Every year since he retired from acting we seem to get one film from Clint Eastwood and this year it’s going to be one major prestige picture due this November. The film is J. Edgar and it’s a biopic detailing the life of the FBI’s founder and first director, J. Edgar Hoover.
This film will be the first time Leonardo DiCaprio and Eastwood will be working together. From the look of the cast assembled Eastwood has surrounded DiCaprio with some talented performers from Dame Judi Dench, Naomi Watts right up to Jeffrey Donovan, Geoff Pierson and Stephen Root.
The trailer shows just how much the film just screens “Awards Picture” from beginning to end. It’s not a suprise that J. Edgar has become one of the films this coming fall/winter to be a major frontrunner for the many film circles awards and, most likely, for the next Academy Awards. Here’s to hoping that this film will be a major bounce back for Eastwood after 2010’s very uneven and dull Hereafter.
J. Edgar is set for a limited release this November 9, 2011 before going worldwide a couple days later on November 11.
Through the Shattered Lens 
I have J. Edgar on my list of 15 upcoming films that are going to suck. 🙂 My concern is that 1) Clint Eastwood hasn’t made a truly good film in a while, 2) Dustin Black’s screenplay for Milk was one of the most overrated screenplays of the past decade, and 3) Leonard DiCaprio is usually better when he’s appearing in great genre films (like Inception) as opposed to films that are specifically designed to be award winners (like 75% of the films he ends up making).
Still, I like the trailer and at least its Clint Eastwood handling politically sensitive material as opposed to Oliver Stone.
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I think J. Edgar will be one of the films that will be picked by voters to be in the Best Film category just for the fact that it’s a biopic of one of America’s most controversial and least understood figures. Whether the film deserves such accolades sometimes don’t factor in how people will vote. They’ll just see a film that tries to delve into the dirty laundry of the FBI and it’s founder and that’s like catnip for Hollywood people. 🙂
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I wonder…Even from the limited exposure in the trailer. Leo’s accent/affectation sounds contrived. From the intro voiceover through every clip in the trailer, he sounds like he’s acting. If it can’t make it for two and a half minutes, it won’t be able to withstand 90 – 120 minutes.
He was good in “Gilbert Grape”, though.
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120 minutes if you’re lucky. This is a Clint Eastwood film about a big subject so I imagine it’ll be more like 150 minutes.
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That would certainly prolong the pain,
I’m not really one to be critical (I heard that!), so I don’t spend a lot of time assessing actors. But I do have mixed feelings about Leo. You watch “Shutter Island” and think, “Pretty good”. You watch “The Man In The Iron Mask”, and see a thoroughly-outclassed (albeit young) actor in the title role (in a not-very-good movie).
Maybe he just isn’t right for bios and impressions. Maybe Clint should have recruited Meryl Streep again – she’s great with that stuff. Streep as Hoover? Now that’s a ticket I would buy.
Musing about bad actors (I’m not saying Leo is bad. I’m just not sure), reminded me of one of my favorite observations by a film critic. A woman named Ann Hornaday used to do reviews for The Baltimore Sun newspaper in the 90’s. In her review of a film called (I think), “Message In A Bottle”. she commented about how much better an actor the aging costar Paul Newman was than the star, Kevin Costner. Describing a scene in which Costner’s character was apparently performing the referenced activity, she wrote “Costner is so bad, he looks like a guy pretending to sand a boat”.
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