The trailers for films from the late winter and early spring of next year continue to trickle in this week, along with some late entries into the field for November and December releases. There was an especially strong group of smaller and independent film promos this past week, many of which look far more promising than their big-studio counterparts. Check out this week's Trailer Hitch for all the details.
I can see it now: a bunch of studio execs are sitting around shortly after the surprising success of Bring it On. One of them says, "Hmm; this movie did well, so why don't we try and make the formula even better?" And then another one says back to him, "I know! We could keep the cheerleaders in the movie, but instead focus on the marching band that performs with the cheerleaders! And even better, the movie will be about two drummers competing for a spot in the marching band!" After seeing the trailer for Drumline, I think it's safe to say that they should have just stuck with the cheerleaders. If the preview wasn't bad enough already, it certainly didn't help matters that the only recognizable face was the guy from the 7-Up commercials. The whole trailer was painfully unfunny, surely not a good step towards getting people interested in what is supposed to be a comedy. These movies always have the potential to be quite enjoyable if they don't take themselves too seriously; unfortunately, I didn't get the sense at all that Drumline would be of this vein.
Seeing as I am not a child under the age of ten nor the parent of one, I really don't know too much about The Wild Thornberrys, other than it's a popular kids' show on Nickelodeon. However, I will say that I was fairly underwhelmed by the new trailer for the film. The "poachers bad, environment good" theme has been done a few too many times for my taste, and I really didn't get the sense that this movie will bring anything new to the table on that subject. Of course, I am not the target audience for a promo like this, so in that regard, I will say that the preview does do a good job of making sure to give all the characters screen time, to assure the young fans of the show that all their favorites will be in the movie as well. Since children are obviously the target audience for the ad, this type of marketing makes sense. While the trailer won't interest me or you very much, it will probably be tremendously exciting to fans of the show.
Kevin Spacey stars in a film that looks like Oscar bait, only problem is, the studio pushed this one off until April. The Life of David Gale is about an activist who is put on Death Row and a journalist's efforts to determine whether or not he is truly guilty. Honestly, I was not too impressed with what I saw of Spacey's performance in the trailer. The role does not necessarily seem to be one that he fits into very well, but it was hard to tell definitively from the preview. I actually thought Kate Winslet looked better in her role as the reporter. This film will need to rely far more on good word-of-mouth and critics' reviews to be a success, since I don't think the trailer is nearly powerful enough to intrigue audiences.
Sometimes movies just sound like a bad idea. Steve Martin and Queen Latifah costarring in a fish-out-of-water comedy about a white lawyer who meets a woman on the Internet only to find out she's black and in prison? Give me a break. I went into watching this trailer with extremely low expectations, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. There were several very funny lines in the trailer, particularly from the always-hilarious Eugene Levy. I also loved Martin's response to his son when the son asks him what "a rack" is (a country, of course). Still, I'm really having trouble picturing any chemistry between Martin and Latifah, and I'm afraid that this might be one of those films where every single funny line is in the preview. Hopefully, though, I'll be proved wrong, and this film will continue to exceed what is sure to be some deflated expectations.
This documentary focuses on The Funk Brothers, a band that played back-up for a ridiculous number of Motown legends. As with any documentary, this one is obviously somewhat limited in terms of audience. For a music lover, though, this one looks to be a real treat. The trailer itself is well-done in that it gives the viewer a good background into the subject matter in a short time span. Even those people minimally interested in music will likely be intrigued to hear about a group with so many number one hits whose name they probably won't even recognize. This is certainly a documentary which looks to be quite interesting for fans of the material, and for everyone else could potentially be quite enlightening.
It often seems like most of the foreign films which gain notoriety here in the US are those which have a particular gimmick or attraction to them. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for example, had its spectacular martial arts, while Life is Beautiful gained a huge amount of popularity after Roberto Benigni's wild performance at the Oscars. It is always interesting to me, then, to hear about a foreign film which is much more standard in theme but nevertheless looks quite good. Take Care of My Cat, for instance, plainly advertises itself as a coming-of-age story about five girls. This is obviously a topic that has been done many times before, but is always interesting when done well. Furthermore, seeing a take on the story from a completely different cultural perspective is quite intriguing to me. The trailer was fairly short, and thus it was hard to get a full idea of how the movie looks, but I will be keeping my eye out for more information on this film.
Solaris is quite an aberration in film advertising over the past couple years. It is quite rare for a movie that does not have its release date pushed back to not have a trailer until a few weeks before its scheduled opening. It is even more unusual for this to happen with a movie that has the star power of Solaris. It is James Cameron's first film production since Titanic. It is the latest film from Steven Soderbergh, Hollywood's current It director. Finally, it stars George Clooney, who is certainly one of the bigger actors in Hollywood right now. Despite all these big names, it was not until this past week that anything more than a teaser had been released to the public. I was actually surprised with the tone of the promo; I was expecting something with a little more of the blockbuster sci-fi feel. Instead, this seemed to have more in common with Contact or 2001 than with, say, Alien. I did find the preview intriguing, but it was pretty vague in terms of giving the viewer a sense of the story. Since I would assume most people are like me and have not seen the original film that this is based on, the lack of information here is a bit more of a problem than it might be in some other cases. Nevertheless, I wouldn't be surprised to see a more detailed trailer appear on television or online in the next week or so in order to ensure that this movie capitalizes on its huge potential.
A shorter trailer, specifically designed for American audiences, has been released for The Pianist, the highly-anticipated film from Roman Polanski. Again, the juxtaposition of the achingly beautiful piano music and the horrific acts of the Nazis is the main focus. The jarring interruption of the piano by the bomb blast was particularly effective, in my opinion. It is hard for me to decide, though, whether I like this trailer or the previous international version better. The previous trailer had dialogue and showed many more scenes from the movie itself, while this trailer has no dialogue, instead giving a good idea of the film's overall tone. I like the simplicity of the new trailer, and indeed I feel it is the more powerful of the two. Needless to say, the combination of both of these trailers has left The Pianist as one of my most highly-anticipated films for the rest of the year.
Obviously, the huge success of the recent movies based on the X-Men and Spider-Man has made comic books the latest hot source for film adaptations. Daredevil, little known to us non-comic geeks, is being turned into a movie starring Ben Affleck. I was glad to see the trailer explain exactly who Daredevil is and what his special powers are, since most of us aren't as familiar with him as we are with Superman or Batman. In the lead female role is Jennifer Garner, who looks absolutely stunning. Overall, I was very impressed with the tone of the preview; it seems quite comfortable being a fun action movie with a bit of humor mixed in. The only place this tone was lacking was at the very end of the promo; you could tell that the line about Bigfoot and eyewitnesses was supposed to be funny, but it simply wasn't. A nice little one-liner would have been far more effective here. Despite the bad taste left in my mouth by this last line, I do think the film looks promising. The trailer will do a nice job of bringing the movie to the attention of a lot of people who might not have heard of it beforehand.
