Usually we reserve Trailer Park for a pile-on of new movie trailers, but this year has seen a serious dearth of new both new movies and previews for new movies. So let’s highlight some true classics you need in your repertoire if they aren’t there already. Three standouts are airing on basic cable–depending on where you live and what you subscribe to–Saturday and Sunday. First up is the baseball comedy classic Brewster’s Millions. And then we have two different brands of war movie. So what are they?
The Man in the High Castle was Philip K. Dick‘s most critically acclaimed novel, which says a lot for his parallel history World War II tale when stacked up against his other brilliant short stories and novels (that’s 121 stories and 44 novels in all). It’s also the first of his stories to become a big-budget television series, premiering in 2015 with the well-received pilot for The Man in the High Castle. Amazon Studios proved it can make a drama on par with any other network or studio in its first two seasons, and at San Diego Comic-Con the studio announced the series renewal for a fourth season. This past week Amazon released a great preview for the next season (see it below). So you now have a full month to get caught up on the first 20 episodes before Season 3 arrives on Amazon Prime in October.
The series is well worth your time. The first season was a bit of a slowly building story, providing all the twisty elements to take viewers in a believable way into a parallel version of Earth’s past where the Nazis and Japan were victorious in WWII and America was divided up between them. As gritty a dystopian show as anyone could muster, the back half of each season is reward enough to stick with the series, even for viewers not especially in the mood for the bleak subject matter. The winner of two of eight Emmy Award nominations, the series begins in 1962, long after the end of the war–long enough for a new culture to have been solidified across the regions of North America. The series leads created the best performances you’ll find on television: Alexa Davalos(Angel, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Mist, Defiance), as Juliana Crane, an American whose actions are pivotal for the future, Rufus Sewell(Knight’s Tale, Zen), a former American soldier who becomes one of the Nazi leaders in the former States, Joel de la Fuente(The Adjustment Bureau, The Happening) is stunning as the most ruthless of characters, the Japanese leader of the Pacific region of America, and an incredibly nuanced performance of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa(Lost in Space, Star Wars Rebels, Grimm, Heroes, Alien Nation, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Big Trouble in Little China) as trade minister for Japan based in San Francisco–a brilliantly layered character like nothing you’ve seen.
Building on Dick’s original ideas and expanding on them is what the series does best, blending the best of the old (like keeping Tagawa’s character having a special power to see an alternate version of the world from the novel) and the new (like using film footage vs. books to inspire actions). The writers nicely integrate updates and new characters into the series. Who is the Man in the High Castle? You’ll just have to watch to find out. Look for a stellar supporting cast, two fantastic season finales, and a great set-up for the show’s third season. Fan-favorite genre actors in the show include Rupert Evans(Hellboy, Lexx, Fingersmith, Charmed),Luke Kleintank(Bones), DJ Qualls (Supernatural),Rick Worthy(Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural),Michael Hogan(Battlestar Galactica, 12 Monkeys, Supernatural, Haven, Warehouse 13),Callum Keith Rennie(The X-Files, The Dead Zone, Tru Calling, Battlestar Galactica), Daniel Roebuck (Lost, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Grimm, Quantum Leap), Tate Donovan (Memphis Belle, Argo, Shooter), and many more.
Here is the latest trailer for the third season of The Man in the High Castle:
In Argo, the stakes could not be greater. It is 1979 and the American embassy in Iran is stormed by a vast street mob seeking to hold hostage 52 people in exchange for the return of the Shah of Iran, granted asylum in the United States and dying from cancer. For 444 days we waited and hoped for their release, and each day Walter Cronkite ended his news broadcast with the number of days they’d been held. It was the ultimate nightmare and the sporadic glimpses of the hostages being led away with white blindfolds made us all imagine what kind of terror they must each be going through, as Christmas 1979 and Christmas 1980 came and went, as back home we all went ahead with our lives every day. But Argo is not about the 52 hostages.
At the time the embassy was attacked, six Americans working in the embassy managed to escape and hide out in the home of the Canadian ambassador and his wife. Argo is the story of a completely illogical, unlikely, nearly impossible–even crazy–plan involving a mock sci-fi movie concocted to rescue them, and two friends back in the States who came together in 1980 to create a plan and convince President Carter to give the go-ahead to proceed with the mission.
The taking of the U.S. hostages in Iran is one of the earliest events I remember, and it was the stuff of nightmares. It was also the first big event I recall that started the daily newspaper counter, showing the days the hostages had been held. What we didn’t hear on television were the stories of other Americans who had not been kidnapped but were stuck in Iran.
Based on actual events, Argo is the story of the Canadian Caper, the name given to a joint covert operation held by the governments of Canada and the United States whereby Canada sheltered six U.S. nationals who avoided capture as part of the larger group of hostages held under Ayatollah Khomeini. Argo was the name of a fictional sci-fi movie concocted by CIA identity deception agent Tony Mendez. If all would work as planned, he would sneak into Tehran, bringing new identification and other materials to create the new identities, then march the six hostages out in plain sight to the airport.
Editor’s Note: Check out our full review of Argohere.
Scene from Argo–the movie within the movie.
As told by Joshuah Bearman in a 2007 Wired Magazine article, nothing less than a stunning collaboration of unlikely Hollywood and entertainment names converged to create the ruse: John Chambers, the Academy Award winning make-up artist for The Planet of the Apes, and Bob Sidell, the then Love Boat make-up artist who would go on to work on E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. Luckily a foundering production was under way that they could step into, a Roger Zelazny novel adaptation that had already seen concept drawings done by none other than Marvel Comics’ legendary artist Jack Kirby. Chambers & Co. set up their offices in the facility just vacated by Michael Douglas, who had wrapped filming his own Oscar winner, The China Syndrome and began their work.
Several incredible stories have emerged from the international incidents of 1979 and 1980, not the least of which is the one-day presidential nominee Ross Perot, who led a successful rescue of employees of Electronic Data Systems from an Iran jail. Perot’s story was most famously told in Ken Follett’s On Wings of Eagles. Argo is another story of a similar effort. The first movie preview is just out, and looks fantastic:
The preview alone really reflects some nice cinematography, art design, retro costumes, and make-up. Will this be the big career defining next step for Ben Affleck?
Actual faked movie poster from the CIA concocted “film” Argo.
Affleck (Paycheck, The Sum of All Fears, Shakespeare in Love) directs and stars in the film, which is not surprisingly produced by George Clooney (the film has a lot of the look down from his movie Syriana), and Grant Heslov (Good Night, and Good Luck) and Affleck. Affleck plays Mendez along with an all-star cast: Alan Arkin (Catch 22, Gattaca, So I married an Axe Murderer, Edward Scissorhands), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), John Goodman (Roseanne, The Big Lebowski, Always, Community, The Artist), Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog, Escape from New York, Deep Space Nine), Richard Kind (Spin City, Leverage, The Station Agent), and Tate Donovan (Memphis Belle, Magnum, P.I.).
Can anyone say Oscar contender? Argo hits theaters in October 2012.
. Argo is another story of a similar effort. The first movie preview is just out, and looks fantastic:
