Rails and Ties Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The trailers I looked at this week seemed to be forming a pattern, so we're going to follow the bouncing ball as it moves from one preview to another, starting with...

Midnight Meat Train
This one is based on a particularly grisly story from Clive Barker's pretty grisly to begin with Books of Blood series. Scott Weinberg first discussed this one here on Cinematical back in May of 2006. I'm always leery of films based on a short story, especially one I enjoyed. Expanding the tale to feature length requires so much padding the original material can easily get lost. The trailer does a nice job of presenting the premise with a lovely sense of dread. A photographer trying to capture the essence of the city on film witnesses an unspeakably brutal act in a subway car. Someone or something is literally butchering people and harvesting the meat. I did say grisly, right? And speaking of trains...

Rails and Ties
A suicidal woman parks her car on the train tracks and waits for the inevitable. Kevin Bacon plays the conductor who is unable to stop the train in time. The woman's son witnesses the tragedy, and eventually forms a bond with the conductor and his wife (Marcia Gay Harden), apparently being accepted as part of the family. A fairly intense looking human drama that represents a nice change from all the explosions, super heroes and such from the summer movie season. Bacon is one of the greats and it looks like he carries this one well. This film also marks the feature directorial debut of Clint Eastwood's daughter Alison Eastwood. You can read Kim Voynar's review of the film here. And speaking of unusual family dynamics...

In a whirlwind of Comic-Con Kevins, which involved Kevin Smith, Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige, G4's Attack of the Show Kevin Pereira, AOL's Kevin Polowy, and yours truly, I was able to get one more Kevin under the wire ... Kevin Bacon.

He's spent more time making movies than the rest of us have spent watching them, and I was able to catch up with him to talk about his upcoming thriller Death Sentence, and to ask him about some other things, including the upcoming Nixon/Frost film that reunites him with Ron Howard, Rails and Ties, directed by Alison Eastwood, and of course, the upcoming remake of Footloose.

Kick off your Sunday shoes, if you're still wearing them, and check out the video.

Following in the footsteps of her father, actress/singer-turned-director Alison Eastwood is set to make her directorial debut with the film Rails and Ties. As the daughter of relatively unknown actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood, Alison will be competing with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola's daughter, Sofia Coppola, for a chance to be crowned numero uno when it comes to famous Hollywood daughters who one day decide to become directors because, well, they can and because Daddy would be proud. (Actually, seeing as I don't know either one of these gals personally, that's a very unfair statement to make. Yeah. That was mean. I should delete it. But I'm too lazy.)

Pic, which is based on Micky Levy's original screenplay (yes, that's not a typo -- I really said 'original'), tells the interconnecting story of two families and their physical, emotional and psychological collision. If that description is a bit vague, I'll have you know the opening scene depicts a woman who parks her car on railroad tracks, while awaiting the next train to smash through her vehicle. Oh, and I should also note her 9-year-old son is seated beside her. Geez, talk about a depressing way to open a film -- I'm scarred just writing about it. If you're at all wondering whether or not Papa Clint will be involved, he is ... but only as producer. Rails and Ties begins production this fall.