Been meaning to post something about this film "Across the Universe" that's coming out this fall I think. I've seen the trailer for it at damn near every movie I've been too in the last two months and I gotta say it does not draw me in. It looks like a musical romanticized version of the 60s using covers of Beatles songs, which caught my attention initially, but there's nothing in the trailer that makes it look at all appealing. Anyone else have a take on it?
It looks quite awful to me -- I mean, they've already done a movie version of
Hair. And it looks like the same plot, guy meets hippie-ish girl, the Vietnam war rages... Rumored to be a troubled production (the studio took it away from the director and re-cut it).
Interestingly, I just saw the movie of
Hair for the first time last week. Maybe it's because I'm older, but Treat Williams' character seemed rather obnoxious. Indeed all the hippies seemed rather out-of-touch with reality (John Savage's character, Claude, came across as the most sane person on screen). But it's one of the most beautifully-photographed musicals ever, and the songs are still fab. Great cameos by later-to-become-famous folks like Nell Carter, Michael Jeter, Charlotte Rae. The "WhiteBoys/BlackBoys" number may be one of the most subversive sequences ever in a commercial film. And "Easy to be Hard" -- OMG, what a powerful song that is within the context of the plot! I had no idea.
