Odds & Ends
Monday, August 15, 2005
Trailer Trash
I love trailers. Sure, they are cinematic junk food: films cut down to the most basic of visceral pleasures. Like junk food, over-exposure could probably be bad for you, reducing your attention span and leaving you a visual adrenalin junkie. (I assume something like this happened to Michael Bay at some point). But just as sometimes you really need a Big Mac, there are times when you just want to gorge yourself on the juicy bits of a film without having to absorb all the cinematic nutritional value (such as plot, character, and exposition). And now that they are routinely included on DVDs and circulated on the internet, it's easier than ever to indulge a trailer habit. I'm sure this increasing availability means various cinema studies students at universities are preparing theses on the evolution of movie marketing. Certainly there are a few observations even a casual observer can make. Old trailers always seem slow and clunky, for example, but generally do not give away as much of the plot as those made in the last few years. (The progression seems to be towards trailers that give away the entire plot through a rapidfire montage of single frame stills). Watching a particularly bad trailer the other day (for Stealth, about which I say more below) got me thinking about some of the good and bad trailers I've seen over the years. So, just off the top of my head, here are a few that I consider to be good and bad examples of the form. Where possible, I've given a link to the one I'm talking about. Good The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The internet only trailer, which you can find here). I've mentioned this one before here; it's an excellently done piss-take of all the cliches of trailer-making. The clever thing about it is that even while it's taking the mickey out of the techniques of trailers, it is utilising those same cliches effectively. The self-consciously rapid-fire montage at its end, for example, really does get you fired up and wanting to see the movie. The other thing I like about it is that it manages to be reasonably true to Douglas Adams' writing style, even though it isn't based on any of his material. As an Adams pastiche, it's more effective than any of the original material that appeared in the movie itself. Jaws (I can't find this one on the internet, but it's on the 25th anniversary DVD). Much has been written about the industry-changing box-office performance of Jaws in the summer of 1975, but I don't often see attempts to explain why it was such an instant hit: its success seems to be accepted as some kind of historic inevitability. Obviously it's an excellent movie, but the film was a smash before there was chance for any word-of-mouth to build. However, when the film finally appeared on DVD with its original trailer, it all made a lot more sense. Unlike pretty much every trailer of such a vintage, Jaws' original trailer is still effective today, and it must have gotten quite a buzz going before the film opened. It has the same uncanny instinct for editing rhythms evident in the feature itself, to the point where I wonder if the film's editor (Verna Fields) put it together herself. The Phantom Menace (The main theatrical trailer, which you can find here). This is notable partly as an example of a really good trailer made for an atrocious film. But it also does something I really like in a trailer, which is construct a story that is something of a red-herring. The trailer builds up a small part of the overall plot of the movie as if it's the whole thing, which leaves a fair bit of the movie still to be discovered by its audience. (The trailer for Tony Martin's Bad Eggs is another example where this was done well). Psycho (The theatrical trailer, which you can find here). This is another example of an effective older trailer. They don't make them like this anymore: a six-minute-plus epic with Alfred Hitchcock touring the Bates motel and house. Hitchcock is in fine form, keeping the film's secret but also playing up the fact that the film is an enormous sick joke. Surveying the bathroom in which Marion is killed, he says with relish: "Well, they've cleaned all this up now. Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole... the whole place was... well, it's - it's too horrible to describe." And yet its leisurely pace is itself something of a ruse, lulling the audience into a false sense of security before a final shock audio cue of Marion screaming. Bad Titanic (The main theatrical trailer, which you can find here) This one stands out in my mind as being a particularly egregious offender in the "trailer-gives-the-whole-movie-away" stakes. They all do this now, but at the time, I don't think they usually did it this badly. (I've heard it said that this is an American thing, and that European trailers are traditionally less explicit, but not having lived in Europe I can't comment: this has a whiff of knee-jerk anti-Americanism to me). Yes, we know the boat sinks, but the Titanic trailer really did give pretty much every story beat away. Stealth (The theatrical trailer, which you can find here) Only time will tell if