Today's Triple News: monsters, apes and cunnilingus

No less than triple news today, another first!:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/152339/eerste_posters_dawn_of_the_planet_of_the_apes

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/152305/nieuwe_poster_nymphomaniac

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/152306/nieuwe_trailer_en_poster_godzilla_online

A lot of posters these last 24 hours. The Holidays are nigh so studios want to promote their upcoming projects more vigorously than usual to make sure all those cinemagoers (and I know from experience there will be lots of them!) will get a glimpse of their product. Except for Lars von Trier, who just wants to shock and amaze everybody, Holidays or no. He certainly succeeds with his latest Nymphomaniac poster, which is even more unsubtely explicit than the previous batch. If we didn't know what to expect from that particular film, we know now. I must say, I find this movie ever more amusing, thanks to its promotional campaign. These daring and original poster concepts are effectively catching my attention, as I know they attract others too. I wonder whether any of these will actually be seen in theaters anywhere, they seem to be so risqué they're only suited for online marketing. Say what you will about a stubborn troublemaker like Von Trier, he certainly knows how to cause a scandal that can only benefit the movie getting noticed. Whether people will go and see it is another matter and whether those that do will actually like it is an even more poignant question. But even if Nymphomaniac fails to be a compelling piece of exploration of human sexuality/erotics, its promotion is a definite success!

The other marketing material I posted is more standard fare. The Apes posters tease, they do little more. You get little new plot information from them other than the return of Caesar and Koba, the addition of two novel ape characters (including a new gorilla), and the fact the shit is about to hit the fan because of their grim look and war paint. Doesn't matter, I was already looking forward to this movie. I liked the previous reboot Rise of the PotA, as well as all the originals (some more than others). However, I'm not going more ape over this film now than I already did.

That said, I am getting more excited over the Godzilla remake. It seems it takes the simple basics of the Japanese originals, introducing a giant mutated dinosaur (?) and pitting him against the military, without bothering with an accompanying plot too much. That's good, because there is little more to Godzilla than that. Sure, there is the warning against nuclear weapons, but that's hardly a new message. And unlike the dreadful 1998 American remake, this Godzilla actually looks like his Japanese counterpart. Though story isn't the most pertinent issue, at least there's some terrific actors present (Gary Oldman. yay!) and a director who knows and respects the subject material (as he demonstrated with his Kaiju hommage guerilla film Monsters). And action doesn't appear to be something this movie lacks. It seems there's little here that can go wrong making this as good a Godzilla film as any of them. Which doesn't mean it will be a masterpiece (nonono!), but it will be good monster-stomping-cities fun, which is all you could hope for in a big G film. Except for the appearance of other creatures to fight Godzilla. I don't see any here, but earlier promotional material ensured us that's thrown in as well.

Today's Double News: survive these Nymphomaniac posters

Not one but two whole pieces of MovieScene news today, thanks to neglicence on my part in the last two days:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/150732/milla_jovovich_en_pierce_brosnan_gecast_voor_survivor

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/150765/nieuwe_posters_van_lars_von_triers_nymphomaniac

An action thriller starring Milla Jovovich... what's next, a romcom starring Jennifer Aniston? Jovovich is basically one of the obvious go-to gals if you want a tough girl shooting people up in your film. In this regard Survivor is sure to deliver what the term 'action' usually promises, since Jovovich's catchy enthusiasm in all her roles of this type (and there have been few memorable movies in her resumé that don't fit that bill) carries those films, if nothing else does. Brosnan, once quite an action star himself but in the last few years choosing the route of diversification to show his capabilities as an actor instead of a moviestar, is not an unlikely choice for a film like this, though of course his exact role has yet to be revealed. My guess would be the mentor of the heroine, since he's not exactly villain material (though I wouldn't mind if he was for a change). James McTeigue is an interesting pick as director for this project, indicating this will either be a totally over-the-top action flick (like his Ninja Assassin), or a more serious and intelligent drama similar in approach to The Raven and the excellent V for Vendetta, both also by his hand. At this point, Survivor can go in any direction so there's little point to idle speculation.

Speculation however, is exactly what drives us when talking about Nymphomaniac. The carefully developed marketing strategy certainly keeps fueling our expectations and imagination as to just how this film, controversial from the get-go, will pan out. It's about sex and it contains explicit sexual material that deliberately borders - or indeed simply crosses that border altogether - on the pornographic, despite starring established actors. This is what we've been hearing for over a year now, but we have yet to see any fleshy substance. So far we've been treated to a single clip from each of the eight chapters the movie will be composed of every month (four in total at this point), and none of them revealed the steamy sex scenes we have come to anticipate are in store for us (which of course is the point, since we're expected to pay for them by going to the cinema). However, we have been provoked by excessively teasy promotional material, including the infamous original poster. And now the film's marketing campaign unleashes fourteen new character posters on us, all of them telling us the same single thing: male or female, this is gonna be a sexually charged film for every spectator. Wheter it will actually be a good film on its own merits remains to be seen, but it undoubtedly will be fascinating to behold what a rebel like Lars von Trier has to say about the nature of human sexuality and its role in contemporary society. And I can imagine these particular promotional materials becoming cult commodities in future years, since you don't find many theatrical posters this thought provoking, daring and suggestive. Hopefully the movie will be able to live up to the hype its advertising campaign is creating, instead of ending up hurt by it as our expectations have grown too outrageous to be satiated by the actual final content.