Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

After the rather surprising trailer that shows us a playful Marty, now we get this rather tame teaser poster for the upcoming Hugo.

Can't say this poster screams "I'm dying to see this ASAP!", it looks more like a leftover piece from The Golden Compass movies that never came to happen...

This slightly updated version of Brave's teaser gives us a glimpse at how influenced the movie will be by Celtic and Medieval traditions. The way in which the artists achieved movement with such grace and beauty in this poster is truly remarkable. Please let Cars 2 be behind us and have Pixar deliver this to us today!

What were your thoughts on the Hugo trailer? Excited about Brave?

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time *

Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton
Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, Toby Kebbell, Reece Ritchie
Richard Coyle, Steve Toussaint

At first glance Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is yet another shallow video game adaptation meant to entertain youngsters with its giant set pieces, special effects and numbing loudness; but look closer and you will find a distasteful "oh well" approach to American foreign policy and media brainwashing.
Set in ancient Persia, it centers on Dastan (Gyllenhaal) an orphan of humble origins adopted by the king (Ronald Pickup) and raised like a prince.
As the movie begins, Dastan and his brothers (Kebbell and Coyle) prepare to invade the scared city of Alamut on the grounds that they have been manufacturing weapons for Persia's enemies.
Not long after they have invaded the city, Dastan figures out it was all a trick devised by the story's actual villain (quite easy to discover considering the makeup artists all but put a "villain" sign on his face). He also discovers the actual reason for the invasion was to find an ancient dagger that has the power of turning back time; but before he can become a hero, he's been framed for murder, becomes a fugitive and finds himself traveling with Princess Tamina of Alamut (Arterton) to reclaim his rightful place.
The problem with the movie isn't how miscast it is (Gyllenhaal has absolutely no hero potential despite the bigger muscles) or how badly it uses its good actors (Arterton could've been iconic and Molina just remind us that a brilliant actor can make almost anything seem better than it is). The problem isn't the action sequences either, although their Aladdin with ADD aesthetics continue to highlight the same brand of flashy, quick editing Jerry Bruckheimer's productions have become known for, which shows even less than it says.
The biggest problem with the film is how it uses all these elements to thinly disguise it's "let's move on" views on the Iraq invasion.
At first, the story seems to be taking a critical aim at how the Bush government (and its allies) handled a situation that quickly got out of their hands. We are presented with facts that almost entirely resemble the search for weapons of mass destruction led by the American army on Iraqi soil and how a few government people quickly created an entire war as diversion from their real aim (the dagger in the movie, oil in real life).
It's not even necessary to mention nepotism and the similarities between powerful political families and royalty to see how much the main plot drew from history.
But once the central dagger comes up, viewers are provided with the sort of device that could work in two ways.
Its ability to go back in time enables the audience to fantasize about a world where things can be undone and evil is quickly fixed. In a way this could provide some sort of escapism from the already brutal reality raging outside the theater.
But why then, introduce this element of correction into an allegory that had such recent effects? If it doesn't want to deal with reality why then remind us of it?
It's only then when the movie's real intention seems to come out and by suggesting mystical artifacts can fix our wrongs it's empowering the video game generation to think of technology as their own way of escaping reality and consciously grant themselves absolution.
What's the difference between the dagger and digital video recording or personalized online content? In the same way that Prince Dastan can simply rewind and fix the past, we now have the power to control the information we get and simply fast forward through the news or ignore a disturbing article and conceal the world from our already limited perception.
Prince of Persia isn't about entertaining as much as it's about creating a false idea of our involvement in the world.
The only magical thing about this movie is that very few seem to notice it's essentially propaganda.

Shutter Island **1/2

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley
Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Elias Koteas
Max von Sydow, Ted Levine, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch

