Understand, The Movie Orgy isn’t a proper movie but an exercise in extreme film geekdom, as Dante and Davison spliced 16mm trailers, clips, newsreel footage, bloopers and old TV shows together to form a semi-linear commentary on/reaction against the time. Over the years, the project has earned a borderline apocryphal reputation, called by some the “Rosetta Stone” of Dante’s career — a glimpse deep into the filmmaker’s id — and it’s a testament to the city’s cult film scene that so many stayed for the entire show. (Full report after the jump.)

Two features, The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Speed Crazy, serve as the movie’s backbone, with Dante cutting out the boring parts and returning every so often to provide another scene (he also samples heavily from Beginning of the End, The Giant Gila Monster and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers — all Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorites). Relying on those clips to supply some semblance of forward motion, he then feels free to do loop-de-loops with other footage.

Savvy splices allow adjacent pieces of footage to comment on one another, as when film noir gangsters crack wise during Nixon’s famous Checkers speech or an informational dog-training strip cuts to a U.S. Marine recruitment video. In other cases, Dante collapses entire features into a single scene, as with an episode of Desilu’s Life & Legend of Wyatt Earp and the canine-come-home drama The Return of Rusty, or inserts subliminal belly dancing footage into commercials for kids’ products. For the grand finale, he orchestrates the explosive climaxes of at least half a dozen different B movies into a single apocalyptic shootout. (If I ever get another chance to see it, I’ll count how many times the words “The End” appear on screen. Dozens.)

These days, anyone with iMovie and a home computer can attempt a feat of this nature, but few have the sense of humor or savvy to draw from such varied sources. In his introduction last night, Dante feared the movie might seem overly dated, but this sort of ironic postmodern commentary is more popular now than ever (a handful of patently racist and religious-themed clips pack an even stronger punch in these politically correct times). And though Dante encouraged the crowd to saunter in and out at will, assuring them they wouldn’t miss anything, he’s assembled it in such a way that gags build on earlier clips (every Speed Crazy clip, for example, features racing maniac Nick Barrow offering a variation on the line, “Don’t crowd me, Joe” — a line Paul Rudd would repeat decades later in Dante’s Runaway Daughters).

If only every director sat down to create such a pastiche of their favorite footage, we’d have a better idea of their influences. The next best thing is series like Dante’s Inferno, where fans can watch entire features (although, if Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse bonanza was any indication, the full-length movies can seriously test an audience’s stamina). Both programs — as well as lineups hosted by Eli Roth and Edgar Wright — were the brainchild of the New Beverly Cinema, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in May. The following month, Diablo Cody picks her favorite hipster flicks.

"No motion picture has ever offered more entertainment!" In the early days of movie advertising, trailers announced virtually every upcoming feature with shameless hyperbole. Now (to co-opt the most overused word in trailer-speak), one docu exposes the artistry behind the advertising: Michael J. Shapiro's "Coming Attractions: The History of the Movie Trailer" packages a talking-heads overview with dozens of the most original and exciting trailers ever made. Unresolved legal clearances may limit pic to educational uses (pic preemed last week at UCLA), but popular demand could warrant further exposure.

Divided into two parts, "Coming Attractions" devotes its first hour to the classical era of movie advertising, using an unfortunate dry academic approach. Things pick up in the second half as a new wave of marketing minds obliterate the National Screen Service's long-stagnant monopoly, with many of the survivors providing firsthand accounts of the revolution.

Strategy shifted radically in 1955, when designer Saul Bass suggested the notion of key art, in which a single emblematic image (such as his trademark visual treatment for "The Man With the Golden Arm") could brand an entire campaign. Eight years later, Stanley Kubrick hired commercial director Pablo Ferro to cut his "Dr. Strangelove" trailer, bringing the Madison Avenue aesthetic to prestige projects.

But the true innovator of movie trailers -- and the raison d'etre for this retrospective -- was Andrew Kuehn, a visionary who created the dynamic style still found in trailers today: rapid cuts, active graphics and new voices (it was Kuehn who gave the young James Earl Jones a job narrating his landmark "Night of the Iguana" trailer).

