Columbus Film Trailer

[Lyric Maro]

Theres a trailer currently playing in theaters for a film called Blended. It is just the latest in a long line of movie trailers that I learn to almost love hating thanks to repeated unwanted viewings. It has something to do with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler taking a joint trip to Africa. They are both single parents. She has boys; he has girls. They all hate each other, but sure enough, they will all end the film fucking. I've seen the Blended trailer about ten times and still have no idea why it's called Blended. Blanded was probably considered too spoilery. Hey-oh!

So I'm not in a good mood about Adam Sandler right now. I usually try to find that corner of my adolescence that used to love him, but it's harder lately. Keep that in mind as I write about Pixels.

Adam Sandler's production company, Happy Madison, is going ahead with a movie called Pixels which will be directed by Chris Columbus. For maximum money potential and after careful consideration, Happy Madison has decided to cast Adam Sandler as the star. He will likely be joined by frequent costar Kevin James. Josh Gad may also appear. Happy Madison wants Jennifer Aniston to be in the movie, but she may be too busy making something called Mean Moms for Vivid Entertainment (I think).

Here's the thing: Pixel is based on a short film by Patrick Jean called Pixels: Retro Gamers, and it kind of sounds cool. A bunch of '80s video game characters attack New York and a group of awesome video game players have to go fight them off. Maybe it's a little derivative, but I like that synopsis. It's supposed to be an action-comedy like Ghostbusters, or Ghostbusters before Ghostbusters became a weird eulogy, anyway.

"Suddenly the place I'd lived my whole life felt different." A trailer has finally arrived for one of the best films from the Sundance Film Festival this year. Columbus is the feature directorial debut of a filmmaker known as "Kogonada", a Korean cinephile who previously made video essays that achieved quite a bit of acclaim online. Columbus stars Haley Lu Richardson as a young woman from the town of Columbus, Indiana, a small place known for its remarkable and innovative architecture (and it's all actually real). Her story intertwines with a Korean man played by John Cho who visits because his father, an architect, is in a coma. The cast also includes Parker Posey, Erin Allegretti, Rory Culkin, and Jim Dougherty. We published a glowing review of this from Sundance, and it's definitely worth your time to discover. See below.

A Korean-born man (John Cho) finds himself stuck in Columbus, Indiana, where his architect father is in a coma. The man meets a young woman (Haley Lu Richardson) who wants to stay in Columbus with her mother, a recovering addict, instead of pursuing her own dreams. Columbus is written and directed by a Korean filmmaker who goes by the name "Kogonada" (follow him @kogonada), making his feature directorial debut with this. Kogonada previously made video essays and submitted work to film magazines before getting into filmmaking. This first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (read our review). Columbus will arrive in select theaters starting August 4th later this summer. Who's interested?

"I see these artists on stage and they have something that I don't" Oscilloscope Labs has revealed an official US trailer for Poser, an indie film about a podcaster discovering herself and losing herself in a local music scene. This first premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival last year, and it also stopped by the Hamburg & Thessaloniki Film Festivals. As Lennon Gates fuels her desire for entree into a podcast featuring live music and conversations with the artists she so fervently admires, Lennon finds inspiration for her own musical ambitions... and a growing sense of misdirected identity. The stylish film is set around the underground music scene in Columbus, Ohio and follows Lennon as she is lead "down a path of dark obsession." Sylvie Mix stars as Lennon, along with a small cast: Bobbi Kitten, Rachel Keefe, and Jeff Grennell. They're also hosting a "Poserfest" concert in Columbus, OH a week after it opens. This film actually looks pretty rad.

