Sunday, December 27, 2009

Web Stalker - Bloggers See Scorsese/DiCaprio Shutter Island Trailer... Flee




Add one part Leonardo DiCaprio, one part creepy Gothic insane-asylum ambiance and two parts Martin Scorsese's bushy eyebrow and the result is ... the first trailer for psychological creep-out Shutter Island, based on the novel by Mystic River's Dennis Lehane.



Lest you think the Internet community is asleep at the wheel, rest assured that film geeks and entertainment bloggers have had plenty to say about this development. And the movie hype (and anti-hype) began long before the trailer... when Variety first reported that Scorsese and his Departed star were reteaming for the Lehane adaptation back in 2007, it was hard to find anyone who thought it was a bad idea.
One Rotten Tomatoes commentator summed up the consensus saying, "I don't care if the movie's about the Muppet Babies and some missing cookies, if Scorsese's directing and DiCaprio is his clay to mold, I'm in." Cinematical echoed similar commentators all over the web, saying "All I know is we're getting a new Scorsese movie (relatively) soon. Leo's involvement is just a little good news on the side."

Shutter Island was, of course, a radical departure for Lehane, a spooky thriller far removed from Boston's gritty mean streets, with their history of violence and intricately knotted familial ties. Cinematical nonetheless echoed the sentiment that dominated Rotten Tomatoes: "All I know is we're getting a new Scorsese movie (relatively) soon. Leo's involvement is just a little good news on the side."

Inevitably, the detractors chimed in, like the BoxOfficeProphets previewer who dubbed DiCaprio "Retardo DiCrapio," which is probably more than you need to know about where he's coming from. Suffice it to say that if you do a quick search for DiCaprio on Facebook, you'll get no fewer than 458 hits and have to scroll through eleven pages of glowing fan pages before you get to the first negative one. (That's would be the F!@# Leonardo DiCaprio page, in case you're wondering, and it has only six fans.)

Anyway, back to the issue at hand: The ever-reticent Scorsese kept things tightly under wraps during production, most of which took place on Peddocks Island in Massachusetts, so there was little to stir up the Internet hordes until last week, when the First! Official! Trailer! hit the web.

Though a fair share of fanboy comments fell into in the "W.O.W.," "Hell Yeah," and awesome...awesome...awesome...breathe...awesomeeeee" camp, the movie-blogger consensus is firmly on the side of "Not so much."s

Michael Adams at The Wrap tepidly described the trailer as looking like "the most expensive b-movie you've ever seen" Others, like The Guardian's film blog, took the criticism a step further, coming out firmly against sthe trailer in a post titled "Will Shutter Island be just the latest Scorsese/DiCaprio disappointment?" It went on to dismiss the pair's previous three movies as "lavish yet unremarkable genre films." Ouch!

The Big Picture's Patrick Goldstein was more scathing still, complaining that the preview is "too pulpy for its own good, overloaded with all sorts of spooky, gothic touches and way too much cornball plot exposition."

You know what's worse than an over-the-top trailer, though? One that totally gives away the plot! New York Magazine's Vulture blog goes so far as to advise that you not to watch the Shutter Island trailer at all, "[s]ince it definitely shows way too much." Commentators over at Slashfilm, EmpireOnline and EW's PopWatch are all engaged in hot discussions bemoaning the very same issue.

Far be it from us to ishowcase still more spoilers about Shutter Island's elusive Patient 67, but in all seriousness... if you're at all interested, you'll want to take a look.
Source: Blogs.amctv.com

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