[Eitan]
Sigh. It looks like we’re all going to have to pay twice to see one movie. Che looks extremely exciting and, if the film is anything like the trailer, certainly gorgeous and well-made. But it’s one film. I don’t care if it’s twice the length of a “typical” Hollywood production. It’s still one film, and the experience shouldn’t be broken up by a) having to wait a week or two or even hang out in the theater for the next Che Part Two showtime and b) another $10 ticket.
I’m of the opinion that Kill Bill really was intended to be two films and that from a narrative perspective, it wasn’t a terrible decision to split up the two parts (even if it did smack of opportunism). This, however, looks like a single experience, and I’d rather sit through a bruising 4+ hours (hey, I did see Lawrence of Arabia in theaters… twice) than have to make two trips to the multiplex.
Also, if they’re going to split it up into two films, they might as well keep the original titles — Guerrilla and The Argentine — instead of the lame Che Part One and Che Part Two
They’ll wish they had released this one after the next inauguration–this movie is going to be so bad, it’ll boost Bush’s lackluster approval ratings. I mean it: if John McCain wins the election, I’m blaming W. If the script reviews, set visit horror stories and on-set antics weren’t warning enough, consider this: you know that awful scene in the middle of the otherwise-decent Nixon? The one where the beleaguered prez wakes up in the middle of the night, leaves the White House unnoticed without secret security accompaniment, walks to the Lincoln Memorial and stares at the larger-than-life former president when a group of college students approach him and, using fifth-grade-level rhetoric, manage to make the man rethink his positions on every major issue? Well, W is going to be kind of like that: a hodgepodge of cherry-picked highlights with a coating of revisionist history and overearnest liberal nonsense.
Watching W and his friends on the big screen will be no different from when we did the same thing with American Dreamz, which gave us a surprisingly okay Dennis Quaid as Bush and a bald (BALD!) Willem Dafoe as Cheney. That movie was pretty awful, but I think W is prepared to set the bar even lower.
All that said, the trailer had been taken down by the time I got to your post. Maybe it’ll change my mind. Probably not.
EDIT: Finally caught up with the trailer. I like the style, but the montage of key players at the end is more funny than it is good salesmanship. Also, Slate.com has put forward a nearly identical argument against the release date.
by Eitan
Holy shit — the W. trailer is now available. Burn After Reading be damned, this ought to be the biggest mainstream mindfuck this fall. I can’t wait. Perfect casting for Condi (Thandie Newton), Karl (Toby Jones), Colin (Jeffrey Wright) and Dick (Richard Dreyfuss). Ellen Burstyn is too pretty to be Barbara, and — what the hell — James Cromwell looks and sounds like a jackass playing George H.W. Bush, whom he made no effort to look or sound like. They should have just hired Dana Carvey. He needs a new project; I don’t think the Master of Disguise sequel is ever going to happen.
This is really going to be an extremely surreal film — the first feature political movie about someone that WE lived through (unless you count Primary Colors, which I don’t really, and The Queen, which wasn’t about our own country). I don’t know if I’ve ever had a feeling of cognitive dissonance so far in advance of a movie as I have with this. There are clearly films I anticipate, especially ones based on books I’ve read, and long to know what the performances will be like, and how the film will work aesthetically. But this is the first film of my lifetime where every single frame will resemble the silent ongoing nightmare I’ve been having for the past seven and a half years. The fact that they’re not releasing this after the next inauguration is a bit jarring. I will likely see W. opening weekend or shortly thereafter, and what will I inevitably end up doing? I’ll turn on the TV, and these SAME people will be there — but who’s that playing them? Oh, it’s Dick Cheney as Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney…
These are the unavoidable characters in the never-ending real life soap opera of American existence — how can we look the real versions in the eye after spending three hours acquainted with Hollywood’s finest recreations of them? It’s like going to a lookalike convention where everyone is dressed to look like your family, or possibly the worst wax museum nightmare of all time.
To quote my sister, “if I didn’t know it was real, I’d think it was fake”
Elliot, are you even remotely as excited for this as I am?
shot / reverse shot 