One of the upcoming films that everyone’s been predicting will be a major Oscar contender is Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.  To a certain extent, I thought some of that hype might be because everyone knows that, even though Lee was named best director,  Crash totally stole the award for best picture from Brokeback Mountain.

(Seriously, even my cousins from South Texas — the majority of whom wear cowboy hats and take the term “real man” quite seriously — have commented to me that Brokeback Mountain was a better film than Crash.  And you know what?  I agree with them but I also think that Capote was a better film than both of them.)

However, I’ve just seen the trailer for Life of Pi was I have to admit that I was blown away and, by the end of it, I was nearly moved to tears.  In many ways, this trailer feels less like an advertisement for a movie and more like a touching and powerful short film that could easily stand alone as a work of art.  After seeing this trailer — despite the fact that, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m just a little bit terrified of the water (or, more specifically, drowning in the water) — I can say that Life of Pi is a film that I’m very much looking forward to seeing.