Nearly a month ago, the trailer for the next highly anticipated film David Fincher film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button debuted before the fourth Indiana Jones movie on May 23rd. Now Fincher and Paramount Pictures have officially launched the teaser trailer today. For contemporary movie marketing, this is as good as it gets.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008) Teaser

My first viewing of the trailer on the big screen was kind of a transcendent experience. Maybe greater than the one for The Dark Knight coming July 18th. Hell, it’s on par with There Will Be Blood from last year.

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) Trailer

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007) Trailer

The angelic and somber score accompanying the teaser of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button comes from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals – Aquarium sans the choir. It has been used in Terrance Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) and a few Ren and Stimpy cartoons. Except for the odd line of dialogue that bookends the teaser, the music is dominant like a silent picture. It reminds me of the eerie, dialogue-free trailer for Dark City.

DARK CITY (1998) Trailer

Best of all, the David Fincher teaser doesn’t overstay its welcome clocking in at one minute and forty-six seconds. Too many trailers go to the trouble of cramming in every cool visual along with the final confrontation into two minutes and forty seconds. Over-eagerness does not suit a seducer.

The F. Scott Fitzgerald short story makes for a compelling hour’s read. It draws parallels to Daniel Keyes’ Flowers For Algernon. A baby is born wrinkled, decrepit and frighteningly able to talk candidly about the indignity of being given a milk bottle. As the time passes, Benjamin Button (nearly named Methuselah, referring to the son of Noah who reached the age of 969 years old) must contend with living a unique life of regressing to youth both psychically and mentally. He is always withheld from the conventional human experience, but strives for it anyways.

Within Fincher’s command after Zodiac (2007), his most successful feature, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could become an instant classic. So long as Benjamin Button himself is a tragic character. It would be terrible if the filmmakers screwed it up with playing safe and happy with such a volatile and melancholy premise.

The film stars Brad Pitt (12 Monkeys, 1995), Cate Blanchett (The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1999), Tilda Swinton (Young Adam, 2003), Julia Ormond (The Baby of Macon, 1993), Elias Koteas (The Thin Red Line, 1998), Jason Flemyng (From Hell, 2001), and Taraji P. Henson (Hustle and Flow, 2005)

Christmas is looking very promising this year.

BAGHEAD (2008) Trailer

This is a movie that excites me – it could be very good or very bad – there’s no middle ground here. Even the poster is arresting for its mundanity, repulsion, eeriness and quirkiness. I’ve always found paperbags to be rather ominous.

What gives me hope is that the premise of a half-naked man with a eye-holed paperbag over his head will not be delivered as a straight-up horror film. No, the Duplass Brothers are too smart for that. Baghead is described by the filmmakers as being “funny, truthful, (and) endearing”, which makes it much scarier. Usually the combination of comedy and horror looks good on paper but is a trial to execute successfully as a film. It requires a deft touch like a Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, 1999) or a Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001).

Here’s the skinny: A bunch of would-be actors retreat to a cabin in the Necronomicon-filled woods to write an indie film over the weekend. The film has a light-touch when focused on the comradery and the wavering prospect of romance between friends. The proverbial bag-headed boogeyman that is penned by our heroes in their script materializes as a very human and intimate threat. This reminds me of the urban legend turned real in the underrated Bernard Rose (Paperhouse, 1988) film Candyman (1992).

From Mark and Larry Duplass, Baghead comes right after their whimsical The Puffy Chair (2005), which is on my To-See List after Jane Champion’s An Angel At My Table (1990).

Baghead will be shown in Austin, Texas June 13th. A limited release is still pending.

The typographer in me is doing jumping-jacks over this Bell-font teaser poster for Oliver Stone’s W. I hope to see them lined up across the marquee walls soon. The Bushisms are also a great send up of the commander in thief.

Do you think this type of all-type movie advertisement sheet could set a trend for future movie posters? No pictures, but with more font-laced words dedicated to more than just the film’s title and a tag line.

Extra

You can download the font regularly used for movie poster credits here.

Distributed by QED International and Lionsgate Films, Oliver Stone’s W. is starring Josh Brolin – George W. Bush (In the Valley of Elah, 2007), Elizabeth Banks – Laura Bush (Catch Me If You Can, 2002), James Cromwell – George H.W. Bush (The General’s Daughter, 1999), Ellen Burstyn – Barbara Bush (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974), Thandie Newton – Condoleezza Rice (Flirting, 1991), Jeffrey Wright – Colin Powell (Syriana, 2005), Scott Glenn – Donald Rumsfeld (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991), Toby Jones – Karl Rove (Nightwatching, 2007) Ioan Gruffud – Tony Blair (Black Hawk Down, 2001), and Richard Dreyfuss – Dick Cheney (Jaws, 1975) will be released this October.

Early Sunday morning, a fire broke out at the Universal Studios lot in Los Angeles, California. The L.A. Fire Department has released over 300 firefighters to contain it, three of which have been reported injured. The King Kong Exhibit at the Universal Theme Park is badly damaged. The Park was closed for the whole day, leaving over 20,000 visitors locked out. Buildings were left hollowed and gutted by the raging inferno. Several of the original sets for renowned movies such as the courthouse exterior from Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future (1985) have been destroyed as well as the sets for the Clint Eastwood film The Changeling (2008), which debuted at Cannes early last month.

A video of the disaster can be seen at the Florida Local 10 website.

This tragedy caused by force of nature brings to mind the sad 2006 ruination of Nick Park’s Aardman Studios that burned down its sets, props, and painstakingly hand-done clay models for the wonderful Wallace and Gromit (1989 – 2002) short films and Chicken Run (2000).

Universal Pictures’ most valued video archive has been scathed. Also burnt to the ground was a warehouse containing vaults of over 40,000 original and master versions of old Universal films. There is a great and crucial blessing that the original negatives of Universal’s history of film was located far away from the erupting fire. The damaged video stock can be replaced. The cause of the fire is still unconfirmed, but a faulty electrical error by a working sound stage for a commercial shoot over the weekend is suspect.

NBC Universal President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Meyer was reported saying that “We have duplicates of everything. Nothing is lost forever.” Thankfully a number of sets including the back lot used for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Norman Bates’ house, is still standing. Millions of dollars have been lost, but not many people were hurt. This is the second of two massive fires at the studio within the last two decades, the first was caused by arson in 1990.

Get ready for a Palahniuk Punch. After the subversive head bunt of the David Fincher cinematic satire, Fight Club (1999), a new adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Choke is coming to theaters this Fall. First time writer-director of Choke, winner of the Sundance Special Jury Price, is character actor Clark Gregg from David Mamet’s Spartan (2004), and the wonderful Nicole Holofcener comedy-drama Lovely and Amazing (2001), which stars Brenda Blethyn, Catherine Keener and love-goddess Emily Mortimer.

Choke looks like a very dark comedy this side of Neil Labute’s In The Company of Men (1997) stars Sam Rockwell (Joshua, 2007) as a dysfunctional sex addict trying to find his place in the world and in his mother’s physician (Kelly Macdonald, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, 2006). Anjelica Huston (The Darjeeling Limited, 2007) plays mom who must be so proud! I hope this angry satire takes aim at all the right targets… and hits hard.