FRED Entertainment

Director:Steve Buscemi
Cast: Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, Mary Kay Place, Seymour Cassel, Kevin Corrigan
Release: March 24, 2006
Synopsis: Casey Affleck plays Jim, a young man who, after deciding he can’t make it on his own, moves back to his hometown in Indiana — under his parents’ roof. He’s saved from his family’s dysfunction by a local woman and her son, who sees him as a father figure.

Prognosis: Positive. I went to England once.

Saw a play there.

The play was called “This Is Our Youth” and it was written by Kenneth Lonergan, of YOU CAN COUNT ON ME fame. Matt Damon was supposed to be in it but he was “on holiday” or some such thing and was being replaced by some name I have yet to ever hear again. I thought about not seeing it but I was a fan of the flick and gave it a go. Casey Affleck was in it and it was, perhaps, the best part of the production. He was, without pole smoking his ego, marvelous. I liked him and have enjoyed his presence in other things since then. He has his own style and presentation and it’s nice to see he wants to have his own identity. When I saw the trailer for this, then, I felt that same rush of intrigue I had when I saw him ply his theatrical trade in London.

“He shot himself in the head”

The opening card that announces this is a new comedy from Steve Buscemi has the above line being uttered right before we know this. Casey’s dry, straight-forward speak is well-placed for what looks like, not a black comedy, but a quiet comedy. Liv Tyler plays, in what looks like, your average small town bumpkin who is outside the ken of Casey’s well-read universe. He’s not condescending but as he explains how Hemmingway did away with himself you feel that there is an imbalance in the parity between the two of them. As we walk deeper into the trailer you also get hipped to the knowledge that Casey looks like he is just drifting through his life.

The cinematography precisely reflects the grayness that seems to hover over his head; the danger in this, though, is you could end up with a protagonist who is so blue that the audience might start to wish he really does pull the trigger on his life, ending it all.

After admitting that he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown to Liv, who really warms the climate in this trailer, Casey just absorbs the odd goings-on of his family. From his mother who seems to be cut from the cloth of every adoring mother character there is, to his strange uncle who seems equally cut from the crazy person bin of stock players there seems to be an honesty that just can’t be denied in here.

I am equally floored by how much I see hope in Casey’s frumpy, monotone persona. After telling a squad of diminutive, and equally downtrodden looking, girls that even though they are destined to lose their game but, “the past does not always predict the future.” Whoa, there, Neo, that’s a fistful of foreshadowing if I ever heard it. But, whatever, because the lilting guitars in the background, the modesty with which we’re pimped the number of film festivals the movie has played at and the ease with which this trailer makes its transitions is just commendable.

The ending is a little too cheeky for my taste, the young boy who helps to end things seems to be channeling the dark spirit of Jonathan Lipnicki circa JERRY MAGUIRE, and I really don’t care for Casey’s forced cancer-causing saccharine smile, but the pros far outweigh the cons and makes me really want to go out my way to see this movie.

Director: Terry Zwigoff
Cast: Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, Matt Keeslar, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston
Release: April 28, 2006
Synopsis: Based on a comic story in Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Art School Confidential follows Jerome (Minghella), an art student who dreams of becoming the greatest artist in the world. Arriving as a freshman at a prestigious East Coast art school filled with every artsy “type” there is, Jerome quickly discovers his affected style and arrogance won’t get him very far. When he sees that a clueless jock is attracting the glory rightfully due him, he hatches an all-or-nothing plan to hit it big in the art world and win the heart of the most beautiful girl in the school.

Prognosis: Negative. Hmm, is this a comedy?

I wouldn’t know it by first trying to take in the initial moments of this trailer. When John Malkovich embodies the spirit of an artist who is trying to teach his class the ways of being one I think, initially, he’s being serious. When he tells his audience that he wants to see something he hasn’t already seen many times over I feel he’s getting at something pretty right on the mark: when you’re an artist and trying to create for the first time, be it through words, pictures or sculpture, you sometimes call upon the muse of unoriginality. Sure, to you it’s the first time you’ve drawn a woman’s fun bags, milk wagons, her hoo-ha, what have you, but unless you find the right angle to tackle the singular subject in front of you you’re just going to be white noise compared to everyone else who has been here and done that miserably.

I got all of this just by his opening remarks, true dat, but I got uneasy when the jaunty voiceover starts telling me all about this artiste university, how artisans can explore their creativity (as you see some dude putting the finishing touches, literally, on some ice cream sculpture) and you have one guy in an audience Q&A asking what advice one can give to someone just starting out to which is said, “That is such…a stupid question.”

The Tex Avery wolf jaw plunking down to the ground, that metallic sound clanging off-screen, is what happened at this point. So, I ask again, is this a comedy? I guess it is as the following images, one after another, keep getting more and more obnoxious.

What’s more about this abrupt change is that, in another scene, one guy has his wrists tied with rope with alligator clamps attached to his nipples, leading to a car battery. It’s funny, to be sure, but as soon as he asks someone to hit the juice, he starts screaming and we are jerked, violently, to a woman who is about to disrobe in order to be painted as an artists’ model. I think there could have been a better way to snap from one image to another but this was not the way to do it. The flow is awful.

To add even more mediocrity into the mix we have our protagonist trying to score with some of the art school chicks. This should have been one the best parts of this trailer as we explore all the “wacky and zany” oddballs we can all collectively imagine that inhabit art schools but it’s just executed with the kind of grace that’s usually just reserved for showboating, women’s Olympic snowboarding. To prove my point you have no less than two needle scratch sound effects being employed to get the point across that these ladies are well-beyond the normal purview of women who would, in real life, attend these kinds of schools.

I mean, I get it, wild and crazy chicks are funny to mock and to get a guffaw or two out of them but this is just lazy trailer creation. One of the girls, oddly enough, exemplifies the stereotypical Bettie Page Syndrome I made mention of a few weeks ago; these girls with the retro black hair and sharply cut bangs are always a good go-to for a quick laugh.

I expected more from the dude who brought me BAD SANTA and I feel a little let down. I am just hoping this was a matter of giving this movie to the wrong agency in making the trailer.

Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Cast: Enrique Arreola, Daniel Miranda, Diego Catano, Danny Pereat
Release: March 10th, 2006
Synopsis: Takes you into one particular Sunday morning in the lives of two fourteen-year old boys, Flama and Moko. With their neighbor Rita and pizza delivery boy Ulises, they create their own adventures to overcome their boredom. “Duck Season” explores the loneliness of childhood, the effects of divorce and the curious power of love and friendship.

Prognosis: Mucho Posi-TiVo. I am a fan of memes.

Whether it’s finding out who might be in contention for viral video of the week, the bottle rocket kid shooting one out of his arse was a good one, or that the odd digital short I turned off prematurely one night while Saturday Night Live, Lazy Sunday (And thanks to SNL finding that people actually liked something they’ve done they’ve decided to try and beat the living piss out of these digital shorts by including them in damn near every episode since then. Great idea, peeps.), would have me so hooked after I played it a few half dozen times. The Chuck Norris meme of the moment is good but none of these are possible unless you have 13 year-old boys like these dudes here to pass it along to their cronies.

What I enjoy about this trailer, primarily, is the strength of its opening. I am always amazed that for as many times as I’ve done this there are dozens of new approaches to get things started. Here it’s the black and white static shot of a mother walking out of an apartment door and pushing the elevator door as two boys look on. The musical cue comes in, a funky 70’s ba-wanka beat, and the screen goes black. The boys cheer in delight as their adult overlord has unmanned their post for a while, they crack open the Coke, sit their asses down in front of the television and go to town playing Halo. The music is crackin’ and the frags are poppin.

The power cuts out.

The mood sours as things get silent. Like true boys, they languish in their unfortunate situation by just sitting there.

Things turn strange when a girl from next door stops by for reasons we’re not sure of nor are we sure why an odd pizza delivery guy makes himself at home; if I had money on it, though, I would say it would to be to kill the three of them but that’s just my experience talking.

