Movie trailers rather deceptive

You can't believe everything you see. If you had to guess what kind of film "Man of the Year" is from the television ads and theatrical trailers, you'd probably think it was a comedy.

And the new Robin Williams vehicle does start out as a comedy, though after about 40 or so minutes, it arguably turns into a political thriller that features only a handful of humorous scenes (a story line involving possible electoral fraud dominates the film's final half).

I'm not saying the studio that released the film, Universal Pictures, is doing deceptive advertising. It was probably difficult for their trailer editors and marketing to come up with something that gives an accurate picture of the film in just one minute.

After all, even the film can't decide what it's about or what it's trying to say. That falls on the filmmaker as much as anyone.

Besides, it's not the only example of misleading advertising. The spots for the animated dud "The Ant Bully" didn't reveal anything about how dark or crass it really was.

And the goofy college comedy "Accepted" was considerably more R-rated than the trailers suggested (though the studio did cut material to get a more desirable PG-13 rating).

Also, having already seen next week's World War II drama "Flags of Our Fathers," it's not quite the rah-rah war epic that people are expecting it to be — or the one that's been advertised.

Not to be cagey, but I'll save any further commentary for my full review of Clint Eastwood's newest, which will be running on the film's opening day next Friday.

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, SUNDANCE!

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, the organization behind the Sundance Film Festival.

Redford served in an advisory capacity to the Utah/U.S. Film Festival in the late 1970s, and then his institute group took over the event in 1981, and in his words, "decided to put (the festival) in a ski resort in the middle of winter, to make it as hard to get to as possible."

All joking aside, the event has run annually in January ever since (mostly in Park City, though Salt Lake City added emphasis recently). And it's only gotten bigger over time. An estimated 53,000 filmgoers attended this year's festival.

But the institute also has year-round programs, which include filmmaker, theater and composer labs, theater presentations and special screening series. One of the latter has included screenings of previous film festival selections in cities around the country.

This weekend, filmmakers John Waters and Stanley Tucci were in Salt Lake City to introduce some of their movies (on Friday at the Tower Theatre and Saturday at the Broadway Centre Cinemas, respectively).

The screenings continue through Thursday at the Broadway, 111 E. 300 South. Information on the retrospective series is available at both www.sundance.org and www.saltlakefilmsociety.org.

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E-mail: jeff@desnews.com