Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies.
I’ve actually got two new trailers for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 for you today. First up is a followup to the previous teaser, which showed President Snow giving an address to Panem with Peeta surprisingly by his side. He’s once again addressing the nation with Peeta beside him, but this time he has another guest and things have a remarkably different tone even before the surprise at the end of the address. Take a look and read on for my comments and the first full teaser trailer for Mockingjay – Part 1.
Giles: This is very bad.
Xander: Are we overreacting? He’s in a computer! What can he do?
Buffy: You mean besides convince a perfectly nice kid to try and kill me? I don’t know. How about mess up all the medical equipment in the world?
Giles: Randomize traffic signals.
Buffy: Access launch codes for our nuclear missiles.
Giles: Destroy the world’s economy.
Buffy: I think I pretty much capped it with that nuclear missile thing.
Giles: Right, yours was best.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1: Episode 8 – “I, Robot . . . You, Jane”
One of the Council of Elders shook his head. “It’s too late to burn anyone at the stake today,” he said, and there was a mutter of disappointment from the townspeople. “We will burn Count Olaf at the stake right after breakfast,” he continued. “All uptown residents should bring flaming torches, and all downtown residents should bring wood for kindling and some sort of healthy snack. See you tomorrow.”
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village – Lemony Snicket
Worf: As you probably know by now, Jadzia and I will be married here on the station in six days.
Julian Bashir: There’s nothing more romantic than a wedding on DS9 in springtime.
Miles O’Brien: …when the neutrinos are in bloom.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6: Episode 7 – “You Are Cordially Invited”
“And Harry Potter’s now having an argument with his Keeper,” said Luna serenely, while both Hufflepuffs and Slytherins below in the crowd cheered and jeered. “I don’t think that’ll help him find the Snitch, but maybe it’s a clever ruse. . . .”
Swearing angrily, Harry spun round and set off around the pitch again, scanning the skies for some sign of the tiny, winged golden ball.
Ginny and Demelza scored a goal apiece, giving the red-and-gold-clad supporters below something to cheer about. Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as interestingly shaped clouds and the possibility that Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain possession of the Quaffle for longer than a minute, was suffering from something called “Loser’s Lurgy.”
“Seventy-forty to Hufflepuff!” barked Professor McGonagall into Luna’s megaphone.
“Is it, already?” said Luna vaguely.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
Buffy: So! What’d you do all day?
Angel: Uh, I read a little.And just thought about a lot of things. Buffy, I…
Buffy: My diary? You read my diary? That is *not* okay! A diary is like a person’s most private place! I… You don’t even know what I was writing about! ‘Hunk’ can mean a lot of things, bad things. And, and when it says that your eyes are ‘penetrating’, I meant to write ‘bulging’.
Angel: Buffy…
Buffy: And ‘A’ doesn’t even stand for ‘Angel’ for that matter, it stands for… ‘Achmed’, a charming foreign exchange student, so that whole fantasy part has nothing to even do with you at all…
Angel: Your mother moved your diary when she came in to straighten up. I watched from the closet. I didn’t read it, I swear.
Buffy: Oh! Oh…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1: Episode 7 – “Angel”
Although “jumping to conclusions” is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village – Lemony Snicket
Nostalgia can be dangerous, especially when it comes to the film industry. Nostalgia is what gives us endless remakes, reboots and sequels to what’s come before, in the place of more original fare. It seems like most people would choose to go to a film based on something that they’re familiar with than take a chance on something new, and the studios know this. Nostalgia is often served up as a method of forging an emotional connection with an audience, in place of real emotion in the story. But nostalgia can be dangerous from the other side of things too, when it prevents us from giving a film a chance simply because it looks similar to something we’ve seen and loved before. (I recently had a long argument with a coworker over whether movies released today will still be watched in 50 years as movies from the 1960’s are still watched today, with the twist being that he doesn’t see modern movies because he doesn’t think they can possibly compare to the films of his youth.) I think Earth to Echo has become a victim to nostalgia.
The Love Pirate 