As a cornerstone of modern literature, it’s oddly appropriate that the Man Who Killed Quioxote (directed by Terry Gilliam—Monty Python; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) extends the mythos that gave us the word quixotic by adapting its story for today’s world. It’s a delightfully meta concept: here we have an old Spanish shoemaker (Jonathan Pryce) who starred as Don Quixote in a student film a decade prior; now, he believes he is Don Quixote. The original novel was predicated on the idea of a character under the illusion that he could inhabit a medieval, chivalrous character. It’s a concept reminiscent of films like Synechdoche, New York (2008), leaning into the novelty of its premise with the promise of delivering in the details of its execution.

It’s a simple concept, well executed: what if no one had heard of the Beatles, and their songs were reintroduced—some 49 years after their breakup in 1970? For any musician given the opportunity, it’s both a fantasy come true and an absurd moral quandary, and that’s the hypothetical terrain that Yesterday explores head-first. 

While we are currently between major trailer seasons – not quite close enough to summer blockbusters, too far away from the holidays – and in the midst of awards, the Super Bowl always yields a new crop of audiovisual advertising to pour over. Leading this draft comes Shaft, a remake/sequel of the 1971 film of the same name and its 2000 reboot.

The Guild of Music Supervisors recently announced their nominees for their 9th annual awards. Naturally, we’re particularly interested in the “Trailers & Promos” category. 

Although Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may be just making its way out of theatres as of this writing, the Marvel train waits for no one, and we’re already being promised another swinging foray this summer with Spider-Man: Far From Home. 

Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1968 classic “Crimson and Clover” is the song of the day here, and you can already guess which lyrics are being highlighted: as the character (Natasha Lyonne, of Orange is the New Black fame) falls down the stairs to an untimely demise or recklessly staggers into oncoming traffic, the words “over and over” softly drift over her lifeless body as the day is made to repeat once again.

In the aftermath of the influx of holiday season trailers and into the awards show season, we thought it an opportune time to refocus on what’s happening on the small screen. Among the most musically interesting of recent TV trailers is certainly the latest foray promoting the next season for Star Trek: Discovery. This trailer features a constantly shifting and building arrangement that arrives at a satisfying conclusion in its final moments.

It’s that time of year again: 2018 yielded a strong cast of trailers across genres, budgets, and styles. Now for our second year running, here are a few trailers that we felt stood head and shoulders above the rest this year, with a special focus, of course, on the soundtrack.

This sequel to Shaun the Sheep (2015) comes from Aardman, the studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. Known for its visually arresting stop-motion style, Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon promises, delightfully, more of the same.

Directed by Brad Corbet, Vox Lux is a film that in some ways serves as a good chaser to Lady Gaga-lead A Star is Born. Vox Lux follows Celeste in her initial rise to fame in the way of tragedy as a teenager, and subsequently her struggles with her own teenager daughter as she juggles this responsibility and maintaining her career as a relatively older popular music performer.

Based on a novel by Ryu Murakami (not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, of 1Q84 fame) and directed by Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of my Mother, 2016), Piercing (2019) is a psychological thriller hinging on a night between Reed (Christopher Abbott) and Jackie (Mia Wasikowska). Ostensibly on a business trip, Reed leaves his family with a briefcase packed with tools for murder; to his mind, the cure to excise his impulse for violence is to carry out the deed. Jackie, a call girl, is not taken so easily however, and the dynamic veers wildly between lasciviousness and outright violence. 

In previous blog posts and on Twitter, we’ve covered the unintentional lack of backing music for a The Mummy reboot trailer, and as an intentional artistic choice in the trailer for horror film A Quiet Place. We said it might be “both a first and only” occurrence for the blog, and today that’s no longer true – the second film to embrace its total lack of tonality, however, could not be more different in tone.

You may have expected Ryan Reynolds to next take up share in your mind with the nigh-inevitable Deadpool 3 – yet, early Christmas miracles do come true. While it’s not the Danny Devito starring role that fans have been clamouring for, this has been one of the most-discussed and intriguingly unusual choices in animated voice acting in recent memory.

Laika Studios (Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings) returns with its signature stop-motion animated style with Missing Link, imagining if Bigfoot were decided more attuned to modernity than any of us might think.

The latest from from the Coen Brothers is part of a Western anthology coming to Netflix. Twenty-five years in, the Brothers’ irreverent wit and playful humour shows no signs of abating. Premiering at the Venice International Film Festival, the second trailer for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs recently released. The first episode in the six-fold series, it promises to be a mix of comedy and violence, not unlike the previous Coen classic Burn After Reading, or more directly, other Coen takes on the Western True Grit (2010) and, of course, No Country for Old Men (2007). With star power like James Franco and Tom Waits in the wings, Buster Scruggs and the attendant anthology promise to follow well in the previous Westerns’ footsteps.

“The Best of Enemies” sees civil rights activist Ann Atwater go up against noted Ku Klux Klan member C. P. Ellis on the issue of school integration – and the pervasive sonic theme here is, indeed, integration. At the beginning of the trailer, for example, the sound of a distant school bell is suddenly engulfed by a burning flame; this bell exact as a perfect sound bridge and segue as it morphs into the sound of a ringing landline telephone. Similarly, this trailer employs a very subtle mashup that in some sense embodies the racial relations that the film promises to explore.