Have you ever watched a movie trailer that was better than the actual movie? One where after you’ve left the theater you feel as if you should hunt down the editor and the director and run them down with your car for lying to you and stealing eight of your hard earned dollars? Or at the very least drive by their house and throw a brick through their window? (This opening paragraph explains why Hollywood-types have unlisted numbers and why I was duped into buy Soldier on DVD; I mean, how I could resist Kurt Russell saying “I’m gonna kill them all” and then the White Zombie song “Astrocreep” kicks in?)
It takes a special kind of artist, or con man depending on the movie, to cut a successful movie trailer. Several weeks ago an editing firm held an in-house contest to see which of their editors could cut a trailer from an existing movie that was so misleading the trailer could have been for a different movie altogether. After these trailers were cut the editors gave a few of their friends the link to the private, company-owned server so they could see them. Their friends were not very good friends (or were excellent friends, depending on how you look at it) and the links have been making the rounds on the internet faster than a pack of smokes at an AA meeting. There are three of them, and you should really watch all of them. Amazing work:
Shining””Most blogs I’ve read agree that this is probably the best one. The Shining as a heart-felt drama about a lonely boy and a down on his luck writer? Looks like Cameron Crowe directed it.
Titanic””I’m willing to bet that after James Cameron sees this he’ll wish he had actually filmed this movie instead of the saccharine, cry-fest he originally filmed in 1997.
West Side Story””I’ve only got five words for this one: Holy shit that looks scary!