The lives of these four people start to fuse together as they delight in doing the kinds of things that kids are known for doing: inciting indirect mayhem by just having too much time, and imagination, on their hands. The music that lilts behind the cut scenes of these people getting goofy fits perfectly; it’s fun, it’s jaunty and makes no sense. You get a cadre, a lot, of different award props. There seems to be a couple of dozen that fill up the screen but you get the point, and they are cheeky about doing it, that while this is a seemingly wistful movie you’re going to get something more.

I cannot explain why watching this trailer is so soothing and enjoyable but in an arena where loud and brash are the tools of the trade I give this trailer positive vibrations solely for setting a nice mood.

You’ve got a foreign langauage film, strike number 1, plus you’ve got a movie about kids, strike 2, and your sole goal with this trailer is to garner some interest without using too much of your native dialogue, strike 3. I don’t envy this marketing department at all because foreign flicks ARE a hard sell to us Americans. We like to think of ourselves as melting pots of humanity but we likes our entertainments en ingles thank you very much.

This trailer manages to overcome all of these things by not being afraid to make it all money shots, and it hurts to see the flicks that have to resort to that in their adverts, and present the movie as it is supposed to be seen. It’s one of those things where, as good or bad as the movie may be, you’ve got to admire their one shot to reach the American audience takes this form.

Carl Taylor: “Golf clap?”

James St. James: “Golf clap.”

Director: Frank Coraci
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken
Release: June 23, 2006
Synopsis: CLICK focuses on a workaholic architect who finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.

Prognosis: Depends on how mainstream I’m feeling that week. Let’s have an open discussion, okay, a one-sided discussion with your delayed thoughts to follow later, about the place where Adam Sandler movies fit in the filmic landscape.

The knee-jerk response that he has a built-in audience won’t cut it for this argument and neither will that he has his own brand of humor that people seem to come out to watch in droves. I just can’t figure out what it is about his kinds of films just seem to exude. I am sure that the director of WEDDING CRASHERS, David Dobkin, who just got bounced from Sandler’s latest creation I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY, could give us a clue but since all I have is the trailer for his upcoming movie I will just break it down thusly. Now, since every movie deserves to be judged fairly, I’ll be impartial and just stick to what’s on the screen.

“Do you ever feel there is not enough time”¦”

I wish I could say this movie spells doom from the start but the choice of running with Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” as the sound bed to open this trailer is nice. I like the song and it somehow gets me in the mood for something safe, basic.

I’m not disappointed here as the sight of Kate Beckinsale walking her husband out of the house in the morning is a lot more un-common than it is real but it sets up the following scene of Adam being portrayed as a father who works too hard. The concept is as beaten and worn as anything else there is, David Hasselhoff not helping matters by being the prototypical boss who demands nothing less than obedience and hard work without regard to anything else. By David giving Adam this near-impossible assignment of coming up with something “great” over the 4th of July weekend you not only establish your characters’ motivation and problem but you have the added bonus of knowing, quickly, what the issue is at hand: he works too damn hard.

The effect is at once brilliant and yawn-inspiring. On the former, it’s brilliant because you manage to set things in motion quickly, not dwelling on stupid details that eat time and waste attention spans. On the latter, it’s lame because the premise is so cookie-cutter that it defies any kind of real sense of originality. In the subsequent scenes we are also led to believe he is so out of touch with his kids and their world by not being able to differentiate between any of the, da-da-da-dum, remote controls in the house. He’s turning on a ceiling fan, race cars, everything else but the television. He’s so wackily frustrated that he goes out to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get a universal remote; the store’s name is so prominently displayed that I am not sure there has ever been a product placement so boldly advertised in a trailer before. Kudos, trailer people.

Of course, this is when the crazy crap starts to happen. He hooks up with leader of the cow bells, Christopher Walken, and this is where I am sure hours and hours of time spent in a little writer’s room eventually led: Adam gets a remote that works on life. (Gasp!) I know, all you dopes who spent copious amounts of time in college to learn how to write are all wasting your time; no one can compete with these big league thinkers.

The application of this “remote” is prominently run though as we get Adam fast forwarding through fights with his old lady, which will no doubt get laughs from the ladies as well as the dudes who they subjugate; his boss, who he puts on pause so he can physically abuse and will earn the laughter from dudes who “so wish they could do that”; and the pause effect he applies to some woman wearing a tank top as she jogs, giving us all slo-mo boob floppin’ delight. The man is a genius. I want to dislike this trailer in so many ways but when, lo-and-behold, the remote breaks and he finds himself fast forwarding unwillingly through his life, his daughter quickly going through the stages in her life, I find myself being curious to know where things are leading.

I can’t figure out Sandler’s angle on most of his movies but I can see where he knows how to play the game of being able to reach multiple types of people with this movie. Good, bad or indifferent you can’t fault the guy for being a shrewd moviemaker.

Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Dave Chappelle and Friends
Release: March 3, 2006
Synopsis: Dave Chappelle’s Block Party spotlights comedy superstar Dave Chappelle as he presents a Brooklyn neighborhood with its very own once-in-a-lifetime free block party. The unprecedented combination of comedy and music was shot on location. In addition to Mr. Chappelle performing all-new material, the stellar roster of artists includes Kanye West, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, Dead Prez, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, the Roots, Cody ChesnuTT, Big Daddy Kane, and – reunited for their first performance in over seven years – the Fugees. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michel Gondry and his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind cinematographer Ellen Kuras capture all of the exclusive performances and crowd excitement on an unforgettable Saturday afternoon and night, as well as (earlier in the week) private rehearsals footage and Mr. Chappelle in the small Ohio town he calls home. In Ohio, Mr. Chappelle wandered through town handing out golden tickets to invite several dozen citizens to join the party, providing transportation and lodging for their first-time-ever visit to Brooklyn. Ohio’s Central State University marching band made the trip and helped kick off the festivities at the intersection of Quincy and Downing Streets. As a diverse crowd comes together, Mr. Chappelle’s freestyle wit guides them (and us) through a day-long, life-affirming celebration of music and comedy, history and community. The lineup of performers is distinguished not only by the caliber of their music but also by the strength and power that their art draws from keeping their creativity pure.

Prognosis: Positive With 10 lbs. Worth Of Crazy. Obfuscation.

Some of the things I took away from Dave Chappelle’s interview with Oprah a couple of weeks ago had nothing to do with me feeling enlightened by Dave’s actions in the past year but, rather, I took away the feeling that he either doesn’t know how to answer a direct question, wasn’t prepared to give answers to direct questions and that he is ill prepared to talk in an interview. Period.

“Why did you walk out on a $50 million dollar television show?”

Crickets might have well been playing an orchestral movement because Dave seemed lost.

One thing, though, which piqued my curiosity, was his concert film that he planned on releasing. Now, this is good. There is an energy that’s apparent as soon as this trailer opens up and I am delighted that Dave’s inability to communicate to other humans hasn’t interfered with his capacity to bring the funny. Also, with Michel Gondry helming the directorial duties you can be assured that it will be captured with the right amount of personality.

When the screen opens and you see two dudes who are residents of Dayton, Ohio, where Dave has made his home for quite some time, and explain that they don’t do a whole lot and one fine day Dave Chappelle, who is slightly off camera but gives these guys a couple of tickets to his concert, offers to take them away for the weekend. The manner in which Dave surrenders a couple of the tickets is a bit unsettling, it’s almost as if he’s trying to entreat them to get into his van to help move a couch, wink wink, but I get it.

Fast forward to Dave working the crowd, moments before the concert begins, and he’s on. He just knows how to flip that switch and get a group of people going. He lets fly a few Lil’ John “Whaaat?!”s and so, I take it, that it’s alright for him to appropriate his comedy when it suits him but when other people do it to him it sends him into a frenzy that can only be quieted with a trip to South Africa. Got it. Check.

