Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found trailers to be endlessly fascinating.
Those of you who saw Thor: The Dark World last weekend were treated to an unusual trailer for the next X-Men movie. It’s a trailer that’s different than what I expected, which I think serves it well. Take a look, and read on for my thoughts:
For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling
(Note: This is a fictional creative writing exercise, inspired by hours of contemplation of which animated performances have been most worthy of attention over the years. This feature imagines that a Best Voice Performance category was added to the Oscars following Beauty and the Beast’s nomination for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards. Each week I’ll cover the hypothetical nominees and winner from one year of animated performances.)
Following the general confusion of the 69th Academy Awards, no one knew what to expect for 1997. Pixar had yet to reassert itself following the success of Toy Story, but the slate of feature length animation for the year was considered to be much stronger than that of 1996. What was not anticipated was the new controversy that was about to crop up.
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Of the Phase One movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor was the one that seemed least likely to succeed. Iron Man felt familiar as a superhero story, while Captain America had a mass appeal, but Thor was unusual. It had a Shakespearean family drama involving gods combined with a fish-out-of-water story and a bit of romance. The question was whether viewers could buy an immortal, Norse god as a superhero on the big screen. It was a surprise success, however, and in my view was the key film in setting up The Avengers, both in laying the plot foundation and in expanding the expectations of audiences.
So here we are two years later with Thor: The Dark World. Continue reading
Elphaba and Galinda: There’s been some confusion, for you see, my roommate is…
Galinda: …unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe…
Elphaba: …blonde.
Wicked – “What is this Feeling?”
Delia: I’m here with you. I will live with you in this hellhole, but I must express myself. If you don’t let me gut out this house and make it my own, I will go insane, and I will take you with me!
Beetlejuice
Dr. Julian Bashir: Causing people to suffer because you hate them… is terrible. But causing people to suffer because you have forgotten how to care… that’s really hard to understand.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 3, Episode 11 – “Past Tense: Part I”
Welcome to “Friday Favorites” which highlight some of my favorite movie-related things.
Last week in part 1 of my Friday Favorites devoted to characters from The Fifth Element I talked about how much I enjoy Ruby Rhod as played by Chris Tucker. However, there’s one other character in the film that holds my attention every time he’s onscreen, and that is Gary Oldman’s villainous Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Zorg would probably go in my top 10 most memorable film villains of all time. Much like with Ruby Rhod, Zorg is the perfect combination of writing, styling and performance that makes him hard to forget.
Harry started explaining about hidden microphones and recording equipment. Ron was fascinated, but Hermione interrupted them.
“Aren’t you two ever going to read Hogwarts, A History?”
“What’s the point?” said Ron. “You know it by heart, we can just ask you.”
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling
Warning, this review contains spoilers for the previous books of the series, Divergent and Insurgent.
Allegiant, the third and final book in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth, picks up right where its predecessor left off. At the end of Insurgent the factionless had taken over, doing away with the faction system and killing the leader of the Erudite. A video had been found which revealed that the city was sealed and the faction system put in place in order to fix the problems of the outside world, and that when enough Divergent had appeared they were to emerge into the larger world to fulfill that purpose. Tris and Tobias/Four had reconciled and decided to no longer keep secrets from each other. What we were left with at the end of book two was a long list of questions and an uncertainty as to what could possibly happen next.
The Love Pirate 