Trailer Tuesday: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The re-teaming of Fight Club collaborators David Fincher and his star Brad Pitt is definitely something to get excited about. Their latest effort is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a tale about a man who ages backwards. Fincher made a name for himself creating unease with films like Se7en, Fight Club and Panic Room. But his tone seems more dreamy and even a little romantic in this fantastical tale. Ading interest are Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton. The film looks to be one of the more intriuguing holiday releases. The trailer premiered last week on Apple and the film is set to open on Christmas day. The trailer is courtesy of Paramount.

Burn After Reading

Brad Pitt as a gym instructor who's in way over his head in Burn After Reading (Focus Features)

Sorry for the delay in getting to the new Coen Brothers film but I figured it would top most people's list for what to see this past weekend while something like In Search of a Midnight Kiss was in much more need of coverage. Last year, the Coens scored big with No Country for Old Men. They won the Best Picture Oscar, an armload of critics' awards, and solid box office returns. It was a film in which not a single word or gesture was wasted. So how do you follow something that good? Well if you're the Coens you try switching genres and immediately turning around to deliver a dark comedy. Burn After Reading (opened September 12 at Landmark's La Jolla Village Theaters, AMC Mission Valley, AMC FashionValley, UltraStar Mission Valley, UltraStar Chula Vista and Regal Rancho Del Rey) also serves up a deliciously eclectic cast that includes Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins.

You can also listen to the discussion from The KPBS Film Club of the Air.

Trailer Tuesday: Burn After Reading

The Coen Brothers -- still basking in the glow of their Oscar win for No Country For Old Men -- already have another film done and ready to open on September 12. That's one of the fastest trunarounds for these meticulous filmmaking brothers. Their latest film is Burn After Reading and concerns a disc found at a gym and containing the memoirs of a CIA agent. The disc ends up in the hands of a pair of unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it. Anything by the Coens is cause for celebration or at the very least eager anticipation. This latest effort looks to return Brad Pitt to some refreshing indie wackiness (think back to his vivid and highly enjoyable performances in Twelve Monkeys, True Romance and Johnny Suede). So with less than a month until it's release, here's a look at the Coens' Burn After Reading. George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton (also fresh from an Oscar win for Michael Clayton in which Clooney was the star) and John Malkovich co-star. This one has definite potential. Trailer is courtesy of Focus Features.

Pineapple Express

Seth Rogen and James Franco in what may be the first pot action comedy, Pineapple Express (Sony Pictures)

I have a weakness for pot comedies. I think there's a lack of mean-spiritedness in pot comedies even when there are gross out gags or in the case of Pineapple Express (opening August 6 throughout San Diego) violence. You can always find a goofy sweetness lurking somewhere in a pot comedy and I find that oddly endearing. In the case of Pineapple Express that sweetness can be found in James Franco's broad innocent grin and in a totally frivolous scene where the two main characters take a moment to goof off in the woods. You could cut that scene out and not disrupt the plot at all yet that scene seems essential to me in terms of defining this film as a pot comedy. But while films such as Harold and Kumar, Garden State, and Knocked Up are all obvious pot comedies, Pineapple Express may be the first pot action comedy. Now cops have always been a part of pot comedies if only in the sense that characters are often on the look out for cops in order to avoid arrest, or find themselves being pursued by law enforcement. But pot comedies have avoided using cops, guns, and criminals in full-blown action mode - until now. Check out the video of the Pineapple Express Comic-Con panel.

The Assassination of Jesse James

Brad Pitt as Jesse James in The Assassination of... (Warner Bros.)

The full name of this film didn't fit in the headline: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Now that's not quite up to the word count of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, but assassination does figure prominently in each. And in the case of The Assassination of Jesse James (opened Oct. 12 throughout San Diego), the lengthiness of the title foreshadows the excesses of the film.

Here's a simple rule: If the audience knows a film's final destination in this case Robert Ford shooting outlaw Jesse James the filmmaker darn well better better make the journey interesting because there are no surprises lurking ahead. The life and death of outlaw Jesse James has been told many times before, sometimes romanticizing him (as with Tyrone Power in the 1939 film) and sometimes presenting him as a dangerous psychopath (Robert Duvall in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid). James has secured himself a place in American folklore since his death in 1882 at the hands of one of his own gang, Robert Ford. James had fought with the ruthless Confederate guerrilla fighters, Quantrill's Raiders during the Civil War and then turned to robbing banks, trains and the occasional stage coach. Some newspapers portrayed him as a kind of Robin Hood and small farmers probably derived some satisfaction from the way the James Gang stuck it to the big businesses of the time -- the banks and trains. What all this means is that James has long been a subject of fascination for a variety of media.

Babel

Brad Pitt stars in Babel.

With Babel (opening November 3 at Landmark's La Jolla Village Cinemas), Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga complete a planned trilogy that began with Amores Perros, continued with 21 Grams and concludes with Babel.

The arrival of Babel serves as the unofficial start of the Oscar season. It marks the beginning of the studios serious dramas and Oscar hopefuls. No doubt someone has already anointed it this years Crash. But since I was put off by the heavy-handed self-importance of that Best Picture Oscar winner from last year, I would like to dismiss that comparison up front.

Babel is thematically and stylistically linked to Irritu's two previous films, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, but the films avoid any direct narrative links or overlapping plot and characters. All three are sprawling multi-character works in which multiple plot strands slowly converge to bring a group of strangers together in unexpected ways. In Amores Perros, a car accident weaves three sets of characters together to explore the emotional wreckage that follows the physical smash-up. In 21 Grams, the hit and run deaths of two little girls brings another triptych of stories together for a meditation on loss and grief. Irritus Amores Perros pulsed with life - running a gamut of emotions and experiences. But 21 Grams felt relentlessly one-note as it dallied with a limited emotional range. Now Babel comes along and falls somewhere in between the two.