Anne Hathaway is about to have a pretty good few months. The actress has been consistently charming, diverse and impressive on screen, but of late her showcases, from hosting a botched Oscars to films like "Love And Other Drugs" and "One Day," haven't quite worked, even if she's been pretty good in them. But in a couple of months, she's got the plum role of Catwoman in "The Dark Knight Rises," which is likely to win over the hearts and loins of the geek community.
And when Christmas comes, she has a key supporting role in one of the big Oscar hopefuls, musical "Les Miserables," from "The King's Speech" director Tom Hooper. And while her part is smaller than some of her co-stars, like Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne and Samantha Barks, she's front-and-center in the first trailer, which debuted this morning over at Bing, suggesting that an awards campaign is certainly in the works for the actress.
The clip is scored by Hathaway, as Fantine, singing one of the film's signature tunes, "I Dreamed A Dream" (as made famous of late by Susan Boyle), over footage showing most of the cast. And it looks very handsome, certainly, with impressive scope and performances that look like they could be heading in the right direction. We're glad that Hooper doesn't seem to be taking the Rob Marshall let's-just-do-the-musical-numbers-on-a-stage approach, but he's still bringing his signature style to the film, which may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you found the extreme close-ups and look-at-me camera angles of "The King's Speech" fresh or distracting.
Still, this could have been much less promising: the brief snippets here are cinematic and powerful. We'll find out if the film works out when it hits theaters on December 7th.