Monday, May 02, 2005

Cultural ignorance or insensitivity?

I went to the movies yesterday. The movie (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) was OK. Actually, to tell the truth I was a little disappointed. I enjoyed the movie, but I loved the books and expected the movie to be as good. Plus my wife who hasn't read the books had a lot of trouble following the story, so I felt bad having dragged her along to see it. Actually the BBC mini-series from the mid-80's was way better.

Anyway, the point of the post is that a couple of trailers advertised films coming "this summer" and "next winter". This really annoys me. Are the movie studios so dummb that they don't know that the seasons in Australia are reversed, or simply too lazy to bother creating a version of the trailer in which "next summer" is changed to something like "this July" since the climate in Australia has much less distinct seasons, so Australians tend to talk in terms of months or specific holidays (so "this Christmas" would work ok).

In fact, that part of the trailer could simply have been removed, because it communicated absolutely nothing to the audience about the expected release date.

No comments: