Kinematoscope

A look at the taglines for this week's major releases. How do studios try to hook us when they only have a sentence?

Actual tagline: Some Secrets Take Us To The Edge

That doesn't really tell me much, poster. Unless that secret that takes us to the edge is... anti-semitism? (Obligatory. It's his first movie back!)

From The Trailer: Turns out the entire tag goes thusly: Some Memories Never Fade. Some Feeling Never Change. Some Secrets Take Us To The Edge.

Also we learn this is another in the suddenly-lucrative "Don't Mess With My Daughter" subgenre after the slight sucess of last year's The Last House On The Left and the surprise smash hit Taken. Some people kill Mel-Gibson-The-Cop's daughter, and he, well, kills all of them.




Actual tagline: Did You Ever Wish For The Impossible?

Another bafflingly cryptic poster/tag combination. What's "the impossible"? To have a giant right shoulder and a teeny left one? For your fingernails to be edible? Fitting five people in an old-school mini-cooper?

From The Trailer: Again, no additional motto.

But we do discover that Kristen Bell is unlucky in love, and needs a high concept rom-com to find it! Spoiler Alert: she falls in love and it ends happily and our memories of Veronica Mars die just a little.

A look at the taglines for this week's major releases. How do studios try to hook us when they only have a sentence?

Actual tagline: Don't hope for a miracle. Make one

Miracles by definition are something you can only hope for, unless you happen to believe in a deity (or so I hear). Then you can pray to said deity, or maybe blackmail it, until the miracle is delivered.

From The Trailer: They Had Everything To Lose. So They Risked It All. (What?)




Actual tagline: When The Last Angel Falls... The Fight For Mankind Begins.

Is it religious week? It's nice to see Paul Bettany paying his bills, but why would an angel need a semi-automatic? And this is just me thinking out loud but why would an angel have a bellybutton, since he/she/it would not be born of woman?

From The Trailer: No more slogans there, but I bet there's a fun drinking game in this film if you do a shot every time Bettany uses his gravelly badass voice and says Angels.




Actual tagline: The Tooth Hurts.

OR: You Can't Handle The Tooth.

Rejcted ideas for these posters, I'm sure: The Tooth About Cats And Dogs. An Inconvenient Tooth. We Hold These Tooths To Be Self-Evident. and so on.

Sidenote: I wonder if in the future, this will lead to some hilarious Netflix queue mix-ups with the straight-to-DVD horror movie of the same name.

A look at the taglines for this week's major releases. How do studios try to hook us when they only have a sentence?

No joke, internets. One of the resolutions I made this year was to not miss a single week of this feature, since it's breezy to write and fun, and then I got bronchitis and missed the very first week. So we start 2010 with a double installment of last Friday's wide releases and this week's.

Actual tagline: Anna planned to propose to her boyfriend on February 29th. This is not her boyfriend.

What a reversal, poster! You should just keep it going: This is not Anna. This is not a movie poster. You are not yourself. NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS!

From the trailer: When life surprises you... don't be afraid to take a LEAP of faith.

Also feel free to take a bunch of pratfalls, apparently. Quick googling reveals the "women can propose on leap day" legend to be a real thing (or a real legend, anyway). I wonder if the movie will adhere to all of the traditions supposedly involved, like the woman having to wear a scarlet flannel petticoat while proposing (and the man paying her a forfeit for turning her down, like a silk gown or 100 pounds).




Actual tagline: He Wasn't a Rebel Until He Found His Cause.

Raise your hand if you are in the target demographic for this Michael Cera vehicle and have seen Rebel Without A Cause. No one? Do you know who stars in it? No? And yet the title has survived in the pop consciousness enough for this tagline to make sense. Go figure.




Actual tagline: In 2019, the most precious natural resource... is us.

That's not proper grammar, is it? One would never say "In 2019, us is the most precious natural resource." Also this poster seems to want me to think that this movie is like The Matrix, but... blue.

From the trailer: This Winter, the battle between Immortality and Humanity.. IS ON.



Actual tagline: Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it.

Presumably, "it" is the titular book. Without any other context, I assume this is some sort of post-apocalyptic librarian movie.




Actual tagline: Part spy, part babysitter, all hero.

A difficult choice between that and the equally lame Spying is easy, babysitting is hard. Is Jackie Chan officially only able to get children as costars now? What happened to B-Movie actresses like Claire Forlani and Jennifer Love-Hewitt? Were they deterred by his joints making ungodly noises while still performing his own stunts (he's 55)?

I do love how the poster keeps going- still not sold? How about Billy Ray Cyrus! And George Lopez! Will that do it?

From the trailer: There was something that was all like "Bob Ho has dethroned dictators, but he's about to face his greatest challenge yet... White children!" or something but I was too busy clenching my teeth to notice. Cyrus and Lopez are apparently worse actors than Jackie Chan, and a pig is fed bacon. Thought you should know.




Actual tagline: The story of a life and everything that came after...

More accurately, a death and everything that came after. I'm pretty grateful that this movie has no Oscar potential at all, because now I won't feel obligated to see it at all. Murder makes people sad? You don't say.