Slate’s Josh Levin has a smart look at the evolving role of the so-called “red band trailer” —i.e., movie previews that don’t have that green “approved for all audiences” screen in front of them. This lets the studios smut it up for kids on the internet, who will not be deterred by an industry-mandated dialog box before the clip is shown. (”Are you sure you’re 18?”)

A real breakthrough will be when the major movie-trailer sites start offering them for download. I couldn’t find any on iTunes or at Yahoo.

Interesting foonote: After the exhibition industry essentially banned them in 2000, the Regal Entertainment Group recently broke ranks and started showing the naughty trailers. Regal is controlled by gay-bashing creationist and tedious moralizing Bush-head Philip Anschutz.