Jul 15 2011
Scorsese’s ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ gets a shorter title and a trailer
Although it’s initially startling (or is it disheartening?) to see Martin Scorsese’s name plastered on a 3D holiday flick aimed at kids, there’s a good chance ‘Hugo’ will be worth seeing.
Although the trailer itself is a pretty standard cut-and-paste job, it hides the secrets and wonder that went into Brian Selznick’s Caldecott winning book ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ , about a young boy hiding in a Parisian railway station and trying to unlock the mysteries of his father’s work. Why Scorsese? The trailer has pratfalls and Sacha Baron Cohen running around like he’s escaped from Tintin.
Well, what the trailers don’t hint at as much is that Hugo’s storyline revolves around the silent film wizard Georges Méliès, who loved developing automata–mechanical puppets of a sort–for his film work. The book itself took a historical fiction slant, and then moved into fantasy.
I can’t say I’m sold on these trailers, but I do know that Scorsese–for the first time in several years–has some wonderful source material. I’m personally intrigued. The design of the film looks right-on.