... FOR "MARKETING PLOYS AND THE TEASER FOR THE TEASER FOR THE TRAILER FOR THE MOVIE YOU'RE DYING TO SEE"

Could someone please tell me when trailer-worship became an actual thing? By "trailer," of course, I mean "a short promotional film composed of clips showing highlights of a movie due for release in the near future," as Dictionary.com defines it, and by "worship" I mean "people completely losing their s#@% over two minutes of random footage for a movie that probably hasn't even finished shooting yet." Most unsettling is the fact that you no longer need to venture down to your local theater to view these trailers in all their big-screen glory, as was the case in my day. Now, you can download the latest trailers onto your computer, or access them on YouTube or some attention-seeking celebrity's Facebook or Twitter feed, to your heart's content.

As if that weren't enough, we have now reached a point where studios have started releasing trailers for their trailers - 30-60-second teasers for full-length previews soon to debut on TV or the web. I first noticed this during the build-up to Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), when Paramount rolled out this minute-long teaser on December 6th, 2012:

... FOR "THE MASCULINIZATION OF DISNEY PRINCESSES (A VISUAL GUIDE)"

As the Disney live-action remake/cartoon nostalgia train rolls on (this morning, Sir Ian McKellan posted this report from the Beauty And The Beast table read), I thought we'd take a gander at the effects these films have had in our current pop culture climate.

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland (2010) came first, of course - a (some would say) drastic re-conceptualizing of the animated Disney classic, with Johnny Depp as a bug-eyed Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter suffering from the most horrifying case of elephantiasis ever captured on film. Next, Universal took a crack at the fairest one of them all with Snow White & The Huntsman (2012), starring Charlize Theron and Kristen Stewart. Then in 2014, Disney earned themselves a mint by casting Angelina Jolie in Maleficent, a faux-feminist retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the POV of the villain. And while I didn't much care for Maleficent ("This is an ugly, embittered film on many levels," I wrote here, and I stick by that - just not for the reasons you'd expect), I did pick up on a strange sort of trend that popped up at the end of all three films - namely, the desire to turn beloved Disney princess-types into pant-wearing warriors.

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY #9 ('THE IRON GIANT'/'WRECK-IT-RALPH'/'THE DARK KNIGHT RISES' EDITION)"

Our continuing series of blog posts in which we take a look at odd movie coincidences – scenes, jokes, dialogue, even specific camera shots shared between two (or more) seemingly unrelated films. Anyone who's sat through a particular scene in a movie and thought, "Gee, haven't I seen someone so this somewhere before?" will know exactly what I’m talking about.

One of the most underrated animated films of the last twenty years, Brad Bird's The Iron Giant (1999) tells the gentle story of a nine-year-old boy who befriends a sentient robot from outer space. It was based on a children's book, The Iron Man, written by Ted Hughes and published in 1968 (then later adapted as a rock musical by The Who's Pete Townshend). The movie was adored by critics but largely (some would say criminally) ignored by audiences, thanks to a half-hearted marketing push by Warner Bros, who apparently couldn't make heads or tails of it. Since then, it's grown in stature not just as a classic of animation but as a classic American film - as much for its rich 50s period setting as its wicked sense of humor, showcased already by Bird during his stint on The Simpsons (1989-1998) and again during The Incredibles (2004) and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011).