Trailer Thoughts

Well, this looks appealingly nuts. I think there's a lot of potential for interesting stories to be told that take place in the nineteenth and acknowledge the complicated history of race therein.* And a take this extreme practically demands attention and debate. I hope there will be a rich critical discussion around this movie this coming winter.

*This seems like as good a place as any to observe that I'm crazy excited about Twelve Years a Slave, not only because of the increasingly awesome casting news but because it's a true story and Chiwetel Ejiofor has long deserved a meaty starring role and I love that Steve McQueen's throwing his new bigger profile behind it.

I'm interested in some of the questions Ta-Nehisi Coates raised in his reaction post regarding the trailer. (For one thing, I think the question of whether we've hashed out the Soul on Ice deal enough varies depending on whether "we" is "people engaged in academic and critical discussions about race" or "America.") While the issue of women's function in liberating themselves is a critical one to keep in mind, I don't know that we'll fully know how that's going to shake out until we see the whole movie. Certainly, if you look at the first trailer for Inglourious Basterds, I don't think you get any real sense of how much of the movie is devoted to Shoshanna rather than the titular group. And I hope (and, to some extent, expect) that the man who gave Pam Grier such a showcase in Jackie Brown isn't employing Kerry Washington as just a pretty face.