The Prestige

I normally try to keep movie stuff off this page, for numerous reasons, but this one looks very promising.

A new film coming out in October, starring some of my favourite actors of all time and directed by a master. I've been trying to restrain myself until a trailer came out but the only one I could find on YouTube had a voiceover from Entertainment Tonight so I'll put another one up soon.

With Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as the two leads and with Michael Caine and David Bowie supporting, it's already sowing seeds of huge promise, but then Christopher Nolan is directing which, in itself, is cool, but it means that both Caine and Bale have agreed to work with him more than they were contractually obliged to with the Batman Begins franchise...and I trust their judgement. There are also appearances by the ever-beautiful Scarlett Johansson, Andy Serkis (Gollum & King Kong) and Piper Perabo who, despite her failure to crack Hollywood in Coyote Ugly, is still pretty cute.

The story, apparently adapted from a novel by Christopher Priest revolves around two turn-of-the-century magicians in London both seeking to be the best magician and perform the most amazing feat the world has ever seen. The intensity of the competition between the two drives them both to darker and darker deeds in order to be the best. In classic Nolan fashion, there is sure to be a perfect balance between entertainment, through powerful characters and wonderous scenes, and a moral standing, presumably on how far one must go and still be the better man.

What makes it just that bit extra cool is that David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla, in what would've been the year of Tesla's 150th birthday (I'm not sure if that phrase works properly...I suppose it depends on whether you believe that there is an upper limit on the length of a man's life - but that's for another time).

For those of you who don't know, Tesla was the genius who invented long-distance radio communication and was the main force behind the use of alternating current (AC) for long-distance power transmission. He was, from memory, the third person to announce they'd derived a grand unified theory (the holy grail of physics since the beginning of last century) before dying without leaving any trace of their work on the matter. For the last decade or so, however, he's probably become more famous for the weapon named after him in the Red Alert computer games (which he'd also claimed he'd invented - at the time it was the first mention of a 'death ray'). Oh, and he spoke seven languages, of two families, fluently. So, yeah, he was a pretty awesome guy and is still regarded, pretty much universally, as the best electrical engineer who ever lived.

This is digressing a bit, more so because I doubt Tesla actually particpated in magic shows and is just involved a la the recent Jules Verne-esque stories, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...but it's still cool.

So, I've got to the end of the post without a link to the IMDB page or the only trailer that's up yet so here they are: IMDB YouTube