Ewan McGregor - new The Impossible trailer, Cold Chain Mission review

Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor brave the elements in longer The Impossible trailer

Back in January, we brought you the Spanish teaser for The Impossible, one of our most-anticipated features for the coming year primarily because it’s the latest from The Orphanage director Juan Antonio Bayona. Twitch had that clip at the time, and must have a tie to the studio’s marketing department, because they’ve posted the latest full trailer to Impossible. We’re sharing it below:

Bayona plans to follow a family as they cope with the sudden, devastating effect of the powerful tsunami that swept over Thailand in 2004. He has hired Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts to play the parents of young boys, but as you can see in the clip (despite a clunky translation into Spanish), the epic visuals will be the star of Bayona’s drama.

The trailer seems to suggest that Impossible will spend time developing the family dynamic, which is wise. We need to care for the survival of these characters if Impossible is going to carry any weight. We need to root for the parents to reunite with their children, otherwise this is just another Roland Emmerich knock-off, and I honestly don’t think that’s what Bayona intends.

The Impossible is expected to reach theatres in Spain in October. We don’t yet have a release date for the U.S., though I’m hoping that Warner Bros. slots it into its potential awards calendar, meaning we might see Impossible at one of the fall film festivals, be it Toronto, New York or possibly AFI in Los Angeles. We’ll keep you posted when we hear concrete release information. Until then, enjoy the trailer, and all of its devastating beauty. 
Source: Cinema Blend

Also reported by Inside Movies 

 

Ewan McGregor: Cold Chain Mission review

COLD CHAIN MISSION: Sunday 22nd April, BBC2, 9pm

“From LA I fly to London, then onto Delhi…” And so it began. Ewan McGregor: Cold Chain Mission was always going to be tough; first you have the logistics of getting an A-lister and film crew to India and Nepal, and then the challenge of maintaining the Cold Chain itself. (For those of you who missed it, “Cold Chain” refers to the process of keeping things such as Pharmaceuticals and Seafood at a cold temperature during transit. In McGregor’s case, it’s the former.)

Finally, there is the major hurdle, creating a television documentary about a celebrity helping impoverished third world children, without it being incredibly patronising. Effort has been made on this front; McGregor openly admits at the start of the program that it’s a combination of charity work and an exciting adventure, and sure enough, motorcycles, clearly his main passion, featured heavily. It’s the honesty of the program, McGregor’s charismatic and affable personality, coupled with acute awareness on behalf of the producers to spare viewers from the usual “celebrity in a developing nation” experience, (something akin to passing a kidney stone whilst a twat in Havaiana flip flops gives an extended rendition of their gap year in Botswana) that allows you watch it without questioning the validity of altruism.

Whilst McGregor and the vaccines reach their destination, the same cannot be said for the program itself. In their efforts to avoid the usual celebrity-charity vicarious sadomasochism, the human interest angle was somewhat discarded. Due in part, perhaps, to the nature of the task, which involved arduous trekking to remote villages, an upstream journey in a dilapidated boat, and, with much credit to McGregor, landing an aeroplane on an almost impossibly precarious landing strip, the programme becomes more of a travelogue, albeit an enjoyable one.

The Travelogue format of McGregor’s cold chain is both it’s greatest strength and greatest weakness. McGregor provides both humour, and at times, touching poignancy. However, like the dirt paths that McGregor traipsed, the focus of the programme was too narrow, and one would be forgiven if they thought that the only social issue at play was the geographic remoteness of the locales. Perhaps more social issues could have been explored in a different “Cold Chain” mission, where McGregor travels in a refrigerated van from a Trout Farm to a supermarket distribution centre near Kettering.

Read more at Channel Hopping 

Episode 2 will air on Sunday 29 April : Ewan McGregor journeys up the CongoRiver following a vaccine trail supported by Unicef.