trailer break: ‘Inkheart’

Yeah, it does bear a certain resemblance to Bedtime Stories, the Adam Sandler comedy opening in the U.S. on Christmas Day, what with stories coming alive when read, and I’d suspect that’s why this film isn’t opening in the U.S. today, as it is in the U.K., to keep the two movies separated by a bit of time. Except that Bedtime Stories opens in the U.K. on December 26, only two weeks after this one, so maybe Inkheart is just getting out of the way of the very crowded December the U.S. is having this year (11 movies are opening wide between today and Christmas Day in the U.S., which means some of them are going to get bypassed by audiences who might otherwise have checked them out).

One big factor in Inkheart’s favor, crowded release or no: it doesn’t star Adam Sandler. Oh, the Sandler movie will be huge, of course, and will likely make me want to run screaming from the theater. But Inkheart looks charming -- it reminds me of Jasper Fforde’s novels about Thursday Next, Literary Detective, and her world in which books are alive and can be visited, literally, which I’d love to see do for the screen (though perhaps it’d be better on the small screen). I hope it lives up to that promise.

Inkheart opens today in the U.K., and in the U.S. on January 23, 2009.