Adventures in The Talkies: Super 8

On the advice of my good friend Duse, I went to see Super 8 this afternoon. Actually, I intended to see the screening of the New York Philharmonic's staging of Stephen Sondheim's Company, but apparently I am not the only one in Chicago who enjoys musical theater, because that shit was sold out.

But Super 8 was as good as Duse said, and it reminded me of the second time I saw ET (not the first, because at age 5, I announced to the entire theater that ET looked like poop): how much I believed in the kids in the story and the way they talked to (mostly teased) each other and liked how their families seemed for-real and their town seemed like my town and how terrifying the government and military seems.

I liked the score and the group of friends and Elle Fanning as the accessibly pretty girl and that Michael Hitchcock turned up on the county sheriff's team and...well, I don't know that I liked how Ron Eldard seemed like he wandered into a time machine from his Sleepers performance, but it's nice that he's still working. I also liked that the costume department put Kyle Chandler in a white tee shirt. Kudos to you fine people.

Anyway: fun times. No one sang "Ladies Who Lunch" or "Being Alive," but you can't have it all.

But the most important part of this experience was seeing the trailers before this film. I usually assume that the trailers are specifically handpicked to appeal to the individuals seeing the main feature. If that is the case, then I, the moviegoer, will be chomping at the bit to see:
1) Horrible Bosses, which looks like something I'll probably watch on Comedy Central two or three years from now on a Saturday afternoon.
2) Rise of the Planet of the Apes: you know, I don't even know how to approach this. I saw the Burton remake of Planet of the Apes in the theater, what, 15 years ago? I didn't think that was all that good, but it wasn't necessarily terrible or anything. But this trailer...I don't know what it was about it, but I had to quell waves and waves of laughter that threatened to overcome me throughout the trailer. I swear I wasn't doing my usual MST3K lite riffy thinking either. Just something about the many menacing shots of Andy Serkis in that CGI gorilla suit, and then the huge atomic monkey bomb and the line of silent monkeys like a simian version of The Birds... so weird and How Did This Get Made? looking.
3) Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon Laser Floyd Show: those robots look like tinsel balls. I have never understood, in an aesthetic sense, how and why people enjoy looking at those tinsel-bots. Also: blah blah conspiracy...why do they, and the Pirates franchise, have these weirdo elaborate plots? Pkew! Pkew! Kaboom! Bee-boo-bah-boo-beep robots! See, not so fucking hard, right? Why does Neil Armstrong have to be there? When my brothers and I played Optimus Prime GI Joe He-Man Fun Time Hour, we never included elaborate retellings of modern history.
4) Captain America: okay, they got me with this one. I was lukewarm initially--Captain America never tripped my trigger back in my cartoon-watching days--but the trailer actually made it seem very cool.
5) The Zookeeper: Jesus, Kevin James.
6) and most importantly, Real Steel: I e-mailed blahmanda my approximation of my internal reaction through the course of the trailer...

15 seconds: "What? Another The Fighter? Already?"
25 seconds: "Robots?"
26 seconds:"Robots?"
30 seconds: "This is a joke trailer right?"
35 seconds to rest of trailer: "Please let the title of this movie be Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: The Game: The Movie."

No lie and/or exaggeration: when the title credits flew onto the screen, I busted out laughing. I couldn't help it.