Don't judge a movie...

The Prestige was fantastic, a fine example of a movie matching the tone of its trailer. I saw TV promos for Lucky Number Slevin that touted it as a thriller even though most teasers and trailers for the movie made it clear it was a dark comedy.

There's something else that bugs me about movie distribution. Have you ever browsed a video rental store and noticed striking similarities between video covers? I'm not sure which came first, but the covers for the home video releases of Highball and Swingers are a good example; one is obviously ripping off the other. I'm sad to admit that when I see a lesser-known movie with a cover design resembling one from another more popular movie, it turns me off from wanting to see that lesser-known film, even though the covers of both films are almost definitely designed by advertising companies or an artistic arm of the distributor. I shouldn't let the zeal of marketing people influence my decision to watch the movie, a decision which should be based on the merit of the movie itself and the people who produced it. I just can't help it; cheesy cover-ripoffs make me lose respect for a movie.

Speaking of The Prestige: I loved it, but will people please stop heralding Christopher Nolan as the second coming of Christ in filmmaking? He's made four great movies in the last six years but his style needs a lot of work. The fight scenes in Batman Begins were too muddled. Filmmakers should adhere to two tenets: the camera doesn't always need to be zoomed in so far, and most scenes don't need a musical score. Less is more, people. Less is more.

One last note: this Blogger text editor is a pain in my ass, probably because it's editing the HTML formatting on the text as I type it and it's getting the tags all screwed up. It's funny how I complain about Internet nuisances even though the Internet makes finding information 100 times easier than it was a decade ago.