Yes, No, Maybe So: "We Bought A Zoo"

Perhaps it's my childhood calling but I've been looking forward to We Bought A Zoo all year on account of me likey the wild animals. I even initially thought it might be in the Oscar race on account of inspirational film and comeback possibilities for its director. But that was then... We finally have a trailer for Cameron Crowe's first movie since everybody decided to shun him (Elizabethtown) just a few short years after everyone decided that they worshipped him (Almost Famous). In the new film Matt Damon plays a widower (I think? It's unclear) struggling to raise his kids from central casting: let's call them Quippy Cute Moppet and Mopey Teenager In Need Of Fathering. The family is sad and needs a fresh start. They buy... wait for it... A ZOO!

Now, let's break it down with our patented Yes, No, Maybe So system. Does the trailer make us eager, eager to avoid or leave us somewhere inbetween? 

YES

• Matt Damon is aging gracefully, still handsome and still a belieavable everyman type. He'll undoubtedly be sympathetic as a widower with needy kids. 
• Wild Animals! Wild animals that don't dream of hanging out at TGIF with Kevin James. If you couldn't picture yourself jumping up and down with glee (ages 8 and under) when you heard that your new house is a zoo just like Quippy Cute Moppet you have grown way too cynical.
• Damon + Thomas Haden Church +  Elle Fanning +  Scarlett Johansson = solid starry blonde cast.
• Wait... is Scarlett Johansson playing a real person this time? Like not an idealized muse but an ordinary woman? 

NO

• Ugh. Turns out that Quippy Cute Moppet is a signatory to Hollywood's Mandatory Dissing of Bald Men Act. Haters gon' hate. 
• Ugh. Turns out that it's yet another movie that buys into America's dullard hatred of Elitist Education and Actual Job Training in favor of Blind Worship of Chutzpah. Just Do It!  "You don't need any special knowledge to run a zoo, just a lot of heart"... uhhhhh, don't you need some specialized knowledge of how to care for LIVING WILD ANIMALS ?! I'm guessing: yes. Heart won't help you if the animals have a toothache or a pregnancy!
• The music chosen for the trailer (bonus point to the first person who names it in the comments) is shorthand for Inspirational Underscore. 
• So too is the golden hue and pensive sunlight shorthand for Inspirational Film. 
• So too are the constant inspirational pep talks shorthand for Inspirational Pep Ta... uh, well.
• Will there be any single beat in this movie that isn't flat and processed and predictably shaped like a slice of American cheese?
• Is that moment that Matt Damon is all "whoa" with his body when he hears the lion roar, straight out of Amateur Slapstick 101 or is this trailer's editing just completely unforgiving? 
• "I want them to have an authentic American experience." I hope Matt isn't talking about raising his kids within a zoo because I've never met anyone who grew up in a non-figurative one. 
• Let me guess, Mopey Teenager In Need of Fathering falls in love with Elle Fanning? Is this going to be a distracting subplot in order to have something for everyone ala that high school crush thread in Crazy Stupid Love? 

Little Known Fact: Excessive Exposure to Bathetic Platitudes and Inspirational Media Causes MigrainesMAYBE SO

• Though it looks insufferably like a Generic Inspirational Family Film with wild animals as merely decorative distraction, who knows. Trailers are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience.
• Maybe the bear eats Quippy Cute Moppet?

The "No" column is awfully robust, I fear.

Where do you fall with this one? Or on Cameron Crowe in general actually? Tell me you at least love wild animals. 

Marge Never Stood A Chance

JA from MNPP here - René Clément's Purple Noon played at MoMA here in New York yesterday and those lucky enough to get in to the sold-out show had a giant wall of that staring at them. SIGH. Can you imagine? I love Matt Damon's performance in Minghella's 1999 Talented Mr. Ripley, but it for me it never quite had that... this. The sensation that "Okay yes Tom I am completely hypnotized now I will do whatever you say eyes eyes eyes oh my god eyes yes whatever you say." I like that this.

DVDs. The greatest film I...

