Trailer Park: Lincoln Has a Trailer And It's...Okay
On Thursday evening during a Google+ hangout with director Steven Spielberg and co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the trailer for Lincoln was shown to the public for the first time. 
Earlier in the week a smaller teaser had been released, but last night the world got their first true glimpse at Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. The film hits theaters on November 16.
The long-gestating project had been a labor of love for Spielberg, who finally cast the Lincoln role with DDL after years of development.
The verdict on the Lincoln trailer?
The trailer has all the typical Spielberg historical biopic hallmarks. Soaring John Williams score, dramatic fades (a lot of them), special-effects makeup, facial hair, racists, succulent scenery, rain, mud, accents, shadows, yelling and silent laughing.
Sally Field is Mrs. Lincoln in full Mama Gump mode. Yes, that was Mad Men's Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant, and what is that on Tommy Lee Jones's head?
Sort of reminded me of the trailer for Spielberg's Amistad, his 1997 almost-epic about an 1839 mutiny aboard a slave ship.
I have been a more than vocal -- rabid -- and excitable champion of the Lincoln project, but the trailer didn't totally sell me on the film. I will say that this looks like one of DDL's most subtle roles. Could it be an Oscar contender and a winner? I can't honestly tell by the trailer, and I don't know if that is good or bad.
Most people forget that Lincoln's voice was described by historians and those that heard him speak as high and wavering, with a tinge of a Southern drawl, so DDL got that right. You are out of luck if you were waiting around for a sweaty Daniel Plainview howl.
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