The Extratextuals

Somehow I went a full year without seeing many films, so the competition wasn’t all that steep, though I’m still relatively happy with most of my top picks. Remember that they count if I saw them in 2008, hence some of the 2007 entries.

Movies

10. Enchanted. Silly but fun, and ideal for the second 9 hour leg of a trip to Malawi.

9. Sweeney Todd. I like Tim Burton’s aesthetic. Odd, dark, kinda cool.

8. The Bourne Ultimatum. If only I could move and fight like Bourne, my subway commute would be so much less of a hassle.

7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Admittedly, in other years, the movie that gifted the phrase “nuking the fridge” to movie criticism wouldn’t make the list, but it was fun, and it was great to see Harrison back in action. I spent a lot of playtime trying to be him as a kid, so he has a long leash.

6. Quantum of Solace. Not quite Casino Royale, but I’m intrigued by the decision to serialize the Bond films, and Daniel Craig is still easily the best Bond.

5. There Will Be Blood. By the time Daniel Day Lewis was drinking from the other dude’s milkshake, I was a little tired, since I also saw this on the way to Malawi, but it was gripping stuff. I wish I could’ve seen it on the big screen.

4. Cloverfield. A great ride. My sense is that New Yorkers liked this film more than others. I loved it. Wouldn’t want to own it or see it without a full theatre, but I really liked it.

3. No Country for Old Men. I have a real weak spot for totally dark, badass villains, so this movie hit all the right chords with me. And I love the Coen Bros. stuff.

2. Iron Man. Like Batman Begins, Iron Man has a brilliant first two acts, then falls quite flat. But its first two acts were really fun.

1. The Dark Knight. I know I’m not supposed to like it, because hype is bad, right? Well, much of Dark Knight’s hype was really bad (a Gotham pepperoni pizza from Domino’s? Come on!). I think much of its marketing sucked. To the point that I was ready to dislike the film, and especially Heath Ledger’s performance. Instead, I really liked it. The IMAX screen helped, no doubt. But it was great fun. Let the haters hate, but I won’t. I’m even one of the only people I know who actually likes Christian Bale’s Batman voice.

Now for movie posters after the fold. Yes, I get to the extratextuals eventually …

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awards, lists, poster art Beautiful Losers, Blindness, Bourne, Cloverfield, Dark Knight, Enchanted, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, Man on Wire, No Country for Old Men, Punisher, Quantum of Solace, Saw V, Sweeney Todd, The Eye, The Happening, There Will Be Blood

Every time I set foot in the city, I tend to walk into another film or television show. By which I don’t mean that I see a lot of filming: I mean that the storyworlds of multiple films and shows are forever poaching on New York.

Recently, it’s the cool viral campaign for Forgetting Sarah Marshall that’s everywhere. Taxis announce “You DO look fat in those jeans, Sarah Marshall,” “My mom never liked you, Sarah Marshall,” and “I am SO over you, Sarah Marshall,” as do the sides of buses. Bus stands, meanwhile, add to the mix, large posters stating simply, “You suck, Sarah Marshall.”

It’s a really effective ad campaign, since it seems to capture the central mood of the film. The dire need to perform one’s dislike post-breakup, and to announce it to the world, so clearly labels itself as protesting too much, as a sad ploy of the broken heart. Moreover, while Sarah Marshall’s name needs to get into all the ads so that people will know what the ads are referring to, the repetition of her name has the side effect of sounding like an incantation from a guy who just can’t stop thinking about Sarah. It’s a cringe-worthy campaign, since it shows us Jason Segel’s character as hopelessly still in love and unable to deal with it maturely, yet we’ve all probably been there, right? All that’s different here is the scale, which invokes the other salient aspect of the film: that Sarah Marshall is a star. Telling all your friends that your ex sucks is one thing, but if she’s a star, so goes the rationale, you need to use taxis, bus stands, and so forth to get the message across. Meanwhile, that scale just blows up the emotion ten-fold for us, promising us a very identifiable emotional base to the film, but also a level of exaggeration and excess that will allow comfortable comic distance and cathartic pleasure.

My lone complaint, though, is that I sort of wish they would up the ante a bit and start tagging Sarah Marshall slogans in public places. In some sense, after all, it would all be more in-frame if the Segel character’s messages were scrawled in public washrooms, on building sides, etched into subway car windows, etc., than on expensive ads. Mind you, if Time Warner can get done for being would-be terrorists, I guess Universal might want to avoid being labeled as vandals.

I’m also intrigued that the film has a restricted trailer (in addition to a general one), thereby being one of the first films I’ve heard of to realize this loophole in the MPAA censorship of trailers.

Finally, too, it should be noted, the film has a strong blog entourage, with one supposedly from the Jason Segel character, another from a supposed fan defending Sarah Marshall, and – quite amusingly – it seems as though a real-life Sarah Marshall out there has tired of the site traffic to her www.sarahmarshall.com, and has thus dropped whatever else was there, replacing it with a photocopy of her (?) ass, and a counter acknowledging that I was the 18468th person to hate Sarah Marshall.

poster art, previews Forgetting Sarah Marshall, poster art, posters