OK, so as for the rest of the footage Sony screened for us this morning at ShoWest. The whole goal of the morning was to highlight their summer movies, so the footage came from Angels & Demons, Julie &Julia, The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3,, Year One and The Ugly Truth. All of these movies already have trailers except Julie & Julia, which meant the presentation was more of an extended version of what we've already seen rather than anything truly revealing. But here's a rundown of what we saw anyway.
Julie & Julia. Since this was the first footage we'd seen from this one, it was the most interesting to me, even though the movie is an adaptation of a book I didn't like all that much. The story follows both Julia Child (Meryl Streep) learning to cook in Paris, and New York secretary Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who decides to change her life by cooking all the recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. The Amy Adams section, in which she's intimidated by her more powerful friends and comically flustered by all her cooking experiments, feels like very traditional chick-flick stuff, and Adams' rampant adorableness actually makes it seem even more irritating. But Meryl Streep, predictably, is great as Child, and continues her streak of playing grim and serious (Devil Wears Prada, Doubt) and then changing it up with something light and adorable (Prairie Home Companion, Mamma Mia!). I especially liked the relationship between Streep and Stanley Tucci, who plays Julia's loving, adorable husband. Having seen her backstab him in The Devil Wears Prada, it's nice to see the two old pros getting along.
Angels & Demons. If you've read the book, or saw The Da Vinci Code, or are vaguely familiar with the concept of Tom Hanks running around a European city and solving arcane clues, you know what you're getting from this one. What we saw was basically an extended version of the trailer, with an added scene of Tom Hanks shirtless, Ewan McGregor questioning Hanks about whether or not he believes in God, and an actual joke or two. It's possible that this will involve more action and less sitting around talking than Da Vinci Code, but for the most part it looks about the same.
The Ugly Truth. This romantic comedy still looks entirely unappealing, and Katherine Heigl is playing a character that caters to all the worst attributes of her persona-- overbearing, snobby, full of herself. And Gerard Butler, handsome as he is, is still irritating as a know-it-all lothario who tries to teach Heigl's character how to communicate with men. There's a funny scene in a restaurant in which Heigl is wearing vibrating underwear and trying to give a presentation at the same time, but the setup was so implausible it was hard to get into it. Mostly the movie just feels disposable. Next!
Year One. Again, mostly just extended versions of what we've seen in the trailers already, with not even a hint at how this plot might come together. The more I see of this, the less interested I am, really-- most of the jokes seem fairly obvious and on-the-nose, and despite the great talent in the movie, no one is doing anything all that new or interesting. Except for David Cross, that is, whose line "Your name is suck!" still makes me laugh every time.
Taking of Pelham 1,2,3. Like Year One, the more I see of this, the less appealing it is. Mostly because despite all the footage shown here, I still can't figure out the plot-- they keep showing car crashes as if John Travolta's subway hijacker character is somehow controlling them, even though he's down in the subway harassing Denzel Washington. The footage was shown to the tune of a lot of rap and hard rock music, which just made it all seem a little desperate. Might turn out to be some disposable entertainment, but at this point it looks like another one of those unnecessary remakes.
