If you didn’t think a lot of trailers were released each week, guess again as I deliver my second installment in my new “Overlooked Trailers” feature this week bringing you looks at a new Hayao Miyazaki-penned feature called From Up on Poppy Hill, the first trailer from Josh Radnor‘s Liberal Arts starring Elizabeth Olsen, an intense red band trailer for a film called The Loft that stars Karl Urban, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Marsden, Eric Stonestreet and Wentworth Miller, a trailer for 3, 2, 1… Frankie Go Boom featuring Ron Perlman in drag and even more.
After last week’s installment I actually ended up seeing two of the films only a few days after posting the trailers — The Ambassador and Samsara — who knows if I’ll be seeing any of the films featured in today’s edition any time soon.
From Up On Poppy Hill
March 2013
Written by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his son, Goro Miyazaki (Tales from Earthsea), From Up on Poppy Hill will be hitting theaters next March through GKids in the first film of the new deal between the stateside studio and Studio Ghibli.
The film is set in Yokohama in 1963, and centers on a high school couple’s innocent love and the secrets surrounding their births. The story takes place in a Japan that is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics — and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the new generation struggles to embrace modernity and throw off the shackles of a troubled past. The film’s rich color palette and painterly detail capture the beauty of Yokohama’s harbor and its lush surrounding hillsides, while the 1960’s pop soundtrack evokes nostalgia for an era of innocence and hope.
Beauty is Embarrassing
September 7
Beauty Is Embarrassing is a funny, irreverent, joyful and inspiring documentary featuring the life and current times of one of America’s most important artists, Wayne White. During his thirty-year career as a painter, art director, puppeteer, illustrator and overall raconteur White has been responsible for some of the most iconic images in popular culture. The film chronicles his early days in NYC as one of the creators of the Pee-wee’s Playhouse TV Show to his work as an art director on seminal music videos for The Smashing Pumpkins and Peter Gabriel to his current turn as a star in the fine art world. The film traces the vaulted highs and the crushing lows of an artist, father and husband trying to make it in the hectic world of commercial work while fulfilling his personal passion for creating great works of art. In the end Beauty Is Embarrassing is a deeply inspirational story about a man who lives by one rule: do you what you love, and it’ll lead to where you want to go.
Liberal Arts
September 14
Newly single, 35, and uninspired by his job, Jesse Fisher (Josh Radnor) worries that his best days are behind him. But no matter how much he buries his head in a book, life keeps pulling Jesse back. When his favorite college professor invites him to campus to speak at his retirement dinner, Jesse jumps at the chance. He is prepared for the nostalgia of the dining halls and dorm rooms, the parties and poetry seminars; what he doesn’t see coming is Zibby–a beautiful, precocious, classical-music-loving sophomore. Zibby awakens scary, exciting, long-dormant feelings of possibility and connection that Jesse thought he had buried forever. The film co-stars Elizabeth Olsen, Zac Efron, Richard Jenkins, Allison Janney, John Magaro and Elizabeth Reaser.
