January 30, 2008

• Spoilers are for "Cloverfield", the movie. In case you didn't......anyway, movie. Spoilers.
• This opens over here this weekend, and although I've already read loads on it, I think I'll give these links a miss for a few days. But I'll deffo read em later.
• Cool kitfisto - hope you like it. I liked it better than I expected FWIW.
• I think it would have worked better with drunken, Parkour thrill-seekers who run after the monster for cheap thrills. Think Jackass + Banlieue 13.
• Or maybe if the monster had eaten a DISKETTE FILLED WITH GOVERNMENT SECRETS and the heroes HAD to get it back before THE RUSSIANS MAFIA got to it first.
• I hear a lot of people saying they hated the characters and there was too much "Oh my god!" and not enough crunchy monster goodness, but for my part I dug it. The characters weren't exactly winning personalities, but I didn't find them hateful or unbelievable or anything, and the monster action was great. Kinda like Godzilla from ground level. I had a good time with it, and I think most will.
• *and that first link is WAY more than 15 mins. I'll never trust polychrome again.*
• I've seen so much from trailers, ads, trailers, more ads, and media hype that I don't honestly care to see it. I'm sick of it already.
• P.S. This is also keeping me away.
• The very irst time I saw the trailer, I said, "OK, I've seen everything I need to see without 90 minutes of filler." Reminds me of the MST3K episode where Crow's screenplay get the green light, but will only be produced in trailer form.
• I hadn't seen a trailer or, well, much of anything about it walking in. (Though I'm told we _did_ see a trailer a few months back; darned if I remember it.) So no overexposure burn out here thankfully.
• Lara is SO right. Oh my GOD I nearly hurled watching "Cloverfield"-- and not just because it was such a bad movie! And also the fact that I'd been to the optometrist that day to get my eyes dilated didn't help. I had to "watch" the whole goddamn film huddled behind the hood of my coat. But hey, the sound design was brilliant!
• I liked it for this reason: It sort of inverted the monster movie formula. Well, not inverted it so much as decided to watch it from a different angle. Typically, it seems to me, the conflict is monster vs. heroic scientist. 54 godzilla, all the decent monster suit clones, Matthew Broderick Godzilla, etc. How can you innovate with that formula? You can't, you can just make it look nicer. Cloverfield, obviously, is just Godzilla from the ground level, maybe, but by doing so it's not Godzilla at all anymore. It's not Man vs. Monster anymore, it's Man vs. Environment. It's normal people dealing with stuff beyond their control, reacting, and being capable of showing their own courage that, while ultimately inconcequential - compared to that Heroic Scientist that's probably somewhere off screen with the army folk - and meaningless, is no less Heroic than that of the Scientist. Maybe moreso, since the Everymen are subject to constant physical danger, while that Heroic Scientist rarely faces mortal peril at all. Now, I'm a fan of Lost, so I might be biased, but I'm also a believer in Eco's opera aperta, so even if JJ envisioned none of this stuff, I'd argue it is still there. As to the camerawork, I'll say this: I wish I hadn't eaten popcorn while watching it, and I'm glad I did not see it in Imax.
• I liked it. I thought some of the action sequences were great. I thought some of the shots were great. I thought the idea was great. The pre-attack portion of the movie was completely unbearable. I would have walked out (only time I have ever walked out on a movie - Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) if I would have not known monsters were coming. I generally just ran with the thing and tried not to be too critical. I had a hard time believing that the subway would not be packed with people. And while I could understand the idea behind trying to film it, there is no way the guy is toting the camera around when it may well cost him his life. Lastly, I might go back to get my wife, but there would be no way in hell I would be going back with someone else to get his wife.
• I thought it was awesome. I don't think I'll see it again, and I hope nobody tries to make more like it, but it was a brilliant, one-time gimmick film.
• I thought "Cloverfield in 15 minutes" was hilarious. Thanks for the link, polychrome.
• (only time I have ever walked out on a movie - Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) I find it incredible that you walked in to Breakin' 2. I didn't mind the pre-monster stuff so much as apparently everyone else on the planet did. I didn't think they were the best people I'd ever met in my life, didn't think I'd like to hang out at their pad or go to Coney Island with them or anything. But I thought they were reasonably accurate portrayals of people of that age and shallowness, and I didn't find them unbearably hateful or particularly loathsome. But that may just be a function of my own personal shallowness and hate-ability.
• I guess I would have gotten pretty sick of the "characters" if the movie had, you know, been about *them*. Just read that a sequel's been planned. I'm betting that with the right budget and writing that they can make it as good as Blair Witch Project 2.
• I think you've hit the nail on the head, Nick--it wasn't about them, so much as about the event as seen from ground level. I read on another board someone's comment that because of the "found footage" frame story you're not with the characters, but rather with the guy in the darkened room who's reviewing this footage of the disaster. The guy I read referred to it as a "5th wall," or ceiling, or whatever. It's a gimmick, sure, but one I found effective. And I really liked Blair Witch too. So add salt to taste. I just wish they had followed through on the "camera goes into the monster's mouth" thing near the end. I was looking forward to a guided tour through the baddie's digestive tract...
• I just wish they had followed through on the "camera goes into the monster's mouth" thing near the end. I was looking forward to a guided tour through the baddie's digestive tract... Ah, the patented JonahScope™ Process.
• I did not like Blair Witch (it's only scary in implication in the last few shots because of something that happened five minutes into the movie). I haven't been remotely interested in Cloverfield for a stack of reasons, one of them being the shakycam fauxité (I'm now coining that as a term for fake-verité, but I may not be the first). Cleo's movie parodies are always funny, though. She has a book on sale in the UK. Man vs Environment monster movie = Korea's The Host. Well-made and upsetting. Not many buildings knocked down, though. The actress playing the near-champion in archery also starred in a really popular Korean TV drama that's aired in the US in the last few months, Someday. (Trailer for Someday on YouTube.)