Doc touches on many of the industry's current concerns -- testing, double-vending and the Internet -- and even addresses the fundamental question of whether trailers ever accurately represent a picture. One small but significant oversight is the degree to which Kuehn and his contemporaries' avant-garde structure and pacing changed not only the marketing business, but also Hollywood storytelling in much the same way that MTV and music-videos shook things up in the '80s.

Narrated by Robert Osborne, presentation emphasizes educational value over entertainment, making minimal attempt to approximate the energy of its subject. Still, exceptional coverage and well-chosen examples should send auds scrambling back to their DVDs, where trailers are at long last being preserved and archived, with a newfound respect.

Trailers like this never work on the internet. They start by prentending to be teasers for other hotly anticipated summer blockbusters, but because you already know what you're getting when you click, the joke's over before it begins. But since I'm personally more excited about The Simpsons Movie than Superman Returns, let's just imagine we're sitting in the dark before Ice Age: The Meltdown (for $70 million worth of ticket buyers out there, you won't have to pretend)...

Doh! It's Homer Simpson sitting on the couch in a super-tight Superman T and—what else?$#8212;his tighty-whities (sans beer, surprisingly, since that flies on TV but was probably deemed inappropriate for a G-rated teaser trailer).

Blink. "I forgot what I was supposed to say," Homer groans, and the crowd goes wild. The announcer drops the date (July 27, 2007) along with the movie's actual way-ugly logo, and Homer adds, "Uh-oh, we'd better get started."

At first, it seems the teaser has told us nothing. On the contrary, it has given us everything we needed to know so far (even the follow-up story in Variety has nothing to add): The Simpsons Movie is coming and we have just 16 months to wait.

As Mr. Burns hisses over the final screen, "Excellent."

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A bunch of Central Park Zoo animals (a lion, a giraffe and so on) break out of captivity and wreak havoc in the big city. No, it's not a Madagascar sequel. It's the latest offering from Disney's animation department, The Wild, and if it sounds suspiciously familiar, this isn't the first time that's happened between the folks at Disney and DreamWorks: Think A Bug's Life vs. Antz or Finding Nemo vs. Shark Tale.

"The Version Children Love." Uh-huh.

So where did this movie come from? It wasn't anywhere to be found on Disney's earlier 2006 release schedule (below), though the level of animated detail suggests that they've been working on it for a while. And if you can get past the obvious similarities to Madagascar, maybe there's some charm to be found in another zoo-break scenario.

For starters, The Wild introduces a bunch of new animals: a squirrel, a snake, a koala, two undercover chameleons and a herd of break-dancing wildebeasts (on a separate note, just consider how far CG animation has come since the days of The Lion King's wildebeast stampede). Plus, the animation looks completely different, with much greater pains taken on Disney's part to make the animals, trees and other surroundings look realistic (though I prefer the Tex Avery-inspired stylization of Madagascar, personally). Maybe kids won't mind the fact that they've been down this road before.

I've had more than a year to get used to it (since the first glimpses of Pixar's next feature started popping up on the web), and I'm still skeptical. Could Cars be Pixar's first misstep? Toys, bugs, monsters -- kids love 'em. But anthropomorphic hot wheels? I dunno. Boys, maybe. But even then, these wheels don't even look that hot. Then again, I remember having similar apprehensions about fish, and Pixar proved me wrong with their most endearing film yet.

Almost. There's still the problem of those eyes... and that's what's been irking me for a year now. Sure, the irises twinkle and shine, but why are they positioned in the middle of the windshield? And why does a slab of body-colored eyelid cut into the eyespace whenever they blink? Surely Pixar should have followed Aardman's lead and gone with the headlights instead (using the wipers as eyebrows)? Staring at the front of a car, it's what you imagine anyway: bumper as mouth, headlights as eyes. It worked for Herbie. Why change?

Uh oh. Looks like the Son of Krypton's gonna have some competition this summer. First, director Bryan Singer abandons the X-Men franchise to helm Superman Returns. Then, X3 loses its replacement director (Layer Cake's Matthew Vaughn), only to pick up Rush Hour bad boy Brett Ratner in the eleventh hour. But if you disregard the troubled backstory and compare the two superhero sequels on the strength of their teasers alone, X3 is the clear victor — and that's because the production has something to prove.

