“He’s got a lot on his mind.” That’s the tagline for Noah Baumbach’s new film, “Greenberg,” starring Ben Stiller that looks more and more to be simply about life and what to do when you hit 40, which is the new 30 for adults who still haven’t found their way or figured shit out yet (uhh, all of us… sigh).
Umm, and you know what? It looks kind of awesome. Humorous, ironic, but seemingly not shying away from a lot of emotion and grave subjects or tenors. And Ben Stiller, who we were really worried about in this thing (he had to replace Mark Ruffalo after all) looks great in the trailer. We are pleasantly surprised, as we were iffy about his ability to do drama.
The great tone of the trailer is also helped out by the main song, LCD Soundsytem’s life manifesto/soul-searching 30-something track, “All My Friends” and you can actually even spot — very sly Noah — a cameo shot of LCD frontman James Murphy walking in the trailer just as the music starts (see below). It also appears that some of the score will be written by LCD Soundsystem as well, the end of the trailer says, “featuring new music” by the Brooklyn dance-rock band which will be interesting.
Will it be a full score? We doubt it, Baumbach does have musicians help out, Dean & Britta (ex of Luna) scored some of “Squid & The Whale” (and did some of the music supervision) and added one new track to “Margot At The Wedding,” but considering the credit, it’s probably not a full score and just a few new tracks recorded for the movie (we will be happily proven wrong otherwise). Baumbach’s not really known for his music choices, but to us they’re up there with Wes Anderson soundtracks, just not really as well-appreciated. He goes for some excellent, off-the-radar deep cuts (the final three songs on the ‘Margot’ soundtrack, Fleetwood Mac, Donovan and Karen Dalton choices are all fucking aces; The ‘Squid’ soundtrack is also incredible and the use of Lou Reed to finish out the film always took our breath away).
As one of our writers says, “Also, nice to see Stiller not running from CGI or Robert DeNiro for once.” LOL. It’s true, he’s on-point here. Or at least looks it (unlike say, Jack Black who didn’t really suit, “Margot At The Wedding”).
Here’s the official synopsis:
Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is at a crossroads in his life. Out of a job and none too interested in finding one, he agrees to housesit for his younger and more successful brother (Chris Messina), thereby getting a free place to stay in Los Angeles. Once settled in, Greenberg sets out to reconnect with his old friend and former bandmate Ivan (Rhys Ifans). But times have changed, and old friends aren’t necessarily still best friends, so Greenberg finds himself spending more and more time instead with his brother’s personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring singer and herself something of a lost soul. As their relationship develops through a series of embarrassingly awkward romantic encounters, even someone as irascible as Greenberg might have at last found a reason to be happy.
The film also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brie Larson, Juno Temple, Chris Messina and Mark Duplass.
As previously reported, the film hits theaters March 12, 2010 (limited release) and is definitely one of our most eagerly anticipated films of next year. You can watch the trailer over at Apple in HD. Oh, popped up on YouTube too.
Lastly, we’re big fans of Baumbach’s music choices as stated above. So much so that we did an If I Were Noah Baumbach imaginary music playlist from our old Soundtrack Series that you can listen to if interested.