Both times I’ve seen No Country for Old Men in the theater, this trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood has been attached. It is the best trailer I’ve ever seen.
It took me a while to find this on YouTube–when I looked after the first time I saw NCfOM I couldn’t find it at all. I truly hope it’s not one of those “you need to see it on the big screen” deals. But through a combination of the editing, Daniel Day-Lewis’s manically committed performance (evident even in several-second snippets), Jonny Greenwood’s preposterously ominous score, and the best tease of a title since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it’s just about the most frightening trailer imaginable. I love it so.
By the way, the second best trailer I’ve ever seen is this:
What are your favorite trailers? Please post links if you’ve got ’em.
The Casshern trailer was about 1500 times better than the movie turned out to be:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fr10hFLscGA
That’s the case with a lot of effects-heavy movies, because even the dumbest can probably string together two minutes’ worth of stunning visuals and swanky art direction. Cases in point for me include Dragon Wars (though the action sequences at least lived up to the trailer): http://youtube.com/watch?v=YnQXvQ1R4gg
And IIRC, the trailer for Pearl Harbor actually made me tear up: http://youtube.com/watch?v=PIPBtP02yKc