Trailer Trashin’: Visit Old-Time Hollywood in the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!
Hello again, dear readers. This past week saw the release of Guillermo del Toro’s new horror film Crimson Peak, which I’m very excited about. In the meantime, I’ve got another trailer for a 2016 movie to show you. Now let’s take a look at the first trailer for Hail, Caesar!, the next film from the Coen Brothers.
Premise: Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a Hollywood “fixer” helping the production of the upcoming epic film Hail, Caesar! starring Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). But when Whitlock is kidnapped by a group calling themselves “The Future,” Mannix is the one in charge of collecting the $100,000 ransom and rescuing him.
My take: There’s something I just love about the golden age of Hollywood, that period from the late 1920s through the late 1950s. And I love movies about that era of filmmaking. And that’s just what we’re getting with Hail, Caesar!, a story about 1950s Hollywood brought to us by Joel and Ethan Coen. This is the first trailer for Hail, Caesar!, and it looks like a lot of fun.
0:09-0:18: We’re introduced right away to our protagonist, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). Although this film is telling a fictional story, Mannix was a real person, a studio executive and producer famous/infamous for his work as a “fixer” who kept unsavory details of movie stars’ private lives away from the public.
0:23-0:26: Channing Tatum as Burt, an actor and one of Mannix’s clients.
0:28: Ralph Fiennes as Laurence Lorenz, a film director. Check out that awesome check-pattern jacket he’s wearing.
0:32-0:33: Our first look at Scarlett Johansson, who plays “an actress who suddenly becomes pregnant as her film is about to go into production.” There’s some amusing real-life subtext to that, since that almost the exact situation Johansson was in early last year when she was about to start work on Avengers: Age of Ultron.
0:34: The Coens’ frequent collaborator Frances McDormand as a film editor.
0:40-0:41: Our first look at George Clooney as the awesomely named Baird Whitlock, the star of the film-within-a-film Hail, Caesar! So many people have said that Clooney seems like an old-fashioned movie star that it’s great to see him actually playing one.
0:48: If this chap looks familiar, there’s good reason for that. This is character actor Clancy Brown, who appeared in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), Highlander (1986), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Starship Troopers (1997), among many other films. Always nice to see him.
1:18: Alden Ehrenreich as Tobey, another actor and client of Mannix.
1:22-1:27: I love this Esther Williams-style stuff that Johansson’s character is doing.
1:34-1:42: Johansson’s character goes to see/possibly seduce Joseph Silverman (Jonah Hill), who seems to be some kind of bookkeeper or accountant.
1:47-1:51: Besides Eddie Mannix, there’s another real person in this fictional story. Hedda Hopper (Tilda Swinton), the famous Hollywood gossip columnist, well known for her flamboyant hats and naming suspected Communists during the McCarthy era.
2:06-2:07: Very cool shot of a boat rowing toward a submarine with a red Soviet star on the conning tower. And that blond fellow standing up at the front of the rowboat is none other than Dolph Lundgren, who is playing a “Soviet submarine commander.”
2:19-2:25: Baird Whitlock meets a strange group of people all chilling together in a nice lounge. Is this the group that called themselves “The Future” in his ransom note?
I hadn’t even heard of this film prior to seeing the trailer, but I’m definitely interested now. I love movies about this time period. The tone and feel looks really fun, and there’s a ton of actors I like. When the beginning of February comes around, I definitely want to check out Hail, Caesar!
ANTICIPATION: I say, this looks like a swell picture!
Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Christopher Lambert, Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz, Fisher Stevens, Clancy Brown, Robert Picardo, Emily Beecham, Kate Morgan Chadwick, and Dolph Lundgren
Directors: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Writers: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Timothy Monforton
