trash from trailers

Here’s what I hate when it comes to movie trailers for sequels. I hate, hate, hate when it starts out with extended highlights of past movies.

When you download the Indy trailer, you get excited pretty quickly when the first thing you notice is the 1:51 of running time. We’re gonna get 1:51 of Indy, sweet! You would think. Oops. First you get highlights of the first three movies you’ve seen 1,000 times already. Really? We needed that? We needed to see Indy once more shining that staff onto the ground from Raiders? Or the birds flying around in Temple of Doom? Or the Nazis in Last Crusade? We don’t get a shot anything new until the 40-second mark, and don’t even see the latest Indy until the 57-second mark. Almost a whole minute without answering the biggest question every Indiana Jones fan wants to know: Is Harrison Ford wearing Depends or not? I mean, it’s cool if he is, he’s earned the right to play Indy until he’s 90. But nearly a whole minute? Without the star?

The answer we find out later is, no, he’s not wearing diapers, at least it doesn’t look like it. And for the next minute, we find out that, yeah, whether he’s old or not — he’ll turn 66 while the movie still is in theaters — Ford still can rock Indy. He looks old. How else could he look? — but he’s still got that Indy daring. That’s why he’s always been the best choice for Indy — Ford can convey with total believability that he has no fear (other than snakes). And that he really is a human with no super powers other than that lack of fear and the willingness to do what other men wouldn’t.

But we just find that out too late. My ADD kicks in around the 30-second when I’m already giddily thinking of the fact that Opening Day is less than a month away. I know the Spielberg/Lucas crew is guarding secrets on this thing like we’re going to find out that Indy is also the spawn of Darth Vader, but how much can you possibly give away in two minutes? Just show us some more stuff blowing up and I’m cool.

Now here’s how you make a trailer. Great to see Batman coming back the way it should. With stuff blowing up, with what have to be some of Heath Ledger’s creepiest parts in his Joker performance, with Christian Bale being Christian Bale — and with Katie Holmes nowhere near the movie. I thought they should have made the whole teaser trailer — which was pretty bad — highlights of Maggie Gyllenhaal playing Rachel Dawes so that everyone knows the despicably miscast Holmes is gone.

The Batman trailer makes me wanna mark off July 18 on my calendar — the Indy trailer makes me worried as all giddy-up for May 22. So which one do you think is more effective?

Still catching up on some 2007 movies:

American Gangster: Good but not great. Two-and-a-half hours is too long for anything except a drive to Atlantic City. But I will say that Denzel blows the doors off of George Clooney’s performance in Michael Clayton and should have gotten his Oscar nomination.

Across the Universe: Liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I’m not a Julie Taymor fan, I’m scared to death about what she’ll do to Spider-Man and I would not want to see her original version of this movie. But what finally showed up on screen is pretty impressive, if not heavy-handed on Taymor’s part. At one point I screamed out, “Hey Bergman, stick to the facts!” Yeah, it’s that crazy. I don’t consider myself a “fan” of the Beatles, but I certainly appreciate their work. And I appreciate how hard it must have been to put this movie together.

I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to the Terminator season finale tonight or not. I probably won’t even watch it until Wednesday, so I won’t be commenting on it until then. But I’d be fine if it didn’t get picked up for next season. It just didn’t deliver the goods. I’m along for the ride and everything, but only out of convenience and because the season has been so short. If I knew I was going to get stuck watching nine months of this to get a final payoff, I’d have been gone before February. Catching up on some past eps almost put me to sleep last night.

But I am along for the ride with Dexter. I was wary about what CBS planned to do with the Showtime show, cleaning it up and putting it on its Sunday schedule as strike-filler. But it’s barely noticeable — well, not overtly totally horribly distractingly noticeable — and Michael C. Hall’s performance still stands out. I always wanted to rent this on DVD, and figured this would be the perfect litmus test as to whether I should or not. Safe to say I will be renting the DVDs to watch the unedited versions.

Disappointing weekend at the box office for Will Farrell. Semi-Pro only scared up about $15 million. Duh. In today’s day and age, when there is basketball on just about every channel on TV seemingly 24 hours a day, why would you release a basketball movie in direct competition with all of that basketball? Doesn’t make a lick of sense. Do it in the fall when people are psyched for basketball to start. Do it after the tournament when people are ready to laugh at basketball. Do it two weeks ago during the all-star break. But why put it out when you not only have to compete against other movies, but the very genre you are trying to draw viewers from? Just silly. Why don’t I get to run a studio?

Kill me. Just grab a gun, and pull the trigger now before I ever have to see even a trailer for this.

More strike backlash. If you live in a foreign country, you might not be getting the best we have to offer on TV for an extra long time. Sorry about that.