Cinema ads vs other art forms

Sometimes trailers end up being far more entertaining than the movie you've paid to see, sadly. To me, at least, they are a lot of fun and I have no problem with them.

People who hate sitting through them can easily avoid them by going to the movie five minutes later --- I mean, it's not like they're stuck somewhere in the middle of the movie, are they???

Someone put ads on their LP: was it Sigue Sigue Sputnik? (The Who did gag ads on 'The Who Sell Out')

Very old people and record collectors will recall that LPs used to have ads on the inner sleeve, and sometimes on the outersleeve also (for other records by same record company; if it was an EMI record, ads also for EMITEX, which was a nice cloth to wipe your record down with).

Pulpy paperbacks often have ads at the back.

Art shows have big logos for sponsors. Some art-show catalogues have begun to carry hilariously bogue intros thanking the sponsor, saying things like "Leonardo Da Vinci invented perspective in the Renaissance. Kraft Cheezy Nodulez have re-invented it for the 21st century. That is why they make a great pair. Da Vinci and Kraft Cheez." Only at greater length and (if anything) less humility.

Good cinema trailers are a work of art - unfortunately most films do not see it like that and tend to cobble together the best bits of the film with the V-O bloke. I am particularly enamoured of trailers which give away the entire plot of a movie, including the ending. The Sixth Sense trailer was fantatsic in this regard and much spookier than the actual film. In the movie the "I see dead people" line is not uttered until an hour in. In the trailer we get it at the end. Willis is shot at begining of film - you need no more information.

Was reminded of this just the other day seeing a trailer for Say It Isn't So which not only reveals that Kline and Graham are brother and sister, it also reveals the later twist that they are not actually siblings. Genius. Why bother writing a plot.

The Pearl Harbor trailer though - at least the European one - is a piece of majestic beauty and almost certainly better than the film it trails. I am always thoroughly disappointed when I don't get at least two new tailers per visit - and there are certain arthouse cinemas which I tend to avoid because they only show one trailer per filck. Give me my moneys worth and ad me til I burst.

Love the Kraft Cheezy thing.

Anyway, yeah. An interesting (if minor) counterblast to the 'everything's so commercialised these days' argument is the way, as Mark says, pulp fiction (and even Penguins, I think) used to be bookended with pages of adverts for grooming products and sewing patterns. Also, 'serious' newspapers used to have a front page consisting solely of classified advertisements. A long battle was fought before the Times accepted the trashy tabloid practice of actually putting NEWS on the front.

Actually, I don't mind the "coming attractions" bit. Sometimes the trailers can be more entertaining than the main feature. *Any* trailer would be better than "titanic". Once, we saw a trailer for "bill & ted's something or other" which was pretty funny. When we saw the film though, it was embarassingly bad. However, shortly thereafter, we saw the trailer again at a different film, and THE TRAILER WAS STILL FUNNY. Sometimes they can give an impression of what a film is going to be like, too, which can save you money, if it looks really awful. Actually, I quite enjoy the cheap-rate local ads you sometimes get in cinemas up here in the grim north. You can get a larf out of them, as well as the '80's throwback bladerunner rip-off ads for vodka & the like that seem to go on for ever...

Lots of books feature "trailers" for other books in the back, BTW

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Trailers are brilliant, still the best way of deciding whether a forthcoming film is worth seeing.

Interestingly, when I was in San Francisco recently I went to see Enemy at the Gates (it's shite). One of the trailers before it was for this brilliant looking hard-hitting courtroom drama with James Woods in it - and then it turned out to be an anti-smoking advert. So not all cinema ads are rubbish.

Books do carry ads - they often carry lists of other books you might want to read in them.