Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Interesting Trailer for Baz Luhrmann's Australia


MSN just put up the trailer (thank you cinematical) for Baz Luhrmann's new movie Australia, but no embed code (argh!). It is... an interesting trailer. It's certainly beautiful (and I would expect nothing less from the director of Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet) and the performances (Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman) look pretty excellent. It's really skimpy on the plot details though. I have no clue what this movie is about at this point. Maybe even less of one than I did before I saw this trailer. But what's really bothering me is why Explosions in the Sky is playing over the first half of the trailer? More importantly, why that specific song (The Only Moment We Were Alone)? I can see how the title of the song might fit into the very vague storyline we're given in the trailer. But these are the last images I would've imagined being put over that song. I'm a huge Explosions in the Sky fan (go buy their records now, they're fantastic [you might recognize them as the band that did the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights]), and with the extremely visual imagination that I have, I always imagine what kind of scene I would shoot over songs. Explosions in the Sky are especially good for this exercise because they're an instrumental band. Maybe it's only because I'm so familiar with this song, but it does not seem to fit the images that are presented in this trailer at all. It was not only jarring for me, but completely distracting.

Did anyone else feel that way about the music? How about the movie, first impressions?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go to this fabulous fan website for anything you ever wanted to know about this movie.

http://www.australiamovie.net/

Basically, from another great fan site at: http://www.bazthegreatsite.com/australiamovie.htm

"Australia is the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), a highly strung English aristocrat who leaves England in 1938 to follow her husband to Australia. He is in Australia with the intention of selling his cattle station. However, Lady Ashley believes he is having an affair and travels out there to confront him. The cattle station is located in the far north of Australia, and when she arrives she find herself in a strange land; her husband is dead and her only assets are a piece of land the size of Belgium and two thousand head of cattle.

Lady Ashley is forced to unite with a rough, hewn cattle drover (Hugh Jackman) in order to protect her ranch from a takeover plot. Over the next four years, the story follows these two characters as they undertake an epic cattle drive across the Australian landscape. When they finally reach their destination, they are caught up in the first of the Japanese bombings of Darwin during World War II (1942). During the course of her epic journey, Lady Ashley falls in love with the drover, and the Australian landscape, and realises that her life is not over, and there's always a new life to be had. The title Australia is intended to sum up the story of her life - her journey, the landscape, and the people she meets - all of which transform her life forever."