New "Interstellar" Trailer!

Christopher Nolan occupies a special place in the world of big-budget filmmaking right now. He makes movies with mass appeal that demand you be fully engaged to enjoy them. I'm partial to Memento, The Prestige, and Inception, but even his Batman movies are ambitious, mature, and thematically focused. His next film, Interstellar, looks to continue in that tradition. The film opens in November and there's a new trailer for you to enjoy below.

The story seems to take place in a future where climate change has nearly destroyed the food supply. Matthew McConaughey plays a former pilot who is given the chance to join an expedition to the far reaches of space with the hope of finding a habitable planet to colonize. By doing so, however, he risks never seeing his children again. Co-starring in the film are Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, and Topher Grace among others.

Since Nolan's longtime cinematographer, Wally Pfister, has moved on to directing his own movies, Hoyte Van Hoytema (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) will step in to help craft the visual texture of Interstellar. As with Nolan's last three pictures, select scenes will be shot using IMAX cameras, which seems appropriate for the scope of the story. Hans Zimmer (Composer), Lee Smith (Editor), Nathan Crowley (Production Designer), Emma Thomas (Producer), and Jonathan Nolan (Co-Screenwriter) are all reuniting with Nolan for the film.

I like what I'm seeing so far. Those shots of the spacecraft circling the wormhole are fantastic, and I can't wait to see what's on the other side. I have a funny feeling that most of the scenes in the trailer are taken from the first half of the film, so there should be plenty of surprises in store for us come November 7th.

What do you think? Check out the trailer and drop a comment below, or tweet your comments to @settingtheframe.

MDFF Presents: "Liquid Sky"

I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of Liquid Sky. I hadn't. A quick online search of websites like Ebay and Amazon.com revealed that finding a decent copy of this cult film is tougher than you might think. While there are a few VHS tapes still circulating around (if you even have a working player) and some import DVDs that you could take a chance on, there hasn't been an official U.S. version available for some time. Just like the freewheeling new-wave lifestyle depicted in the film, the movie faded away, becoming little more than a cinematic footnote as the most successful indie hit of 1983.

Review: "Under the Skin"

There's a long line of science-fiction/horror films that feature the predatory female using man's sexual desire against him. In Under the Skin, Scarlett Johansson portrays such a character, prowling the streets of Glasgow, Scotland for unsuspecting single men to lure to her lair. What happens to them when they get there, well... it might make you think twice about jumping into the Prisoners van with Black Widow for a little bow-chicka-wow-wow.

Review: Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

It's safe to assume that any filmmaker with a recognizable stamp on their work is going to have both avid fans who connect with the way they tell stories and vehement detractors who don't. For Wes Anderson, the man behind Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore, each new film seems to widen that gap between the extremes, and it's easy to understand why. As someone who enjoys all of Anderson's work, even I would agree that his films are becoming more elaborate and his style more pronounced.

His latest feature, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is the delightfully manic tale of a hotel concierge who is framed for murder. Of course, nothing that simple could adequately explain the plot of a Wes Anderson picture, or its cast of characters and caricatures, so we begin in 1985, as a writer (Tom Wilkinson) is recording an interview about his book, "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Insisting that the book is based on real events, the writer begins to recall how, in 1968, his younger self (Jude Law) was regaled by the story, which came directly from the hotel proprietor, Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham). While we spend very little time in 1985 -- a section whose purpose will only come into focus at the very end of the movie -- the 1968 portion lovingly lingers, and is periodically returned to throughout the picture. Law and Abraham have an easy chemistry, and Jason Schwartzman, an Anderson regular since he made his debut in Rushmore, shows up for a spell in this section also.