When does a film about male strippers transcend its logline and become a compelling character study that everyone can enjoy regardless of their interest in dudes' waxed chests? When it's directed by Steven Soderbergh! I know it seems crazy, but I swear it's true. Channing Tatum, who plays the titular Mike (who actually is pretty magical), reportedly helped to inspire the script by mining his own earliest show business experiences as a young peeler: In the film, his Mike plays accidental mentor to Adam (Alex Pettyfer), ushering him into the world of professional male disrobing. At first, things are as much fun for the awestruck Adam (fat stacks of cash; no-strings-attached blowjays) as they are for the audience. However, it seems that sex work sometimes has a downside, which Adam has to discover on his own.
Tatum is not really my jam, but he's more likable here than ever before. Pettyfer does a pretty good job of hiding his British accent to play a washed-out college football star. Matthew Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, and Joe Manganiello give more depth to their secondary exotic dancer characters. (Wrestler Kevin Nash plays a stripper — not a dancer, so much — whom you could lift right out of the film without anyone's noticing.) But the true star of Magic Mike isn't Mike at all but Matthew McConaughey. As Dallas, the owner of strip revue Xquisite, McConaughey gets to nurture young talent, dangle elusive business opportunities, rock leather pants, and so much more. If there were any justice in the world, this performance would land McConaughey his first Oscar nomination. That is not a joke.
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Silver: Let’s start with a tweet by Parks and Recreation creator Michael Schur. On May 22, he tweeted, “Just watched the Great Gatsby trailer. It looks like some of Scorsese's and Vinny Chase's best work.” In just 40 characters Schur succinctly and accurately summed up both the grandeur and ludicrousness of Baz Luhrmann’s latest visual assault. No way can I do better (Rem, maybe. Me, no).
We've been monitoring the progress of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Huntervery closely over the last few months, as it seems to be the one option on the cinematic calendar that will provide us with an opportunity to watch a Mount Rushmore president murder the undead with a traditional lumberjacking implement. (Well, at least until someone greenlights Seth Grahame-Smith's pitch about how founding vigilante fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington secretly used to team up to dispatch zombies with a two-man crosscut saw.) So it was a great relief to reach the Red Band Trailer phase of AL:VH's pre-release hype schedule and finally have our Pavlovian gore responses triggered by the release of much more graphically violent vampire-evisceration footage. The new material doesn't disappoint: Yup, Honest Abe definitely hacks the ever-unliving shit out of some fang-faced bastards in this thing. We're glad we can stop worrying about that now.
Silver:This trailer leaves me completely conflicted.
Here’s what I liked:
*There are some moments that are quite funny. Although we’ve seen the out-of-time, out-of-place gag before, I get a kick of out of the way Depp’s recently awoken 16th-century vampire attacks the TV for being evil sorcery. The juxtaposition of Karen Carpenter singing, and Depp’s line “Reveal yourself, tiny songstress!” makes me smile every time.
Dan Silver: Last week Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was a film I was looking forward to mocking, shunning, and then secretly renting on VOD one night after my wife and kid went to bed. But after seeing the brooding, visually vibrant, and downright bad-ass first trailer, I quickly became excited to fork over my $11 on June 22. So it pains me to say that the film’s international trailer diminishes my enthusiasm somewhat. With its orchestral score and all too typical hyperbolic, out of context, monologue/VO, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter now feels like the tonally askew, narratively disjointed, bland summer blockbuster I always thought it was going to be. More specifically it’s smelling a little like Jonah Hex. [Ed Note: OUCH.]
Sometimes you need to put up a trailer and just get out of the way. (Because Abraham Lincoln might accidentally take off your head while trying to explode a tree with his vampire-cleaving ax.)
Each week, marketers release new movie posters, many for films whose releases are still months away. But for those who know where to look, one-sheets can reveal studios' hopes and insecurities about their products. In this space, we will attempt to decode the hidden meanings of the week's new posters.
Each week, marketers release new movie posters, many for films whose releases are still months away. But for those who know where to look, one-sheets can reveal studios' hopes and insecurities about their products. In this space, we will attempt to decode the hidden meanings of the week's new posters.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
What the art says: The title is goofy, but the image is creepy. The ax, the hidden face, the skull in the moon, the chair in the woods. (Ever meet someone who sat on a chair in the woods? Exactly.) It also says Tim Burton is a firm believer that pale guys sitting on their ass sell movies better than a bootlegger on Canal Street. See also: Sweeny Todd, Beetlejuice What the text says: There aren’t any stars in this movie. The only people billed here are Burton and director Timur Bekmambetov. Our finely tuned font calipers show that Timur’s name is a bit bigger, which is a true victory for all the mole people in the world. Really, dude looks like a mole.
