Road to Whatever.

Well, we know where we’re going, but we don’t know where we’ve been: In the trailer bin this week, Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee scrounge for food, shelter, and solace amid the post-apocalyptic ruins — while fending off the highly dangerous HBO all-stars (Garret Dillahunt, Michael K. Williams) — in the trailer for John Hillcoat’s long-awaited adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, also with Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall. Having seen Hillcoat’s poetic, weirdly dreamlike The Proposition, I have to think the actual movie is better than this godawful trailer would suggest. (That Survivor-ish “outwit outlast” word game is particularly dumb, and seems grifted from the much more elegant trailer for I am Legend a few years ago.)

Also new this week: The mind-meld of Larry David and Woody Allen is at last complete with the trailer for Allen’s Whatever Works, also starring Evan Rachel Wood, Rebecca Clarkson, Ed Begley, Jr., Michael McKean, and Conleth Hill. Try to curb your enthusiasm.

Brothers in Anxiety.

For his next film after Vicky Crista Barcelona, Woody Allen returns to New York City with the perfect Allen analogue, Larry David (and Evan Rachel Wood). Which reminds me, I saw the eminently missable Cassandra’s Dream two weekends ago and will post a review sometime soon, although “eminently missable” gets most of the point across.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Awaken Your Fear.

You heard it here first: Barack Obama’s campaign has abandoned its message of hope, and, with Larry David, is now waging the politics of fear: “David is…quoted threatening the Dartmouth students who are undecided between Obama and Edwards. ‘Okay, alright,’ he said. ‘If you don’t vote for Obama, I’m never doing the show again.’” Sigh, it’s a sad day…no wonder Cheryl left him. Still, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Which reminds me, in case you missed Senator Clinton’s Hail-Mary Giuliani-ism of Monday, Ted of The Late Adopter posted it in an earlier comment thread. Said the Senator, speaking of Gordon Brown: “I don’t think it was by accident that Al Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more closely than some of our fellow citizens do…Let’s not forget you’re hiring a president not just to do what a candidate says during the election, you want a president to be there when the chips are down.” Hard to call that a message of change. In fact, take out that weird stab at “our fellow citizens” who haven’t swarmed to Clinton’s candidacy, and it sounds like all the usual terror terror terror garbage we’ve been hearing from the GOP for years.

Vamps of all kinds.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has a fatal attraction problem with Scarlett Johansson in the new trailer for Match Point, directed by…well, someone unexpected. (By way of Listen Missy.) Also in the trailer bin are looks at the “remake” of Broadway’s The Producers (What? No Larry David?) and Underworld: Evolution, the unnecessary sequel to a truly terrible film. Seriously, if everyone just sent Bill Nighy $10 rather than seeing this latter flick, the world would be a better place. Catsuit-Kate notwithstanding, he’d be the only reason to sit through this drek.