The opening scene in Shutter Island contains the entire movie; the Paramount Studio logo fills the screen while an ominous string music fills the air. Then all of a sudden the title cards appear, with no dissolves or fade outs. Seconds later we see U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) head over a toilet, suffering an extreme bout of sea sickness.
He cleans up, fixes his tie and goes outside where he meets his new partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) as they approach the title island (an Alcatraz like fort that harbors an asylum for the criminally insane).
In the old fashioned typography of the credits and the musical nod (which reminds you of something Franz Waxman would've done) Martin Scorsese declares his film will be a throwback to classic noir, gothic and horror films.
But for those paying enough attention, he also gives away the film's plot-and polarizing twists-direct and indirectly (those caring to find out in advance need to do no more than psychoanalyze the concept of vomiting and get creative after an apparent continuity error).
It can be said that because of this effect the film is arguably spoiled for those seeking a mystery flick and also ruined for those seeking a psychological study who instead of being rewarded with a complex whodunit get a facile howcatchem.
Scorsese, who's always been a precise filmmaker, has trouble conveying both predominant aspects of the film and while he obviously has a lot to say (the whole movie is filled with infinite movie homages and references) he tries to say it all at once.
This is evident in the convoluted plot, adapted by Laeta Kalogridis from a novel by Dennis Lehane, which shows us the investigation the marshals conduct in the island (the mysterious disappearance of a patient played by the excellent Mortimer) but also tries to convey the troubles inside Teddy's mind (related to the death of his wife, played by a beautifully creepy Williams) the extent of which also involves WWII traumas and HUAC conspiracies.
Soon the plot has trouble finding its way, if any, among the constant new information we receive; this somehow never really deepens the mystery but makes the film drag, as people who know what's coming undergo an endurance test and those unaware of the twists are drowned by the intense, but vague, dream sequences.
Therefore the film is at its best, when along with editor extraordinaire Thelma Schoonmaker and director of photography Robert Richardson, Scorsese indulges the audience with the power of his images.
There are scenes, involving surreal dreams and flashbacks, that go to places he's rarely visited since The Last Temptation of Christ; places where Michelle Williams bursts into flames and Nazi soldiers are executed in front of the frozen corpses they originated.
Some of these moments achieve the kind of beautiful nightmare qualities David Lynch has become an expert at and while giving Marty mostly new territory to explore, fail to click within the whole.
If one of the purposes of Shutter Island was to blur the division between reality and imagination (or to study if there is any when it comes to specific human perception) Marty's obviously more into one than the other (deciding which is which brings yet another dilemma).
For someone with Scorsese's kind of attention to detail, we also wonder why would he give the audience clues about the mystery and then forget to keep up the game.
The best element of the film is arguably Leonardo DiCaprio who gives one of his richest performances letting himself fall completely into whatever the movie is (he works that final line to the extent that he convinces us we saw a much better movie). He's obviously onto something no one else is and creates an affecting portrait of fear, passion and confidence about to shatter.
He is excellent in moments where other actors might've exaggerated and seeps into the brooding essence of someone like Robert Mitchum (appropriate given Out of the Past hugely shaped the feel of the film), his interaction with the superb, if somehow underused, cast is revelatory.
There's a scene with Clarkson that probably would've made a much more interesting film and his moments with the Vincent Price-like Kingsley and the perversely calm von Sydow, both playing asylum doctors, are spellbinding.
As a whole the experience of Shutter Island can be reduced to a paraphrase of the film's closing scene and lead us to wonder if a so-so Scorsese movie is worse than no Marty at all.

Elegy ***

Director: Isabel Coixet
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz
Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard, Debbie Harry, Dennis Hopper

When describing his approach to a woman as "I go yacking away mainly because I want to fuck her", you realize that David Kepesh (Kingsley) is either the world's most honest man or the biggest asshole.
Isabel Coixet's beautiful work in "Elegy" is delivered when she finds the balance between the two.
We learn that Kepesh is a divorced, celebrated author and culture critic whose most stable relationship comes in the shape of Carolyn (an affecting beautiful performance by Clarkson), his mistress of twenty years who always drops by for sex and then leaves for business.
He has become estranged with his son (the reliable Sarsgaard) after he abandoned him as a child and spends time talking about his conquests with his best friend and poet George O'Hearn (Hopper).
One day he meets Consuela Castillo (Cruz), a beautiful, intriguing woman who captures his imagination and happens to be his student. They embark in an affair (after the semester is over, the film isn't about academic scandals...) that then becomes something like love, until he begins to obsess over the fact that she will probably leave him for a younger man.
Based on Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal",the film at first plays like middle age male fantasy where you have an interesting, mature man who never lost his sexual charm finding himself smothered by the unthinkable love that comes in the shape of a beautiful woman thirty years younger.
Narrated by Kingsley with an tone and enunciation reserved for hard boiled film noir, the first part of the plot plays out like what an affair would play out imagined by a Raymond Chandler fan. Here David becomes a distrusting creature, always lurking in the shadows (even the ones inside his head) looking for the right moment to attack.
It's no surprise that during this time we also wait for Consuela to reveal the femme fatale we're convinced she has in her somewhere. Because as David assumes: everything that people will see in them is an old dirty man and a sly young woman trying to get something from him.
When Consuela insists this is love David panicks, taking the story into a path that alters his and our consciousness about age, feelings and mortality.
Because yes, among many things "Elegy" is about coming to terms with death (the opening monologue has David quote Bette Davis herself) but it doesn't pretend to make you settle with this idea, instead Coixet seems to draw from the now overused conception that "life is what happens when you're waiting for it to happen".
Kingsley of course brings a sense of self to David unlike any other actor could. Not only do you feel him connect to the character in a personal way (after old it's a well known film myth that it's the bravest of actors who dare to play their age) but he also gives David a backstory that makes him difficult, but not impossible to understand.
In his scenes with Hopper (which are probably the best in the film) Kingsley portrays the kind of comraderie that takes years to take shape. Hopper also is helpful in creating this sense of a masculine world that sometimes seems impenetrable for women.
If it wasn't for Coixet's delicate, even sensuous approach Roth's hero would stay at a surface level and it would be easy for the audience to decide he's either good or bad.
Her aid in this task is the ever more surprising Penélope Cruz who could've made Consuela a sex bomb, but chooses a restrained, almost ethereal approach and never lets her cultural background become a caricature.
Her performance is extremely sensual, but unintentionally, because she lets her character put a spell on us without showing it. She brings an emotional challenge to David that doesn't even need to rely on a third act twist that feels more like punishment than fate.
The film's major flaw might be the fact that it puts too much emphasis on events that should've felt more organic, but in these mistakes Coixet highlights the duality that has always made women and men so different.
She lets her mistakes be part of who she is and ignores the pride attributed to men who try to play everything like uninterested, unaffected heroes.
It should result ironic that it's a woman who was able to tap so well into the testosterone club of Roth's mind (just take into consideration the title change) to make it something deeply universal.