New Clint Eastwood movie Trailers and random news

A new trailer has just been released for Clint Eastwood's new film projects, Flags of our Fathers and Red Sun,Black Sand. Both films deal with the battle for Iwo Jima between the United States and the Imperial Japanese army during WWII. When I first heard about Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, I thought "oh no, not another patriotic American war movie which completely demonizes another nation". Recently, I learned that Eastwood was making two films on the battle of Iwo Jima simultaneously (I believe), both scheduled for release in either 2006 or 2007. One film "Flags of our Fathers" tells the story of the battle from the American perspective while "Red Sun, Black Sand" tells the story entirely from the Japanese perspective. More interestingly, "Red Sun, Black Sand" has an entire Japanese cast (including Ken Watanabe!!!)who will actually speak Japanese in the film as opposed to Memoirs of a Geisha which forced its actors to speak English for American consumers and ignorantly casted Chinese actresses in Japanese roles (because, to the ignorant Rob Marshall, what's the difference). Thank you Eastwood.

Never have I ever heard of a similar project (or twin projects). While "Flags of our fathers" may still be the patriotic movie I envisioned(although, maybe not), Red Sun, Black Sand will compensate for this by demystifying the so called enemy (or the Japanese"Other") by showing their human relationships behind the battlefield. Eastwood has managed to circumvent the errors of former directors who have depicted an American war with an extremely one-sided bias by depicting both sides and dedicating two films to exploring them in full depth. Now, I am quite excited to see both films and will be there on opening day for both.

Anyway, here is a link to the trailer which incorporates footage from both films and surprisingly both films look quite good (I can only hope they will be also). It is a Japanese trailer, but you should still watch it.

http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2006/DEFGH/Flags-Of-Our-Fathers/trailer.php

On a side note, I found the news of Canadian director Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet hereafter) becoming a professor at the university of Toronto rather interesting, considering I trying to decide where to go for graduate school. It would be awesome to be taught by Egoyan. Although, he only teaches undergraduate courses and I would not base my decision for graduate studies on the presence of one single person. I am still mainly contemplating York university and Concordia.

Lastly, last weekend, Kevin Smith starred as a guest reviewer for the recuperating Ebert on the Ebert and Roeper show and here is a link to the audio of the show.

http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/ebertandroeper/today.html