I spent part of yesterday afternoon looking at some of the trailers on the BBC Film site:
--- Kill Bill is one I like more than I thought I would (based on the trailer of course)... It's Quentin Tarantino and I like its 'tude. It may be (I hope it is) more than just another piece of millennial kick-butt fluff. It may become THE piece of millennial kick-butt fluff: it might have enough overkill (:-)) in it to stick around for a while (QTs stuff tends to make it to the classics shelf, so he gets the benefit of the doubt)...
--- Love Actually looks very promising (Notting Hill is one of my favorite movies and one day, I'm afraid, that videotape will just wear out). This time, one of the actors is Alan Rickman, who is amazingly attractive and sexy without either prettiness or roughness, and with the best voice on the planet. He's so good at playing baddies or even just dubious types (we've seen him as Snape in the Harry Potter films, a piece of brilliant casting) that it's possible to forget that he's a great lead actor as well as a superb character actor, and does brilliant comedy as well as great drama, and that Alan Rickman as a man in love would be unforgettable.
--- The Coens (may they live forever) are at it again with Intolerable Cruelty. There is no way to describe this (or really any) Coen Bros. movie. Just watch the trailer.
--- Master and Commander; The Far Side of the World is difficult for me to write about. I'm a reader and fan of Patrick O'Brian's twenty novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin and the crew members who go with them on many of their voyages. I've been through all twenty of the novels at least five times, and some of them many more times than that. I love each of these novels more than the next (as they say).
Master and Commander is the name of one book in the series (the first), and The Far Side of the World is the name of another (#10), and neither of their plots seem to be reflected in the trailer (although there is another, #3, that may supply the plot, perhaps -- HMS Surprise -- but it is difficult to be sure from the trailer alone).
One rule of thumb is that a feature-length film can be well-based on a short story or even a novella, but to reflect a novel of any complexity, the film has to be longer than that, or the novel has to suffer being cut severely. That is why I believe the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings films are so superb -- not only do we get to see more of the top quality production, acting, direction, etc.; they also allow something closer to the nuanced depths of the novel to appear on film, and give us readers the essence we hope for.
I hope that this movie (M&C) represents a foothold, and that other movies based on other parts of the series (depending on how this one does, of course) might be made to follow after it. Not twenty, naturally; nobody really thinks that, in terms of commercial feature films. Of course, if PBS or HBO or the BBC or A&E ever wanted to take on a large and meaningful, exciting, adventure-filled, character-driven multipart project, on a huge scale, this would be it. Hint, hint.
Watch the trailer. My two problems with it are (1) I can't tell enough from it to see where it fits in to the series -- and there are scads of O'Brian fans like me dotted all around the world, producers take note. And (2), I don't see some of the casting choices, fine actors though they are, fitting in to the roles they are assigned -- but it's hard to tell this from the trailer, and I must wait for the movie to see what actually happens. I've got my fingers crossed. I really want this to be a great film and blow my Aubrey-Maturin dedicated-reader socks off. I want it to be worthy of the late, great Patrick O'Brian.
--- Ned Kelly -- Orlando Bloom strikes again (and I for one am happy to see him) as a supporting actor in Gregor Jordan's film in which Heath Ledger plays Ned Kelly. Looking good; looking very good.
10:16:01 AM 
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