Trailers

So the Lovely Bride and I went to see the latest "Harry Potter" film over the weekend, and I thought it. It was pretty good and it made internal sense to me, though the LB went back to re-read that particular book to see what they left in, took out, or created anew, in preparation of the release of the last book.

(And it gets very quiet around the house when a new HP book shows up, as Kate spends her non-painting hours in a chair, reading. But I digress...)

So the movie was good, but the trailers really attracted my attention. Mind you, I am not a major movie fan, so I rarely know when a movie is coming until the week before, when there is an overload of movie promos on the tube (and I know it is Friday when the movie opens and that huge surge disappears). So I was seeing stuff for the first time.

- Like the relentless "If you liked Harry Potter, you'll like ..." attitudes of the Golden Compass (Narnia for atheists) and some other YA book which I had no previous knowledge of where ordinary kid travels through time in the fight between light and darkness. ( I guess the holiday movie Fred Claus, about Santa's slacker older brother, also falls into this category).

- Like Steve Carell in a new Get Smart movie. Steve Miller and I howled at the trailer, the bulk of which was a phone booth gag worthy of the original series. May the movie be as good.

- Like a cute little video for "Across the Universe", which is a Beatles musical (anyone who remembers "Sgt Pepper's" or "All This and World War II" is now making holy signs against the computer screen and praying for their eternal souls). But they used a lesser-known (I had to look it up) song ("I've Just Seen a Face" which you know, but never by that title) and made it even more up-tempo than Paul McCartney usually barrels through. This is one movie I am going to deeply avoid (the story involves a young man named Jude, the girl he meets named Lucy, and Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite ... OK, I'll stop now before you gouge out your eyes). All the warning side of a horrible project. Still, as a two minute video, it is really cool (and not yet available on the net - another, sadder, odder trailer, is).

And one other thing - what are they thinking about the clientèle when they run promos for Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel before all this. Did they make a connection between foodies and Harry Potter fans?

More later,