With Damien Chazelle directing (LaLa Land, Whiplash), it comes as little surprise that Babylon would have such an intense musical focus for its trailer, which certainly has been making the rounds at the Toronto International Film Festival. Justin Hurwitz returns as composer, helping to cement their reputation as a special collaborative partnership. Every so often, an auteur director will have longtime collaborators, especially in music; Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, James Cameron and James Horner, or Tim Burton and Danny Elfman all spring to mind as easy examples of such a phenomenon. With Babylon, Chazelle and Hurwitz surely enter such a category (as if there were any doubt).

The (not so) secret to the trailer for Disney’s Secret Invasion, the latest in a steady drumbeat of Marvel Cinematic Universe-based TV series to hit the streaming platform, is in the sound design. For the first twenty seconds or so, a monologue directed at Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is interrupted only by the occasional ominous, appropriately unidentifiable sound—such as the low-fidelity blare at 0:18 as Fury exits what looks like a spacecraft, or the diegetic closing of a huge metal door at 0:23, interacting somewhat with the dialogue (a closing door as she speaks of Fury’s avoidance). The off-screen voice of Maria Hill appears in frame at 0:30; the sounds pause for a moment as Fury delivers his first line: “yeah, well, this is different”.

Arriving on Netflix through the mind of Tim Burton, the series WEDNESDAY focuses on the titular, deadpan daughter of television’s most adoringly reviled family.

Written and directed by James Gray (Little Odessa, Ad Astra) and having premiered earlier this year at Cannes, Armageddon Time is a period drama strongly inspired by Gray’s own coming of age. It focuses on the experience of a Jewish-American child, Paul (Banks Repeta), who finds himself at odds with racist parents and educators over his friendship with Johnny (Jaylin Webb). Anthony Hopkins, meanwhile, plays the role of both Paul’s grandfather and a compassionate conscience.

Between a preponderance of franchise movies coming out in this coming holiday season, with Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in the lead, at least one film with a two-part title promises something relatively fresh. The latest Dungeons and Dragons is Paramount Pictures’ reboot of the prior trilogy (2000-2012), and promises a mix of action and comedic flair, leading off with the star power of Chris Pine, perhaps not unlike what Dwayne Johnson was able to do with the Jumanji franchise.

Among other San Diego Comic Con unveilings, the fourth instalment of the venerated John Wick series began its trailer campaign with a minute-long teaser that focuses squarely where it should: the action, with Keanu Reeves’ starring role at its centre.

Andor’s trailer definitely diverges sonically from previous Star Wars fare; not only does it follow from the recently concluded Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but it also tells a story centring on much lesser-known characters. These factors probably contribute to a musical backdrop that almost necessarily deviates from the series’ classic musical themes. While the composer for the series is Nicholas Britell (who composed the much-lauded theme for Succession, among other things), epic music composer Rok Nardin takes the reins for the trailer, using “Quantum Field”, a piece yet to be published.

As the Marvel Cinematic Universe unfolds in its Phase Four plan to reset and introduce characters, surely none of these resets resonates so much as it does for the Black Panther franchise, which faces the untimely passing of its lead, Chadwick Boseman. In light of this, the trailer opens with a cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” (1974). The song acts in a sense as a direct bridge to the audience, in recognition of what everyone knows—the mantle of Black Panther must be passed in this film. It becomes as much, if not more, a tribute to Boseman as it prepares the viewer for the coming narrative.

Directed by Jessica M. Thompson (The Light of the Moon) and starring Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, Furious 7), The Invitation looks to be fairly standard horror fare courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Black Adam is Warner Bros.’ latest foray into the DC Universe. While employing a fairly standard epic music treatment for a superhero film, the choice of licensed music does play into the plot.

The trailer leverages two musical themes from the original show’s music, originally composed by Ramin Djawadi: the main theme and the House Targaryen theme. This is evident from the outset, with its distinctive rising semitones in its melodic arc as the most conspicuous aspect of the first forty seconds. The addition of epic percussion and a large choir to the theme reinforces the greater focus on the dragons—entirely apt, as a prequel that centers on the titular beasts and the Targaryens’ historical ties to them.