The next few moments are just Dave armed with a bullhorn and traipsing through Brooklyn spouting off whatever comes to his mind. It’s honestly good stuff; his riffing here is on par with some of the best rehearsed material that’s being plied to audiences.

Then, we get the talent. Erykah Badu is all up in there, you’ve got the Roots ready to bring it and you even have the man who may or may not need Common to bitch slap him a few times on Lower Wacker in Chicago, Kanye West. The energy is bursting off the screen and you can feel that this is really something special.

2 things. One, when Mos Def, who has been exceptional in parlaying his music career into a filmic one, pops up, keep your ears open as the music is simply bumpin’ when you see the Fugees start working the crowd for themselves. Two, when Dave, shortly after this is talking to a pack of kids while holing a pool cue taunts these children to bring it for reals in a game of 8-ball and simultaneously slapping down a large bill. The kids’ expression alone is enough to say that while Dave may have some things to work out he can work a wide spectrum of age brackets.

Director: James Westby
Cast: Melik Malkasian, Matt Morris, Tyler Gannon
Release: Coming soon to a festival near you…Peep the release date information as supplied by Herr Westby below…
Synopsis: FILM GEEK is a hilarious new comedy about Scotty Pelk, a socially inept video store clerk with an encyclopedic knowledge of film. He runs a website, scottysfilmpage.com, which receives zero traffic. He annoys his customers. He annoys his co-workers. And when he is inevitably fired from his video store job, Scotty finds refuge in Niko, a downtown hipster who teaches him a thing or two about love and life. But Niko’s smarmy ex-boyfriend Brandon won’t go away quietly. As Scotty’s first love turns to obsession, his life begins to change in profound ways.

Prognosis: Solid. There’s this one guy, down the street, where I rent my videos. Yeah, I know about Netflix but I am slow when it comes to these kinds of things.

The guy always always asks me about the films I bring back when I check out more. It could be that I was renting SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS but he interjects with his own narrative about how he came to like or dislike the movie. It utterly fascinates me that I could be renting YOUNG EINSTEIN and this dude would lay it out as to how he felt about the movie. He amazes me. That’s why I think I responded so well to this trailer about a know-it-all video jockey.

Yes, the story of video clerks has been well-documented on celluloid in recent years and that’s why it puts a movie like this in the precarious position of having to prove that there is still something fresh to say about this genre, this segment of the population who do these jobs.

When we open up things a solid music track neither distracts nor overpowers what is happening on the screen. You’ve got some customer providing the comedic bait to our protagonist, she’s looking for a movie with the word “heaven” in it, and we’re launched into this rundown of movies by our man who rattles off all kinds of flicks that might fit the ladies’ query. It’s soft comedy but it is, nonetheless, viable.

The cards lay it all out for us. He annoys people, he’s going nowhere, etc”¦but the nice thing about the trailer is that expediency seems to be the thing on this trailer maker’s mind and that’s a great thing to see. The most common thing for someone who is doing this sort of thing on a shoestring is to really showcase the artists’ talent; trailers run in the opposite vein of that. You want your story to go in, go out and leave an impression. What you notice after we get a 1/3 of the way into this movie is that it’s doing just that.

Things do, however, take a strange turn when our clerk gets canned from the one job he, no doubt, can only do real well. His punting coincides with him meeting some girl who wants to bring him out of his nebbish shell. This is where I have an issue with the trailer. It seems awkward that we go from complete geek to all of a sudden having this strange new woman exposing him to a life which has completely passed him by. He looks strange in the role of a guy going to parties, drinking beer, schmoking a lil’ weed and I don’t know if I buy the rapid romance here. It’s forced or at least it feels like we’re rushing through something we shouldn’t be.

I warm up to it a little bit, though, when we see this guy surviving life beyond the video store as he makes his way through things other than always preparing for Tuesdays. The geek’s admission that he loves movies and that they let you be other people is poignant and that’s where the real emotional buy-in comes in for a movie like this.

I felt confused, at first, with trying to peg where we are going with this guy. Was he a hapless geek who deserved what he got, was this a movie about how he was never going to get what he wanted or was this about trying to establish something new when the one thing you’re good at is taken away? It is the latter and even though there are a few visual miscues that try and throw you off the mark in getting the right idea about this movie it is nonetheless a solid trailer for a movie that has a story worth following through to the end.

And those interested in knowing when, and if, this is coming close to you soon, Mr. Westby sent me this note:

Syracuse, NY
Palace Theatre
March 3, 2006

Orlando, FL
Downtown Media Arts Center
March 30 ““ April 9, 2006

Austin, TX
Alamo South Lamar
Opens May 1, 2006

Director:Jared Hess
Cast: Jack Black, Ana de la Reguera, Héctor Jimenez, Richard Montoya, Peter Stormare
Release: June 2, 2006
Synopsis: Jack Black stars as Ignacio (friends call him Nacho), a Mexican priest who moonlights as a lucha libre wrestler to raise money for his orphanage in this comedy from the creators of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and the writer and star of THE SCHOOL OF ROCK.

Prognosis: You’re on your own with this one. I don’t know what the hell is going on but I feel fine.

One of the strangest predicaments to be in, I would imagine, is to create something so good that not only have you managed to spark an entire legion of fanatics that like to mimic moments from your film whilst toiling away at their cubicle jobs but you’ve also had the secondary effect of helping to make Q3’s financials for Suburban-Mom-Mall-Approved Hot Topic some of the best they’ve ever been by pimping everything from shirts that still admonish me to Vote For Pedro to a bobble head that can sit quietly on my desk.

How do you possibly follow that up? With all the adulation that was heaped on NAPOLEON DYNAMITE you’ve thought that the bigger budget second movie Jared and Jerusha Hess would’ve blown their load, as it were, on something safe yet solid. They chose, obviously, to go with the latter and ditch the former because this is all sorts of out there.

I can’t, for the life of me, understand where the nexus of this movie came from or why Jack Black was the obvious choice when choosing who would make the best luchador in a movie that has all the flavor of NAPOLEON’s former self. Jack opens this bad boy in all his girthy glory. His un-Godliness is spoiled, however, when he does and ankle grab that treats us to a full moon that’s Neptunian in diameter. The pace is perfect, though, as the music, the same kind of windy pipes usually reserved for those South American scenes from CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, makes me feel there is a fire fight about to occur. Jack is getting his vinyl jack boots laced up and is compressing his head into his mask when he explains the method to his madness.

Before I feel comfortable in the explanation given as to why this is all happening, I am yanked precipitously to the back story involving Jack hustling business using his ped-taxi, probably whisking people to and from the Dream Palace, Skin Cabaret or Wide World of Hymens, and coming upon the greatest luchador he’s ever seen.

His story is involved as his awe turns to work. He wants that attention, that adulation, and will do anything to achieve it. His Spanish accent is amusing, sure, and his nun friend who explains that unless his cause is for something righteous God will not bless him.

The angles here are all sorts of odd but, again, there seems to be a reason and direction so instead of being frustrated I am left feeling that, fine, be weird for weird’s sake but keep the information flowing, you know?

The next scene, though, throws me for a loop-da-loop when Jack is slo-mo running, pushing his anemic looking partner out of the way while taking in a dusty jog on a dirt path and then tossing a freshly snapped off bee hive at the same man. Wha huh?

Some scenes later, the golden luchador that inspired Jack into this business of wrangling and tangling steps out into a packed house and is greeted with fireworks and hot chicks at his side. The image, while strange, is common enough when you’ve grown up on the WWF. Jack’s theatrics to counter balance the golden child are birdlike and I can’t get a handle over whether he means business or is trying to also play up to a crowd that’s looking forward to seeing Jack get all sorts of schooled.

I am then treated to Jack ripping off his shirt, with an accompanying explanation about how he could do such a thing, displays his skills for a couple of dudes who look high on glue, and then I get not one but two butt shots of Jack; in one he gives me a full clench and, the other, a butt that’s tightly secured in red tights.

