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.
Is Wes Anderson basically making the same film over and over again, with minor variations in plot, while the style, tone, cast and crew stay the same? Matt confessed this week that he sometimes thinks this is true when watching the trailers for new films by the director – but once he’s watching the actual films, it’s obvious that there is much more to Anderson than a highly recognisable style.
Meanwhile, Julie once again jumped in her Time Machine in order to take us back to a classic of the silent movie era: The Three Musketeers, starring Douglas Fairbanks. And since it’s usually difficult to find trailers for films from the 1920s, here’s something even better: the entire film, in one of the many versions available on YouTube.
And what else do we have on our weekly list of trailers?
Matt: It certainly dates me when I say that my Captain Nemo is James Mason – but after Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I’m definitely there for a more anticolonial interpretation of the Captain and his endeavours. Is the new series Nautilus more true to Jules Vernes? I can’t really say, never having read a single one of Vernes’ novels, but if you can’t have a Nemo truer to his origins than Mason fighting the evils of the East India Mercantile Company in 2025, when can you?
Matt: And then there’s… this. I was never a huge fan of Luc Besson, but I could understand his appeal. Those times are long past, though, and this new film, yet another take on Dracula that seems to be inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s version without understanding what makes its heart beat, looks bad. Obviously there can even be something appealing in a bad film – but watching this trailer, I have to ask myself: why watch this over so many other adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel? (Or, indeed, listen to our podcast from a while ago about Three Draculas?)
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 