Cinema ads vs other art forms

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

x0x0

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.