The rest of this trailer is filled with multiple shots of wrestling, of Jack’s partner looking to get his groove on with a rather unsavory chica, and there’s a sweet shot of Jack taking flight out of the ring, getting some wicked air, as he tries to land on his golden hero.

The ending, though, leaves me scratching my brain. He invites the woman who is, ostensibly, the female love interest in this movie to his room at the monastery, I guess he’s a monk too, to have a piece of toast. I guess it’s supposed to be funny and I think there’ll be some people who will say this is all sorts of humorous but I don’t understand. Is toast eating the new hotness or did I just miss that memo?

I’ll probably see this movie simply to see how the sophomore outing ultimately goes but, damn, don’t make me feel that I may regret my loyalty.

Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Amy Adams, Sacha Baron Cohen, Leslie Bibb, William Boyer, Gary Cole, Elvis Costello, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Ferrell
Release: August 4, 2006
Synopsis: NASCAR stock car racing sensation Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) is a national hero because of his “win at all costs” approach. He and his loyal racing partner, childhood friend Cal Naughton Jr. (John C. Reilly), are a fearless duo — “Thunder” and “Lightning” by their fans for their ability to finish so many races in the #1 and #2 positions, with Cal always in second place. When flamboyant French Formula One driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) challenges “Thunder” and “Lightning” for the supremacy of NASCAR, Ricky Bobby must face his own demons and fight Girard for the right to be known as racing’s top driver.

Prognosis: Negative. No.

I thought this was going to be, in the parlance that my English teachers would no doubt flunk me for, a slam-dunk.

This trailer has challenged me to really sit down and meditate on the reasons why this movie appears, on the surface, to suffer from the wrong kind of angle sell. An angle sell, as I have coined, stamped and now dispersed in the annals of conversational currency, is a phrase I’ve come to realize means how a piece of advertising like this trailer, as a whole, is packaged. If you’ve got the wrong angle to begin with, usually resulting in a marketing department being confused with how to pimp a product to the masses, you’re going to start, proceed and end being way off the mark. Classic examples of movies being marketed all sorts of wrong litter the conversations of many directors who get upset when the promotions people have the end-all be-all decision power to tell the public what a movie ultimately is. Is it a drama, a comedy, a dramedy? What this all means, ultimately, is that figuring out the angle of a movie is like having a loaded gun with only one bullet in it: you’ve got to know where to shoot it and when.

The trailer for TALLADEGA NIGHTS suffers from a poor execution. This should be the movie that brings the crazy ass Will Ferrell back from the schlock (i.e. KICKING AND SCREAMING and his part in giving us the color infused pastiche pap of CURIOUS GEORGE) that helped finance his summer home in Monaco and back into the fold of comedic icons. This is the movie that should be what ANCHORMAN really wasn’t: funny. It should pop off the screen with Ferrell’s brand of giddiness but what we’re served is an opening sequence packed with promise with ZZ Top’s “La Grange” only to be let down with a crazy child to crazy adult transition that’s as amusing as the first CARS trailer.

The arena for NASCAR should be a hotbed of funny but, as we progress even further to setting up what this movie is about, getting a funny moment when we hear that Will’s kids in this movie are named Walker and Texas Ranger, respectively, the jokes are taking a long time to get out there.

That’s the problem, I think. The next sequence when Will and John C. Reilly go back and forth about couplings that go together, Chinese Food and pudding being rebuked for peanut butter and jelly when involving a lady, isn’t as good as it should be because you’re making me work too damn hard to get the joke. Oh, and look at the time, half of the trailer is gone, wasted. These jokes necessitate a set-up and the momentum for this movie pays the price.

And, when we finally come upon Sacha Baron Cohen’s character we’re given just enough time to see him, hear him utter a few words and he’s quickly forgotten. What the fu$%? Yeah, not many people really like the whole Ali G thing but I am a fan and, dammit, this is Will’s nemesis in this movie and I want something witty. No, I get Will driving with a cougar and Will signing a baby’s forehead. Yeah, the explosion of comedy just doesn’t relent.

I will say that the angle for how you market this thing is found when Will puts on a blindfold, ostensibly to do a little Jedi driving, whilst behind the wheel. The subsequent sequence of him careening into parked cars, straight out BEVERLY HILLS COP, and then veering off the road into a house is what every moment of this trailer should have been. It’s obnoxious, irreverent, wacky and the kind of thing that dudes want to see.

PLUS, and this is important, the moment of Will running around after a crash on the track and he’s in his underwear, spouting all sorts of nonsensical bullshit, even managing to drag Tom Cruise’s good name into it? THAT’S it. THAT’S the ethos of this movie and every other moment of this film’s trailer should have been just as irreverent.

As it is, I’m not really looking forward to this movie as I am just hopeful that someone will get it together and give me a better trailer. Booyakasha.

Director:Jeff Feuerzeig
Cast: Louis Black, Bill Johnston, Daniel Johnston, Mabel Johnston, Jeff Tartakov
Release: March 31, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: Daniel Johnston, manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist is revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love.

Prognosis: Positive but with corrections. I think that one of the worst things you can do when pimping your product to a populace is shower too much praise on it; this only results in heightened expectations that fall short. Every time.

When I see a synopsis claim that uses the word “genius” to describe the subject that we’re about to watch I get instantly cynical and skeptical. I don’t care if this batshit crazy music man really IS a genius but I want to come up to my own conclusions about such things. Thankfully, the trailer never drops the G word and I am amazed that I am so drawn in by this movie’s substance.

On first glance this trailer immediately grabs me when we see our musical, filmic namesake standing on a stage, looking at a handheld camera as a throng of fans cheering in the background. The musical interlude that twinkles in the background as the screen flickers to a NAPOLEON DYNAMITE-esque hand-scribbled Sundance award proclamation along with words of praise from AIN’T IT COOL is endearing.

The archival video footage of Daniel Johnston from years ago, in his own voice, explaining who he is and allowing us to get a feel for this un-rock star is appropriate in a way that the modern footage that’s interlaced with it offers the audience a nice balance of offering something old with something new.

On top of getting information, quickly, about who this quirky songster is you also get a voiceover from someone who sounds well versed in musical comings and goings; it could be one of those twats that love to pour endlessly over old issues of Rolling Stone or NME and are proud as punch to think they are a part of a critical literati but it’s evenhanded. When you hear someone else, a woman, say that underneath all this talent there was something really really wrong with the guy you can sense that this is why the film got made in the first place.

This point is expounded upon as, ostensibly, those who knew him clue is in on the fact that not only was this dude tossed like a rainbow into a mental ward but that the doted on the devil much too much for his own good. Again, the sounds of those talking are laid out over a bed of fresh looking images. An abandoned, dilapidated nuthouse is used as background for Johnston’s audio diary of his time spent inside the kook clink. Shots of deliciously piled drugs from our nation’s pharmaceutical overlords give the idea that Daniel was somehow eventually treated for his psychoses.

The last moments of this trailer are spent showing the once rail thin Johnston about three times the man he used to be, perhaps a side effect of the medications, as his own music plays along images of his life as it is now. There are still people cheering for him, he still has that wily sense about him and his music seems just as poignant as it was over twenty years ago.

I don’t know a thing about him but yet, simply based on what I see here, I think I’d like to.

Director:Mary Harron
Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, Jonathan M. Woodward, David Strathairn, Cara Seymour
Release: April 14, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: The story of Bettie Page, uber-successful 1950’s pin-up model, one of the first sex icons in America, and the target of a Senate investigation (based on her bondage photos).

Prognosis: Negative. Don’t you love seeing those faux hipster chicks who wear their hair like Bettie Page? They wear those same kind of era sunglasses, usually carry themselves with the kind of bitchiness that’s usually reserved for captains of the cheerleading team in high school and like to surround themselves with like-minded dweebs who feel that they’re all worse off living in the now instead of being really cool by emulating long dead iconoclasts? No? Maybe I’m the only one who loves seeing these kinds of ladies and making fun of them.