the movie is as bad as the trailer makes it look: if so, it would be quite an achievement. This trailer prompted this post: people were openly laughing at it when I saw it. First it makes the movie out to be an inferior rip-off of the already dumb Top Gun, but then - in a moment of almost transcendental idiocy - it reveals that no, the movie is in fact even stupider than that. Speed 2: Cruise Control (The theatrical trailer, which you can find here) On the subject of audiences openly laughing at trailers: the trailer for Speed 2 was the first time I remember it happening. Not so much because the trailer was badly done, but simply because it laid out the stupidity of the premise with such transparency. Speed had centred on a concept - the bus that couldn't slow down - that was perfect for an action film, in that it gave the film an unrelenting kineticism. So what do they do for the sequel? They set it on the slowest moving vehicle they can find. (Imaginary dialogue: "The boat will blow up if it goes over 5 miles per hour!"). Also, the scene where the cop gets suspended by his commanding officer is now officially the most laughably overworked cliche in Hollywood moviemaking: so while it may be an obligatory inclusion in the movie itself, it really shouldn't be one of the scenes you put in the trailer. And finally - the "Cruise Control" tag was surely the dumbest sequel subtitle since Die Hard 2: Die Harder. The Phantom Menace (The "tone poem" series of ads: you can find the entries in this series here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Yes, despite its main trailer being good, The Phantom Menace did manage some ads that were as bad as the film itself. Possibly the most pretentious series of commercials ever prepared for a motion picture were the series of "tone poem" ads made for this movie, each of which featured a solemnly intoned original piece of pseudo-poetry that perfectly captured the feel of bad angst-ridden teenage writing. A sample from the series, narrated by Natalie Portman's character, Queen Amidala: There are things I cannot do Eck. If trailers really were junk food, I think I would have just got acid reflux. It's a worry when the movie is terrible, but the trailer still manages to be worse. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 15.8.05 - 1 comments  
Sunday, August 07, 2005
My Body May Belong to You, But My Soul Belongs to Warner Bros
Note: this post has been updated; see the bottom for more details. When the Australian division of Warner Bros split the four disk Looney Tunes Golden Collection released in the United States into three separate collections (two single disks and a double disk), I was fairly philosophical. Even allowing for the fact that we missed out on some of the extra features the Americans got - notably The Boys From Termite Terrace, a documentary about the studio - I was just happy to be getting any release of these wonderful cartoons at all. It did cross my mind that the format of the release, and its cheap-looking cover art, would lead to poor sales for the DVDs. But I could enjoy great cartoons like Rabbit Seasoning, Rabbit of Seville, and Hair-Raising Hare on DVD at last. And there would be more to come, I told myself. So I have waited calmly ever since that release, in March 2004, expecting that the next volume would follow. But now I'm getting alarmed. Wave 3 of the series is now on its way in the US, and there is still no sign from the local distributor of the excellent second wave that was released overseas in November last year. Has some local DVD guru, having released the first wave in this country without some of its extras and in ugly packaging, decided that there isn't any demand in this country for the Looney Tunes DVDs? (And while I'm asking, what has happened to the Disney Treasures series in this country? We got four volumes of that, in two waves of two disks, in May and August 2004. There are a lot of excellent disks in that series still to come, but the three month wait between the first and second waves has now extended to twelve months with no sign of the next. Perhaps that series, too, suffered from packaging: rather than the durable tin boxes Disney used overseas, the Australian release were released in those flimsy cardboard DVD cases distributors use to mark a "special" release, but which become tattered and broken once you open them a few times, making you wish for regular plastic packaging.) If you're wondering what you're missing on the Looney Tunes front, here are a few of the great cartoons we are missing from the two waves of Looney Tunes disks not yet released here (this is a very select list, just picking up on some highpoints: fuller rundowns can be found here and here). Wave 2 Rhapsody Rabbit (Friz Freleng, 1946) - Bugs plays the piano, with a mouse in the keyboard. A very minimalist concept, but a model for many musical cartoons that came later. Also the subject of the controversial "who - if anyone - copied from who?" debate when the Tom and Jerry cartoon Cat Concerto used the identical premise in the same year... and won the Academy Award for best short subject. What's Opera Doc? (Chuck Jones, 1957) - Maybe