectacles…
• … and an unhealthy bout of midlife crisis
• Rhythmic thuds overlaying the trailer’s montage…
• … which, incidentally, doesn’t give away much of the plot

Due to these superficial similarities, I initially thought both trailers were for the same movie, and wondered what sort of gonzo film and even more gonzo marketing team could have produced such tonally disparate trailers. (And boy, would I have lapped up that alternate-universe movie as well.) But once I differentiated the two movies, their notable differences became even more tantalising.

Once you learn that A Serious Man was authored by the Coen brothers (Fargo, Burn After Reading), the absurdist humour of its desperate protagonist grows recognisably familiar. It is set to open here in Singapore next year, on Jan 7:

Meanwhile, A Single Man is the debut effort of director Tom Ford, renowned fashion designer. Hopefully, it will soon find a distributor; it’s a hard wait to see Colin Firth as a dumpy mid-lifer in personal crisis, an unhinged Julianne Moore, and the rest of Eduard Grau’s luscious cinematography:

Edit: It’s been picked up by Harvey Weinstein! Now, hopefully, it’ll open on May 12 next year without any cuts, and thus become my inaugural R21 movie experience (because you know a movie with GLBT content is going to be slapped with that rating, risqué or not).

The first movie named after a Facebook status?

—Nathaniel Rogers, The Film Experience

Evidently, this Nancy Myers-directed rom-com—set for a Christmas Day release, if you know what I mean—is about how Alec Baldwin thought he was over Meryl Streep – but whoops, isn’t. Sort of like moviegoers around the world.

— David Hudson, The Auteurs Daily

Based on the trailer, doesn’t it look like Meryl’s trying to rehabilitate her Mamma Mia character into an actual human being? Not to jinx it, of course (grin), but as a relatively young fan who discovered her wondrous gifts only three years ago in The Devil Wears Prada, I’m still not used to her newfound attempts at playing a self-confessed slut. (Sex-minded, yes—as she was in Silkwood, The Bridges of Madison County and A Prairie Home Companion—but even those characters were rather monogamous; her star persona’s always seemed too wholesome for outright “slutty”.)