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Screen Grabs July 11

Screen Grabs July 11 This week’s slate of trailers is all over the map. From unlikely romance to crowd-sourced music docs and a classic cartoon family in 3D the goods are below.

Sleepwalk With Me

Stand-up comic turned playwright Mike Birbiglia brings his hilarious stories of somnambulism to the big screen with this adaptation of his one-man show. NPR’s Ira Glass co-wrote and produced the film while it’s great to see Loudon Wainwright III in an acting role after his turn in cult fave Undeclared .

Gangster Squad

This star-studded mafia flick set in the ’40s looks pretty shticky but also a lot of fun. The heartthrob metre is off the charts with Ryan Gosling Josh Brolin and Sean Penn plus Emma Stone as the main squeeze and Nick Nolte as some kind of stressed-out boss. With all the tommy guns and classic cars it’s like Dick Tracy without the songs (or Madonna).

Are We Not Men?

Four decades before Idiocracy a group of Akron Ohio art-punks began warning the world about de-evolution. This Devo documentary has been in the works for a few years with the band’s co-operation and thanks to a Kickstarter campaign it’s now 95% completed. Whether you’re a hardcore fan or a newbie watching Mark Mothersbaugh and co. share their story is sure to be awesome.

Hi Custodian

Meanwhile The Dirty Projectors aim for the future in an entirely different fashion. The Brooklyn band has always been ahead of the curve with its virtuosic strain of pop and this clip for the upcoming film from mastermind Dave Longstreth adds high-concept Matthew Barney-inspired visuals. It all seems incredibly pretentious but wouldn’t make sense any other way.

Hello I Must Be Going

Less May-December than July-October this rom-com follows a recently divorced woman who starts an affair with a 19-year-old. After screening as the opening film of Sundance 2012 and distributed by the late Adam Yauch’s Oscillope Laboratories it’s sure to have something going for it. Christopher Abbot from Girls plays the younger half of the equation and if you’re like me and can’t put your finger on where you’ve seen Melanie Lynskey it might be The Informant! Win Win or (shudder) Two and a Half Men .

Goats

To be honest this coming-of-age comedy looks pretty terrible but it’s worth watching the trailer to see David Duchovny with a giant mountain-man beard.

Comes A Bright Day

While the 12-year-old in me can’t help but laugh every time I read the name Imogen Poots this British thriller actually looks deadly serious. The up-and-coming actress best known for 28 Weeks Later joins Craig Roberts from Submarine as the innocent kids caught in the middle of a crime. Is it safe to guess that there’s some kind of twist?

The Imposter

I shared the trailer for this film in a previous column but this new featurette sheds a bit more light behind the scenes. Director Bart Layton and his fellow filmmakers give some insight into their decision to dramatize the shocking true story of a man posing as a kidnapped teenager alongside more typical documentary techniques. Like Orson Welles’ classic F for Fake the veiled layers of artifice add to the subject matter and make it seem even more fascinating.

The Longest Daycare Finally there’s no real reason to see Ice Age: Continental Drift unless you’re intrigued by a 12-second trailer. The Simpsons make their 3D debut in this short film screening before the nth sequel to the computer animated series starring Ray Romano (joined this time by Drake Nicki Minaj and Peter Dinklage). From what we can gather it sees Maggie returning to the Ayn Rand School for Tots and going head-to-head against the unibrow baby. Enough to save a mammoth-sized disaster?

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