I love going to the movies - I love popcorn, I love soda, I love the trailers that give us previews of coming attractions... I don't even mind commercials the way some do (since if you know the economics of movie theaters, you know that there are few revenue streams to begin with, and the split with the studios is horrendously in the studios favor).
Still, if there must be commercials they should be movie-level commercials, not cheap TV type things, and Maria Sharapova's sad spot for Canon (tennis balls chasing her from the court to her hotel so they can make a smiley face in the street) is just unfortunate. It's also a little disturbing, since the tennis balls seem to cause all sorts of injuries and accidents.
But I started this post because I wanted to talk about the trailers I saw yesterday for holiday films - and beyond:
- Casino Royale arrives with the new trailer for Spider-Man 3, and it looked fantastic (so good, they showed it twice - to repeated cheers). And just to prove Marie Antoinette was an aberration, Kirsten Dunst looks and sounds terrific, at least in this short excerpt
- I am willing to admit that Will Smith's Pursuit of Happyness (which I thought changed its title, but apparently has been misspelled all along) is little more than a blatant tug at our heartstrings, but mine got tugged, and I suspect a lot of other folks will too, about a black man struggling to raise his son and improve their lives by going through the unpaid internship program at Dean Witter. Based on this trailer, I'd say his Oscar nomination is a distinct possibility
- Nancy Myers follows up Something's Gotta Give with The Holiday, which although it seems formulaic, looks like it works pretty well - Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet trade houses for holiday vacations in England and LA, respectively and find love - Diaz with Jude Law (as Winslet's brother), and Winslet with Jack Black. Black in particular looks like he'll be great
- The Good Shepherd, about the early days of the CIA looks great, with Matt Damon taking the lead and Angelina Jolie playing his wife (though it looks like she may have little to do). Robert DeNiro directs, which probably means a big ol' hug from the Academy
- No one at Casino Royale seemed too pleased with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which I'm not sure about - it's probably too violent (the trailer only suggests this), and it's a hard sell to get audiences to find an interest in an obscure battle between South American Indian tribes (probably even less interest, by the way, than Pathfinder - that Vikings vs. Indians flick that's being pushed with a gory, shadowy... and ultimately rather silly looking trailer)
- What can you say about Rocky Balboa? If it works - and it might - it could be huge; but how many times does Stallone have a bite a this apple before it gets, well... old?
- Finally, the award for silliest pretentious trailering has to go to The Nativity Story for its heavy reliance on meaningful glances and, well after it's made the point of what it's about, providing us with the helpful title card "This Christmas" - which aside from being redundant (when you're the Christmas movie about Christmas... for God's sake) is also slightly inaccurate - the movie is actually about "that Christmas" or "The First Christmas" so why not just say that instead?
(Okay one more - why not just tag the posters "You will believe that a Virgin could get knocked up" - since the movie seems to play every piece of preposterousness like it's Masterpiece Theater?)
And although I didn't see it last night, I can't help but pass along the trailer for the film that the, ahem, WB is giving the WeBoy for his birthday.
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