Jason Reitman’s new movie about “the sexual frustrations that young teenagers and adults face in today’s world” as told through social media. Interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is seeing Ansel Elgort and Adam Sandler in the same movie. And seeing Adam in the hands of a serious director is fascinating because we’ve seen him rise to the occasion before, in Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Spanglish, and Funny People. So… is Adam gunning for an Oscar? Or at least trying to have a Robin Williams-type career, where he can do both serious movies AND the moronic comedies he loves so much? We’ll see.
The most interesting thing to me, though, about Men, Women, and Children is that it looks to be told almost entirely through texting, Twitter, Facebook, and the internet. Which makes me think of the mini-doc “A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film,”(below) in which filmmaker Tony Zhou specifically explores the various ways in which TV and movies have lately been experimenting with showing the act of texting and the Internet – which sounds deadly dull, I know but is actually BEYOND FASCINATING. For instance: You almost never see a shot of a phone with a message on it anymore, cinema tropes have evolved beyond that, and this movie, in particular, seems to be taking that in a whole new direction.
I urge you to watch both the teaser trailer for Men, Women, and Children AND the the min doc on texting in films below.
The post The Trailer for Men, Women & Children (and the Problem of Showing Social Media in Film) appeared first on World of Wonder.
