Video Sunday: Trailer Bonanza

A little more than a year ago I conducted a Children’s Literary Salon at NYPL with a bunch of talented female graphic novelists of children’s literature (Colleen AF Venable (Hamster and Cheese), Raina Telegemeier (Smile), and Tracy White (How I Made it to Eighteen)).  It was recorded for posterity (unlike most of my Salons) and that was the last I heard of it.  Then the other day I find out from J.L. Bell on Twitter that it’s up and running on the NYPL website.  Glory be, who knew!  So if you’ve ever been curious as to what a Literary Salon consists of, have at it.

Again, this was yet another pretty darn good week for videos.  Trailers abounded, and not just for movies.  The big news of the week was that a Bill Joyce picture book had been turned into what may be the most cinematic picture book app we’ve seen yet.  It’s called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and is so gorgeous, in fact, that I’m going to do something I’ve managed to avoid until now.  I’ll buy it.  Here’s why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z38EdtRHlnA&feature=player_embedded

Thanks to Ben Rubin and Paul Schmid for the link!

On the book trailer side of things is this one for what I’m going to call the most anticipated fall children’s book of 2011, I Want My Hat Back:

And then on the actual movie world, two trailers were released this week.  One gives me hope.  The other . . . not so much.  So on the hope side of things is this new, longer Tintin trailer.  I was always convinced that Tintin could never be done well because who’s going to allow a kid like him to handle a gun onscreen?  I never counted on CGI to save the day.  I usually hate this style of animation but here . . . it kinda works because it acknowledges how cartoony it can be.  Oddly, I could only find a trailer online that had French subtitles.  Ah well.

Nice yes?  Well retain that happy feeling because the other trailer released was a bit of a disappointment.  I don’t know why Martin Scorsese got it into his head that the title “Hugo” sounds better than “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”.  Plain old “Hugo” sounds very odd indeed.  Then . . . well, see for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-NbNjPJFFI&feature=player_embedded

Here’s me beef.  First off, I may be partly put off by the music of the trailer, which sounds like it was culled from the Because of Winn-Dixie soundtrack.  Perfectly serviceable tune, but inappropriate for this kind of movie.  Second, what we appear to be looking at is a trailer that makes the film look like Home Alone set in a French train station.  Third, I never like Chloe Moretz, but that’s a personal thing.  Doesn’t help matters any that they gave her lines in this trailer that seem awfully “gee willikers”.  Now there are things I liked here as well.  Jude Law as a dad is a good idea.  They somehow found a kid to play Hugo that looks exactly like Selznick’s drawings, bags under his eyes and all (would that I could say the same for Ms. Moretz’s character).  Ben Kingsley = brilliant.  And if they refilm scenes to look like they came from old Melies films then I’ll forgive any and all sins (though Matt points out that Smashing Pumpkins already did exactly that).

In other news, recently some animation students at Kingston University were inspired to create short animated films of Salman Rushdie’s children’s novel Luka and the Fire of Life.  This one was deemed the winner:

And if you’d like to see the runners-up, Zach Ellams, Moira Lam, Tim O’Leary, Sophie Powell created this one, Frank Burgess, Angus Dick, James Lancett, Ben Tobitt, Sean Weston made this one, and John Balallo, Jun Hyoung Chun, Katie Robson, Yao Xiang made this. Thanks to The Guardian for the info.

Finally for the final off-topic video of the day, this is from the documentary Dark Girls (more info here).  This looks amazing.  I wish I could see the film itself.  The little girl at 2:17 will kill you.

Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.

Filed under: Videos