• June 15, 2006 | 11 a.m. PT

Life in the movie-trailer park

Everyone’s got an opinion about movie trailers. It seems that the best of them stick in our minds more, while we try to immediately forget the bad ones. The overall favorite? “X-Men III.” The overall least favorite” Robin Williams in “RV.”

Here are some of your thoughts.

TRAILERS WE LOVE
“I would definitely say the X-Men: The Last Stand trailer was the best this year. After seeing it for the first time in the theater, I came home and watched it about 6 more times online! The music, the editing, the lines....it made me want to fast-forward to May!”    --Tina

“The X-Men 3 trailer was INCREDIBLE! Anyone who knew the storyline leading up to it was on the edge of their seats when it showed Famke Janssen as Phoenix for the first time! And the final line of the trailer when she says “Kill Me!” was absolutely the most intense moment of it!”    --Todd

“My favorite trailer was for the original movie ‘The Omen’ that starred Lee Remick and Gregory Peck. I’d see that damn dog coming towards me down the hallway and I’d hide behind a sofa pillow.”    --Susie

‘Favorite: A Scanner Darkly. (Matrix meets that Charles Schwab commercial - Oooo, neat).”    --Kristen

“I agree whole heartedly that the “Dead Man’s Chest” is one of the best trailers out. But I would like to disagree that the best part is forgetting Jack. The best part is in the trailer that comes on at the movies, when Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) tells Captain Jack (Johnny Depp) “There will come a moment when you will have the chance to do the right thing” In which he replies, “I know those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass me by.” It sums up everything about Captain Jack Sparrow and why audiences love him.”    --Kea

“Snakes on a Plane! My friends and I screamed when we saw the trailer before X-men 3. We plan to go to the midnight showing with toy snakes.”    --Kellye

“Hands down, “Happy Feet” is probably the funniest, catchiest animated trailer I’ve ever seen. The sight of a penguin ensemble singing “My Way” in Spanish, is HILARIOUS!!!”    --Jerry

“One of the best trailers in recent years is the original one (with the still photos, not the scenes from the film) for Buffalo 66. It works because it is mysterious, attractive, risqué; absurd and full of the swagger and flavor of 1970s rough and tumble films that are its antecedents. Most importantly it gives a taste of the film without ruining the plot. It’s a short film in itself. Needless to say, such a trailer (to say nothing of the film itself) would never have been released by a a major studio. Here it is.”    --Gidon

“Umm, hello?!?! ‘Superman Returns’ ... possibly the greatest trailer for possibly the greatest movie this summer? Pssh.”    --KE

TRAILERS WE HATE
“My least favorite trailer was for “Serenity”. I say least because Universal did such a poor job of creating the trailer that people that didn’t know the storyline thought that the movie was either: A) a sci-fi parody or B) a ripoff of “The Fifth Element”, neither of which was the case. So, just like a good trailer can make a bad movie look good, a bad trailer can make people stay away from a really good movie.”    --Beth

“Least Favorite: RV - They managed to make an unwatchable trailer for an unwatchable film (or so I’ve heard. I would never give two hours of my life up for that crap).”    --Kristen

“I wanted to see Dead Man’s Chest until I saw the terrible trailer which is all blowhard action and not enough of the only thing that made the first movie good which is Jack who doesn’t have more than a line or two in the trailer.”    --Anonymous

“I absolutely hate the trailer for the movie The Lake House. Every time I see it I’m left wondering what to think of it. Is it like a thriller of some kind, with a magical house? Is it just a romance, with all the schmoopy music and angst obvious by the overacting in the trailer? Just what kind of movie is it supposed to be? I don’t know, maybe it’s just Keanu, but it still bugs.”    --Laura

GENERAL THOUGHTS
“People may already know this but ... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre site can be viewed whenever you want to, the site let me view it before 10 p.m. All I did was turn my computer’s clock past 10.”    --Andy

“What about movie trailers that have scenes in them that make you want to see the movie, but then those scenes aren’t in the final cut? I remember seeing a trailer for “The Negotiator” and Kevin Spacey saying, “Now you’re going to have to deal with both of us.” On the basis of that one line, I HAD to see the movie. After I saw it, I realized that line had not appeared in the movie at all and I was P.O.’d! This has happened to me numerous times, and while I know that the trailers are prepared before the film has finished filming/editing, it aggravates me to no end.”    --TB

“The thing I don’t get is why they call them trailers. When I was a kid they were always called previews, which seems much more logical, since they are designed to give you a preview of the film...duh.”  --Elizabeth

• June 13, 2006 | 11:30 a.m. PT

Best of the movie trailers

Sad to say, sometimes the best part of a movie-going experience these days is watching the coming attractions. The Golden Trailer Awards honor those mini-movies, and this year, their Best of Show award went to the trailer for "Mission: Impossible III."