...almost never saw, or is it? Paolo here again. I'd normally be the first person to watch a movie that features attractive men wearing fedoras and Emily Blunt doing contemporary dance, but fate had other plans. But between The Adjustment Bureau's theatrical release and now, it was a movie that had a minor 'bucket list effect' on me. 

In one of its DVD extras 'Leaping through New York,' writer/director George Nolfi praises the city as an all around "magical place". But the film's visual version of New York is underwhelming and dour, since we mostly see colours like blue and grey and it seemingly takes place in perpetual dawn or autumn. That's how I felt the first time, although repeated viewings made me appreciate how the sunlight would hit on the upper half of the city's Metropolis-like art deco skyscrapers.

New York, as this film depicts is, makes its citizens feel anomic. We get this feeling specifically through the way the titular adjusters are depicted within the shots, as when four mid-level adjusters look out from a rooftop to countless windows in front of them. That image is essentially repeated when two adjusters Harry (Anthony Mackie) and Richardson (John Slattery) look out a window inside the bureau. A high angle long shot of the bureau's library before we see Harry thinking about one of his cases, David (Matt Damon) offers a similar feeling. The city is an overwhelmingly large frame for an internal and masculine struggle, as Harry becomes wary of how his job affects others. But maybe the film dwarfs the adjusters to highlight a part of their function, to have the least ripple effects, as invisible, microscopic, unnoticed.

David and his star crossed lover Elise (Blunt) are also lonely people without family...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: Contagion

In this edition of Let's Count the Oscar Winners, err, Yes, No, Maybe So, we take a look at Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. Details of this film had been kept quite secret until this trailer was released a few days ago. I'd seen snippets from the film at a distributors event a few months ago but they highlighted star wattage over plot. So now the trailer has arrived and in a move that has some condemning Soderbergh for spoiling his own film, he pulls off a Game of Thrones seconds into the trailer (at the bottom of the post)

YES - That cast!

All of them either have Oscars or have been nominated on multiple occasions but the best part is that they're not just "movie stars", they're all incredible actors. Is this like the "serious version" of Ocean's 11? Soderbergh gets bonus points for that The Talented Mr. Ripley reunion, but where is Cate when you need her?

NO - How can Steven Soderbergh deliver such a superb trailer and threaten us with early retirement? Also, considering he has developed a tradition of delivering one artsy film followed by a fun one, which one is this? His last movie was a documentary, so does it count or should we use The Informant as reference? The director has a tendency to work with genre and this looks like it could be his take on the psychological film or the disaster movie (I smell a fun double bill with Melancholia!)

Soderbergh is also one of the most ambitious directors in contemporary history. Most of the time he gets away with whatever he wants, but given the political references spotted in this trailer this could either be brilliant or end up turning into a bland piece of meh like Blindness.

MAYBE SO - With the revelation that Gwyneth Paltrow's character dies, we have to ask ourselves, how much will this affect the rest of the film? Some people have already called this a monstrous spoiler and are pissed at the director for letting this piece of information come out.

 PSA: Gwyneth Paltrow in The Perils of Gambling!

Killing one of your main stars isn't something completely new but it still sends waves of how-dare-they and where-are-we-going-now terror among audiences who want it the easy way. This revelation tells us that either her character was meaningless and there are bigger shocks to come or that Soderbergh is the kind of director you want to work with so badly that you don't care if he kills you before the movie is even released. 

I for one am beyond excited to see what he has up his sleeve this time. How about you? Are you as impressed by the cast? Should Soderbergh retire yet?

30 Seconds to Summer (Superbowl Leftovers) Pt. 1

As I was confessing on Twitter yesterday, I have literally never watched the Superbowl. Not once. The only football bits I've ever seen were in high school (I hung with the band geeks but was a choirboy), comic strips (Lucy is so mean!), in movies, and in Friday Night Lights. L-O-V-E that show. It returns in April for its final season. *sniffle*

Since movie studios bleed gazillion$ worth of their future profit$ to air 30 seconds of their potential blockbusters I $hould $hare them. It's like a hydra-headed episode of Yes, No, Maybe So. I'm listing them in the order I was curious about them BEFORE I saw the spots. Things may have changed.

superhero teases and more after the jump

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