We’re not sure if James Franco keeps a diary but if he does, 2013 likely takes up several volumes. Tackling everything from the major studio comedies to left field documentaries to hard scrabble indie flicks, working as a writer, director, actor, producer and more (sometimes all at once), James Franco is nothing if not prolific and creatively curious. One film he managed to get on the festival circuit last year was his Cormac McCarthy adaptation “Child Of God,” and while it still needs distributor, a new trailer for the project has dropped.
Scott Haze takes the lead role of Lester Ballard, a man living on the fringes of society who spirals into further debauchery, crime and murder, and some nasty, grimy business that might not even be fit for print. It certainly looks primal as all hell, which makes sense given the source material, but as our man in Venice attests, it’s a pretty low rent production, noting: “Flaws with the filmmaking could perhaps have been forgiven for a tour-de-force central turn, but there’s little to learn about the character once the first couple of reels are through. The whole thing feels sort of tossed off, like it was made by film students over a couple of weekends.” Zing.
Like we said, there’s no U.S. home for this yet, so for the time being this trailer will be all you get. But take heart, James Franco’s doc “Kink,” which premiered at last year’s Sundance, finally made a distribution deal over the weekend, with MPI Pictures snapping it up. It’ll hit theaters this summer.
The trailer looks awesome, but they should have added some quotes about the movie itself and Franco as a director also, not just the main rising star Scott Haze (he will own 2014), who undertakes a role that will become iconic (this movie will have some cult following for sure) and is Oscar worthy.
Quotes like:
"Franco's powerful adaptation, directed with discipline and intelligence, captures McCarthy's mordant darkness. It reveals the humanity buried beneath animalistic behavior." – Caryn James, James on screenS!
"This is a tough sell, a heavy-duty Southern gothic that makes the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men seem lightweight." – Kent Turner, Film-Forward.com!
"Again "Child of God is a genuine triumph. Franco handles the picture with verve and style. He even manages to utilize chunks of McCarthy's prose in a series of odd "conversational" voice-overs and literal title cards splashing across the screen. I loved this technique. It was fun AND rooted the film in the glorious American literary tradition of Southern Gothic. Franco elicits a wide range of great performances and his actual coverage and composition of the dramatic action feels like the work of someone who's been directing movies his whole career. The movie is grotesque, at times sickening and often shocking, but it is rooted in genuine humanity and is easily one of the best movies of the year." – Greg Klymkiw,http://klymkiwfilmcorner.blogspot.co.uk/!