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If it's not trailers, it's teasers; if it's not teasers; it's images. By the time a blockbuster finally arrives, if you haven't heard so much about it that you want to scream -- from overload or delight -- the studio's marketing team hasn't done their job. But how early is too early to begin promoting a movie?

Pointing to this week's release of a teaser trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, more than a year in advance of its planned theatrical roll-out in July 2010, The Big Money wonders if that's a good strategy: "How do you keep interest high then over the long autumn, winter, and spring? By producing trailer after trailer? Hollywood will watch this strategy closely to see at what point trailer fatigue sets in or whether it needs to build interest even earlier in its expensive summer blockbusters." Of course, as io9 observed, this isn't a new strategy; The Incredibles got teased 18 months in advance and Star Trek 16 months early (due in part to a release delay). Watchmen tried a different strategy that seemed to work, releasing behind the scenes clips (or "video journals") each month in the year leading up to its theatrical debut.

How do you pique interest and build awareness without potential viewers feeling like the movie's being jammed down their throats? Is it better to wait until closer to the release date? Are too many trailers and other advance promotional devices causing you to suffer from "trailer fatigue"? How early do you want to start seeing teasers and trailers?

Now that we've entered the final month of the year, look for our site (and several others) to spend some time looking back at 2008. We here at Cinematical will kick off our year-end festivities real soon, but in the meantime Yahoo Movies was first out of the gate with a list of the most popular movie trailers of 2008. Keep in mind this is only according to Yahoo's numbers and represents the most watched, not necessarily the best (we'll have that list later this month).

As expected, a good majority of this list is made up of big summer blockbuster-type stuff, and guess which flick leads the pack? Yup, the one with that damn bat. The top two (Dark Knight and Indiana Jones) don't surprise me in the least, but the next two are ... Twilight (3) and The Incredible Hulk (4)? Really? Those vampires even beat everyone's favorite boy wizard, Harry Potter, who came in at a disappointing sixth on the list, behind Iron Man. Check out the titles below -- anything surprise you? Did you expect Twilight to take the third spot behind whoppers like Dark Knight and Indy? Sound off ...

1. The Dark Knight
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
3. Twilight
4. The Incredible Hulk
5. Iron Man
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Wanted
8. Hancock
9. Sex and the City
10. Kung Fu Panda

My main interest in David Fincher's films is the cinematography. The director's vision is pretty stylized, and he tends to use the best of the best DP's in order to get that vision on the screen. I'd personally like to see him work with Darius Khondji again (he shot both Se7en and Panic Room), but I'm pretty excited with his choice to work with Harry Savides for his latest thriller, Zodiac. Anyway, the trailer for the new film has just gone up on Yahoo! Australia and I'm happy to say it looks really good. And I mean looks. Not just the cinematography, but also the production design, too. As for the film itself, I'm not too sure. I just can't get into Jake Gyllenhaal as a serious actor after Brokeback Mountain, even if he was amazing in his less-appreciated but better film Jarhead. Oh, and I'm not that crazy about Chlöe Sevigny these days, either.

My personal, cynical opinions aside, Zodiac received a mixed reception from AICN contributors last month, and the less favorable comments have me hesitant with my anticipation. At least it has to be better than Alexander Bulkley's recent version of the story, right? Fincher's film doesn't have Rory Culkin, for instance. It has Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey, Jr. I guess, I'll just have to wait until March to see for myself.

As for Fincher's next film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I hope the director knows what he's doing with newbie DP Claudio Miranda.

For another glimpse at Zodiac, check out Apple's short on the film's editing process here.

The Seventh Annual Golden Trailer Awards were held on June 1st in NYC and Mission: Impossible III was the big winner, garnering three trophies for Trailer Park, the company that produced the film's previews. In addition to winning the grand prize of Best of Show, M:I III won awards for having the best trailer for an action movie and for a summer 2006 blockbuster.

Personally, I think that the best trailer should be the one that attracts people to a movie, since that is its purpose. I admit the Mission: Impossible III trailer is pretty good, but it didn't really convince many to see it, and didn't make me think the movie would be as good as it actually is. When I think of a good trailer, I am always reminded of the ones for Blow, the cocaine biopic starring Johnny Depp. The previews were stylishly edited and featured great soundtracks, which had me in anticipation for months. Unfortunately the actual movie was surprisingly mediocre, but the trailer did a terrific job of drawing me in. 

I can't think of the best movie trailer I saw in the past year, so I guess there weren't many that were memorable -- looking at the list of other winners, I can't even remember their trailers. The last truly great preview I can remember was for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The complete list of winners after the jump.

Trailers are notoriously tricky things; they can show you an extremely skewed version of the movie at hand, or they can give the whole movie away. The Weinstein Co. is trying another tack to get you to watch movies -- by giving you an extended teaser: they're showing free samples of select films online at video-sharing sites like YouTube. They've shown the first eight minutes of Lucky Number Slevin on the amateur site (after the movie has already opened in theaters) to get you to see the remaining 102 minutes. First Look Studios has given an extended clip of their period drama The Proposition, starring Guy Pearce and Emily Watson, to iFilm.com. The film opens in theaters on May 5.