Empty heads are very fond of long titles

SHOOT: How do you have your book or movie stand out from the crowd? Simple, if the competition is using long titles, you use short ones, and vice versa.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Coming in the next few months are “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,” and “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.” Art houses will receive the comedy “Happy Thank You More Please.” The colon-crazy executives over at Warner Brothers have a movie coming out based on the book “Guardians of Ga’Hoole.” But some recent title surgery has made it “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.” It’s enough to make “Nanny McPhee Returns,” a sequel coming in August from Universal Pictures, seem downright spare. Title elongation has been building for years. “Star Wars” is now “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.” The summer of 2003 brought “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde” and “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.” Last year there was “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” “Inception,” the latest from the director Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight”), will stick out like a sore thumb on July 16