In Contention

Tag: Cameron Crowe

  • ‘We Bought a Zoo’ trailer

    Just in time to capitalize on Scarlett Johansson’s nude photo scandal (that was low, sorry), the trailer for Cameron Crowe’s latest, “We Bought a Zoo,” hits the web. The first half of this early glimpse really makes it look like a return to character study form for Crowe, while the second half lays on the heavy saccharine (I winced at “I like the animals, but I love the humans”). So the proof will be in the pudding, as they say, but Matt Damon looks to be giving a solid performance here and, well, I’ll try to remain positive. The last Crowe outing frankly took a lot out of me. Check out the trailer via Apple by clicking the image below, or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • Should we be buying into ‘Zoo?’

    When compiling my first round of Oscar predictions last week, I somehow found myself gliding instinctively over Cameron Crowe’s upcoming true-life comedy “We Bought a Zoo” — despite its starry profile, big studio backing and plum holiday release date. Glancing over Kris’s predictions to the right, I noticed he’s done the same.

    Admittedly, Crowe’s last two features — 2001’s intriguing but unmoored “Vanilla Sky” and 2005’s utterly wretched “Elizabethtown” — have rather diminished the stock of the writer-director who won an Oscar ten years ago for “Almost Famous.” And “We Bought a Zoo” — a seemingly lightweight, family-friendly film adapted from Benjamin Mee’s memoirs of his quest to revive a failing wildlife park — could strike some as too fuzzy a prospect for big-league awards.

    Meanwhile, that Fox is skipping the festival circuit might be interpreted as an indication that they view the film as a likely commercial play rather than a critics’ cause. It’s worth noting, meanwhile, that this is Crowe’s first feature on which he shares a writing credit — with chick-flick fixture Aline Brosh McKenna, who struck the right fluffy note with her adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada,” but likewise has stumbled badly with her follow-up efforts.

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  • Pearl Jam, as directed by Cameron Crowe

    It’s definitely Crowe, stylistically,  but it doesn’t work for the band.  Good song:

  • Cameron Crowe returns!

    After the disaster that was “Elizabethtown” — a script that was so much stronger than what wound up on screen — Cameron Crowe is finally coming back with a Ben Stiller-Reese Witherspoon adventure comedy for Sony.

    Even after “Elizabethtown,” Crowe is still a filmmaker who I will be first in line opening day for. 2009 just got a whole lot more exciting for me.