Decker

No thread yet for this movie apparently. It's been getting some serious Oscar buzz and is Bryan Cranston's first major project since completing Breaking Bad.
It will be showing that the Toronto Film Festival this week, so we should get an idea of how strong it is in a few days.

From Hollywood-Elsewhere website :

Adding Trumbo

I’ve been told I need to add Jay Roach‘s Trumbo, a biopic of once-blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, to HE’s list of notable, aspirational 2015 films. The period drama, filmed last fall in the New Orleans area, stars Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, one of the most prolific and honored screenwriters in Hollywood history. Costars include Diane Lane, Elle Fanning. Helen Mirren and John Goodman. Dalton Trumbo is renowned for having used “fronts” or having otherwise taken no screen credit for scripts written during his blacklisted period in the ’50s. Kirk Douglas, who claimed credit for being the first to hire Trumbo under his own name on Spartacus, is played by Dean O’Gorman; Otto Preminger, portrayed by Christian Berkel, paid Trumbo the same respect when he gave Trumbo public screen credit for his work on Exodus. Preminger’s film came out two months after Spartacus but who stepped up first? Douglas states on a Criterion commentary track that he provided a drive-on pass for Trumbo during the filming of Spartacus in late ’59 or early ’60. David James Elliott plays Trumbo enemy and rightie rabble-rouser John Wayne. Pic is produced by Michael London‘s Groundswell Production


Bryan Cranston as screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Jay Roach and Michael London’s Trumbo. Pic no release date but will probably pop six months from now at one of the August-September film festivals — Venice, Telluride or Toronto.


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Decker

Reviews are coming in from Toronto and it's looking pretty good so far.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/trumbo/

Jeffery Wells' take from Hollywood-Elsewhere :

Naked, Extremely Prolific Writer In Bathtub

There’s nothing wrong with being an intelligent, pruned-down, HBO-level biopic, which is pretty much what you get with Jay Roach‘s Trumbo (Bleecker Street, 11.6). A political biopic, I should say. I saw it last night from a balcony seat at the Elgin, and it just flew right by. Call it an above-average portrait of the Hollywood blacklist era, and a better-than-decent capturing of one the most gifted and industrious blacklisted screenwriters ever. A moustachioed, sandpaper-voiced Bryan Cranston portrays the stalwart titular hero; I felt completely at home with the guy. Trumbo was one of the most gifted wordsmiths in Hollywood history — a winner of two screenwriting Oscars (Roman Holiday, The Brave One) during his under-wraps period, and also the author of A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Cowboy, Spartacus, Exodus, Lonely Are The Brave…the list is quite lengthy. He was also a man of balls and honor. I just wish that Roach and screenwriter John McNamara had paid at least some attention to the legendary Gun Crazy (’50), which Trumbo co-wrote under an alias. My favorite supporting performances (in this order): Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson (particularly during a scene in which he explains to Trumbo why he became a friendly HUAC witness), Helen Mirren as the maliciously right-wing Hedda Hopper, John Goodman as schlock producer Frank King, Louis C.K. as Arlen Hird, and David James Elliott as John Wayne.

Ash Ketchum

I'm curious how they portray John Wayne in the film. I don't like the description of him in one of the above quotes as "a rightie rabble-rouser." One can argue about the effectiveness or rightness of Wayne's anti-communist activities in the 1950s, but that label doesn't fit at all. Wayne was much more complicated than that. I hope they don't turn him into a cartoon character.

Having said all that, I like the idea of Cranston playing Dalton Trumbo, who was, for a time in the 1940s--before the HUAC hearings derailed his career--the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. (Did he have a better agent than Ben Hecht?) And, while other blacklisted screenwriters kept working during that period using pseudonyms or fronts, Trumbo really kept working and turned out great stuff during that period, GUN CRAZY being one of the most well-known examples.

Also, I've read a lot of Trumbo's letters from his blacklisted period (compiled in a book or two). He wasn't the diehard commie ideologue that some of his Hollywood Ten comrades were. For one thing, he liked to live well. And he had a sense of humor. He's the one member of the Hollywood Ten that I actually have some affinity for. As Billy Wilder put it, when they were called "the Unfriendly Ten," because they were tagged as "unfriendly" witnesses before HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee), "A couple of them were talented, the rest were just unfriendly."

P.S. I just watched the trailer. It covers a lot of the key events in Trumbo's story, but I was annoyed by the fact that the actor playing "Kirk Douglas" doesn't look or sound like him in the slightest.

Crocker Jarmen

I wonder if they'll include the part where Kubrick suggested he get the screen-credit for Trumbo's Spartacus script?

Looks interesting, but even after American Hustle, I'm not sold on Louis CK playing anyone other than a middle-aged New York stand-up comic.

dex14

Currently 71% on Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/trumbo/#contentReviews

This is starting to play around me now too. A lot of movies coming out this week.

Jack Straw

Couldn't they have sought out his son Michael who looks almost identical to his father these days?

FWIW, I saw a clip of the movie with Louie CK who looked and sounded very convincing in his acting role.

Dr. DVD

Saw this today. Very well acted movie, but a bit one sided in presentation. Didn't know Heda Hopper had so much pull in old Hollywood.

PatD

I saw this today and found it a satisfying David and Goliath story with terrific performances. It also has a lot of humor that's massaged into the drama expertly.

jacob_b

No idea on the story, but because it has John Goodman (and he was in Argo with Bryan), I am really excited to see this soon.

Why So Blu?

He was portrayed as a scumbag. All talk, no penis. Trumbo clowned him hard in front of important people about the lack of his war service. I don't have a high regard for JW anyway - he probably was a scumbag from what I've read about him through the years.

Why So Blu?

Saw this today and it was pretty cool. I think Cranston may get a nomination. I do wish the film was longer but it was cool and entertaining.

mphtrilogy

Much better than I expected. Very good watch.

Hazel Motes

Really good movie overshadowed by the fact that it sent Edward G Robinson up the river for something he NEVER did. He was questioned MULTIPLE times and NEVER named names. How a major motion picture like this could screw up the facts so bad is insane. Its a shame because it was otherwise a really good movie.

Troy Stiffler

Is that true? From the movie, I thought that he didn't directly name names as "communists", but gave names of friends who meet at his home. If what you say is true, they took it pretty far, and created a fake drama around it.

This is on Amazon Prime if anyone wants to watch.

OldBoy

I enjoyed this too. Not amazing, but pretty breezy and good performances...

JeffTheAlpaca

It was better than what I expected. Louis CK was pretty good in it too.

Cranston with this and LBJ has been on a pretty good roll lately though he might mess it up if he agrees to a Malcolm in the Middle reunion.

Mabuse

Finally saw this. It's a mediocre film that looks like a made for TV movie, however it does contain a half dozen very clever forest gump type moments where real newsreels and recreated footage are integrated perfectly. I can't say there were any flaws in the performances, but the script was very flawed and was filled with historical inaccuracies.

Everything surrounding Spartacus was wrong. Little details like showing the famous battle with the Ethiopian being shot indoors on a set, to outright reinvention of the facts. The film depicts Kirk Douglas consulting with Trumbo during preproduction and Douglas says that Kubrick is giving him a hard time. Kubrick didn't join the Spartacus production until principal photography had already begun. It felt to me they altered the facts just so they could name drop Kubrick.

I liked everything involving Preminger. Very funny caricature of the man. Not accurate, but an acceptable liberty since it was trying to get a laugh. John Goodman and the script do a good job of making the King brothers into a pair of saviors and bad asses that they probably were not in real life.