One of the key question marks in this year’s Oscar season, one conspicuously absent from our most anticipated post-fall film festival picks feature published this morning, is Clint Eastwood‘s “J. Edgar,” his decades-spanning drama about the controversial head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.
The project stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular subject, and while in most people’s minds Eastwood + DiCaprio = Oscars, that seems to be a rather superficial response. Almost everything made after 2004’s Best Picture-winning “Million Dollar Baby” has been either patchy (“Invictus“), uneven (“Flags Of Our Fathers“) a mild effort (“Gran Torino“) or downright dull (“Hereafter“) — this writer would submit that “Changeling” is his best work since then. Then again that period accounts for eleven Oscar nominations (“Letters from Iwo Jima” scoring four including Best Picture and Best Director nods), but only two wins (duel sound editing awards for his two WWII films). So, ok, we shouldn’t count out Eastwood, but we’re still looking to be won over.
So the trailer? Well, right now all that’s available is a bad bootleg from Access Hollywood so we won’t cast any judgement for now. Watch it for yourself below and once Apple or Yahoo have a real embed, we’ll switch things out. A proper embed is available for you to look at below.
“J. Edgar” is set to screen on November 9 in limited release and then quickly goes wide on November 11. The picture will make its debut at the AFI Film Festival just a few days prior on November 3. Written by “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black the intriguing ensemble cast includes, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Ed Westwick, Damon Herriman, Judi Dench, Ken Howard, Jeffrey Donovan and Stephen Root.
