Judging a Book By Its Cover, a Film by its Title, a Pork Chop by its Wrapper
I find that you can rarely go wrong in life when you judge books by their covers. Anything featuring a detail from a classical work of art: avoid. Anything featuring space, planets, spaceships, fantastic vistas: buy immediately. Anything with embossed gold lettering: avoid. Anything with a dragon: hide.
And so on.
I do the same with movies, based on their titles. The Constant Gardener, for example, sounds like it might be something to do with Rosemary and Thyme, that cutting-edge detective series on ITV1. It sounds like something my mum might like, if she was still alive. It sounds like a Radio 4-listening, Late Review-watching, Radio Times Free Previewing wet dream
But I'm probably all wrong about it (it's my hobby), because it's based on a Le Carré thing, which I didn't know until just now. So it might be quite good, or not, but the title puts me off, and the thought that I might meet people like my mother if I went to see it.
I was trying to think of other films you might think are rubbish, based on their titles, but which turn out to be quite good.
I thought The Shipping News would be tripe, and the fact that it had that old ham Kevin Spacey in it made me even more sure, but I quite enjoyed it really. Andrew keeps lending me films that I quite enjoy, though I can't remember what any of them are called, or what the actors are called.
But anything with "Warrior" or "Sword" in the title: it's going to be rubbish, isn't it?
And so on.
I do the same with movies, based on their titles. The Constant Gardener, for example, sounds like it might be something to do with Rosemary and Thyme, that cutting-edge detective series on ITV1. It sounds like something my mum might like, if she was still alive. It sounds like a Radio 4-listening, Late Review-watching, Radio Times Free Previewing wet dream
But I'm probably all wrong about it (it's my hobby), because it's based on a Le Carré thing, which I didn't know until just now. So it might be quite good, or not, but the title puts me off, and the thought that I might meet people like my mother if I went to see it.
I was trying to think of other films you might think are rubbish, based on their titles, but which turn out to be quite good.
I thought The Shipping News would be tripe, and the fact that it had that old ham Kevin Spacey in it made me even more sure, but I quite enjoyed it really. Andrew keeps lending me films that I quite enjoy, though I can't remember what any of them are called, or what the actors are called.
But anything with "Warrior" or "Sword" in the title: it's going to be rubbish, isn't it?
posted by Anonymous at
Thursday, January 19, 2006
2 Comments:
I read this recently, which made me chuckle - 'DO judge a book by its cover - it's been specially designed to attract a certain audience, so you'll pretty much know whether you'll like it or not...."
By
Anna Lowman (annawaits), at 10:44 am
I think it depends on your taste really. What one person is drawn to, another avoids like the plague. the worst type of 'wrapper' is the movie trailer: boy, you can make any old crapola look good for a trailer-length period. Sometimes you can even make a very long good trailer: the usual final effect of this is that when you see the film you know they put EVERY second of good footage into the trailer.
Bookwise, titles will intrigue me too, but you're probably right about covers. There are a lot of covers similar to each other my collection (especially for fiction: does non-fiction count for covers...? or titles?)
By
Lisa Rullsenberg, at 2:58 am
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