Well, our week just got a whole lot better, because the trailer (and poster) for one of our most anticipated films of the year has arrived. We’ve been enormously curious about “Birdman,” partly because it’s the latest film from one of our favorites, Alejandro González Iñárritu (or Alejandro G. Iñárritu, as the trailer now bills him), and partly because the film promised to be something of a departure, apparently a more comic vibe for a filmmaker whose work before now, like “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” “Babel” and “Biutiful,” has tended towards the bleak.
The film stars a comeback-courting Michael Keaton as an actor best known for starring in superhero movies (meta!) who aims to revive his career on Broadway, with Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan, Edward Norton (wrestling in his underwear in the trailer), Andrea Riseborough and Naomi Watts also among the cast.
The trailer reveals that it’s definitely different, but also clearly the work of Iñárritu. It’s not quite what we were expecting: there are a lot of fantasy sequences and the like, and a dark undercurrent (the music, a slowed down version of Gnarls Barkley‘s “Crazy,” probably gives a clue as to where things are going), but it looks stunning and fascinating and exactly what we were hoping, a sort of blend of “Opening Night” and “Black Swan.” Fox Searchlight releases the film on October 17th, but look for it to pop up at Venice, Telluride or TIFF before then.
