myrddyn

reflections from the kiddie pool
2002-03-26 18:47:42 (UTC)

Seeing the perfect movie


I am a gigantic movie trailer junkie. I love movie
trailers. I know it makes me a pain in the butt to go to
movies with because I get shitty if I'm late and we miss
the trailers. Not so much these days because you can
download them off the Internet, but sometimes it just isn't
the same.

Sometimes I have this experience when I see a trailer, of
the story of the movie unfolding in my mind. It's like
trying to see into the storyteller's mind as he or she was
writing. The best trailers have given me more chills than
their respective movies.

I saw a trailer like that the other day, for a movie
called "Life or Something Like It". It stars Angelina
Jolie as a bitchy, up-and-coming TV reporter and Edward
Burns as the laid-back, not-really-going-anywhere cameraman
assigned to her. Basically, one day she is interviewing
a 'psychic' street savant who foresees her death in about a
week. As his other predictions from the interview come
true, it looks like she starts to believe she is going to
die, so she starts acting as if the future basically
doesn't matter and living in the present.

The basic concept of this has tremendous potential.
However, the 'basic concept' you can see just from the
trailer is going to be wrapped in huge piles of Hollywood
shit. The initial 'hate' relationship between Jolie and
Burns, surprise surprise, turns to budding romance. Jolie
looks certain to be overplayed as a blond ambitious bitch,
and there will be your usual lowest-common-denominator
humor, some of which involving a monkey appears in the
trailer.

The street savant character looks to be the only serious
player in the film, and if they really decided to build
something around that this movie could have been really
good. Remember, this same concept of impending death was
used extremely effectively in American Beauty.

The movie could be a tragedy, where she really does die.
It could be a growth piece, where she does not, but cut out
the shitty blonde bitch stuff and cookie-cutter romance
with Burns. Or leave the romance in, have her go through
the self-analyzing and growth, and decide for someone else
besides Burns leaving him heartbroken. It's like you just
know that the screenwriter had something deep or profound
in mind, that got totally twisted on the way to the screen.

I don't mean to sound like I only enjoy movies with tragic
or sad endings, it's just that we are so innundated with
happy Hollywood endings that the screenwriters, producers
and dirctors with the balls to deviate from that feel-good
formula have produced some of the best films over the past
decade. Why was Empire Strikes Back the best of the
three? Because Lucas took the 'happy ending' from A New
Hope and twisted it on its ear. Ghost World, American
Beauty, Chasing Amy, Twelve Monkeys, One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest . . . I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.

Anyway I haven't totally given up hope on Life or Something
Like It, I'm just going to approach it with very reserved
expectations and hope for the best.

Some of my other recent favorite trailers:

Brotherhood of the Wolf
The Matrix
13 Conversations about One Thing
Episode II -- Mystery
Empire Strikes Back -- Special Edition
Lord of the Rings
Blade II
Amelie
Ice Age (the very first trailer)
Romeo Must Die
The Muskateer
Kissing Jessica Stein
The Phantom Menace
Sexy Beast

There are a ton more, these just jumped to mind as I sped
down my mental list as fast as I could type. A number of
these movies that were decent, but didn't live up to the
expectations I had in my mind based on the trailer. A few
turned out just to be bad movies period.

Well this has been the confession of a trailer junkie. I
am so far behind in seeing the good movies that are out or
are coming out this weekend that I hope to get my fill of
trailers in the next couple of weeks :)




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