It's an acting showdown for the ages, as the beloved and gold-coated Meryl Streep is set to share screen time with your boy-crazy best friend (and ours) Taylor Swift. Actually, to be fair, Swift is only slated for a small role. Really, The Giver, and its trailer, belong to Jeff Bridges and newcomers Brenton Thwaites and Odeya Rush. As well, Alexander Skarsgård and Katie Holmes (yay) are on board the Phillip Noyce-directed movie based off the oh-so-popular Lois Lowry book of the same name.
For those wanting to get up to speed, The Giver follows a filmic sci-fi path recently carved out by The Hunger Games and Divergent. Interestingly, though, the original Lowry novel predates the books those other films were based on. It's actually a pioneer in the genre. The plot is simple and attractive. In a post-apocalyptic utopian society, all emotions have been done away with thanks to regular injections. This is great when it comes to things like avoiding war and such, but bad when it comes to things like love and reality television.
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Now, those of you who've read the book will remember that those still under the thrall of those emotion-checking treatments only see their world in black and white, whereas freed people see it in color. We were sort of hoping there'd be a cinematographic treatment that would break the movie into half gray scale, half Technicolor, The Wizard of Oz-style. Alas, there's nothing here like that except Meryl Streep's awesome hair.
Whatever the case, you can expect to see Streep, Swift, Holmes, and friends in theaters August 15. Bring your own emotions.
Video: Via YouTube.