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January 17, 2007
TRAILERS AHOY!
Trailers are everywhere today!
John Williams, a Welshman who directs Japanese movies, has a new flick, STARFISH HOTEL, coming out and the trailer looks gorgeous. The synopsis sounds like a Haruki Murakami novel, and the billowing red drapes look like TWIN PEAKS, and there is a disconcerting glimpse of that DONNIE DARKO bunny, but it's got a lush spookiness all its own. And, of course, Akira Emoto.
(View the trailer)
(read the synopsis)
Twitch has posted a nice teaser trailer for Kiyoshi Kurosawa's RETRIBUTION and although I swore that I'd never watch another Asian horror movie featuring a dead girl with long black hair, let alone a Japanese horror movie featuring a dead girl with long black hair, this looks really good. And it's Kiyoshi Kurosawa who's never been one to just recycle the same-old, same-old. It's playing NYC soon.
And finally, THE HOST, has debuted a new trailer over at MSN. Compare it to the original trailer and you can see that they're really trying to zoom in on a way to make this movie work for American audiences. No Korean dialogue in the second trailer, hardly any reveals of the monster, and they place it firmly in the foreign arthouse movie camp with its shots of family fun and goofy Italian seaside music at the start. It's certainly a more interesting trailer and it feels far truer to the movie. Let's see if it pays off on March 9 when THE HOST opens. There's a lot riding on how THE HOST does - if it flops or underperforms I think you're going to see a lot less interest in Asian genre movies being picked up for distribution for a while, and that would be a real shame.
January 17, 2007 at 09:34 AM in Trailers | Permalink
Comments
This was the same trailer that I told you about Grady. I saw when I went to see Pan's Labyrinth when it opened.
In my opinion it sucks real bad. At best, it makes the movie seem as if it is some sort of spoof of monster movies or a tounge in cheek monster film. It captures nothing of what the actual film is like and makes it look real lame.
It impressed no one in the packed audience that went to see the film. You can feel as if there was a collective, "Whatever..." feeling in the audience.
The best international trailer that has been created for this movie was the UK trailer in which pretty much was the same edit as the US "red band" trailer except it had far better music to accompany the footage.
A big reason I believe that a lot of foreign films don't open as big as they could is because the marketing sucks...specifically the trailers. You have to get the attention of the audience and for whatever reason, these companies that buy these films for release here have the crappiest trailer people around.
They should probably get in touch with Brian White's former trailer group from his HKL days. Those guys make brilliant trailers and since it seems that White's not using them for whatever reason, someone else should.
Posted by: the running man | Jan 17, 2007 12:33:38 PM