The early reviews of the festival's trailers have been a collective yawn.

The trailers, designed by a studio called Digital Kitchen, show paper-cutout figures being placed in a three-dimensional diorama - sometimes we see the hands manipulating the figures, sometimes not. One of the trailers depicts the fall of Icarus, with the hands holding a lighter to the figure's paper wings.

Though pretty, the trailers don't have the fun and energy of past years' trailers, where humor usually dominated. Last year it was the controversial animated shorts by the Web studio JibJab, and a few years ago there was a funny set of trailers featuring animal footage to define different aspects of the movie industry.

There is entertainment value in the animated loop that plays on the screen between shows. It continues the paper-cutout theme, except the cutouts are sitting in a theater audience. There's even a bit of a "Where's Waldo?" element, since a close inspection of the figures reveals Napoleon Dynamite and his brother Kip, "Super Size Me's" Morgan Spurlock stuffing his face with french fries, three characters from "Kung Fu Hustle," and Robert Redford.

- Sean P. Means