New Photos & Trailer: Todd Solondz’s ‘Life During Wartime’

OK, this official U.S. trailer for Todd Soldonz’s “Life During Wartime” is not very different from the U.K. one released earlier this year, but hey, we also found some new pictures to go along with this post (a new poster was also recently released).

Also as our review from TIFF 2009 notes; while “Life During Wartime” wasn’t completely successful front to back, it is a interesting picture and one worth not only seeing, but discussing. Once titled “Forgiveness,” this is the picture’s main theme and since there are several immoral and vile characters, it does raise some fascinating questions about the capacity for redemption that are left to the viewer to decide.
As discussed several times, perhaps ad nauesum, the picture is a quasi sequel to “Happiness” (and to a lesser extent “Welcome To The Dollhouse” — a few characters from that film return too) and many of the same characters return, but they’re played by different actors.
The picture stars several actors including Allison Janney, Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens, Ciarán Hinds, Ally Sheedy, Shirley Henderson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Lerner and more (we made a handy cheat sheet last year so you could see who was now playing who — Michael K. Williams plays Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character for example and Paul Reubens resumes John Lovitz’s role).

IFC opens the picture on July 23 in New York, it expands the following weekend and then it will be OnDemand shortly after that. Also, one of our reader reminds us something that we reported on last year: Devendra Banhart and Beck sang and performed the title track featured in the trailer, written by Solondz himself.