I know we have some Peter Sarsgaard fans around here, so I feel I have to post this. I was being quite the negative Nancy after seeing the early god-awful trailer for the adaptation of Pultizer-winning author Michael Chabon’s excellent The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Having read the novel, its still looking like a butchering of the story and characters, but at least it is looking more like a competent movie this time.
Along with Sarsgaard, the film co-stars Jon Foster, Sienna Miller, and Nick Nolte and takes place in a city that is both very familiar and dear to my heart. I’m not totally sold I want to see this, but I’m sure my curiosity will get the best of me.
Do you like this trailer more than the last? If you read the novel, what do you think?
Not huge into the soundtrack, but the rest of the trailer looks good.
Not sure if it is because of the fucked up father-son relationship or the Peter Sarsgaard element or the fact that both movies have a proper geographic location for the title of the movie, but I get kind of a Garden State vibe from this trailer. Which is not a bad thing.
read the novel years ago in college. are they leaving out the gay friend? i can’t remember his name, but i remember him being more important in the novel than the boyfriend. or at least just as important.
doesn’t look bad, although the lead actor there doesn’t look like he has much of a presence at all.
For someone who claims to hate Pittsburgh, Sienna Miller sure does seem to spend a lot of time there.
Oddly enough this just popped up on our booking sheet last week, but from what I know it still doesn’t have a distributer. Unless something changes I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t end up being direct to DVD.
probably throwing the trailer out there, gauging what kind of interest there is. it could be a $10 or $20 million movie easily among the college age crowd.
So did anyone ever end up seeing this movie? I finally caught it on DVD last week, and while my first impression wasn’t much, I was compelled to watch it a second time, and then a third, and … I’ve become a little bit obsessed with it.
The reason: Peter Sarsgaard. His charismatic and nuanced performance alone elevates this movie from just mediocre to fascinating and fun to watch.
I agree with most of the general points that the professional critics gave when it came out in the spring. The lead actor, Jon Foster, doesn’t have much presence. They have changed around many of the characters, increasing the presence of some and cutting others out entirely. Foster’s voiceover adds nothing. And it’s way too earnest for it’s own good.
But I haven’t read the original novel by Michael Chabon, so the mixed up characters had no effect on me. In fact, I quite like what they did with Sarsgaard character, combining two characters from the book. It makes the story quite dynamic for the screen, and I can’t really imagine how it would have worked any other way cinematically.
It’s also interesting that Chabon himself said he is quite pleased with this adaptation. Makes me want to read the book next just to compare the two, and it would make a neat case study on how some source material doesn’t have to be adapted verbatim to work.
I highly recommend fans of Sarsgaard to check this out, as well as fans of the novel. I’ve love to hear more thoughts from Row Three beyond the analysis of the trailer above.
The embedded trailer doesn’t seem to work anymore, but I believe this is the same one, and it’s a better reflection of the final film than the other one that Jonathan posted somewhere else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5G-_gN6y6c
And Andrew, rest assured, the trailer music is nothing like the soundtrack of the actual movie. The movie has a really nice score and only a few hand-picked alternative tracks. And you are pretty close with the comparison to Garden State, at least as far as Sarsgaard’s character is concerned.