The teaser trailer starts with an ambient tone, on a single note: for those who know it’s a trailer for Pinocchio, the use of “When You Wish Upon a Star” (originally by Cliff Edwards, 1939) is all but a given. The trick is when exactly to release that dose of nostalgia, and this trailer’s edit is suave in taking its time before unloading the goods. We can do a quick call back to the scene with the mechanical clocks at 0:16 (and note how the sound arrives before the image), as well as a little arpeggiated flourish from time to time, but otherwise the scene is simply awash in synth—Glow, composed by Richard Canavan of Audiomachine in collaboration with Harry Lightfoot (Top Gun: Maverick, Encanto, and others) effectively sets the scene.

The trailer for The Menu is an exercise in precision. Directed by Mark Mylod and starring Ralph Fiennes (who’s starred in a wide filmography, from The Grand Budapest Hotel to the Harry Potter movies), the horror-inspired take on conceptual dining was bound to be different, and this trailer’s design follows suit.

This trailer wastes no time in putting the music front and center, with The Weeknd’s recent (2019) hit “Blinding Lights” setting the tone: at eight seconds in, the first frame of action coincides with the downbeat of the drums, synched to the clicking of a pen. An instrumental version of the track serves to underpin a variety of dialogue. At 0:26 the music pauses for a punchline. As the music returns, some extra accent hits punctuate the scenes where Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani, as Kamala Khan) makes an appearance. A clock that appeared earlier in the trailer comes in at 0:33, where a ticking sound rises to the fore in the arrangement. For whatever reason, as we’ve noted before, ticking has become a go-to sonic element in the trailer’s musical arrangement; it could simply be for the sense of presence and vitality it suggests, or it could be that the pandemic has made us more conscious of passing time.

As we’ve noted fairly often in this blog, musical biopics have experienced considerable popularity in recent years; it stands to reason given this context that eventually, after perhaps the more obvious choices (such as Whitney Houston, Elvis, Queen, or Elton John), attention would turn to those a bit outside—the provocateurs. And among that crowd, there are vanishingly few who have commanded the limelight as consistently as Al Yankovic has.

How far can one take two musical notes? The trailer for Jurassic World: Dominion seems determined to answer that question. The B-flat / A / B-flat motif has been a part of almost every film in the franchise since its 1993 debut, but usually the melody is harmonized in a way that emphasizes wonder. Not so for this trailer: it takes about seven seconds for a note in the lower register to indicate a much more dour, even sinister mood. The melody then veers into new territory around 0:15, moving upwards as epic percussion batters the senses.

For Tom Cruise, it’s not as much a reboot or sequel as it is a return: a startling thirty-six years have passed, yet Cruise shows no sign of slowing down. For the trailer, however, the star is a sound—namely, the sweeping whoosh of fighter planes. After a six-second micro-teaser, the trailer wastes little time (re)establishing the characters, partly to induce drama (“What the hell kind of mission is this?”, a pilot intones)—but the chatter is more of a set-up to the main attraction at 0:22. A jump cut to a precious few seconds of fighter plane action, with every turn of the plane accentuated by the sonic design, steals the show.

Released (when else could it have been?) April 20th on Showtime, Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain captures the seminal Californian hip-hop group as they blazed trails—and simply blazed—through the ‘90s and beyond.

Based on the best-selling novel by Lauren Beukes, the upcoming series Shining Girls follows Kirby Mazrachi (Elizabeth Moss, who is also executive produces), a reporter based in Chicago who as a victim of assault attempts to track down her attacker. Things become more complex when she learns that a murder in the area is linked to her case.

Disney continues to use its streaming platform to expand on various corners of its vast intellectual property empire, and the latest television series in the Star Wars universe promises to answer a simple but intriguing question: just what exactly happened with Obi-Wan Kenobi in the thirty-odd years between Episodes III and IV?