The Extratextuals

Derek’s first part is a hard act to follow, but I decided to focus on trailers, teasers, hype, and TV opening credit sequences. I’ll wage in later about the TV opening credit sequences, but for now, should the clip embedding work:

Best Movie Trailer
Trailers are one of the most underrated, under-appreciated art forms in the contemporary media environment. Indeed, it bears reminding that amidst enthusiastic discussion of YouTube debates, political satire, reporting, virals, etc., many of the most viewed videos on YouTube are trailers. Moreover, as media companies try to saturate our daily lives with trailers, so that we see them somewhere, they also need to be aware that many of us will see many trailers multiple times, and so there’s a fine art to making a trailer that hasn’t sickened you by the time you see it for the tenth time.

Runner-Up: Juno. Ideally, I’d have loved to pick two excellent trailers for bad movies here, but (a) I didn’t see many movies in 2007, so I don’t have much to work with, and (b) the point is that Juno’s trailer had me convinced that I’d like the film. The crispness of the script jumps out at you, and it offers a supremely recognizable (ie: real, not Saved By the Bell-ized) high school life. Ellen Page’s performance announces itself as fantastic, and the trailer chooses wonderful scenes to showcase two great cult properties in Rainn Wilson and Michael Cera. Plus it has Allison Janney/CJ Cregg in it. It pandered to everything I wanted, right down to being filmed in my hometown, Vancouver (which I can nearly always tell visually. No bullshit. It’s the quality of the green. All that rain. And the sky. And the houses).

Winner: Vantage Point. I already blogged about this, so let me just link to it here. But I haven’t seen it, and even if I don’t, or don’t like it, I think the trailer rocks.

More below the fold

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awards, previews Cloverfield, Dark Knight, Dirty Sexy Money, Funny Games, Juno, previews, Simpsons, trailers, Transformers, Vantage Point

First, apologies for the lengthy time off. Grading. Stuff to write. Holiday without Internet. They all added up. Anyways, we’re back, hopefully with a slightly new look soon too. Wasting no time, let’s get down to business:

Today, I call Time Warner and resubscribe to HBO, not being able to care less about many of the shows on the channel, but eagerly anticipating Season 5 of The Wire. Amidst other bloggers’ stated goal to blog the season, I thought I’d start by commenting on its fantastic poster art.

For the uninitiated, The Wire’s place in television history is already entrenched alongside Sesame Street and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as shows that challenged what the medium could and should do. If you teach television studies, you’re no doubt tired by having to repeat the line that most television only focuses on problems as individual, not/never institutional. If you study television studies, you’re probably tired of hearing it. And as a watcher of television, hopefully you’re tired of seeing the moral play out again and again. But The Wire is a show about institutions. Beginning as seemingly a serial cop show, Season 1 examined the street drug trade in West Baltimore, all the while interrogating the social system and structure of crime and punishment with considerable skill. Season 2 added the ports to the picture, Season 3 added politics, Season 4 added schooling, and now Season 5 promises to end with the media.

I could glow about The Wire all day. Its characters, writing, acting, directing, and filming all surpass much of what even the best television can muster. And yet each season’s just made the whole thing better, rounding out the story even more, adding nuance to characters and institutions.

And here the poster art brilliantly communicates the (bold) promise of a season that will conclude the series, and bring it to a head. More below the fold.

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poster art, previews poster art, previews, The Wire