FORUMS

For those of us stationed in the UK, the Super Bowl is a bit of an arcane mystery. We understand the sporting element, that it's the biggest game of the NFL calender, but what we don't really get is the ancillary entertainment industry element to all that gridiron slap 'n' tickle.

Blighty's closest equivalent to the Super Bowl is probably the FA Cup Final, the show-piece occasion of our own football season. Yet for that event the half-time entertainment is most likely to be a group of school kids having a five-a-side kick-about. You're certainly not going to get a fifteen minute mini-gig by the Stones or Springsteen. Likewise the TV ads you avoid during the FA Cup Final in favour of going to make yourself a brew are usually for biscuits or toilet paper or alcoholic beverages. They are not brand spanking new teasers for some of next summer's biggest blockbusters. However that is precisely what Super Bowl viewers are treated to, with two of this year's eyeball ticklers coming courtesy of M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender and Sir Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.

Starting with Airbender: the movie is based on an animated show of the same name, all about Aang, a 112-year-old butt-kicker housed in the corporeal form of a 12-year-old ragamuffin. Aang (played by Noah Ringer) is the focus of the trailer, but there is also a little glimpse of Dev Patel's Prince Zuko tossing out a fireball (er, not a euphemism for any other popular teen boy antics). Oh, and the trailer voice-over offers the chance for the easiest of clean sweeps for those indulging in a bit of cliché bingo.

Moving onto Robin Hood: or Gladiator meets Braveheart as the new clip seems to want to portray it. Director Scott and Russell Crowe reunite for an nth collaboration, in a project which has reshaped and remoulded itself significantly since it was first pitched as a revisionist take on the antics of head Hood baddie, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The Robin Hood Super Bowl spot comes over as a bit full of itself, but the legion of Scott-olytes will ensure his movie has no shortage of admirers when it opens on 14 May.