Movie Trailer Tuesday [FaN Extra]

Hey guys, it’s Tuesday and you know what that means!

No, not $5 margaritas and $1 tacos (I’m so sorry) – it’s time to take a look at four new films to keep on your radar.

SALINGER

During summer vacation, my father forced me to spend at least an hour reading every day. As if reruns of Diff’rent Stokes were going to watch themselves. Gah dad, I hate you!

Since I was subject to whatever we had in the house, I read a lot of dense material I couldn’t yet process. Novels like Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury went right over my sixth grade head but I remember being rather taken by J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories.

Given my limited life experience, I didn’t understand any of its thematic elements, but something about the writing style and mood stuck with me on a visceral level. This and Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat were my favorite substitutions for Gary Coleman’s attitude that summer.

I wouldn’t read The Catcher in the Rye for many years later and even though I was the right age at that time, it didn’t strike me the same way. Perhaps I was too smitten with Weird Al at that point to take it in. I didn’t start brooding professionally until my junior year.

J.D. Salinger all but packed up his typewriter and went home following the success of Rye but he never stopped writing. Upon his death in 2010, the world learned that he had stockpiled volumes of unread, unreleased new material in vaults at his secluded home.

The new documentary Salinger is an exploration of his enigmatic career, analysis of the cultural impact of his work and a mystery thriller surrounding the contents of the vault. Count me in.

 

SAVING MR. BANKS

Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks were both a staple of my elementary school life. I got to watch them whenever my teachers had a hangover – back before I knew what “quiet time” really meant.

Saving Mr. Banks is the based-on-a-true-story of Walt Disney trying to convince the original author of Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, to let Dick Van Dyke sing with cartoons.

Tom Hanks as Disney is about as perfect as casting gets and Emma Thompson is one of my favorite actresses. Considering Nanny McPhee uses magic to babysit rich brats, she should know a thing or two about screwing around with source material.

Sometimes the behind-the-scenes of a project are just as interesting as the project itself. Sometimes not, but Finding Neverland worked so why not Saving Mr. Banks?

I hope they spend a good portion of the film with Jason Schwartzman and Blow Job Novak arguing back and forth about Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. “Godammit! It’s SupercalifragilisticexpialidAcious – docious doesn’t make any fucking sense!” Is it too much to hope for a gentleman knife fight?

What a minute? B.J. Novak? There’s goes the “true story” element. No way Walt willingly employed a jew.

 

LOVELACE

No one has benefited more from Dina and Michael Lohan’s abject failure as parents than Amanda Seyfried. She assumed the career that everyone figured Lindsay would have post-Mean Girls. In fact, Lindsay was at one time attached to a similar project, one without funding of course.

Seyfried, not Lohan, plays Linda Lovelace, Woodward and Bernstein’s anonymous Watergate source. Much like the flippant shaving habits of 70’s porn stars, it’ll either be a pleasant surprise or completely unwatchable, depending on your preference for mustaches and bush.

The original Deep Throat, made back when we had to pretend that sex needed a plot – “Her clitoris is located in her throat, this is a serious issue you guys” – was wildly successful. Some of that due to mob money laundering via theater receipts but either way, it’s one of the most famous pornographic films ever produced.

Lovelace eventually went on to denounce pornography and I wonder if they’ll include that part of the story. The figurehead of many progressive 70’s movements eventually went on to recant their place in history. Norma McCorvey, a/k/a “Jane Roe” is a pro-life activist.

Cursed irony!

 

Blackfish

Science has long known that orcas swim around in the ocean desperately hoping to captured by humans and relocated to a tiny tank so we can jump off their face. They’re called “killer whales” because they’re so cuddly and docile and just love us so darned much.

“Did you hear about Splashy? He got swallowed up in a huge net and dragged away from us thrashing about in utter agony. Lucky jerk hit the jackpot” – is what what scientists claim orcas say when one of their brethren is shipped away.

Despite these incontrovertible facts, some uppity documentarians went and falsified some data to prove otherwise.

Nice try Michael Moores of the Sea, but we know that when a killer whale drags a trainer underwater and tosses them around like a rag doll it’s the trainer’s fault. Look what she was wearing for Christ’s sake!

She was clearly asking to be drowned and half-eaten.

It’s like when my iguana bit my nephew for trying to pet him. We don’t know Jimmy’s sins, maybe he was a serial killer in a past life? Or an evil orca trainer? We just don’t know. Better side with the stir-crazy animal I crammed into a space 1/100th its natural habitat.

So go ahead and see this if you hate science. And God. And truth.