the most celebrated cartoon ever. It was the dying days of the studio and Chuck Jones' unit stole production time from other shorts for this enormously ambitious cartoon that basically served as Bugs Bunny's swan song (although he wouldn't officially retire until several years later). Beep Beep (Chuck Jones, 1952) - The second Road Runner cartoon, and maybe the funniest. Already Jones was reducing the series to its minimum elements: in one scene (echoing a gag from Fast and Furry-ous, the first Road Runner short) the Coyote and Road Runner go into a mine and are represented simply by dots on a diagram. It's the chase cartoon at its most basic. Porky in Wackyland (Bob Clampett, 1938) - One of the early classics of the studio, and one of the most surreal cartoons ever made. You Ought to Be in Pictures (Friz Freleng, 1940) - An early Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Porky and Daffy enter the live action Termite Terrace and meet the producer of the Warner shorts, Leon Schlesinger. The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Bob Clampett, 1946) - Definitely a candidate for the best cartoon ever made. Daffy Duck pretends he's "Duck Twacy" and confronts a series of comic strip villains, including "Flat Top," who launches planes off the top of his head, and "Rubber Head" who rubs Daffy out - literally. Dark, aggressive, and yet extremely funny. The Dover Boys (Chuck Jones, 1942) - A very funny Chuck Jones cartoon that was also a groundbreaking experimentation in the use of limited animation for comic effect. Visually, this is amongst the most influential Hollywood cartoons. Corny Concerto (Bob Clampett, 1943) - I pity those who only know the Warner cartoons of Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, and have never seen the earlier Bob Clampett stuff. This is Clampett's send up of Fantasia, with Elmer Fudd as Deems Taylor. It seems biting now: with the Disney studio reeling from its financial losses in the early forties, it must have seemed really harsh. A Bear for Punishment (Chuck Jones, 1951) - One of Chuck Jones' best occasional series, featuring the Three Bears, reaches its hilarious conclusion when the Mama and Junior Bear perform a father's day pageant for the long-suffering Papa Bear. Includes a classic piece of comic animation when Mama Bear dances for Papa, and one of my favourite moments of dumbness by a cartoon character, as Junior Bear tries to read the label on a jar in the pantry: "G-U-N-P-O-W-D-E-R... duh... Tobacco!" One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones, 1955) - Overrated, but still great, morality play about a singing frog destroying the life of a construction worker. Three Little Bops (Friz Freleng, 1957) - The last of Freleng's many wonderful musical cartoons (in fact, his last really accomplished cartoon, period) is this jazzy retelling of the story of the three little pigs. The great narration - "He huffed and puffed / And bleeped and blooped / And by ten o'clock / was completely pooped" - was sung by Stan Freberg, who is still alive and contributes a commentary track on the DVD. Wave 3 Wave 3 is slightly more cartoon buff-oriented, featuring a much higher quotient of the older cartoons, but still with plenty to keep the casual fan amused. Homeless Hare (Chuck Jones, 1951) - Not Jones' most recognised film, but one of his best. Bugs versus a construction worker. Contains an extremely ambitious set-piece, by Warner standards, when Bugs cops a steel girder to the face and does a dazed spacewalk through the construction equipment. Hillbilly Hare (Robert McKimson, 1950) - McKimson's only really excellent cartoon, climaxing with Bugs putting the villains through their paces in a very violent square dance. Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (Chuck Jones, 1953) - The last of Jones' "Duck Season / Rabbit Season" trilogy with Bugs, Daffy and Elmer. "Shoot me again, I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers and gunpowder and cordite!" The Swooner Crooner (Frank Tashlin, 1944) - Strange cartoon in which a pair of roosters - one resembling Frank Sinatra, one resembling Bing Crosby - are enlisted to boost egg production by singing to hens: hinges on a dumbfounding visual gag, in which the hens swoon to the music and start spilling eggs out in enormous piles. (Note for fans of 1950s live-action comedy - yes, it's the same Frank Tashlin). Robin Hood Daffy (Chuck Jones, 1958) - Another late-period Jones classic. While you can see the cheapness starting to intrude, this nevertheless features several of Jones' funniest and best remembered scenes, including Daffy's attempt to swing on a rope ("Yoiks and away!"), Porky's hysterical laughter at Daffy ("How jolly can you get?") and the clever gag in which Daffy's repeated humiliation is symbolised by his beak repeatedly popping up vertically. A Gruesome Twosome (Bob Clampett, 1945) - One of Clampett's early Tweety cartoons. Freleng later took the character over and cutened him up into the unbearably twee character we know today, but Clampett's Tweety is a mean, sadistic little baby-faced freak. No Barking (Chuck Jones, 1954) - They seriously should show this one in