Do Trailers Spoil Movies?

Posted on October 23, 2011 at 3:36 pm

My friend and fellow critic Kevin McCarthy has a blog post about a woman who filed a lawsuit accusing the “Drive” trailer of false advertising.  She claims the studio, FilmDistrict, misled her into thinking that it would be a car chase movie like “Fast Five.”  Does this trailer say that to you?

There’s more talking in it than racing.  And while the movie does not have a lot of driving, it certainly plays an important role and it is not like the movie fails to provide action.

In any event, trailers have one purpose, and it is not to provide an accurate summary of the movie.  It is to get you to buy a ticket.  Like Kevin, I find that while I do not like it when trailers misrepresent the movie, the bigger problem is when they give away too much.  So, like Kevin, I recommend skipping them, though I often can’t resist them myself.

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Commentary Understanding Media and Pop Culture
Trailer: Oka!

Trailer: Oka!

Posted on October 9, 2011 at 9:08 am

Louis Sarno was from New Jersey, but he fell in love with the music of the pygmy people of Central Africa.  He went there in the mid-1980’s to record their music and returned because he fell in love with their culture — and with a pygmy woman he later married. He wrote a book about his adventures, Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies and a book with CD about what he saw, Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the Babenzele Pygmies and Sounds of Their Forest Home.  His story is now a movie and it looks wonderful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCIYHEWH09M
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Trailers, Previews, and Clips
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