Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
What comes to your mind when you hear The Lord of the Rings and the name “Ian Holm”? For most, it’ll probably be Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – but for Alan, it’s the BBC radio adaptation from 1981. Sadly, there are generally no trailers for radio shows, definitely not for ones that are 44 years old, so let’s instead do one better – and link to the actual episode. Enjoy!
Next, Matt continued his exploration of the films of Federico Fellini, arriving at the 1983 movie And the Ship Sails On. Again, we’re not altogether spoiled for trailers, but we did find the original French trailer, so here goes.
And what else is there in this week’s trailer bag?
Matt: It’ll be so difficult to give this new version of Bonjour Tristesse a fair chance, since I love Otto Preminger’s iconic 1958 adaptation of the novel starring Jean Seberg, David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Which is silly: I’m the one who always says that remakes and new adaptations have great potential to bring out new facets in the material, and Bonjour Tristesse is definitely not an exception. But there’s nothing in the trailer that immediately makes me look up and take notice – though that’s also because I watch this and I see Seberg and Niven and I hear the Juliette Gréco song in my head. Sometimes I wish that the neuralyser from Men in Black was a real thing… though even then, I’d want to make sure to rewatch the original adaptation.
Matt: We’ve only just got around to watching the fifth season of hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and boy, is this one where I wish they’d stopped years ago. The first season is a great take on Margaret Atwood’s feminist dystopia, but in hindsight this almost seems to have been by accident, because the later seasons suggest that the showrunners don’t really understand what made the novel work so well. Instead, the series focuses on its main character – and its star – so much, it takes more and more away from what made Atwood’s Offred/June click. Instead, we get something that wants to be so much bigger and more epic and badass, and even the decisions that seem to aim at nuance and ambiguity are hamfisted. In other words, I watch this trailer for the final season and I’m excited for entirely different reasons than what hulu probably imagines.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 