Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Movie taglines of the Day

One of my favorite past-times is leafing through the trades and the hundreds of ads for schlocky movies that will never be seen in the US. Through a combination of desperation and poor English, movie producers and publicists manage to come up with some hilarious movie titles and taglines. Here are some of the best from the first batch of ads:

I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK
(Actually, this will come to the US since it's by the director of "Oldboy.")

GRAMERA THE BRAVE
"The Never Changing Hero! Our Gramera!"
(picture a giant turtle for this Japanese entry)

18 MINUTES
"Those who have loved or are loved will not walk in darkness." -- Plato

(Surely it's the only movie in history to use a quote from Plato as its tagline. But is it Plato? Sure doesn't sound like him and it does echo certain Biblical passages. Did they use an actual quote from Plato or just make it up?)

ISABELLA
"Is she a one-nighter or is she his daughter?"

The most explanatory tagline:

TYPHOON 101
"Four supernaturally powered young men must fight to save the city of Tapei from disappearing forever in a devastating typhoon summoned by a vengeful demon."

And the most unnecessary:

THE LONGEST NIGHT IN SHANGHAI
"A romantic love story set in the bustle of a large Asian city, namely Shanghai."

2 comments:

priv8pete said...

The closest I could come to that "quote" was:

"Would not any one who was himself of a noble and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt of sailors to which good manners were unknown-he would certainly never have admitted the justice of our censure?"

And this is credited to Socrates. Sounds like pure fiction to me.

Anonymous said...

ISABELLA
"Is she a one-nighter or is she his daughter?"


As Joey Tribbiani would say, "Ew. Ew, ew, ew."