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Wednesday 11 January 2012

Coming Soon....

I have joined the modern age. Oldest television in the world has died and I have been forced to buy a new one. Oldest television in the world was probably twenty or so years old and had lived with a variety of families before coming to stay with me. He was unique in many ways. Firstly he was obese. I had him plonked on a chest full of all dvds etc the day I moved and he’s stayed there ever since as he was too heavy to move. Four years my Royal Family board game has been trapped in that chest. Four long years. He was also a little bit of a tyrant. If he didn’t like what you were watching he would simply change channels. He particularly liked to change himself on to the AV setting which wasn’t very enjoyable for anyone. But I loved him, even as he got deafer and deafer and would randomly turn the volume up to compensate for his lack of hearing. It was when he turned in to the widest, deepest, heaviest radio that I decided we really needed to part ways. Having no picture at all does somewhat limit your televisual enjoyment.

I chose a new television. A television that was HD, wasn’t a metre or so deep and had all the channels I required already in the television (just in time too as they turn the analogue off this year). I took advantage of having a party round at mine and asked strapping lads to carry oldest television to the bin area outside the flats where it could collected by the council. Even in death oldest television was only thinking of others. Rather than make me pay the twenty pounds the council wanted to collect him he arranged for himself to be stolen from the bin area the night before they arrived. The thieves have got themselves a good thing there. Or an ancient non working television that was left out in the snow for three days so is probably liable to electrocute them.

But most excitingly of all new television is connected to the internet. I can watch things on I-player, you tube and through the wonders of technology I can stream love film direct to the television. I have been a member of love film for years. I am on the lowest plan there is. Partly because I am rubbish at making time to watch films but mainly because I kept losing the flipping discs so really only got through two or three a year. But now the possibilities are endless. I have already watched one! But what to watch? Unlimited access to films gives me the same problem as I-tunes. The possibilities are endless – but I don’t know what I want! I am overwhelmed by choice. I think this is where trailers come in.

But the trailers seem to have been made by people who haven’t seen the film. ‘The Help’ a hard hitting film about the civil rights movement in 1960s America was made to look like a flimsy rom com in the trailer. I did actually go and see it and was astonished to find the film was really good and true to the spirit of the book. The trailer however was rubbish. Happily though when I went to see ‘The Help’ I was privileged enough to see the best trailer I have ever seen (for a film I have no intention of seeing). It was ‘War Horse’. Now thanks to stage play and various reviews I know that War Horse is a stirring and moving film about the role of horses in warfare. From the trailer it looked like the film was about the forbidden love of a boy and his horse. Their intense sexual love spans countries and time. Even when he is apart he carries a photo of the horse with him. He dreams of him.

Now thankfully the people who will pay to see the film are far more intelligent and know what the film is about and may have circumnavigated the trailer. If the cinema relied on selling tickets only to the people who had seen the trailer the theatre would be filled entirely of clammy individuals feverishly stroking their My Little Ponies and whispering ‘this is our story Toffeeapple. Our love will be recognised’.

I suppose it’s one way of dodging the usual trailer problem. Putting the entire plot and all the jokes in to the preview. This is normally because the film is a dud and the only way you could be convinced to part with money to see the full length thing is to be convinced that it looks half way decent. I have seen many, many appalling films this way. Films so awful I would rather watch horse love. I was about to say that at least with new telly I don’t have to go to the cinema to watch these things but that casts me in bad light and makes the whole thing rather unsavoury.

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