film schools to budding comedy directors: along with Tex Avery's Bad Luck Blackie (made at MGM in 1949), it's the classic cartoon to demonstrate the use of escalating variations on a repeated gag. In this case, the repeating gag is Frisky Puppy sneaking up behind Claude Cat, and barking at him so that he jumps in the air. Entirely animated by Ken Harris, there is no Jones cartoon that generates more laughs. Rabbit Punch (Chuck Jones, 1948) - Bugs versus a boxer (not to be confused with Bunny Hugged, in which he is up against a wrestler). An Itch in Time (Bob Clampett, 1943) - Also known as "the one with the dirty joke that they assumed would be cut out by the censor, but which wasn't." And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So what about it, Warner Bros? Update, 11/8/05: This post has been largely overtaken by events, as Warner Bros have now announced the release of what appears to be Wave 2: see here. Credit where credit is due: the disks are fantastically priced at $15 each, meaning picking up all four compares pretty favourably to a purchase of a standard four disk box set. The main outstanding issues therefore are whether the presentation of the disks will be as poor as the last Australian round (hard to complain about at this price point) and whether we get all the extra features. We will clearly be getting many of them, but it appears we again may lose a few. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.8.05 - 0 comments
Wartime Filmmaking
I finally caught up with Batman Begins last weekend. I don't plan to do a full review, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's too late in its run to be worthwhile; secondly, the guys at Hoopla pretty much covered all the points I would make about it. I didn't like it as much as they did: I thought as soon as it moved in to action film mode it was pretty poorly made, and that its take on vigilante justice was fairly confused (I actually think the deceptively light and frothy Spiderman films, particularly the second one, balanced substance and action with considerably more finesse). But they got it right about the political undertones of the film, and I certainly found the film much more interesting than its predecessors. This is the other reason I don't want to write a full review, however: having written so much about the political undertones of Revenge of the Sith and War of the Worlds I didn't really want to wade too deeply into those waters again. So this post is just a quick postscript to those previous pieces of writing (here, here and here). Because even as I want to move on to other things, I think it is remarkable that these themes are popping up with such regularity, and in such interesting ways. This is proving to be the American summer in which the effects of September 11 2001, and the political events that followed, were finally reflected in a considered way by the films emerging from the Hollywood production line. Of course, we have seen knee-jerk reactions. The first phase was the frantic pulling of movies considered too insensitive (Collateral Damage) or challenging (The Quiet American) to release in the post-September 11 political environment. And there have been a few awkward, self-congratulatory references to America's response to the attacks, such as the displays of solidarity by the New Yorkers at the conclusion of the train chase in Spiderman 2. Yet these moments have been fairly positive in their tone: we haven't yet seen, for example, the mooted Rambo IV in which Rambo went back to Afghanistan to kick some terrorist butt. If you think of the Hollywood movies of the Reagan era, there was a lot of acting out of violent patriotic fantasies: not just the Rambo films, but also Rocky IV (Stallone versus Russia), and the Missing in Action films. You might have expected a nation that had received such a huge psychic jolt to revive the old right-wing genres such as Dirty Harry or Deathwish-style revenge thrillers, and send a few one-man armies after the terrorists. That hasn't really happened. We're now seeing films that have been conceived, written, and shot well after the events, and can respond not only to the attacks, but to the political fallout afterwards. And what is the Hollywood take? Revenge of the Sith warned about the dangers of politicians who use security threats to erode civil rights. For all its confusion about vigilante justice, Batman Begins still makes the point that vigilantism and terrorism are two sides of the same coin, and is also a pretty interesting take on the way in which the primary weapon of terrorism is fear itself. War of the Worlds showed the folly of the hero's son's desire to pursue a military response to the threat. And to judge by reviews such as this, Land of the Dead has a few interesting points to make also. I don't have any big conclusion to make about all this, except that it could have been much worse. The wider response to September 11 has been incomparably depressing, but Hollywood's surprising reluctance to take the low road has been heartening. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.8.05 - 0 comments
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