Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
Do you like a good scare? Do you like feeling a tad miserable? And do you like great acting? Julie’s Friday post on the HBO adaptation of Stephen King’s The Outsider ticks all three boxes – so if you’ve missed it, make sure to check it out!
This was followed on Saturday by Matt’s thoughts on Danish Academy Award winner Another Round, starring a flawless Mads Mikkelsen – but since we recently featured a trailer for that film on a Sunday trailer post of ours, let’s go with something a bit less predictable. Did you know that in 2019 a video game came out that featured not just Mads but also the likes of Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley and Guillermo del Toro? Welcome to the strange, strange world of Japanese video game director Hideo Kojima!
And with this gem of oddness, let’s move on to our regular programme: more trailers!
Sam: The new double documentary Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation by Lisa Immordino Vreeland on both Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams (as well as their capricious relationship) looks triply fascinating: Not only does it feature extensive clips from their television interviews (with David Frost and Dick Cavett, no less) and excerpts from their enormously important literary works (need I list them? Oh, well: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood vs. A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, just to mention two towering texts each!). It also uses voice over performances by Zachary Quinto and Jim Parsons to convey even more of the eccentric, sardonic and insighful exchanges of the two. Two of the most iconic writers of American literature wrapped up with all this? Yes, please!
Matt: And since we started with Stephen King, let’s end with him too. I loved King as a teenager, but some time around the 1990s I stopped finding his stories all that engaging, while his flaws as a writer and storyteller became more glaring. I’ve not really followed his output, so when there’s an adaptation of one of his newer books, it’s usually news to me. The trailer for Apple TV+’s adaptation of the 2006 Lisey’s Story made me look up in more than one way: not only does it feature Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Clive Owen (whom I’m currently enjoying a lot in The Knick), it’s also directed by Pablo Larraín, whose 2019 film Ema was one of the first films I streamed rather than saw at the cinema when the pandemic was just starting. Larraín is definitely a director well worth watching out for, so I’ve got high hopes for Lisey’s Story.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 