My Happy Place

Image via Apple

Always one to revel in the pre-feature trailers at the cinema, I now delight in viewing the latest film trailers via Apple. There's something about the simplicity of the site, with the film posters lined up in neat rows, so one can judge a book by its cover. I love that summer blockbusters are side-by-side with small indie films, foreign titles and documentaries. It's a veritable lucky-dip.

Trailers are interesting things. Obviously their main role is promotional - hence the stars and directors' names splashed across the screen. But it baffles me that some trailers are content to give the whole story away. To be sure these are often paint-by-numbers films anyway, but still!

I giggled recently over Kate's account of how disappointed my brother was when a certain scene from the Kung Fu Panda trailer didn't make it into the film (the 'skadoosh' shot). Apart from pausing for a moment to appreciate the disappointment of a 26 year old for a kids film, I think it's telling how wedded we can become to trailers, and how, ironically, such a deviation can take you out of the film for a moment.

A similar 'hang on a sec' situation cropped up for me during the practice kissing scene in Hitch. In the trailer, Will Smith shrieks "you overzealous son of a b...", but the final cut was "you overeager son of a b.." Now I think overzealous is funnier than overeager, but perhaps that's just me. And I'm guessing overeager is more widely understood. In any case, I managed to get over it.

Nowadays however, there are teasers and featurettes to consume over and above theatrical and online trailers. Wall-E for instance, has 2 teasers, 1 trailer and 6 vignettes on the Apple site. No doubt this amps up the anticipation for the film, not to mention being ample fodder for procrastination!

For distraction or discovery, the Apple trailer site has become my happy place.