Thursday, August 09, 2007

TIFF prediction #2 & 3: American Gangster & Across the Universe

Saw a lot of violent trailers when we went to see Bourne Ultimatum. Everything was REVENGE (Kevin Bacon doing revenge (Death Sentence) Jodi Foster doing revenge (The Brave One). By the time the movie started we were almost nauseous. Anyway, both of those are released later this summer and I WON'T be seeing them (until they come to TV or video). However, we saw another violent trailer: American Gangster starring Denzel, Russell and directed by Ridley Scott (whose film A Good Year at the 2006 TIFF was GALA but lame. Well the locations i.e. London, Provence, Russell driving a Smart car - were great. Just the end result was somewhat lame.) Now that Robert Altman can no longer come, Scott is like the elder statesman of these festivals (regardless of the quality of his product) so they'll show whatever he brings. With this level of Oscar-winning directing and star power (and a convenient November release) American Gangster is sure to be a RTH GALA (that's Roy Thomson Hall, not VISA). The Google results seemed to show Antoine Fuqua directing this project with Benicio del Toro but looks like the big guns took it over.(literally)

But wait, there's more.

The other cool trailer we saw was a musical... of Beatles songs... featuring fresh faced kids. NO it wasn't Grease VI or Hairspray II but Across the Universe. I was totally mesmerized. It's from Director Julie Taymor (who did The Lion King stage spectacle) so expect nothing less than a cirque du soleil level joy ride with a must-have soundtrack. I think this will go VISA (but could be RTH GALA instead).

Looks like it may be a good year for galas - too bad we didn't splurge on tickets. (We'll have to see what box we get in - selection is only 3 weeks away!!!)

1 comment:

BunkleLife said...

Interested in the Julie Taymor. I actually quite liked Titus (though I gather Anthony Hopkins didn't love Julie's micromanaging directorial style) - not a perfect film, but the art direction was stunning as you'd expect. Though I suspect Across the Universe won't include people inadvertently eating their sons - damn ;-)