First,
Let me give credit where credit is due: Dave White posted on this. I saw it on his blog. Dave is a fine fellow with a good head and should be checked out. He has a book that is forthcoming and each of you should pick up a copy.

Yahoo has the first online trailer for Gone Baby Gone. Check it out.

Back in April, I mentioned that somebody that had seen an early draft was very impressed with it. He said that Bubba (Boston Rapper Slaine) and Patrick (Casey Affleck) both are very good. While this trailer shows little of Bubba, Casey looks outstanding. Physically, he is smaller than I envisioned, but he has a hardness that looks like it easily makes up for that.

I had my doubts about Casey as Patrick, but he appears to have done a damn good job.

Director Kevin Smith (Who worked with GBG Director Ben Affleck on several films) talked to Rotten Tomatoes and had this to say about GBG:

Interviewer: In some ways, though, I’m disappointed that Ben and Matt became huge as actors, and are obviously very, very pretty, and they haven’t written anything since.

Kevin Smith: It is kind-of weird, although Ben recently did an adaptation of a book called Gone, Baby, Gone. I saw it and it’s a wonderful film. It’s an insanely strong directorial debut. He was working from the Dennis Lehane source material but he did a really bang-up job directing it and one of the most noteworthy things about his direction his how out-of-the-way it stands in service of the story.

First time directors, I think, particularly people who’ve worked under Michael Bay or any number of directors that Ben has worked for that don’t include me, who actually have like a visual style and a flashy visual style, you’d imagine that for his first time up to bat that he’d want to not so much ape them but be inspired by the things they’ve done, to move the camera and make it very showy, and that movie doesn’t, the camera really just serves the script.

I was really impressed by that, he didn’t just start whipping that camera around for the sake of being tricky and being, like, “Look what I can do with it.” He really let the story and the performances drive the film and it’s a really interesting and wonderful movie.

Other tidbits:
Gone Baby Gone has had it’s limited release date pushed back to October 19th (Damn them!!!!) and now there is no solid date for it’s national release…but I am thinking maybe Nov 1st since that is the date it hits theaters in some other countries.

The bar used in the film is Murphy’s Law (Edmund Figzgerald in the book). You can take a virtual tour at the bar’s website.

As I understand, the film’s ending does not differ from that of the book. There are changes, but nothing that will likely cause a riot among mystery fans.

P.S. Sarah Weinman pointed out that Dennis Lehane is very happy with the film.