We watch a lot of movie trailers here at ScreenCrave, and, as we inch closer to summer with its ever-increasing torrent of new films, we’re seeing more and more previews with each passing day. As we do so, we can’t help but notice some similarities, repetitions, and clichés among them. Here at Trailer Park, we’ll be offering a rundown of those clichés, where they come from, and which trailers share them. For our first installment, we’ll be breaking down one of summer’s most ever-present previews: The Romantic Comedy Trailer.

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We watch a lot of movie trailers here at ScreenCrave, and, as we inch closer to summer with its ever-increasing torrent of new films, we’re seeing more and more previews with each passing day.  As we do so, we can’t help but notice some similarities, repetitions, and clichés among them.  Here at Trailer Park, we’ll be offering a rundown of those clichés, where they come from, and which trailers share them.  For our first installment, we’ll be breaking down one of summer’s most ever-present previews: The Superhero Movie Trailer.

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“To the Point” is a bi-monthly column about the world of film from our own Damon Houx.  He may say things you don’t agree with–and that’s sort of the point.

Recently The Oatmeal did a cartoon about a guy wanting to watch Game of Thrones, and finding it impossible to do so unless he pirated a copy. Alas, this was printed a mere two weeks before the DVD and Blu-ray box set hit stores, leaving the cartoonist looking, well,  like an entitled prick. It’s hard to know how long this cartoon took to draw, though that’s little excuse. Piracy is wrong, end thought, but it’s a tricky subject.

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Take Sergio Leone’s widescreen spaghetti western fantasias and pour them in a blender, drop in the nihilism of Peckinpah, the genre crashing of Tarantino, and the off-kilter character beats of the brothers Cohen, blend on “high,” then dump the contents across the blasted landscape of a Kiwi desert, and you’ll have something akin to Good For Nothing.  The directorial debut of Weta Digital’s Animation Manager, Mike Wallis, the film never manages to reach the stellar heights of its influences (that said, what movie could?), but, with its tale of a Man With No Name with erectile dysfunction, it certainly honors/subverts them with aplomb.

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The big screen adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ environmentally-cautious tale “The Lorax” expands far beyond 45-pages. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, directed by Universal‘s Despicable Me duo Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda, features several new characters and about as many musical numbers. The singing fish and cotton candy looking trees are bound to make this animated feature a new favorite among kids.

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In a year with a number of great movies, The Oscars mostly went for comfort food over bold decisions, but what else is to be expected at this point? It’s hard to be upset with a voting block that has – time and time again – picked nice and safe and maybe a little political over most of the films that tend to matter. When you look back at 1999, who still thinks American Beauty was the best of that year? And so – as expected – The Artist won big.

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The time has come to say goodbye to the films of 2011. Au revoir The Artist, see you on Netflix! No more Michael Fassbender puns, or Octavia Spencer acceptance speeches. So what better way to say goodbye, and celebrate the Oscars, than by toasting Hollywood’s cream of the crop with a fun drinking game? We understand that some of these awards shows can get a bit boring, even a bit awkward, but let’s make the best of it. We’ve put together an Oscars Drinking Game that’ll be sure to entertain you all night long–just make sure you do it at home, or are paired with a designated driver. Check it out!

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The third Monday in February is upon us—that magical day when we get to hate federal employees for having a three-day weekend, otherwise known Presidents Day, when car lots hold their magically giant sales.  It’s also a day designed to memorialize first U.S. President George Washington (Lincoln unofficially gets tossed in there, too).  As such, we’d like to offer up a platter of film-viewing options for those lucky devils who get Presidents Day off—hey, if you don’t have to work today, the least you could do is watch one of these presidentially-themed flicks, right?  Check out our list below.

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Screenwriters and studio executives alike have seemed to run out of ways to tell the boy-meets-girl, or girl-meets-boy, story. Nowadays, all of the rom-coms we hear about are those between Jennifer Aniston and some bounty hunter or Katherine Heigl playing… well, a bounty hunter. With this year’s  Valentine’s Day, we decided to put a list together of romantic comedies that don’t fall into the Hollywood cliché. The movies below show that there are still unique ways to tell a love story. Here are 10 Oddball Romantic Comedies for you to check out this Valentine’s Day.

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