Off the bat, I love that this movie is rated R for “Nudity, sexual content and some language.” There needs to be more of these kinds of movies in circulation as the dearth of them only make it harder for young boys to come of age with the right kind of material laying around the Blockbuster. They’re sure not going to get it with all these actresses who want to go the tease route and I am even more pleased when the first barrage of images for this film is Bettie in all kinds of poses. They’re tame, to be sure, but you can’t just expect to have things get wild from the word go.

But, oddly enough, the trailer just explodes right into things with showcasing our talent young femme in color and black and white. I am not sure what’s more exotic or erotic but Bettie really isn’t shown to be so much of an innocent girl drawn into a world that was not her choosing but that being a pin-up was just her destiny.

The trailer starts off with her just getting her picture taken in gun boat bras and granny panties but things take a turn for the kink when a nebbish little man brings out these mammoth looking leather boots. I haven’t a clue if this is where her S&M phase starts or what but when a man off the street walks up to her and asks whether it makes her feel like punishing, crushing, humiliating, among other things to dudes when they gravel in front of her. The moment is perfectly rendered and I start to realize that Bettie wasn’t just some Playboy fantasy girl but that she was a full-on dominatrix who reached her subjects from beyond the page.

One of the things I fault this trailer for, though, is its simple omission of any substance here. Yeah, it’s great that we get this woman romping around in her skivvies for a full two minutes and that we get some real titillating video to watch but what about this woman’s private life? I have to assume she wasn’t all about her underwear and was so much more than the sum of her parts. I wouldn’t know any of that, though, because all I get is a little hesitation from Bettie about her fame being so constraining but I want to teased and pleased. This trailer, though, just leaves me blue in more ways than one.

Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Noah Segan, Noah Fleiss, Emilie de Ravin, Meagan Good
Release: March 24, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: Brendan Fry is a loner at his high school, someone who knows all the angles but has chosen to stay on the outside. When the girl he loves turns up dead, he plunges into the school’s social strata like a fist through a honeycomb to find the “who” and “why,” with the same single-minded devotion to his self-appointed task as the hard-boiled heroes of old.

Prognosis: Pass. Originality of Vision.

This film was awarded a prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival for it’s originality of vision but does that mean it had a nice way of telling a story or that it just looked good on screen? I’m not sure what kind of an award an OOV really is but I can’t say that anything about this trailer really makes me want to find out for sure.

It opens up really wonderfully, though, when we get the R rated red banner that comes before everything. I am jazzed that, at the very least, there will be some wildly objectionable content to follow. I am quickly slowed down in my enthusiasm when we see our first player standing in a phone booth.

Now, why there happens to be a phone booth out in the middle of nowhere I don’t know but the little scroll of jive/slang that appears when our other player, the one on the other side of the phone, is hysterically rambling on about a “brick” and a “pin.” Ooo”¦I feel so in with the hip kids.

When I see that the crying girl on the phone was our Australian outback steakhouse fraulein from Lost: Emilie de Ravin. She seems to have gone missing following the exchange between our guy from the beginning but that’s quickly run over as we go back to our dude who brings in his buddies into this situation.

Our man starts to rattle off those code words again: brick, tug, pin. All the while these words are rattled off we get real smoky visuals of these words appearing and dissolving off the screen. I’m not really impressed as I am perturbed by these Sesame Street phonics lessons. I know they’re trying to be all sort of indie with the vibe and look but I’m not feeling very engaged with the material.

What starts to change my direction on this movie is the motion we gain by starting to show what all of this means within the context of the flick. The characters start interacting with other people, the mystery starts to grow deeper as discordant images piece themselves together.

Our hero gets his ass kicked by a Buddy Revell look-a-like in his high school’s parking lot. He, of course, gets to make a smoky cool joke about how he never saw that kid who beat him up before in his life and that he was glad he was looking for lunch money because he was”¦brown baggin’ it. Oh, SNAP! Did you fuc%&ing see that come back?? “Brown baggin’ it.”

Yeah, it’s edgy in that wink-wink sort of way. And the trailer doesn’t especially award you for paying attention to what’s happening as it does make you feel special just for watching what it has to offer in the sense of how cool it is trying to be; and it’s trying hard.

What’s odd is that I still want to see this movie however complex this story might be. There seems to be something between all of this and I can’t help but feel this flick rises ever so greater above the rest of the usual sludge.

Director: Kurt Wimmer
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright, William Fichtner
Release: March 3, 2006
Synopsis: Set in the late 21st century, a subculture of humans called Hemophages has emerged who have been genetically modified, giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence. To the government’s dismay, more and more of the population are being transformed, and they have set out to rid the world of this new subculture that they deem menaces to society. One rogue warrior is bent on protecting her race ““ and seeking revenge on those who changed her life forever. With fierce fighting skills and chameleon-like abilities, Violet (Jovovich) sets out to destroy a government-designed time bomb that will eliminate all Hemophages. To Violet’s surprise, the deadline device is a nine-year-old-boy, who was raised in a laboratory and goes by the name of Six (Bright).

Prognosis: Can’t believe the hype…yet Do you know that there are only two movies I ever really came close to walking out on? I usually reserve the opportunity to see a movie as a chance to allow a filmmaker their chance to tell me a story all the way through. That’s why THE JERKY BOYS and THE FIFTH ELEMENT will always hold special places in my filmic heart as two of the worst films I had to ever endure. Milla Jovovich was only part of the problem in that movie but she’s kind of a one-note actress.

Case in point is the trailer for this movie.

Okay, so Milla is narrating this trailer. We open up with her kicking the crap out of some baddies who are wearing plastic scuba gear apparati, using the same kind of billy clubs made famous in DEMOLITION MAN. What’s amusing to me is that she’s trying to be this hardcore lady but when she finally stops kicking all these dudes asses for a moment and her gut is flopping up and down, she wants to break down the story from the beginning.

I don’t know what futuristic society set out to make super warriors who bear an un-original likeness to Nazi soldiers with samurai swords but it’s like a 13 year-old was given the chance to bring their comic book to life and they’ve included every old and busted archetype they’ve ever seen. AEON FLUX seems to have fused with the leftovers from THE 6TH DAY and those obnoxious shiny black bad guy uniforms from SPACEBALLS.

I’m not sure whose idea it was that this new futuristic world was so unkind to our lungs that people have to wear plugs in their noses which look about as serious as seeing them in the nostrils of Bob and Doug McKenzie from STRANGE BREW but it’s all downhill from this point forth.

We get more of our super soldier Nazi ninjas doing all they can to look as cool and dangerous as they can and Milla brings up the rear, or specifically, her rear in some retro Hypercolor pants and matching half-shirt. And let’s get this out of the way: she’s always wearing a half shirt. I so forgot to consult my military training from the future manual where it states that standard issue uniforms for the good guys are no longer are to be used for maximum protection but should, instead, incite chubbies from all men who dare gaze on her fleshy tummy. It’s mindless, stupid and completely doesn’t serve any logical purpose.

What’s more is the dreadful dialogue. When it is employed, Milla saying crap like “copy that” or “killing is what I do, it;’s what I’m good at” makes being an apologist for all the bad movies I still defend by the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme so shaming; how can I stick up for those when I want to run screaming from this trailer? I don’t know but I am sure I’ll rationalize it somehow.

And, to be fair and balanced, I can’t dismiss this trailer completely out of hand. Even though the music is downright pedestrian I like some of the visuals employed. The effects work in some places is interesting and the handling of some of the battle sequences brings a fresh perspective on how a B movie can be properly executed if enough cheese is tossed at the screen.

I can’t wait until I ignore this movie completely when it’s released theatrically and then rent it when it explodes, or implodes, depending, on DVD. If it does bad enough at the box office I hope to see it being released on DVD within the month.

