The movie trailer for the Coen Brother’s newest movie, A Serious Man, has just been released. Take a look:

The movie looks really good, but that trailer is incredible, isn’t it? I’m not sure if I’ve seen a more artful trailer ever. That incessant beat from the head hitting the wall and the accumulating noises from other parts is so crafty and well done. It’s so much more effective than any voice over could be. Did the Coen Brothers edit this trailer? Probably not, but to whoever did, I see a Golden Trailer Award in your future (that’s right, there is an award for movie trailers).

Watching it made me think of this blog post I wrote for a different blog about The Planet of the Apes and its trailer. I’ve pasted the post, along with the trailer, below.

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So, I just watched the original Planet of the Apes today. I was really just looking for something to watch while I ate lunch, but I got completely sucked in. And being unemployed, I got the time. I watched it all the way through, and I’ve got to say, the movie was fucking good. Not just fun to watch, but legitimately good.

I think it’s interesting that we all know the plot, we all know the quotes. It’s one of those movies that’s been inaugurated into our pop-culture, so much so that it feels like we’ve all seen it, without actually seeing it. When it’s referenced, we all get it, and can laugh at jokes about it, and make our own jokes without ever having to actually see it (this idea can also relate to the DVD collection, or the DVR, where just owning a copy of a movie gives us a level of satisfaction nearly equal to that of actually seeing the movie, but that’s a different topic for another time).

Back to movie. It’s great. The first quarter is masterfully suspenseful, packed with incredible landscape shots and great cinematography and music. Then come the apes, which are surprisingly not too dated. Then we get to an examination of ethics and humanity, then a sweet reveal, which we all know, but still gives you the chills, because Charlton Heston really was a sick actor. The movie also made me further realize how much the Mark Walburg one sucked.

How great is that trailer? Sure there’s some cheesy voice over, but you get to hear the man himself, Charlton Heston, explain the film. And how about that “This is a madhouse!” part? There’s a well made movie trailer.

Is anyone out there looking to invest in a horror film? I have the perfect idea for you. It’s called Subway Series. We all know there’s some serious rivalry between the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs have never won a World Series. The White Sox, who won a World Series a few years ago, are still pretty bad. Let’s say, under insurmountable odds both teams make it to the World Series one year and play each other. Game seven comes around and things are heated. It’s dangerous and eventually a riot spreads from Wrigleyville throughout the entire Second City. It’s chaos, anarchy, dehumanization. Somehow throughout all the violence people start eating each other. This is important, they are not zombies. They are just very aggressive baseball fans.

A group of survivors, a twenty-something couple, a Mexican man who doesn’t speak English but has lost his wife in the riots, a father and son, an elderly woman, a sports commentator, a Chicago Cubs pitcher, a Chicago White Sox catcher and John Cusack. They are our heroes. They must get across the city to the water where they plan on getting on a ship and evacuating the city.

I will sell this idea to anyone, but not for anything under $200,000. Just email me.

Watchmen was a movie I was really excited to see a few months ago, and was planning on seeing in the theaters, lost enthusiasm for as its release was nearing; I can’t really tell you why (besides that a few months ago I figured I would have read the comic by now, which I haven’t). And now with it’s mixed reviews, my non-desire to pay $12 for anything, and the absence of people to go with me, I decided to skip the theater and watch it online.

I don’t watch movies online. I don’t really have a reason for this. I tried to figure out why, and I came up with a few thin excuses. The first is a fear of viruses; but I watch plenty of TV shows online, and actually got a virus doing it once, so I don’t know why I won’t watch movies, but keep watching TV shows. I download a fair amount of torrents, usually foreign films that I can’t find anywhere and have been dying to see. I just watched Goddard’s Breathless and Contempt, along with 8 1/2 by Fellini, and I have Fritz Lang’s M waiting for me. I mentioned all those so you think I’m start and interesting. I also get really fidgety when I watch things on my computer, and I can’t keep still. I found hour long episodes of shows to be difficult if I’m not prepared, so a 3 hour movie almost seemed like chore more than a pleasure, like Rousseau’s neglected beggar. And, I would like to think most importantly, I really appreciate the medium of film, and I know how different and better the experience of watching a movie on a big screen is, and how much you can lose by watching it on a low-res tiny computer screen. Just ask David Lynch, he’ll tell you all about it. But, I wanted to see Watchmen, and I heard of a reputable sight for it, so I sucked it up, and spent my Sunday in the one seat cineplex of my Brooklyn apartment.

To be brief – found the site, found a decent quality cam version, with decent loading speed, and fidgeted away for 2 hours, watching people explode. All in all, not so bad, better than paying $12, insanely worse than the DVD on an HDTV will look in four months.

But, things were going well, things in the story are coming together, I’m a little confused but that’s cool, more people are dying, awesome, prison riot, sweet, the watchmen joining together in full costume, all right I’m rolling, more exploding people, mars, yeah! YEAH! here comes the plot twist, still confused but hopeful, ALRIGHT! I’m grooving, HERE WE GO… and what happens? It switches to German! All of a sudden I’m getting Rorschach’s voice-over coming at me in a gritty, frighteningly fascist tongue, things are blowing up, there’s some superstructure on Mars, I have no idea what’s going on.

