Monday 8 February 2010

Super Bowl 2010: Adverts

Monday 8 February 2010
Do I like the Super Bowl? No. Do I like (American) "football"? No. It's rugby for sissies, as the flame-baiting comment goes. But, what I do like is the fact so many Americans watch the Super Bowl that companies spend a lot of cash to air attention-grabbing adverts for summer movies, or use recognisable characters to sell drinks, etc. And, thanks to the marvel that is YouTube, you don't have to sit through the sporting event (or even live in America) to get to the good stuff:



The Simpsons are advertising Coca-Cola with Mr. Burns. Prepare to be disappointed.



It looks fun, like a more sophisticated Mummy movie. I have no attachment or deep knowledge of the video game source material, sorry.



I really hope this is good, because there are moments and visuals in these trailers that look superb. But Tim Burton's no longer a guarantee of quality, and I'm bored of Johnny Depp in these "ker-azy" roles. Still, this will probably be the next film I'm keen to see in 3D.



It's funny; everything I've seen of The Wolfman looks fantastic, but the film's had such a terrible gestation period (including reshoots so that Benicio Del Toro's Wolf Man character could be on all fours like a dog, because they didn't like him upright!) that I'm worried we're seeing a skewed version of the film's quality in these trailers.



It looks magnificent, as most Ridley Scott films do. But I just don't sense much of a Robin Hood vibe to anything I've seen -- it's effectively Gladiator with England as a backdrop. And I hear from test screenings that the supporting cast aren't that great, particularly the Sheriff of Nottingham.



I haven't seen the anime this is based on, but I hear good things about it. This will be interesting to see if M. Night Shyamalan can finally get a hit post-Signs with a project he didn't create. There's nothing about this trailer that puts me off, beyond Shyamalan's insistence his name be in big letters all over the credits, because his name lost significance about six years ago.



In some ways the nicest surprise of the movie trailers here, because The Crazies isn't so overexposed already. This looks good, actually, despite being a remake of the 1973 classic about a town's water supply being poisoned.



Already brought to my attention in the Lost season 6 premiere thread, here's a spoof of Lost from Bud Light, who still think we're in season 1 it seems. Love the production values, but... sigh. Pretty lame joke -- was it worth the effort?



I appreciate the awkwardness of the idea behind this, given recent events in US late-night talk show circles, but... disappointing. More interesting is the backstory to how it came about. And yes, Dave Letterman wanted Conan involved.