Director:Lori Silverbush, Michael Skolnik
Cast: Anny Mariano, Paola Mendoza, Judy Marte, Dominc Colón
Release: January 27, 2006
Synopsis: A dramatic narrative feature based upon the real stories of girls from the streets and juvenile jail, who lent their voices and unique stories to the filmmakers. These are girls who struggle with all the highs and lows of teenage life in an inner-city world that makes its own rules.

Prognosis: Positive. My real, elapsed city time of what I spent in downtown Chicago proper? It comes out to 4 months. I spent one semester at a school that was successful for me, academically, but completely wrong when it came to defining my professional and artistic goals. The city is alive with pleasure but I can’t imagine what it must be like for some kids to be mainlining that electricity, that vibrancy, of a big metropolitan town.

“I ain’t come here to change your life”¦That’s a fact.”

I thought it was Don Cheadle who starts this thing out. It looks like a tinier Mean Joe Brown from LEAN ON ME but it’s a nice man in a collared shirt and a black, armless sweater.

One of the other things that you learn quickly, and this is where the props begin, is that this movie has been around. The NOMINATIONs, the OFFICIAL SELECTIONs this movie has been accorded is impressive for a movie that doesn’t sport a real noticeable “name.”

Our Cheadle-esque character is barking at a pack of girls who don’t look like debutantes and are obviously being yelled at because of whatever happened before this trailer began. The mix of a real nice slice of music and the delicate way this trailer delivers us to the first moment of this film’s core through its cutting is very well appreciated.

Also, what’s nice is that while there are a lot of quotes flying around, The Post, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, the trailer doesn’t let it stop telling the story of why we’re here, trying to figure out if the flick is worth our time; the narratives of these women, these hardcore chicas, rolls right through the words.

I start to worry that this is going to stray into derivative territory as we discover these are women come from a pedigree of drug dealing, addiction and runaways. I have to believe that this territory has been treaded on before and that this has something new to say. The three ladies who are focused on are all shown in the middle of their lives of destruction.

When each one of them are tarried away to the clink I am pleased that things get more interesting with the advent of finding out, through our Cheadle stand-in, whether there can be a change in the ways people either change their life or become a statistic of recidivism.

As this trailer comes to a close, the real meat of this story obviously not being able to come in the form of a money shot, I think that this is the kind of movie that GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN’ should’ve been. You want to show the dangers of people, kids, getting involved with the kind of trades which put them behind bars and destroy lives but by putting some real looking faces on the issue without sweetening the story with bulletproof vests and ho’s you are doing the narrative a great service.

Director:Christophe Gans
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Jodelle Ferland
Release: April 21, 2006
Synopsis: SILENT HILL is based on the Konami game in which Rose (Mitchell) desperately searches for her lost daughter in the mysterious, terrifying town of Silent Hill, where they are trapped.

Prognosis: Negative. Quick, name the most successful movie to have been adapted from a video game.

That sound of crickets chirping? Yeah, there haven’t been that many to speak of. Sure, you’ve got Milla Jovo-whatever who was serviceable in RESIDENT EVIL and even The Rock who was a part of an experiment gone awry, both cinematically and literally, have proven that movies which are first video games only have so much steam when you try and make an hour and a half of entertainment.

That said, then, this trailer looks like it’ll rise above, if only by a little bit, the common expectations which a flick like this engenders by its very nature of what it is: a not quite horror movie.

I will say, though, I was a bit bored by the initial offering of this trailer. It starts out all soft with a mother and daughter talking about the nature of sleep and dreams while walking down some pussy willow populated country hilltop. I know we’re going to get to the spooky real quick as these trailers only last so long but, come on, I see that we’re already a quarter of a way through this when the conceit that there’s something in the road in the middle of the night that causes mom and daughter to spin out of control. If there are any video geeks among us here today I ask of whether this is the way things begin in the game because I can’t see this being a real “explosive” beginning to things.

I get some jolly enjoyment, though, after we move through this little portion of the movie as when ma wakes up and discovers a) it’s now daylight b) her daughter is gone and c) the snow flakes that are falling aren’t snow flakes at all, and thus bringing back one of the most terrifying moments in SCHINDLER’S LIST, it is all about the errie. I don’t know how you would start out with this being the beginning of the trailer but now I’m engaged with things and this is what I should’ve been feeling about 30 seconds ago.

Now that we’ve established that this woman has a missing kid and is all alone in this desolate town called Silent Hill the interesting stuff is supposed to start, right? No, it doesn’t and I can’t imagine why a lot of people on the Internets are gushing over a trailer that takes me from mildly boring, to heightened delight and then plunges me into confusing cock-tease territory with a montage of clips that renders my man, Sean Bean, into one of those movie guys who are all sorts of bombastic in his quest to find this lost wife, neverminding the fact that if Silent Hill is supposed to be this podunk town which is essentially wiped out for some reason why do they still have functioning cell towers, and makes Radha Mitchell into one of those movie heroines who seem hysterical, not empowered.

Adding to this frustration is the false sense of horror this movie is trying to build to. I get that there is a girl who is slithering around this condemned town who looks exactly like the protagonist’s little lady but the effusiveness with which we keep this doppelganger’s visage out of view, almost like a GODZILLA-like shell game, doesn’t entice me as a viewer.

“To find your daughter you must face the darkness of Hell.”

The above quote just makes my eyes roll in the back of my zombiefied head. EVERYTHING in a horror movie is people talking about Hell this, Hell that and, to me, it’s just lazy storytelling. Yes, if you’ve got to work hard at something it feels like Hell but unless you’re making a movie adaptation of Dante’s “Inferno” you’ve got to come back to me later with something better than that as I would sooner give you a C- on your ability to create tension rather than relying on poor metaphors like this.

Director: Peter John Ross, John Whitney
Cast: Jon Osbeck, Joe Lorenzo, Daniel Alan Kiely, David Carroll, Chip Kocel, Kim Carey
Release: May 5, 2006
Synopsis: Feeling the pressure from Allied advance, Hitler unleashes his secret weapons. Throughout the European theatre of WWII, Lieutenant John Schmidt comes face to face with these “weapons” which terrorize U.S. soldiers fighting the Third Reich. The Office of Strategic Services (The O.S.S., precursor to the C.I.A.) initiates missions behind enemy lines to find the source of these weapons, a mysterious scientist by the name of Dr. Schaltur. Schmidt is joined by Captain Joe Russo and his group of war-hardened GIs who have experienced for themselves the all-too-real horrors of war in battle. Together, they must find the Dr. Schaltur and stop him before Hitler’s horrific vision can be fully realized.

Prognosis: Positive. Now, one of the best things about finally being able to enjoy Kevin Smith’s Spiderman and Black Cat mini-series is that Dr. Josef Mengele is dropped in seamlessly in order to move the plot along to where it needs to go which brings me to this trailer: nothing says “wicked awesome” better than paring a WWII movie and Nazi zombies together in one film. Usually it’s one of the three which get my motor runnin’ but all three together is like a mutated pairing in heaven.

Also, what’s important to note, is that there’s no messing around here. We get right into things tout de suite without any background bull crap that usually hampers indie trailers.

Yeah, the exchange between two Allied soldiers who want to talk about “what they’ve seen” seems a little stiff but the quick cut to the all red screen with the visage of a zombified Nazi doesn’t even begin to explain the delight I felt when I see the white eyes of the undead cutting in and out of the screen as some other soldiers walk a night patrol. I don’t have any context to where we are or when this verbal exchange is happening but it’s just enough that we’re somewhere in the battle of WWII.

I also appreciate the effects work that is on display here. The shot of a plane with its wing on fire, the battle scenes of guns going off with bombs of smoke trying to create the realism of war, the cutaways of the mad scientist’s lab where these zombies are being created should impress even the most ardent stickler of details.