.

I flip around on the time-bar, and find that it’s not all in German, it does switch back to English, but after some important verbal exposition by the characters, explaining probably the entire movie.

So,I skip to the English, watch the rest as confused as before.

Things were ok by the end; they laid out the story pretty thoroughly at the climax, and I got to enjoy it. But I still have no fucking clue what the guitarist from Still Water was building on Mars, and why it was no big deal that the latex chick shattered it, after what I assumed was a thought out and purposeful process and reasoning for an enormous stone clock, but whatever.

So is there a moral to my story? I think it parallels the moral of the movie. Do I need to explain?

I don’t know if I’m going to stream another movie online. Didn’t really do it for me. Back in college, two of my roommates, Juan and Taylor, they would download literally every movie that was available, and then burn them onto dvd so we could watch it on our 60 inch TV. I liked that better.

I’ll leave out my actual review of the movie, although I bet I would have liked it better if it was on a screen taking up my entire field of vision, and I didn’t have access to spider solitaire.

One of my favorite movie genres is the musician biopic that makes musicians seem like the legends they are by dramatizing the Hell out of their lives using talented young actors. You know, movies like Walk The Line, Ray, Notorious. My favorite movie of this kind is I’m Not There about Bob Dylan; using seven separate actors playing seven separate characters that are all based on some form of Robert Allen Zimmerman (Bob Dylan).

Here’s a musician I think should have a biopic made about him someday: Axl Rose.

There Was A Time: The Axl Rose Story

1962

The film starts out with quick scenes of a 16 year old mother giving birth to a baby boy in Lafayette, Indiana she names William Bruce Rose, Jr. Her husband is abusive and leaves soon after, but the mother remarries and changes her baby’s name to her new husband’s: Bailey.

Paul Dano 1978 – 1982

Cut to William Bailey as a teenager singing in church choirs with his step-siblings as the Bailey Trio. He plays piano and is poor in school. While going through some family papers one day he discovers his birth certificate and realizes the man he thought was his father is not! Woah! This is the “Ray Charles’ brother dies in the washtub” moment. He starts getting hassled by the police and grows his hair very long which get him called a girl by people and even kicked out of his own house. He and his best friend Izzy Stradlin only have one outlet: rock music, of course. One day Izzy leaves for LA to make it big and William soon follows after changing his name to W. “Axl” Rose.

Keira Knightley 1984 – 1990

The overnight success of Guns N’ Roses. Thin, outrageous, charismatic, loose cannon. Starts out with Axl playing in Hollywood Rose for crowds of seven, forming Guns N’ Roses where their days consist solely of practicing, doing drugs and smoking cigarettes for research studies at UCLA. Coked up and paranoid all the time. This is the Axl Rose everyone wants to see! Big scenes are Axl Rose smashing his wall to wall mirrors, being booed because of the “One In A Million” controversy and telling a woman he’d sign with her record company if she walks down Sunset Strip naked. What a guy!

Cillian Murphy 1990 – 1992

This is the part of the film that gets meta. Like in I’m Not There how Heath Ledger plays an actor that in the movie plays the portrayal of Bob Dylan played by Christian Bale; Cillian Murphy is going to play Keira Knightley’s character based on Axl Rose through a series of music videos fictionalizing his life. AKA it’ll just be a remake of the Use Your Illusion music videos “Don’t Cry”, “November Rain” and “Estranged”. Axl already did the work for us by making insane, over the top, over produced, melodrama music videos for these songs. Just remake them and replace Axl Rose (who can’t act for shit) with Cillian Murphy (who was at least really good in Batman Begins). It’s so easy (no pun intended)! The order of the videos will create a bit of controversy with fan boys too, which is always really fun. These three videos comibined equals about twenty-five minutes so this portrayal will take up roughly 1/4 of the film.

Jake Gyllenhaal 1993 – 1995

With the Use Your Illusion tour fading out and the band on top of the music scene he’s rich, he’s famous, he’s a complete success. But the videos are the subject of ridicule and Axl seems to be more ridiculous than dangerous. He has horrible fights with his girlfriend. Then his protege Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon dies of a drug over dose. What a troubled man! To avoid the public he locks himself away in his LA apartment for years. Such a cliche.

Mark Wahlberg 1999 – 2006

This is the period in Axl’s life where he’s not such a hot item. Mark Wahlberg in those shitty dreadlocks and an all new band at the 2002 VMA Music Awards. Then there’s the tours that start and stop abruptly, concerts that start hours late while Axl watches football games. It’s a sad and pathetic character. With Buckethead always standing behind him it should seem as if Death is stalking him. Cryptic, I know. This chapter of Axl’s life ends with him a desperate man spaced out on prescription drugs all the time getting into fist fights with Tommy Hilfiger. Marky Mark should put on some weight.

Brad Pitt 2009

Axl Rose with an all new band finally releases Chinese Democracy after fourteen years. It is reviewed well and Axl seems to have his legend back. This character portrayal is one scene with him conducting an interview over the phone in his apartment in LA. He is asked if he ever misses the old days and he thinks fondly to himself, takes a sip of tea, laughs politely, “No.” Then he hangs up on them. Black.

Now tell me right now you wouldn’t see that movie.