Trailers, film pix announcement, and preparations for Oscar predictions

Film Pix Announcement

On January 9th, the film pix showing at studio ten will be Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration. A satire on the fall season Oscar buzz frenzy and how it disrupts the cast of a film suddenly caught within it.


Trailers

Although not entirely new, here are some trailers which I have either found interesting or unintentionally amusing (most of the time, they are the latter).

Here is a trailer for Factory Girl which is a film about Edie Sedgwick's encounter with Andy Warhol in the 1960s and her rise to stardom (along with the disillusionment which usually accompanies it). The film features Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol (odd casting choice), Sienna Miller as Edie, and Hayden Christensen as Billy Quinn, a character who is supposedly meant to be Bob Dylan or Dylan-esque, anyway, according to some sources, but isn't (Either Bob Dylan probably didn't want his name used in the film or nobodyy can prove that this illusive real-life character was indeed Bob Dylan).

http://movies.aol.com/movie/factory-girl/25513/trailer

Now, this is a link to the teaser trailer for the Hannibal Lecter prequel (sigh...sequels and prequels...why).I am thoroughly confused as to how Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern)got involved in this.

http://www.tobis.de/home/site_scripts/filmseite.php?id=101

Here is a full trailer for Zack Snyder's film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 which concerns the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Visually interesting, but, apparently, Gerard Butler is unable to modulate his voice. During the entire trailer, he is screaming variations on "We Spartans," "Sparta," and the like to the point of giving me a serious migraine. In addition, I doubt the film is historically accurate, judging by the trailer (although, I don't think this was ever filmmakers' intention). Furthermore, Snyder's historical epic seems to be over-the-top in terms of dramatics. As a result, I am also starting to have doubts as to whether Snyder can adapt Alan Moore's The Watchmen (which he is set to direct).

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1529800&sdm=web&qtw=640&qth=400

Now, this is a trailer for the German film, The Lives of Others, by newcomer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, which has raked in several awards at the recent European Film Awards along with Pedro Almodovar's Volver. The trailer is in German (no english subtitles). I place this trailer here regardless because this film has been named by several sources as one of the best films of 2006 (many have named it the best film of 2006. Period). I can't wait to see this film and I have been desperately trying to see it through clandestine means.

http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=501&item=0

I will update later with a list of what I believe to be the best films that have appeared in theatres this year (and that I have had the opportunity of seeing) as well as my predictions concerning what I think the Academy awards will nominate. I will write these predictions not because I regard the Oscars as an adequate judge of the year's best films, but rather in order to guess just how predictable the awards will be this year (as they always are). The Academy Awards will never be an accurate judge on films, given the ethnocentric, sexist, and conservative (this last one is debatable) bias in their choices. So, my predictions will in no way validate the illusions of grandeur with which the Academy regards itself and will, actually, like Guest's For Your Consideration, ridicule the potential choices which I believe they will make.