Never Let Me Go: Pretty Horror
Here's the trailer for Never Let Me Go, the Oscar-bait adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's elegant, devastating science fiction novel. It stars watery eyed Brits Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley and is directed by the guy who did... One Hour Photo?
That pedigree troubles me a little. I know that some people didn't care for Ishiguro's 2005 weeper, but I found it all kinds of good — sad, gorgeous in a clean and simple way, endlessly mysterious and thought provoking — and a movie version could threaten to turn it, like all good novels, into overly saturated mush. So if they'd gotten a director with a bit more experience with story — Mark Romanek is a terrific music video director (Johnny Cash's "Hurt"), but has only done two features — I'd feel a little more confident. But who knows. Maybe the actual movie will be as wintry and peculiar as the book is, and the trailer is just rife with soaring string music and lovely sun-dappled shots so they can lure in the typical three-hanky crowd. Believe me, if they do the book justice, you're gonna need those hankies. But hopefully your mind will be whirring too.