TRAILER SMASH!
Sometimes, all you need to see is a movie's trailer - it's often better than the film itself.
Trailers are a $90 million-a-year industry in Hollywood, with their own production crews, their own release dates and now even their own awards show: The Golden Trailers, which will be handed out on March 13 in Los Angeles, hosted by comedian Dennis Miller.
"Trailers are my favorite part of going to the movies," says Evelyn Brady, a former advertising executive who started the Golden Trailers four years ago.
"But the editors who work on these never get any credit. I wanted to shine the spotlight on them."
So give it up for the artists who snip and clip movies into memorable sound bites.
Remember the "Sweet Home Alabama" trailer - and Reese Witherspoon's great line, "Oh, you have a baby . . . in a bar?"
"I remember people rolling in the aisles at that," says People magazine senior editor Jess Cagle, one of this year's Golden Trailers judges.
" 'Sweet Home Alabama' was only a sort-of-funny movie, but the trailer was hilarious. And that can open a movie big."
Golden Trailer awards are divided into groups such as best action, best foreign, best drama and even trashiest.
Snob appeal gets no weight here: hence a film like "Bringing Down the House" gets a nod alongside "About Schmidt" for the best comedy trailer - as does the yet-to-be-released "Daddy Day Care," which doesn't exactly sound like Oscar material.
There's even an award saluting good trailers for not-so-good films. Nominees for the Golden Fleece trophy include "Final Destination 2," "The Hot Chick" and "Rollerball," widely considered one of the year's worst movies.
"There is so much riding on these," Brady says. "Studios are frantic to get them right."
Studios may commission as many as 16 different previews for a big blockbuster and spend as much as $600,000 on each of them.
Often, trailers are tailored to the audience that will see it - "one with fast cuts for the kids, another with romantic, gushy cuts for the women, and yet another with action cuts for the guys," Brady says.
"Gosford Park" is a good example: A sneak peek for female moviegoers played up the romance.
But to sell the film to teens and college students, quick-cut previews focused on Ryan Phillippe and a Rolls-Royce pulling up to the mansion - the car was even artificially sped up in the trailer, just for the MTV crowd.
Occasionally, promos will include footage that doesn't appear in the film.
The trailer for "Unfaithful," for instance, featured a scene in which a detective warned Richard Gere not to look to deeply into Diane Lane's affair.
"I want to know the truth!" Gere shouts. Not in the movie.
In "The Royal Tenenbaums" trailer, Gwyneth Paltrow's character wins a Pulitzer Prize. What Pulitzer?
Studios also test previews to death - and they've found that more is better when it comes to customer satisfaction.
"Test audiences often like trailers that tell the whole story, but that doesn't mean they want to see the movie," Brady says. "The best trailer whets the appetite."
Just as a winning trailer can help make a movie - a crummy one can kill it.
"Say you've got a trailer for a horror film, and the audience laughs at it," Brady says. "That's definitely a bad sign."
Meet The Hills This June
Finally making their DVD debut on June 24th, Hank, Peggy, Bobby and the rest of the King of the Hill gang will get The Complete First Season treatment from Fox Home Entertainment.
Each episode from the 1997-1998 season will come complete with a 4:3 full screen transfer, English, French and Spanish Dolby 2.0 surround tracks, and plenty of extras: audio commentary on select episodes (Pilot, The Order of the Straight Arrow, Hank's Unmentionable Problem, Westie Side Story, Shins of the Father, Plastic White Female, King of the Ant Hill and The Company Man), the featurettes "Becoming King of the Hill," "Mowing Lesson with Charlie," "The Do's and Don'ts of King of the Hill," "Dale's Conspiracies," and "Meet the Hills," no less than 75 deleted scenes, extended scenes, and an alternate ending to the series closer, a Barenaked Ladies music video, the main title with alternate music themes, 12 promo spots, and a special "Thank You from the Production."
Spice Girl Spokeswoman Denies Reunion
LONDON - Could a reunion be far behind? A spokeswoman for Posh Spice says all five former Spice Girls, Ginger, Baby, Sporty, Posh and Scary, are planning what she calls "a social get together" this week. But she denies that a comeback is in the cards, saying the women won't be discussing reunion plans.
This is the first time in five years that all five Spice Girls have gotten together. The group formed in 1994 and sold 35 million albums worldwide in four and a half years, according to their Web site. Some of their hits include "Wannabe," "Say You'll Be There" and "2 Become 1." The girlpower group also made a movie, "Spiceworld." Ginger Spice left the group in 1998. And the remaining four haven't recorded together since 2000.
Double Dose of Beatles for Fab Four Fans
LONDON (Reuters) - Beatles fans had two reasons to twist and shout on Tuesday with announcements of a Europe-wide tour by Paul McCartney and the release of a never-before seen video of three Beatles jamming together.
Fresh from a hugely popular North American tour, McCartney said he would kick-off his first British tour in 10 years in April, with gigs featuring 22 Beatles songs from "All My Loving" to "Let It Be."
His "Back In The World" series of marathon concerts -- each nearly three hours long -- will also hit European cities in France, Spain, Germany and Scandinavia.
"I had a lot of fun touring this show around America last year, but now I'm bringing it on home and that's special to me as I always look forward to playing to a home crowd," McCartney, 60, said in a statement.
"We'll be playing some of my Beatles stuff -- rather a lot of Beatles stuff, actually -- some Wings stuff and some more recent stuff, so basically the show pretty much spans my whole career," he added.
His sweep through Canada, the United States, Mexico and Japan last year broke sales records and was hailed by Billboard Magazine as the tour of the year.
For Beatles fans unable to get their hands on a concert ticket, a reunion performance by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison filmed in 1994 will be released on DVD in March.
The session was filmed at Harrison's studios at his mansion in Oxfordshire, England and is the only time the three played together after the Beatles split in 1970.
A small segment of the footage was featured in the 1996 Beatles Anthology Video.
John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York apartment in December, 1980 and Harrison lost a battle with throat cancer in November, 2001.
More recently, McCartney has been involved in a dispute with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, after he reversed the credits on his latest album from the traditional "Lennon-McCartney" to "By Paul McCartney and John Lennon."
McCartney has said he was not worried about Ono's displeasure at the credit reversal and called the spat a "long-running and rather silly dispute."