... 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 "COINCIDENCES AND CROSSOVERS" (OR, "THAT TIME YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER FROM SOME OTHER MOVIE ALSO POPPED UP IN...")

Our previous post on Disney's Maleficent leaned a little on the heavy side, so today I thought we'd try something lighter and more trivia-centric...

Watching Collateral the other night, I was struck again by the simplicity of its script, the amazing clarity of its high-def digital photography, the way Michael Mann is able to wring supple, nuanced performances from his two stars, Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, and... holy crap, is that Jason "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" Statham switching briefcases with Tom Cruise at the beginning of the movie? Or did my eyes just deceive me? The man may only show his face for about 15-20 seconds or so, but... yep, a quick scan of IMDb shows that Statham is indeed in the movie (credited only as "Airport Man"). My interest piqued, I check IMDb again, and see that Statham's Collateral cameo comes only one year after The Italian Job (2003) and two years after The Transporter (2002). So he'd already made a name for himself by the time 2004 rolled around - why such a bit part in an otherwise major motion picture? Was it a favor to the director? A favor to Cruise? A way of passing the baton from one action hero to another?

... FOR "SUMMER OF THE UNOFFICIAL REMAKE, 2013"

If our current summer movie season had a theme - I know, I know, it's only been a couple of months, yet already one has started to shake itself out - it might be The Summer Of The Unofficial Remake, Whether Its Makers Care To Admit To It Or Not. Of the season's biggest studio releases, at least a dozen of them - Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast And Furious 6, Man Of Steel, Monsters University, World War Z, White House Down, Despicable Me 2, The Lone Ranger, R.I.P.D., RED 2 and The Wolverine - seem cobbled together from the spare parts of previous films. Most, obviously, just happen to be sequels and/or prequels to popular franchises (or, in Star Trek's case, a sequel to the reboot prequel). But that's no excuse for the amount of literal scene-stealing going on now at your local multiplex.

The saying goes, of course, that there's nothing new under the sun. And this is true, to a point (as David Bordwell astutely says here, even box office behemoths like The Godfather, Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark took previously-established Hollywood genres and made them bigger and better). I've even written about films that take entire plots from other films and try to pass them off as their own - a dispiriting trend in Hollywood, and one that seems to be growing more common by the minute.

... FOR "SUMMER OF THE SUPERHERO, 2012"

Now that 2012's summer movie season has ended (Lionsgate's Expendables 2, starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme and virtually every other 'roided 80's action star you can think of, opened to $28.6 million last weekend, and is arguably the last big-budget "event" movie until October), it's important that we look back and remember what worked, what didn't, and what lessons studio executives had better take to heart as they gear up for Summer '13. There were overachievers (Marvel's The Avengers, $617 million U.S.) and underachievers (Battleship, $65 million), breakout hits (Ted, $213 million) and outright disasters (Rock Of Ages, $38 million); there was also, bless its heart, a 47th Ice Age adventure (Continental Drift, with $150 million stateside, plus another $644 million worldwide). All of these, plus more, warrant a discussion on the modern revitalization of the Hollywood blockbuster...

... FOR "THE BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE" - PART 7

Genre:

HISTORICAL DRAMA

Defined:

Biographies. Period pieces. Inspiring true stories of triumph over adversity. There was much to admire about the Historical Dramas of 2000-2009, from the Oscar-winning star performances as larger-than-life personas (Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich, Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, Jamie Foxx in Ray) to the blood-soaked spectacle of atrocities old (Pearl Harbor, The Pianist) and new (Hotel Rwanda, World Trade Center). While filmmakers have long been notorious for altering events to suit Dramatic purposes, the Historical film should nevertheless stick as close to the facts as possible, as well as provide us a vivid recreation of times past. Done right, these films not only show us where we've been, but also what we've yet to become.

The Top Five:

5. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004)

Biopics aren't typically my thing. Too much sentimentality, I suppose, or maybe it's the self-congratulatory attempt to shoehorn an entire life's story into feature length. Martin Scorsese, though, takes a more creative approach with his bustling Howard Hughes epic, narrowing his focus to the impressive 20-year span in which the billionaire industrialist burned brightest, from shooting Hell's Angels at 22, to his successful test flight of the "Spruce Goose" H-4 Hercules in 1947. Scorsese also seems to be having great fun replicating the Hollywood of yesteryear, right down to the two- and three-shade Technicolor film stock of the period (most noticeable in the grass where Hughes and Cate-Blanchett-as-Katherine-Hepburn play golf, or the fields where Hughes crashes his H-1 Racer). And while Leonardo DiCaprio initially seems too boyish to carry the entire movie on his shoulders, his performance actually gains in stature the older his character gets. It's a mirror for DiCaprio's own career trajectory, of a prodigy whose talents extend far beyond his years.