Meanwhile, the Superman teaser brings almost nothing new to the Richard Donner-directed legacy, trusting that the brand (and the director's ego) will guarantee our interest. Sure, everything gets a sunny 21st-century glow, and there are a couple unique images (like the iconic vision of Superman piercing the clouds and hanging in silhouette against the sun), but nothing that drives a strong need-to-see reaction among fans. No doubt the film delivers (the Comic Con teaser certainly revealed as much), but he could've given us at least a tiny hint of the film's story.

This X3 teaser, by comparison, literally leaves us clawing for more — consider the genius title art, in which Wolverine's triple-bladed fist forms the X3 logo. That visual alone suggests more than just an obligatory sequel, but the payoff everything else has been building towards. The franchise could've easily gotten away showing nothing more than that treatment (T3 did less with its first teaser), but it deliver much, much more in split-second flashes that excite even the comic-oblivious likes of me.

From what I can tell, X3 brings Phoenix back from the dead, gives the underused Cyclops something to do (finally) and introduces new characters, including both Arcangel and Beast — not to mention, of course, potentially uniting the Mutants against the humans who have oppressed them for the past two films. With enough provocatively framed action, explosions and ID4-style teaser destruction (we get a shot of the White House façade, but it's the Golden Gate Bridge that's falling down) to whet our appetites, Ratner has pulled an uncanny feat indeed, trumping the Man of Steel with the still-fresh gleaming-metal look of the new X-Men movie.

Set your clocks. On December 12, 2012, the world will end. And Mel Gibson will be there laughing and saying, “I told you so.” As all good teasers go, this fleeting first glimpse tells us precious little about Gibson’s next pet project, instead setting the tone (ominous and superstitious), setting (the ancient Mayan empire) and doomsday mentality of Apocalypto.

There's plenty to speculate about in a teaser that feels like a horror-movie montage of scenes cut from Terrence Malick's latest, The New World. But instead of wistful poetry, Gibson regards the monster-lit Mayan sculpture, glistening tattooed natives and ferocious black panther with equal suspicion.

The subject matter implies respect for the lost culture, but the alarmist edge suggests a sinister undercurrent that trades on age-old stereotypes. The mystery alone is enought to pique our interest... Is that an eclipse we see or the mysterious "Planet X"? And will audiences follow Gibson into such strange territory without Passion's Bible tie-in?

With some 40 million copies in print, the latest teaser for The Da Vinci Code need not concern itself with spoilers. After all, by now everyone has read Dan Brown's book. Instead, the trailer (which features some much-needed footage after last spring's worthless Mona Lisa teaser) focuses on the revelations the audience most wants to see — namely, how the actors look in roles that avid readers have long since cast in their imaginations. After more than a minute of "spooky Louvre" build-up, the teaser offers the big reveal: Tom Hanks, looking less like another Indiana Jones than an older wiser Neo, as Harvard cryptographer extraordinaire Robert Langdon.

Dr. Langdon, I presume.

It's a teaser, folks, and as teasers go, WB ain't givin' us much with this first taste of Superman Returns (especially not after whetting our appetites with so much more in that preview Dan Harris cut for Comic-Con this summer). Still, we'll take what we can get, and this first teaser announces two things loud and clear:

But the second point is far more important and seems to be the primary goal of this first teaser: Singer's wants to make it perfectly clear that he respects the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve version. This preview not only features the same origin story as the 1978 film; it boasts the same music and Marlon Brando voiceover as well (as Superman's father, Jor-El). Everything else is just iconic mumbo jumbo to get your heart beating faster about the prospect of this, what, sequel? Hardly, the movie seems to be starting over at the beginning. Then "reimagining"? Perhaps, although we'll just have to wait for the next preview to see how much Singer's really changed.

Comic-Con audiences got a further look at Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane (she appears for a split second here, but until you get a chance to see her for yourself, you'll just have to take my word that it looks like she can pull it off) and a bald Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor (there was just enough footage to suggest that the actor, who's jumped the shark in my book, has a rather eccentric read on the character).

Oh, yeah, and the flying doesn't suck.