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.
Phew… Busy, busy week – but not so much here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, sadly. (Next week there’ll be more going on, promise!) Nonetheless, we did have a post by Matt about how he thinks we should stop worrying and learn to love the potential in remakes and reboots. So, let’s start with a trailer for one of the best remakes ever! Warning: There be bees.
Okay, that was perhaps not meant entirely seriously, but hey, anything to remind us of the good work Nicholas Cage is doing out there. Anyway, on to our regularly scheduled trailer programme!
Matt: How well this fits my post on remakes! I am a big fan of Roman Polanski’s 1971 film adaptation of Macbeth, which captures the unearthliness of the play’s atmosphere well. It’s an adaptation that understands fully well that cinema works differently from the stage. I also enjoyed Justin Kurzel’s 2015 version, though more for its images than for what Kurzel and his cast do with Shakespeare’s language. There was a BBC version in 1997 that placed the murderous wannabe king on a council estate that felt surprisingly ungimmicky, not least thanks to the central performance by James Frain, and there’s the goofy 2001 film Scotland, PA, which places the Elizabethan tragedy in 1970s suburban Pennsylvania, making Macbeth a disgruntled employee at a fast food joint who’s passed over for a promotion one time too many. Do we really need another film version of the material? Well, if that material is adapted by writer-director Joel Coen and stars the likes of Denzel Washington, Brendan Gleeson and Frances McDormand, why are we even asking the question?
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