You Should Be Into This

Previews.

I live my life vicariously through movies. They are my great distraction. Books and art become a part of your life, where as a movie is a short yet sometimes monumental displacement for your mind. A place, I at least, can whole heartadly leave my cheap baggage at the door and step into someone else’s imaginings. Summer seems to have this very movie-going feeling about it. Perhaps my lack of interest in spending time with many people is accountable or other people’s lack of interest in spending time with me is accountable.

There is also an Americanism at play, with Summer being the movie release season prior to the awards season, therefore is a fervour and a dialogue already at play regarding movies.

The other night I saw a better than average film in a packed theatre (the only time I’m OK with being surrounded by numerous humanoids), and a chatty lady perched down next to me and in a sully of excitement chirped up and said “have I missed the trailers” I said “no”, she said “just the crappy ads then”, I said “mmhhmm” she then giggled and stole the armrest. She then proceeded to almost wet her pants whilst Meryl Streep was talking about having an affair, in a scene comprising her ethnically candid friends, with her ex-husband, Alec Baldwin in “It’s Complicated” (an imagining I can miss). The lady in question was then joined on the other side by a suave caveman who gripped her thigh like he was on a cooking show when Ben Whishaw recited some of John Keats’ famous words in the Bright Star preview.

And this got me thinking, about previews, about what wonderful little windows they are into other worlds, yes I agree these worlds can be shit but that is what’s great – you haven’t invested 2 hours, just 3 minutes. Even though they tease, you appreciate it, you feel somehow thankful and excited by what might come next and I always find myself unfulfilled (a highly underrated feeling) when the film starts.

I was then thrilled, and really the catalyst for this short piece of jibber jabber, when last night I received a DVD via Amazon.com which came from a remote vendor in Godknowswhere, and once I had put it on, to my nostalgic excitement the previews began. Just like when my addiction was VHS and even though my “tape” of Ferris Buellers Day Off has seen better days I still love the bizarre warping during the preview of Toy Soldiers with Lou Gosset Jnr before the “Main Presentation”.

I know you can now be all modern and look at previews online and I appreciate this, however the excitement (yes I am aware I am quite quote, unquote “lame”) of not knowing what comes next and being forced to endure 2-3 minutes of something unexpected is quite cathartic, and can either give you fond ponderings on what you might like to see next or at least a chance to have a good bitch about why a film with John Travolta, his hair plugs juxtaposed by Robin Williams with his outrageous forearm hair, and a plot as pointless as Antonio Stavro Gambini should not have been made.

So in length my point is… be into previews… like this one, it’s the DVD I got with trailers at the start, you won’t like it: