Went to a special screening of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation yesterday. Holds up pretty well, even though it's more a series of scenes than a movie*, albeit very funny scenes. A few things, though...

a) Angelo Badalamenti was, let's face it, an unusual choice to score the film, especially considering the David Lynch films and European dramas that comprise most of his resume. The music for the scene of Clark putting the lights up put me in mind of the 'Rooney sneaks around' music from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (Hughes must've loved that xylophone.) Also, I could swear the 'Squirrel!' sequence was temped with Beetlejuice.

b) The whole saga of Todd and Margo just seems to smack of a low-hanging 'Trendy yuppies suck!' spiel on the part of Hughes. Still, those scenes are funny and Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are terrific.

c) I'm still thrown that Rusty is Johnny Galecki. He looked really different as a kid. Compare him to Juliette Lewis, who doesn't seem to have aged at all in 30 years.

* - It really leaps out at you the episodic nature of this film, especially in how Rusty completely doesn't take advantage of Clark flirting with Mary.

Trailer talk.

Okay. Time for me to get off the sauce.

Some time ago, I found this tweet written by a fellow Toonzone poster:

We need to bring back the "cool down" period in movie trailers -- the part where the score would fade away while the credits displayed, and then the date of release would be shown in complete silence. It let what you just saw sink in before the NEXT trailer hit you. pic.twitter.com/JQZtAzaFiR

— Peter Paltridge (@PlatypusComix) August 27, 2019

I completely agree with the tweet (I doubt I'd have faved it if I didn't) and it got me to thinking about trailers in general these days.

Not to get too 'old man yells at cloud', but I miss the announcers and the borrowed cues from previous movies*. These days, it's all fast cuts and BRAAAAAMS and dialogue clips telling the story. Granted, the latter has always been a part of trailers (the Unlawful Entry trailer was quite an effective example), but it seems to be the only tricks that editing houses know anymore.

On the subject of trailer announcers, maybe this aspect has fallen into parody, but it seems a little sad that they haven't found (or even tried to find) the next Don LaFontaine or Percy Rodrigues or Ron Gans or Hal Douglas. Maybe, it comes down to being too afraid or lazy or time-constricted to write good ad copy. Really, it shouldn't take too much time or effort to construct and you save yourself from giving too much away. (And really, let's put a moratorium on using the last shots of a movie in a trailer, even if they are removed from context so people can't tell it's the end of the movie they're watching. Give us some credit).

* - I can't begin to tell you how gobsmacked I was to hear one of Pino Donaggio's source cues from Body Double in the trailer of Fantasy Island. If I had to pick a favorite trailer, all time, that used film score cues, it'd have to be The Frighteners. In many ways, the trailer is damn near perfect: from its mix of Douglas narration and dialogue clips to the editing to the soundtrack of Silvestri's Death Becomes Her (spiritually perfect, as both films began life as "Tales from the Crypt" episodes), Elfman's Nightbreed and Horner's Casper. Almost makes you wish the film was this perfect.