Good movie news in 2012: The return of the "movie".

I've written a bit about this over the last couple years, but this weekend is surely as shining an example as anything about how the mainstream film landscape has somewhat self-corrected.  This weekend sees the release of four wide releases.  We have two R-rated films, one a vulgar (but surprisingly smart) comedy about a talking bear and the other a $5 million indie dramedy about male strippers directing by one of our most successful experimental filmmakers.  We've got a bawdy PG-13 comedy aimed primarily at African-American audiences and a PG-13 star-driven drama.  Ted, Magic Mike, Madea's Witness Protection, and People Like Us are all coming out tomorrow in wide release.  What we've seen over the last year or so and what we will continue to see throughout the remainder of 2012 is the return of what can only be called the old-fashioned 'movie'.  In a time when it seems that every week brings another $150 million male-driven action tentpole based on a comic book or action figure series, a glance at the release schedule shows something very different.  Amid the big-budget animated films (which I generally like), the mega-budget comic book films (which are sometimes very good) and the various remakes and reboots, there exists a plurality of old-school, often star-driven dramas, comedies, and often adult-skewed fare being released by major studios on thousands of screens every weekend.  It seems that Hollywood is getting the message that one cannot subsist on a diet of nothing but tentpoles.

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby gets a truly hilarious trailer.

Back in 2004, I cut a series of fake trailers for my personal amusement.  My favorite of these was a trailer I cut for Pay It Forward which sold the film as a tense and violent thriller ("On October 18th... no good deed goes unpunished!").  I used the music from the film and footage completely from the movie, only cheating by using the Backdraft theme for a closing action montage.  If I can find a copy of the thing, I'll put it on the site eventually.  It's choppy by today's standards, but this was before the whole 'satirical trailer mash' was a thing.   This Great Gatsby trailer feels like the same kind of thing, attempting to sell a somewhat reserved adult romantic drama as an uber-glitzy and action-packed melodrama.  Of course, since Baz Luhrmann's at the helm, that's probably not a false sell.  Depending on your feelings regarding the original novel and/or your thoughts about Luhrmann, that may be a good or a bad thing.  I liked the novel when I read it once in twelve grade, finding it a fine deconstruction of the whole 'girl who got away' myth that still dominates romantic melodrama.  But if Luhrmann wants to play around with it, have at it.