Historical Costume Movie/TV Trailers: Endless Pandemic Edition

22 thoughts on “Historical Costume Movie/TV Trailers: Endless Pandemic Edition”

1. I just started watching The Great and I LOVE IT! It’s fun, and silly, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s exactly what I need right now.

2. Of the ones listed, Cyrano. The one I’m most looking forward to though, is Last Night in Soho.

3. Glow and Darkness seems to have the best chance for something new or less well-known.

4. Dinklage as Cyrano. I think the film makers have understood the story, and the change of physical characteristic won’t be detrimental. I haven’t read the original play, so my idea of it is based on the 1950 film with José Ferrer, but I’m a bit disappointed that they’ve made Dinklage’s Cyrano so scruffy – he should have panache and swagger despite being hard up. But I’ll forgive a lot to see this really fine actor in this classic part.

5. Literally none of these appeal to me, with very mild exceptions for Benedetta and the Dinklage Cyrano. And if that Da Vinci thing has him being gay I’ll watch that, but it probably won’t.

   1. Wait, it does have some gay stuff but it also seems to have a romance with a woman, so who knows!

   2. Yes but it’s awful. I never finished it because all the emoting and tawdry violence did my head in.

      1. Oh boo.

6. Glow and Darkness seems interesting just for the fresh idea (I do not remember any TV series about crusades), but costumes look… strange? Also, IS this Saladin cosplaying Rasputin?

   1. I was wondering the same thing about Rasputin. Those costumes look… colorful. Very ren faire does Victorian Medieval. Maybe a little uncomfortable, but eh. On the Rasputin thought, can we not get Christian Bale to play a version now? He seems to be the perfect age right now and I can never not see Rasputin as Batman.

7. I saw the trailer for the Last Duel in theatres with my best friend and the two of us were howling at how out of place Ben and Matt’s Bawstan accents sound. Not to mention Matt’s historical mullet and soul patch look (or Ben’s bleach blonde pudding bowl cut). I’m excited for the Kings Man though, even though I expect the historical accuracy of it to be pricely nil.

8. I’m looking forward to The French Dispatch, Passing, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Cyrano. I’m curious why they set Cyrano when they did; it looks 18th century (late 17th century at best) – why not the actual time period? The 1630’s were visually sumptuous.

   The costumes in The Tragedy of Macbeth look utter shite, but the cast, director, and cinematography? Count me in.

   Glow and Darkness couldn’t look more low budget if it tried. Like an SNL parody of Kingdom of Heaven.

   Very disappointed in the way The Last Duel is shaping up.

9. I’m looking forward to Belfast…

10. It’s about time Nella Larsen’s “Passing” got a screen adaptation. I hope they keep the queer subtext intact.
    I am interested in Margaret I of Denmark and… cautious about the West Side Story remake. They have bright colors and a lot of reference shots to the original film (similar costumes, really get that mid-century color scheme, I think I spotted Rita Moreno in there… maybe as this version’s Doc?) but I have been astoundingly disappointed with most live-action film musical adaptations recently because they tend not to make the best use of the mediums (being larger than life but also making use of cinematic editing, which right now skews hyper-realistic). West Side Story is also the most difficult musical as a full package I can think of (and I was raised in musical theater, my dad conducted a full orchestra pit for West Side Story and it was the hardest thing he’s ever done professionally). Dancing and music especially. It’s a dance-centric show, and the music for vocals and instrumental both are absurdly difficult, making use of the experimental styles of the 50’s and 60’s blended with the post-WWII Latin wave… endlessly shifting time signatures and chromatics. Done well, it’s breathtaking. Done poorly and it’s just embarrassing.
    And that’s not even touching on how well/not well this story holds up to time. The new cast is probably actually Puerto Rican, which, yay, but they also seem suspiciously light overall… which would’ve been a thing in how race worked in the 50s-60s since in the US up until the 50s-60s Hispanic people were legally counted as white in the census bc the reasoning went Hispanic=Spanish=Spain=Europe, regardless of if you were, say, mestizo… but that reasoning only counted if you were light-skinned. And that affected how segregation worked, though it varied a lot by population and location- plenty of whites-only schools refused Latino kids who would’ve legally counted as white, for example. (A lot of the traction for the Chicano movement was for equal schooling, as much as it was for agricultural laborers’ rights, though I don’t know as much about the equivalent movements for Puerto Rican civil rights, though it should be noted that if all the Sharks are Puerto Rican, they’re US citizens and would’ve been fleeing the economic instability caused by Operation Bootstrap.) I’m just saying after In The Heights faced similar criticism for its Dominican characters, it’s noticeable.

    1. There’s an excellent bio on Rita Moreno on PBS that just came out where she talks about West Side Story, both the story’s issues & the production itself. And yes, she has a small role in the new one.

    2. I recently listened to a Fresh Air interview with Rita Moreno where she says that in the 50s and 60s, she was considered “too white” to be Boricua (even though she’s the only actual Latina in the film!), and they actually darkened her skin for the role.

    3. I wonder how the West Side Story will do without Jerome Robbins’ choreography? I mean, can you beat his version of “Cool”?

11. I saw Passing at the New York Film Festival and yes, they do keep the queer subtext intact. I have mixed feelings about Edge of Darkness, mainly because I’m not a Denise Richards fan.

12. Be that as it may, I’m not sure we really needed another Death on the Nile after the Suchet version. Biased, because I have been on the SS Sudan.

    1. After Suchet’s excellent renditions, we do not EVER need another Poirot until the end of time. I liked most of Branagh’s work right up until he thought he could pull off Poirot. Uh, no.

13. Eiffel has Emma Mackay in it! She’s the second best thing about Netflix’s Sex Education as Maeve the wise, brilliant yet wounded Goth chick from the wrong side of the tracks (Gillian Anderson as Jean is THE best thing).

14. Glow and Darkness sounded cool but the trailer… nopenopenopenope. But there’s a chance it could cross into the ‘so bad it’s entertaining’ category – you get Saladin looking like he’s entered a Khal Drogo contest, then it gets to DENISE RICHARDS in extremely modern makeup and those oh-so-beachy waves… hilarious.

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