'Twixt' trailer is beguiling, complex and mad?
Posted Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 4:45 PM Central
by John Couture
One of the more curiouser things to come out of Comic Con last month was the stir that Francis Ford Coppola made. Let's be frank, it's Francis Ford Coppola, just the idea of the iconic filmmaker showing up at the world's largest gathering of pop culture geeks is newsworthy in and of itself.
But his appearance wasn't the only thing making headlines.
Coppola was in San Diego to give the audience a sneak peek of his new movie Twixt and the buzz generated from the movie was one of the more prominent things to come out of the convention. The buzz wasn't simply the footage itself, but a whole "new" way of presenting movies and Francis Ford Coppola's belief that film, and more pointedly the presentation of said films, will continue to evolve as the medium matures.
Coppola talked about wanting to take his movie out on the road before it released (which sounds a lot like our pal Kevin Smith's strategy for Red State) and presenting different versions of the film to each audience. Sadly, I wasn't out in San Diego (maybe next year?), so all I have is second-hand accounts, but it seemed like Coppola was talking about editing the film on the fly to make each audience's experience unique.
Think of the Grateful Dead or my fave Pearl Jam who are bands known for mixing up their set lists each night so that each audience got a special show unlike any other. I'll be honest, it sounds like quite the ambitious endeavor, but one that I would gladly pay to see.
Speaking of seeing the movie, one of the first places that anyone will be able to experience the film is up at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September. As part of its worldwide premiere, TIFF released the trailer for Twixt on YouTube and the reaction across the Internet has been mixed to say the least.
Apparently, absent the Edgar Allan Poe 3D glasses, the shine is a bit dulled. Not having the Comic Con experience, I don't have anything to compare it to, but I must say that the trailer certainly intrigues me.
I'll let you catch up and then we can discuss after you've seen it below:
Right off the bat, the film has a real Twin Peaks meets Secret Window vibe which is really cool. When you add the ethereal elements from the dream, well it's not too hard to get excited for the potential of this movie.
Sure granted, this setup has a huge chance of falling flat on its face, but I'm more than willing to give Francis Ford Coppola the benefit of the doubt.
On the surface, the story is about a "third string writer of popular fiction" out on tour to support his latest book. Along his travels, he stumbles into a bizarre town home to a murder mystery that might just be the fuel for his next novel.
Beyond that, we know that his dreams or hallucinations or whatever factor into the story greatly and that Edgar Allan Poe plays a big role in them, quite literally thanks to Ben Chaplin. Given that I know much more about Edgar Allan Poe than I could ever know about what resides in Francis Ford Coppola's head, I'll point out a few things that I found intriguing.
Elle Fanning, who was brilliant in Super 8 by the way, plays a character called "V." If we assume that the writer in the movie parallels Poe, then it her designation may be important given that Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia when he was 26.
Virginia died at a young age and we know that V was murdered as part of the mystery surrounding the town. To me, the coincidences between them are too big to ignore, especially in light of Poe showing up at some point.
From a pure visual standpoint, the mix of color and black and white in the same scene is great and really give off a surreal feel. Could it be a huge disaster? Of course, but again, I think Coppola knows what he's doing.