Dueling 19th Century Magician Projects

I'm rather excited by The Illusionist and The Prestige, what seem to be Warner Bros. and Touchtone's rival 19th century magician projects.

They are:

a.) based on literary works -- the short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" and the novel The Prestige respectively.

b.) not brand items unless they're Edward Norton/Paul Giamatti/Jessica Biel and Hugh Jackman/Christian Bale/Scarlett Johansson pictures, and even star brands break the summer trend of sequels and remakes only.

Six minutes is a long ride
I discovered via the Risky Biz Blog that Yahoo is offering a six minute clip -- don't get too excited a lot of it's credits --of The Illusionist, but there's an additional scene as well. Both serve above all to introduce the film's great sepia, Victorian visuals.

So far there's just a trailer for The Prestige, from the director of the fabulous Memento, but that's also enough to begin building my anticipation.

Oddly Christine was not excited by the premise when we saw it on the big screen at Lady in Water.

I'm prepared to support both, just because they're baked reasonably fresh.

Tags: Movies, trailers, magic