Sometimes the most tragic thing that a movie can do is to have its characters loaded with one-liners and dialogue so stiff it feels like a corpse but intermingled with the scenes of action, which should also be testament to the amount of work which was put into trying to mimic some kind of battlefield realism, but this is the exact kind of lot which should be delivering these kinds of lines. This is WWII, the era of pulp fiction, of Mickey Spillane and these army guys’ grandiose delivery is easily glossed over in order to try and understand why there is this Master Zombie which doesn’t look like he is so easily put down by ordinary machine gun fire.

As we come close to the end we should be pleasantly surprised that the trailer doesn’t follow the current trend in trailer construction which states that you blow your wad in explaining, and showing, everything that’s going to happen. The cards aren’t all on the table, as our narrative stops just as our men in green are going to after the last zombie in the line, “daddy” they call him, and it’s much appreciated as it leaves the audience with just enough questions about what is going on in this movie.

Kudos.

Director: Hal Haberman, Jeremy Passmore
Cast: Alexandra Holden, Jack Kehler, Andrew Leeds, Ian McConnel, Josh Peck, Michael Rapaport
Release: January 30, 2006 (Sundance)
Synopsis: LES FRANKEN (Michael Rapaport) leads a painfully unremarkable life as a metermaid until he enrolls in a drug study for an experimental anti-depressant. An unexpected side effect of the drug convinces Les he is developing special powers and must quit his job to answer his new calling in life… Superhero. A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else.

Prognosis: I Have No Idea. Like to spark up a little? Having a hard time trying to use your “high time” effectively? I’d like to suggest you watch this trailer to truly put psychotropic drugs to good use.

I don’t know how to really put into words what we’ve got cooking here but it’s something I’ve never really tasted before and I like the way it hits the tongue, so to speak.

When we open up the trailer we see Michael Rapaport, really a likeable loser or annoying Brooklyn-ite who ought to learn how speak good, I choose the former, sitting in a stark doctor’s office as he holds a bottle of pills. He asks if they work, the doctor say they do and the next thing you know, and we see, he’s hovering in his family room as his bong load buddy looks on.

Now, the pills he took could possibly be inducing a state of insanity on our protagonist but the early 80’s synth music, popping and crunching in the background, and the static camera shot of Michael just floating as he tries to explain his condition to his roommates glazes everything with a funky craziness.

Not to be undone in his own apartment, Michael returns to his doctor’s office only to leap off his desk and hover above the ground on his chest. The doctor is confused, I’m confused but when he announces that being a superhero takes some adjustment time I am all on board.

Michael then appears at the local police station to tell the officer on duty that he stops crime and then takes off, like Batman fleeing the scene, only to run himself into the nearest brick wall. At first I don’t know what to even say about this but as Michael gets hit by a car, has his buddies shuttling him around town to ostensibly fight wrong do-ers and espouses a credo about not doing good being tantamount to doing evil I can’t help but feel either very impressed at the level of insanity or completely freaked out by where this story is going.

It doesn’t help matters any more that as this trailer progresses, Michael’s condition worsens and looks more and more beat-up.

There is a definite slide Michael’s character takes, as we get the idea that it DOES have something and everything to do with the medication he begins to take, and there is a certain amount of sadness to seeing him slowly burn out in a tailspin of psychosis and paranoia.

I can’t help but sit in awe and amazement as I try and get a handle with where exactly this movie’s story really is going but it’s too much fun to see Michael’s delusion of his own abilities get the best of him as he’s repeatedly thrashed and ass-kicked.

I promise you, though, once you watch this trailer you will have the musical bed that these visuals rest on popping for a very long time afterward.

Director:David Slade
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page, Sandra Oh
Release: April 14, 2006
Synopsis: A smart, charming teenage girl, Hayley probably shouldn’t be going to a local coffee shop to meet Jeff, a 30-something fashion photographer she met on the Internet. But Hayley’s ready to have fun, and soon she’s mixing screwdrivers at Jeff’s place and stripping for an impromptu photo shoot. It’s Jeff’s lucky night ““ until his vision blurs and he passes out. Turns out Hayley isn’t as innocent as she looks after all. In fact, she has a lot on her mind. Like getting Jeff to confess to his penchant for teenage girls ““ and to what he did to Donna Mauer, the girl who disappeared from Jeff’s favorite coffee shop. When Jeff awakens, he’s tied to a chair. If he doesn’t cooperate, Hayley has something to help him along–a little surgical procedure she picked up on the Internet. All she needs is an ice pack. And a knife.

Prognosis: Negative. Okay, right out of the gate, I’m not sure if the material isn’t so much provocative as it is derivative.

I know that pedophilia is a subject that has been touched on as of late in the really well made WOODSMAN and has been so creepily depicted in HAPPINESS that you feel like washing your eyes out with bleach after having seen it. The notion of adults, namely males, who seduce young’uns is nearly a genre all in itself and, my opinion is, that instead of every person making this kind of film having to field questions about the controversial nature of their movies there should be a dialogue in the press about how this informs the genre in a new or fresh kind of way. I am bored to tears, and I assume the filmmakers are as well, when the focus is on public sentiment than it is focused on how a new angle is explored that others have not.

What I don’t like, then, about this trailer is that I frustratingly sit through this thing in hopes I’ll be treated with that very same freshness. What I get, though, is an opening that is reminiscent of CRY_WOLF when an IM exchange goes by blisteringly fast. I realize realism isn’t on the list for a slasher-type movie but this is a movie about some adult diddling a child. Save that, there is a real good sense of creepiness that is pasted all on this thing. You get the feeling all is not bubbles and gum.

Heuristically, the exchange between these two should be a cautionary tale about kids using the Internets whilst unsupervised but this is material for the 10 o’clock news team with Ric Romero telling us something we already know. Nothing really earth shattering about this flimsy set up but it does get going when the young girl and dude hook up. Again, I expect something, anything, but these two talk to each other in a Saturday Morning Special cadence and has be rapping the counter with my fingers.

Hopefully trying to get something new out of this trailer I play this on and then am treated to a moment where creepy guy wipes off a hunk of chocolate cake off the lips of his young prey with his fingers. Please. Does anyone ever have that much schmootz on their face that they leave some honking piece of food left on their lips without quickly reaching for a napkin?

The cinematography, though, is really engaging and that is what is saving this trailer from just being a waste of everyone’s time. The screen time shifts in an elapsed sort of way as the lo-fi music beneath everything makes it all seem more and more desperate.

You get the obligatory Sundance props, which ought to be earlier on in this presentation, while getting the feeling that there is more to this guy than just his predilection for sweet meat. I don’t know if the angle here is that the prey becomes the predator but that’s what the quick clips would have you believe.

If this is the case, then, what’s here is more of a man bites dog kind of a story and, if it is, will that be original enough to have people see this movie? I don’t think it is for me.

Director:Gregory Dark
Cast: Glen Jacobs, Joseph Cappellitti, Craig Horner, Tiffany Lamb, Penny McNamee, Samantha Noble, Matthew Okine, Michael J. Pagan, Luke Pegler, Cecily Polson, Rachael Taylor, Christina Vidal, Steven Vidler, Michael Wilder
Release: May 19th, 2006
Synopsis: A group of youths from a juvenile corrections facility are assigned to renovate an old hotel over the weekend and end up being terrorized by a crazed serial killer who dwells on the upper floors.

Prognosis: Negative. I appreciate the chance to ogle some woman taking a shower all by herself, never minding that no woman who looks as good as her would themselves to take one in a shower stall so covered in muck and crap without making a man clean it first, but I don’t think there is an appropriate amount of time for me to feel she is in any danger. The camera shifts so much that it feels blocky, forced and too rapidly gone through. By the time her scream echoes away and I am greeted with the WWE Films logo I am wondering what just happened.

I love that instead of getting some basic information about what led a pack of good-looking teenagers into one of the most dank looking movie set ever created we are instantly greeted by the WWE wrassler Kane being all mean and ugly.

