View the trailer for The Prestige.

But now, new trailers. My recent obsession has been The Prestige, Christopher Nolan's October release based on a novel by Christopher Priest and starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. First, this film features the best casting ever. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?! It's so logical: Both have posh, sexy accents when they choose to use them. Both enjoy singing and dancing (Bale as a pretty, pretty teenager in Newsies and Swing Kids; Jackman in his Tony-winning performance in The Boy From Oz). Both enjoy making comics nerds wet themselves and respectable women whimper with lust as dark, troubled superheroes. And now, both will be playing Victorian magicians who vie to see who can perform the greatest magic trick.

The film's trailer just gives me the vapors. Atmospherically dark, it begins with Alfred (Bale) flirting rakishly with a young woman, stunning her by catching a bullet in his bare hand. It moves on to set up Jackman's character, a showier performance artist than Bale's surly technician; Scarlett Johansson as a groupie with excellent taste; and Michael Caine as a mentor type to Jackman's Rupert. The score is ominously tinkly (like what Philip Glass might hear while being chased by a butcher-knife-wielding Stephen King), setting up the conflict (of hotness) to come.

View the trailer for Transformers.

Just when you think it can't get darker or more enthralling, David Freaking Bowie shows up as inventor Nikola Tesla (somewhere, Jim Jarmusch is scratching his head, muttering, "I wish I'd thought of that"), Bale's genius appears to turn even more inexorably to madness, everyone sports some questionable facial hair, and WHEN IS THIS MOVIE COMING OUT ALREADY?!

And now for something completely different: Michael Bay's Transformers. I've said it before and I'll say it again: How does anyone expect my generation of disaffected twentysomethings ever to grow up when Hollywood keeps turning the cartoons of our childhood into major motion picture events? I'm kind of holding out for She-Ra: The Quest for Crystal Castle myself, but this teaser for next summer's SFX extravaganza had one of my viewing companions for Pirates of the Caribbean squirming in ecstasy early this summer.

As a trailer it's mostly crap, wasting most of its running time on stock footage of a missile launch and generally making viewers wonder if it's another permutation of that Heineken ad — that is, until the camera goes dark on the blurry image of the Iron Giant's really pissed-off big brother and the title assembles itself over a sweeping shot of Earth. No talent, no Decepticons, and yet it had the audience at the Ziegfeld squealing.

Next summer's big blockbuster? Well, next summer also has the return of Jason Bourne, more Captain Jack, Spider-Man, Shrek, and Danny Ocean. But that's one effective tease the Paramount folks have cooked up. The movie promises to be noisy, overloaded with effects, and in all probability what you'd get if you threw another $80 million at Starship Troopers. But come on — that's awesome!

Trailer illustration above by Lisa Martin