The full trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is finally here in all its Quicktime glory. For now, it’s exclusively at Moviefone, but you can see it in theaters starting on Friday. It should be attached to Madagascar most places.
Charlie
Official Charlie site updated
A helpful reader named Ethan pointed out that the official site for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been updated with new graphics and photos.
Unfortunately, a quick mousing-around reveals that way too much of it is still “coming soon.” But at least there are now placeholders for some crucial omissions, such as filmmaker bios (ahem) and the upcoming full trailer — which should be out by the end of the month.
The MPAA logo at the bottom of the main screen shows that Charlie has been rated PG, for “quirky situations, action and mild language.” The rating is news to me, since I didn’t think we’d even submitted for a rating yet. But PG is where we should be. The movie is goofy, but never terrifying. Any kid who can watch the Harry Potter movies can safely see Charlie.
Buy clothes Charlie Bucket couldn’t afford
My best-dressed friend Jen sent me a link to Kitson, which has started selling a line of exclusive, and expensive, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-related merchandise.
I certainly don’t lay any claim to the idea of Golden Tickets or t-shirts, but I was a little giddy to see that three of the slogan shirts feature dialogue from the script (as opposed to Roald Dahl’s book, or the original movie). The shirts in question are:
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak American.” (Spoken by Mr. Salt.)
“Chewing gum is really gross. Chewing gum I hate the most.” (Spoken by Willy Wonka.)
and
“I love de Chocolate!” (Spoken by Augustus Gloop.)
Okay, the third one is a bit of a stretch, because Augustus says similar things in every version of the story. So I’ll just claim the “de,” since I wrote out his German accent. The fourth slogan shirt, “There’s no know where they’re going”, is also in the script, but it comes directly from Chapter 18 of Dahl’s book.
Obviously, there will be a ton of Charlie-related products over the next few months, so I won’t point out every promotion. And to anticipate the first question in the comments section, no, the screenwriter doesn’t get any piece of the merchandise.
But if Kitson wants to send me a t-shirt or two, I’ll take a men’s large. Not XL. L. Cheers.
Annoying Trend Watch: Technorati spam blogs
I use a Technorati watchlist to keep track of mentions of me, this site, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Technorati follows blogs, so it’s a nice way to gauge what topics people find interesting enough to write about. For instance, teenage girls tend to point out that “JohNny DePP iz SOOOOO HOOTTTTT!”
Over the last two weeks, I’ve noticed a disconcerting rise in the number of faux-blogs. They look like blogs, and they’re hosted on genuine sites like Blogspot. But they have no actual content, just a bunch of gibberish targeting a certain term, like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” I assume they’re computer-generated. Here’s an example.
So why would anyone make a useless blog like this? Presumably, to drive traffic to other sites. The left-hand column on the example blog has links to various other sites, each of which either sells something, or has Google ads which make money on a pay-per-click basis.
It’s really annoying, because up until now, Technorati has been a terrific clutter-buster. I don’t know if the spam-blog problem is readily fixable. Unlike Google, which has algorithms to help it weed out junk sites, I think Technorati basically relies on self-reporting. The system would need to find a way to detect which blogs are real, and which ones are fake. That’s a tall order.