Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tamara Jenkins, The Savage
Currently no functioning trailer on YouTube. Watch it here.
You can tell this movie’s probably going to be worth a damn because of how the trailer is put together. You get an uncut block of dialog for the first full thirty seconds that actually manages to intrigue, rather than bore, the viewer. If the marketing tool can use (relatively) large portions of uninterrupted writing to advertise the film, you know you’ve probably got a winner. After that it’s pretty much your basic show-all-the-good-jokes bag of tricks, but this trailer’s got that rad Spoon song! Also, if I ever make trailers for a living (I wish!), every single one–no matter how stale the trick gets–will have that unbelievably satisfying joke epilogue.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
It’s simple: anchor the trailer on an intense, enigmatic close-up monologue by Daniel Day-Lewis, splice in some peculiar encounters with up-and-coming screechy-voiced creeper Paul Dano as a bizzaro preacher, lay some menacing violin music over the whole affair, and you’ve got yourself a trailer. Put the title in Gothic script and tell people it’s the new Paul Thomas Anderson film and you’ve just won the bonus round.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Helen Mirren, National Treasure 2, Nicolas Cage
In asking “What is it about treasure that makes history so fascinating?” this trailer raises many other oh-so more pertinent questions. Such as, since National Treasure ignores history, and the Book of Secrets also ignores treasure, just what is it that is supposed to make these movies fascinating? The same quality that allows this movie to contain the line, “So let’s recap. We’ve broken into Buckingham Palace and the Oval Office, stolen a page from the President’s super-secret book, and actually kidnapped the President of the United States,” makes it as beautifully compatible for a 3 minute snippet as a ridiculous romp of a feature film. The face-paced, almost incoherent style of the trailer represents everything that is in fact, beautiful about National Treasure, from Ed Harris inappropriately saying “grand-daddy”, to negative sepia stills of Abraham Lincoln, from Area 51 (of course), to the whispered, “This can’t be”. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets almost promises to be on par with its predecessor. It would do us all well to ignore the fact that they may or may not neglect everything established in the first movie. Let’s focus on what matters. More countries. More monuments. More theft. More puzzles. More “oh, Nicolas” moments. And most of all, “The mystery the world is not ready to believe.” Which, I can only assume, is the answer to why Helen Mirren is appearing in this movie. Take a look at the trailer again, all signs point in that direction. Reference: 1:04 “Take a look at this” with a shot of Helen (Also reference Book of Secrets page 304).
p.s. National Treasure 2, is, most unfortunately, not rated R.
It’s a shame that Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” is now inexorably linked to that fucking cruise ship commercial because, for me at least, its effectiveness in this trailer is severely diminished as a result. But gross commercial licensing aside, this is a great example of a trailer which perfectly captures the tone of the entire movie. Anyone who’s seen Trainspotting knows that it’s not all one big sneering jaunt through urban youth culture in Scotland, but the decision to use Ewan McGregor’s snide little monologue as the voice-over narration is a stroke of genius. It both warns you that you’re getting a film with some ‘tude, and also dares you to give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s both bold and vaguely obnoxious; if I’d have seen this trailer in theaters I’d impulsively want to see the movie, but I’d also immediately feel dumb for succumbing to the “scrappy indie movie” marketing ploy. Gets me every time! But it’s a foolproof formula: mix clips of both atrociously ugly and unbearably attractive Scottish heroin addicts performing various irreverent activities, up-beat proto-punk garage rock, and every bit of snappy dialog you can scrape together, put through the editing blender set to “Music Video” and bingo! Insta-indie trailer! That being said…great movie overall. Really lives up to its trailer. And Danny Boyle would of course go on to direct the greatest horror movie of our time.
Random notes: UK trailer = boobs and (bleeped) bad words.
Bonus: Ewan in kilt.