I don’t mean to dismiss this obvious teensploitation flick ever so quickly but even for the awful HOUSE OF WAX and the recent, better than it should’ve been, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE had the supposition in its trailers that people might want to know what happened to these kids which have led them to this moment; I would’ve liked to have seen that but what I get after the initial ugliness of Kane splashes across the trailer is a lot of girls screaming.

How is this supposed to get me to part with my money?

It doesn’t and that’s the problem. If you want guys to come out to see chicks get brutalized and objectified in their shower stalls then I think you’ve got something in this trailer. If your aim is to capitalize on the success of a wrestler whose prowess on the screen seems to be a whole lot of non-talking and walking menacingly with an axe then I think you’ve got something in this trailer. But I don’t think this is all there is. At least I hope there isn’t.

One of the best things about horror movies, good horror movies, is the wafer thin plot upon which they’re built on. No matter how miniscule the situation you’ve got to explain how these people arrived at the point at which everything goes south for them. Even if it’s because one of the chicks really needed to take a dump in the middle of a long road trip through a small New England town which, gasp, doesn’t show up on any map whatsoever then at least it’s something.

A trailer based on nothing but money shots which don’t buy you any currency with me isn’t just lazy trailer making it’s bad business sense which presupposes an audience who you seriously misunderstand and misjudge. Give the kids a little more credit than this trailer.

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones, Sergi López, Ariadna Gil, Maribel Verdú, Álex Angulo
Release: October, 2006 (Mexico)
Synopsis: “Pan’s Labyrinth” is the story of a young girl that travels with her mother and adoptive father to a rural area up North in Spain, 1944. After Franco´s victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.

Prognosis: Lost in transition. One of the worst things I had to endure in college English classes, as I reached higher levels of completion, was having to be tested on being given whole passages without any context and having to attribute the author of the work and the work it was taken from. It was brutal, yes, but one of the things it taught me was that authors have fingerprints. There are, stylistically, ways you can tell where something came from. This is why, yes, I admit, I was going to goof a little on the plasticity of the set/location used to create the world in which these characters live.

It kind of feels like it’s a Little Red Riding Hood/Beauty and The Beast, don’t even get me started on the ironic Ron Pearlman connection, and the cinematography hearkens back to HELLBOY’s dark and gloomy atmosphere. There is no question that this is a Del Toro movie but the question is whether there is more substance than there is style.

So, as the trailer opens and you have some galloping girl walking down some steps that lead down into a pit, which no girl would ever go alone, I half expect the B.P.R.D. to come out with a red looking demon leading the charge. It’s creepy in a way, and that’s testament to Del Toro’s ability as a filmmaker, and it only gets a little more weird when one of the pieces of flora in the underground lair of the odd and strange comes alive.

Before you can say “Wha? Huh”¦” the screen snaps quickly away to a faceless mutant, I don’t know how else to say it, who is sitting at a wooden table with a pair of albino pink eyes sitting on a plate as its claws(?) extend slowly from its hands. I can’t account for why this is inserted like a bon mot but the subsequent scene of the same stupid girl who went down below into a dark cave walking through a fairy dusted opening of a cave of some sort.

My head hurts from the reliance of showcasing the oddness of this movie and I can’t for the life of me understand why you would want to be so clever as to offer nothing as to where any of this is coming from.

We revisit the mutant from before who now has eyes in the palm of his hands, embedded in his hands, and this finally (for whatever reason) seems to put a little fear into the chick’s heart as she looks ready to soil her Underoos.

I love it, and I am giving genuine props, that we get a little bit of EXORCIST type of breathing underneath the wordless, musicless quick clips we’re offered. The one problem with this is that the clips barely, barely, come into focus before jaunting off to another clip that wholly has no bearing for the one that preceded it. I’m not trying to complain but this is already a weird kind of movie and this isn’t helping.

I like Del Toro. I loved DEVIL’S BACKBONE back when no one else knew who he was. I’m not touting my ability to recognize any kind of talent out of anyone but even that movie was able to establish a linear pattern of events that leads up to the creepy. I don’t get that here and that frustrates me. I want to know more about this movie without having to consult the IMDB and I want the trailer to tell me what it’s all about.

Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Jeff Anderson, Brian O’Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Marty Kudelka, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Wanda Sykes
Release: August, 2006 (Tenative)
Synopsis: The sequel picks up 10 years later. “It’s about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s. Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where it’s time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex,” Smith said during an interview at his Hollywood office. “It’s: What happened to these dudes?”

Prognosis: Positive. August 30, 2004.

This was when WheelieBlog.org was officially taken away from the public as an available web site where people could champion and meet other like-minded individuals to talk about what is, ostensibly, the greatest stunt one can perform with a their Huffy. When Randal uses his official Mooby kiosk to inevitably conduct non-business related surfing it is this site, whose logo is a wheelchair, which looks to be used for whatever nefarious purpose it will serve him. What this site and the date referenced above have to do with the movie, then, is that you begin to see that this wasn’t a movie that was slap dashed together with the only aim of milking these characters for one more go around on a whim. Fanboys may have raged about the working title for the film, PASSION OF THE CLERKS, which doesn’t appear anywhere for good reason, logical reasons if you have half a cell in your brain that’s firing, but there’s no other way to put it than this trailer gives the devotees of Smith’s movies enough to make this more than a teaser and defies convention with the choices made in its ultimate construction and delivery.

Primarily, the trailer doesn’t adhere to traditional notions of what the teaser should be. Instead of just giving a whiff of a story and going the tease route, most egregiously executed by the makers of the X-MEN 3 trailer, this is actually a mix of teasing yet satisfying nuggets of possibilities and innuendoes. We may not know how things are going to begin, peak and then crescendo but it does start at the most logical point of reference and then uses this moment to take point for the rest of the tease.

As a point of fact that you can put down in your Rolodex or Etch-A-Sketch I don’t think Anthrax’s “Among the Living” has ever been used for a teaser, and I don’t think it will again anytime soon, but it’s utilized appropriately not only in capturing the frenetic nature of what is surely a movie that has to balance multiple characters all at once like some That’s Incredible! dinner plate spinning maestro.

So, when it’s Dante who says, “Oh..my..God” after opening the lock to the nefarious and infamous Quick Stop (which should’ve been his demise had the ending not been changed) you don’t know, and not shown, what is causing him to react thusly. But, we’re not left to be teased too long as the aberration of a seemingly-still-unemployed Jay and Silent Bob in the Mooby parking lot causes the kind of geek joy which seemed all but snuffed out at the end of JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Say what you will about Jay and Bob but if you’re any kind of fan of CHASING AMY who could deny the righteousness of Bob explaining his desire to be a dancer in Vegas? It’s nice to see the duo back again like some Riggs and Murtaugh team-up.

It’s then on to the introductions of our players as we get a little bit of movement from the likes of Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith and the rest of the old crew. It’s also about here when we get Randal doing his best not to do any work while working, a true hallmark of his character’s ethos from the first film, as he applies a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it penis, in full explosion mode, next to Trevor’s face on an Employee Of The Month plaque; one hopes that there is a young liege/master relationship here where Randal passes on his encyclopedic knowledge of all things slack to a younger generation.

I must give my whole one sentence paragraph props to a Village People looking Ben Affleck who rocks a handlebar moustache with as much aplomb as any 70’s era pornographic movie star who has come, and come again, before him. Well done and he didn’t even have to say a word.

I don’t know how to correctly categorize the number of quick clips, my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder pleasure center was delighted if not overwhelmed, which assaults us with images and sights that have nothing and everything to do with one another. I am at a true loss as to why it seems everyone at the end winds up at what appears to be a club for either a concert of some kind (my only indication is the Morris Day & The Time ending to JASBSB which worked well as a punctuation mark on the whole movie) or night of disco dancing and would thus explain Affleck’s appearance but this is a teaser trailer that teases well.

Sp, what happens when characters are allowed to grow up, to get into their thirties and hopefully realize that the world doesn’t revolve around their own problems and then be revisited years after their first ending was so satisfying? Only months from now will tell.