Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

6 March 2004

Trailers at The Passion

I'm always interested to see what trailers get attached to a movie. It gives you some idea of who the film distributors think will go see a particular movie.

As I sat waiting for The Passion of the Christ to start, I wondered how they'd package this. I'm sure if Hollywood had a bunch of Biblical epics in production, we'd be seeing ads for those.

The distribution for this movie has been so unusual that some people, such as those who've attended church-sponsored screenings, haven't seen any trailers before the movie at all. On the other end of the spectrum was my theater, which showed seven, count 'em, seven (7) previews. That's two more than usual.

And what did they advertise? Garfield (kid/family movie), Agent Cody Banks 2 (young teen action/comedy), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (hip-but-romantic comedy), Spider-Man 2 (comic book action/adventure), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (comic book-ish action/adventure), and, uh, ok that's where I hit my memory's limit. I'm conditioned to remember five.

What wasn't on the bill? The only one I thought might be: Troy (ancient violent secular tale).

By the way, I haven't seen any of the movies being advertised, so please excuse my flippant categorizations.

So... what does this tell us about what the distributors are thinking? The previews are all over the map, which means they probably had no idea. The missing Troy trailer makes sense. People aren't going to see The Passion for the action or the historical epic-ness. They're going for other reasons. That would have been a mistaken assumption, but it was one I thought the distributors would make in the absence of a better idea.

The most surprising entries to me are the kids' movies, because those don't usually get advertised before bloody R-rated films. Parents don't often go to the movies except for a family outing or a "parents' night out," and the violent movies don't really fit either of those scenarios, in general.

The perfect trailer, demographically speaking, might have been for something like Signs, the M. Night Shyamalan/Mel Gibson movie that's vaguely about faith and aliens.

But based on anecdotal evidence, I'd say the marketers were probably right: there were lots of parents at the screening I attended. How do I know? Because some of them brought their kids. (I don't care how religious you are, please don't take your kids to see this movie.)

And based on the wide cross-section of people who've seen the movie, maybe the smattering of disparate trailers was right on the mark, too.

This is like reading tea leaves. No, that's the future. It's like archaeology. Yeah, only more stupid. Sorry for wasting your time like this.

(PS: Here's a trailer that's getting a great reaction from audiences right now.)

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