Wallflower Lennon yearns for access to the inner sanctum of the underground music scene in Columbus, Ohio. When she creates a podcast to interview local artists she adores, Lennon discovers her own musical ambitions, develops a fast friendship with striking, confident performer Bobbi Kitten, and in the process creates an identity not wholly her own. Soon, Lennon's aspirations, with some constructive coaxing from Bobbi to find her voice, lead her down a path of dark obsession. Poser is co-directed by up-and-coming filmmakers Noah Dixon & Ori Segev (a cinematographer), both making their feature directorial debut after one other short previously. The screenplay is written by Noah Dixon. It's produced by Drew Johnson, Joshua Nowak, Brett Reiter, and Juli Sasaki. This initially premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival last year. Oscilloscope Labs will debut Poser in select US theaters starting June 3rd, 2022. Visit the film's site.

Hollywood writer, director and producer Columbus has co-written the first of a planned trilogy called House of Secrets with young-adult author Ned Vizzini (The Other Normals). It's due April 23 from Balzer + Bray, with a blurb on the cover from Rowling that promises: "A breakneck roller coaster of an adventure."

Watch Columbus, 54, and Vizzini talk about the book in a trailer, and read a Q&A below with Columbus, in which he talks about the writing advice Rowling gave him, the inspiration he got from his kids and why he thinks the book is a thematic sequel to his cult hit movie The Goonies.

A: Initially, it was a screenplay called Stones of Time. After the first 90 pages, I realized that this movie would cost about $500 million to make, so I thought, "This is completely impractical as a film," and threw it in a drawer. A few years later, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next, and I looked at Stones of Time and thought, "This could work as a novel because the world (it depicts) is so vast."

I'd never written a novel, and I needed to co-write it with an established author. I read a few samples, and I was really taken with the work of Ned Vizzini. I loved his books, loved his dialogue, and I loved the way he could write teenagers. So we met in L.A. and really hit it off, and I gave him the first 90 pages. About a week later, I got an e-mail from Ned, which contained his rough draft of the first chapter of the book. I rewrote it, sent it back. He did the same, and we kept working this way until we had about 100 pages. And that's when we went out to publishers, and within 24 to 48 hours, we were picked up. It was very encouraging. A year later, we ended up with this 490-page book.

A: Every single bit. I loved the challenge of it. The great thing about co-writing a book, when you have a film business to run as well, is that I could work for two days steadily on the book, then switch gears and send my pages back. It was really very, very rewarding.

That being said, I don't really want to jump into it immediately. I want the book to live as a book for a while. I want kids to discover the book and lose themselves in the book. Sometimes movies just come out a little too early. If Harry Potter taught us anything, it's that it took years for that first film to be made. I remember working on the first Potter film, there were three books already out, and I read the manuscript of Goblet of Fire. People need the chance to discover the characters, fall in love with the characters. I don't think we're going to be Harry Potter, but I do think it's something that kids will be able to lose themselves in the book.

I think Ned responded to the screenplay initially because one of the big themes in the book is a love of literature and a love of reading. That's a important element of writing the book. If we can get one kid to fall in love with reading, that's a great thing. That was a big, big part of it for us.

So I thought to myself, "This could potentially be a thematic sequel to The Goonies." It has the same sense of adventure, it's contemporary kids going on an adventure, and it just felt to me like if there was ever going to be a piece of material for me that has that same sense of fun and adventure that The Goonies did, House of Secrets would be it. It was really inspired with a session of twentysomethings who really wanted a sequel to Goonies.

A: My son, Brendan, is the first person who read the book. He's 20. I use his name in the book. And he's a tough critic on my films. He really is tough. He loves certain films, and others he's like, "What was that? Why would you make that?" I gave him the book thinking he may not like it, and he loved it! He thought it was one of the best things I'd been involved with in years, devoured it in a day and a half. So that was a great validation because he's tough.

A: I still have a teenager at home, and my kids are always around, and some of those fights and some of that dialogue was truly inspired by things that have happened at my house. That is something I've never had a chance to write down on paper, and it just exploded! I've been dealing with kids for 20-plus years, and they aren't always angels. They fight, they argue, they're always on each other about something, and it just inspired this flurry. Whenever Brendan and Cordelia have a conversation, it's very reminiscent of conversations my own kids have had, so it's everywhere.

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