I call shenanigans on that! Sure, the "M:I 3" trailer is action-packed, but is it even possible to make a bad trailer when you have that heart-thumping musical theme playing in the background? Tom Cruise, blah blah blah, threat to his wimmenfolk, blah blah, exploding cars, blah blah. It's the music that picks up the thread of suspense and spins it in that trailer. Watch it with your sound on mute and it's indistinguishable from any other action film out there.

Not that they asked me, but my vote for best action-film trailer — and possibly best trailer of the year — would have gone to "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." When this trailer comes on in movies I've seen, the audience goes nuts.

That creepy little girl's voice sing-songing "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me," slides gracefully into a comedy- and action-packed sequence featuring wormy-faced pirate monsters, sea creatures, a battle on a giant rolling wheel, and throughout it all, the perfectly placed comments of one Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. The best part, though, is Orlando Bloom plaintively calling out ""I can't leave without Jack" and then, once he sees said Jack is being chased by an entire army, changing his mind to say "Never mind, let's go."

The best movie trailers make you want to drop everything, quit your job, move to Hollywood and make movies, and "Dead Man's Chest" gives you that feeling.

If you're a trailer addict, you can while away hours just selecting and playing trailers from Apple's movie trailer page. Some other favorites of mine include "Cars," next summer's "Ratatouille," and "Thank You For Smoking." I've yet to see the teaser for "The Simpsons Movie" anywhere but online, but it's already kind of a classic. And while I'm not expecting much out of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," the trailer site lures you in by the mere fact that it claims the trailer is only available for viewing between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. (Hey, it's already 4 a.m. in Seoul, doesn't that count?)

Movie trailers are less mysterious to us now that we've been jaded by all the wonderful online movie-trailer spoofs, from the recut of "The Shining" as a family comedy and "Big" as a horror film, to the many "Brokeback Mountain" parodies. We know, now, that a fantastic trailer doesn't mean the film will live up to its promise, that some films waste their only good jokes and gags in their trailer, and others just jump-cut the heck out of the footage to make a crappy film look lively.

But we still know a good trailer when we see it, and a good trailer still does its job — juices your brain up to want to see that movie.

What are your favorite (and least favorite, might as well go there) current movie trailers? Send them in.

• June 12, 2006 | 6 a.m. PT

Multi-link Monday

Summer, summer, summer. I'll be out of the office next week and the beginning of the week after, so after this, there won't be a new Multi-link Monday until July. In the meantime, though, send in your links, and start thinking about best and worst commercial nominees. We'll start that annual process up when I get back.

• Reader link o' the week: Remember the tricky "find the bands in this image" game? It drove us crazy for weeks. Now reader Joanne sends in a link to a movie version, so be prepared to lose even more sleep. (Note: If someone finds a list of the answers, do send it in, as we're certain to get plenty of requests for one.)

• Another game: Can you successfully place the states? It's like a jigsaw puzzle, I can only get the ones that attach to the borders, and sometimes not even those.

• Whoa, this optical illusion shook me up. Stare at the dot for 30 seconds. Then mouse over the castle. For a brief moment, your eyes will transform a black-and-white image into color. Makes me think twice about trusting my own eyes. (Link via Metafilter.)

• Have you seen this video of what happens when 101 Diet Coke bottles meet 523 Mentos? Truly must be seen to be believed. Hoo boy, this is even better than when Peter Brady created the volcano science project, and exploded it all over Marcia's Pep Club.

• Scrappy Doo! Cousin Oliver! The short-lived Duke boys' replacements, Coy and Vance! The Onion's AV Club put together a fun list of 13 Memorably Unpopular Characters from Popular TV. (Thanks to Paige for the link!)

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