Trailers for Bardem’s ‘Biutiful’ and Franco’s ‘Howl’

A pair of trailers recently debuted as Empire is the first on the scene with an international trailer for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful starring Javier Bardem. Biutiful debuted at Cannes this year and is still yet to be picked up by a domestic distributor, but it was one of my favorite films from this year’s festival. Certainly, like other Inarritu films it is still a downer, but the film beautifully bookends itself giving viewers more than depression to hold on to as they leave the theater. In my review from Cannes I opened with:

Cancer, child abuse, drugs, exploited Chinese workers and more are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the misery writer-director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful inflicts on its characters. However, the upside to this story is the light that comes out of the darkness, something I would say is a change of pace from Inarritu’s two previous films, Babel and 21 Grams.

Bardem picked up the Best Actor prize at Cannes in a tie with Elio Germano from La Nostra Vita and I really think if this can find domestic distribution an Oscar nod is certainly in the cards.

Next is the trailer for Howl starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg and focusing on the obscenity trial launched to censor Ginsberg’s groundbreaking book-length poem, “Howl.” I saw the film at the Seattle International Film Festival and quite enjoyed it. I ended my review saying:

The biggest mistake you could make would be to go into Howl thinking you are in for a Ginsberg documentary. It’s called Howl for a reason. Sure, you’ll learn a little about Ginsberg’s relationships with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and his companion Peter Orlovsky, but you’ll learn of them as they pertain to Ginsberg and his path to “Howl.” Those that have a knowledge of both “Howl” and Ginsberg will have a much more immediate reaction to the film as it took me a little while to warm up to the content. Open and interested minds will certainly prevail with this picture. It’s a fascinating introduction to an important piece of literature, and this movie’s existence is just one more example of that.

Howl has been picked up by Oscilloscope Laboratories, which will release the film on September 24 in limited venues. Check out the trailer below.

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