Movie trailer round-up: Clintball, bin Laden and Kerouacky snacks

This is my second week of covering the trailer round-up and already it's provoked an existential crisis in me. Why do we need to see little bits of things before we see the whole thing? Are we, as a people, somehow unfulfilled, incomplete? Should we not be trying to grab whole this vast spiritual cake, rather than settle for the mere crumbs these trailers represent? What's that? It's just advertising? Oh, right.

With only a couple of days of Olympicnicking left, the world's thoughts turn to cinema. But they still want to see fringe sports to which they'd never given more thought than the flailings of drunks in the street until two weeks ago. Enter Backwards, which is every inspirational sports movie ever made, with added Olympic rowing undertones and a little extra Van Der Beek. As a side note, I thought the star was Peggy's lesbian friend off Mad Men. It isn't. It's actually someone else.


In Liberal Arts, How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnor has a beard and isn't fully sure of his station in life, so he goes off and meets a cast of endearingly quirky characters and a not-classically-beautiful but enchantingly individual girl, who charm him with their idiosyncrasies and make him re-evaluate everything. Indie movies really should use this set-up more often: they're missing a trick.


Whatever controversy death-of-Bin-Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty causes, it is based on a LIE. I know this because this well-known picture of bigwigs watching the operation in the White House situation room was obviously Photoshopped to include the two people poking their heads in at the back on the right.



I don't know who they are or why the US Government would want to pretend they were there, but it definitely proves a conspiracy of some sort. I hope Oliver Stone's reading this.


Having sensibly ditched its working title 'Knick-Knack, Kerouac, Give a Dog a Bone', On the Road looks set to be a faithful adaptation of a book I probably should have heard of. Without any prior knowledge to fall back on, I'll add colour through the following three spuriously-researched and entirely meritless Kerouac facts:

1. Jack Kerouac's favourite game was Kerouacky-sack.
2. He had a pet duck called Quack-Quack Kerouac.
3. He once owned a fast-food concession stand called Kerouac's Snack Rack. This was in Hackensack.


Here's the second trailer for This is 40, which would've been called 'Rudd Me Tender, Rudd Me Sweet' if I'd have had anything to do with it. (I didn't.)


In Trouble with the Curve, Clint Eastwood and Justin Timberlake share a screen and this is somehow OK. Next week: Dustin Hoffman and Howie from the Backstreet Boys are in a cop buddy movie together. It is called LETHAL SUSPICION or perhaps FORCIBLE ENTRY or something. I've got a week to work on it.


Finally, Gerard Butler is an Irish/Scottish/American hybrid creature who used to play for Celtic in Playing for Keeps. They couldn't have made it Rangers, throw a couple of quid their way for the image rights?


Anyway, Matt's back next week so I'm out of here like last year. But if you like what you see, why not come and visit me over at www dot waaaaaaahhhh! (*gets tazed and thrown out into the alley*)