Trailer Trash

Thanks to a heads-up from the good people at Aint It Cool News, that repository of King Kong hype and homebase for a nation of angry, venom-spewing 13 year old talkbackers, I bring to you tonight 2 brand new trailers, fresh off the ol' Informational Superhighway we got there.

First up, Ron Howard's big screen adaptation of The Da Vinci Code starring beloved Bollywood legend Otm Shank...Oh, no, wait, it's some guy named Tom Hanks...

Wait, is he a real guy? I thought he was just a creepy animated character from that Bob Zemeckis Christmas movie. You know, like Gollum or King Kong, or Kim Basinger from Cool World.

Anyway, on Aint It Cool, all the geeks are wetting themselves with glee over the trailer. I'm unimpressed. So I will now present to you...From the Home Office in Atlantic City, New Jersey, The Top Ten Reasons...Ron Howard's Big-Screen Adaptation of The Da Vinci Code Will Suck.

10. Hooded albino already featured in Bergman's Seventh Seal and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey...Not really that scary.

9. Penned by Akiva Goldsman, the man who gave Batman nipples.

8. Unlike the ultra-successful Passion of the Christ, does not include a single violent whipping session.

7. Gregorian chanting set against an image of light beaming in through a stained glass window. Woo-de-fucking-doo.

6. Girl from Amelie apparently strangled, but most likely won't die painfully on screen.

5. Difficult to enjoy film with complete 5.1 surround sound experience while on the can.

4. Fast-paced, intricately plotted historical/religious thriller from the doofuses that brought you Splash.

3. I mean, it's pretty similar in theme to those Left Behind movies, and there's no way you could ever top that kind of cinematic spectacle.

2. Book wasn't any good in the first place, assholes.

1. Four Words: From Director Ron Howard

Okay, so it doesn't really look all that bad. I just can't resist the chance to mock Ron Howard. Seriously, though, I didn't like the book "Da Vinci Code." It felt, to me, like a sub-par Grisham style mystery tied in with the same old Holy Grail-Jack the Ripper-Mary Magdalene Christian mythology bullshit.

To me, the whole "Jesus has blood relations" thing is like the historical version of an urban legend. It's a story that gets passed down through generations because it represents something archetypal...The notion that, behind the everyday workings of government and society, secretive, shadowy organizations obsessed with power go about the real business of running the world. Sure, it's based on the truth - that corporate and governmental powers make decisions that change all our lives behind closed doors - but we transpose it on to Jesus because...Well, I don't know why...Because it's more remote and romantic and enticing or something...

And I hate hate hate Ron Howard-Akiva Goldsman mash-ups, which include this year's reprehensibly juvenile Cinderella Man and the Oscar Winner for Best Picture a few year's back, the atrocious A Beautiful Mind, surely one of my least favorite films this decade. So, I'm not expecting great things...

But I'm not closed off to the idea that a solid thriller could be made from this material. I had trouble taking it seriously on the page, largely due to author Dan Brown's woefully pedestrian writing style. But as Hitchcock famously noted, mediocre novels make the best films, while great novels make mediocre films. If that's really the case, this film should be a goddamn masterpiece.

Okay, moving on...

This next film will open right alongside Da Vinci in May next year. It's Wolfgang Peterson's remake of the 70's disaster classic The Poseiden Adventure. As they often do with modern remakes for some reason, they've trimmed the title. So it's just Poseiden. Whatever. I don't see why you'd take the name "adventure" out of the title of your movie if it's already in there. Who doesn't want to see a movie that takes them on an adventure? I mean, take a title like Pee Wee's Big Adventure. That's a great title...It tells you exactly what you're getting...A guy named Pee Wee has a wild adventure, in which he retreives his bike from the Alamo. Or something like that.

Here's the trailer.

It might be cool. Peterson previously worked similar material with The Perfect Storm, with mixed results. I liked a lot of the disaster-at-sea stuff in the film's second half. But the opening hour is a horrifying slog. I mean, they're trying so hard to give that bar and all those "colorful" characters a sense of authenticity, but the entire enterprise from the accents on down is just so bogus. More brave death at sea, less blathering about the fight at home and the importance of family.

Thankfully, I think this movie takes place entirely within the ship The Poseiden, so unless he's got Irish immigrants flirting with rich ladies in there, Wolfgang will be able to focus on the action, which is what he does well to begin with. (Although I'll grant his German-language submarine masterpiece, Das Boot, contains memorable characters and genuine pathos).

And the trailer certainly makes it seem like a big movie, and a fairly horrifying one. Something about being inside a boat that's sinking like a stone to the bottom of the sea...Just kind of a deeply unsettling idea.

Plus, the movie stars Kurt Russell. That's one way to significantly up the liklihood I'll enjoy your film.