Winter Madness Begins....

May-July and November-December are the two periods when Hollywood unleashes its absolutely best (and in some cases, ridiculously overhyped), high-budget, heavily-promoted would-be blockbusters. What also works very well for the studios is that they can start the promotion of their winter monsters by releasing the teasers and trailers with their summer blockbusters and vice versa.

so.. summer is upon us (with Kingdom of Heaven being the official summer opener), and so are our first looks of the most highly anticipated movies of the winter. If we limit ourselves to the blockbuster targeting movies (and not the best picture-best director-best actor award targeting movies that also come around october-december), then definitely the three most anticipated movies are King Kong, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and The Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. (in order of decreasing anticipation for me). We are still to know when we'll get to see the teaser of King Kong (even though after watching all the production diaries at the video blog it seems as if I've already seen quite a few trailers) but the other two have rolled out their online trailers today!

This teaser of Goblet of Fire gave me mixed feelings about the movie. Ron has started to look more and more stupid with each movie. All the boys have hairs that are threatening to completely distort the images of these characters in my mind's eye. They couldn't find a Fleur who would look the part as a half-veela. And the dragon in the trailer looks SO bad!! But more than anything else, I am worried about the story itself. I have always thought that Books 2 and 3 are the best of the series so far. And Book 5 had at least some progress as far as the big picture (of the war with Voldemort) is concerned. Goblet of Fire, however, is probably the weakest book. Most of the book is concerned with the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament - two events that have absolutely nothing to do with the main story. The main story progresses a little, thanks to 2 or 3 really relevant chapters but chances are that in an effort to condense a monster book into a 2 and half hour movie, they will concentrate more on the irrelevant but an-action-adventure-movie worthy chapters. Emma said on the ABC today that this movie is just one adventure after another.. BAM-BAM stuff all the way through.. I am afraid that might not be a good thing after all... lets wait and see how it comes out.

The first online trailer for Chronicles of Narnia is not really as great as I had expected because of all the hype. Newline is promoting this movie as their follow-up to LOTR trilogy. But if the trailer is anything to go by, it is laughable to think of it in the same league. LOTR had great special effects, but that was only a small part of why those movies worked. I think those movies had a soul. You cared for the characters (probably the reason why the first movie was so very important. Once you felt connected, the other two were bound to be successful), you cared for the story. And everything from the screenplay to the casting and performances to the music had something to do with it. Narnia, however, seems to be just a special effects festival. I hope I am wrong. But I am not dying to see it. And that's a failure as far as the trailer is concerned.