Chris reviews Cloverfield
Since the DVD comes out tomorrow, I figured I should get off my ass and finally post this review I've been sitting on. I give Cloverfield a 6 out of 10. That's three out of five stars, or a thumbs up on the Siskel & Ebert scale. I know their final score is the one piece of info reviewers usually save for the end of the review, but you need to know up front that Cloverfield is not really a horrible movie, despite the MANY negative things I'm going to say about it. Click the pic to hear the scoop. SPOILERS AHEAD: Consider yourselves warned.
For those of you who haven't seen it, and because the trailers tell you virtually nothing about the story of the film, let me give you a… well, I was going to say 'a quick overview,' but that's not possible because there's not enough story for an overview. How about "the deal," will that work? Here's the deal:
Metrosexual pretty boy What's-His-Name loves beautiful stick-figure girl Beth. Pretty boy is leaving New York to take a job in Japan and his hot-ass, Bollywood looking soon to be sister-in-law Whatchmacallher has thrown him a huge going away party. She decides it should be filmed, and goodbyes and dedications should be taped from all of What's-His-Name's closest stylishly dressed, well groomed friends. The camera is handed from What's-His-Name's forgettable brother to the barely functional retard named Hud whom we will all, in very short order, learn to loathe more than childhood cancer. Hud is walking around being a fucking waste of human protein when Beth shows up… with a date.
She brought a date? Oh my god! To a party? OH MY GOD! What's-His-Name and Beth get in a big fight. Turns out What's-His-Name and Beth fucked not too long ago. Scandal! They fucked because they are attracted to each other, and are most likely in love with each other, and all signs point to the fact that they would be extremely happy together. Therefore they are NOT together, because that would be reasonable and conducive to a life filled with warmth and care for both of them, and the majority of us human beings are too damn stupid to gravitate towards those things which are best for us in the long run. After the fight, Beth storms out of the party with her date in tow. What's-His-Name, who is a stupid asshole, does not follow her to apologize or make amends. If there's one thing you've got to hand to Cloverfield, its that the writers firmly nailed the tendency in men and women to find ways to ensure their continued unhappiness.
And that's the first half hour or so of the movie.
Despite appearing up to this point as another thoroughly unwatchable Dawson's Creekish estrogen clogged vagina-fest, a few minutes later a giant… something attacks Manhattan, ripping the shit out of distant buildings, causing massive explosions, and hurtling debris from miles away. Everyone flees the party and tries to escape Manhattan. What's-His-Name gets through to Beth's cell phone, finds out she is trapped and immobile in her apartment. What's-His-Name, Whatchmacallher, cameraman Hud, and some girl none of them really know team up and make their way past the military, police, and monster to rescue Beth. The rest of the movie is their journey to rescue Beth, rescuing Beth, getting Beth to safety, and all the shit they run into along the way. The story of the film is exhausted about 40 minutes in, and from then on its just an Aliens-esque Beth-centric struggle to stay alive.
I said there's not that much story, which is true. A lot of you might understandably take that to be a criticism. It most definitely is not. Cloverfield may be sci-fi and it may be a giant monster movie, but at it's heart its really a classic disaster film. Disaster films don't have to have too much story, and more often than not they probably shouldn't. A good disaster film is all about people running away from something incredibly lethal they are powerless to stop. In Titanic and The Poseidon Adventure it was the sinking of the ships. In The Day After Tomorrow and The Perfect Storm it was the weather. In Alien vs. Predator: Requiem and Cloverfield it is the ongoing destruction of the characters' hometown caused by a primary monster, a bunch of lesser monsters, and the US military. The characters are just there to try and stay alive.
There are several reasons this movie works, and unfortunately there are even more reasons that it does not. First and foremost is hype. In the end, Cloverfield is a victim of its own advertising. Cloverfield's advertising campaign was, to the best of my recollection, the most effective, most internet-savvy advertising scheme I have ever seen. It was brilliant. It made the viewers do all the work, and it was so interesting that it made us want to do the work. And once the work was done, it made us want to do more. Honestly, I don't think I've seen as effective an ad campaign for a movie since Batman in 1989. But Cloverfield's hype was far too good. It would be hard for any movie to live up to the buzz, and Cloverfield was too quirky to even come close. There's no way this film could have delivered on the unspoken promises it made.
The trailer was the single most honest part of Cloverfield's advertising, and it was fucking GENIUS. First of all, they attached it to TransFormers, the movie that everyone knew was going to be one of the biggest action films of the past five years. TransFormers was a hit movie long before it was released, and everyone knew it. So they teased the TransFormers audience by promising them even more of exactly what they came to TransFormers to see; mass carnage and havoc being wreaked by giant creatures beyond man's understanding or control.
But they didn't give away the farm. No, the info was kept at a trickle. The trailer just shows some friends at a party interrupted when some thing comes crashing through the city, all captured by a somebody with a camcorder. Its scary, its voyeuristic, and its mysterious. Not only that, but they don't show the monster, just the destruction it wreaks. They're making us want to know what it was. And then the most brilliant part of all, they don't tell us the title. Nothing to try to glean more info from. Only a release date we have to wait for to see what in the hell that thing was.
It was incredible. The next day there were just as many reviews of the Cloverfield trailer as there were of TransFormers. Not long after, Cloverfield's viral marketing campaign hit, and it was AWESOME. First word got out about Slusho!, the website dedicated to the fictional drink that appears in many J. J. Abrams projects. Nobody knew how, but Slusho! wasn't just going to be in this project, it was actually involved in the story. It was undeniably linked to the movie, and so it would be important. Eventually 1-18-08.com went online sporting pictures of the event that you could sort through. The brilliance of this site is it's unique interface; pictures can be moved around by clicking and dragging, but if you click the edge of the picture and drag left or right then rapidly drag in the opposite direction, you can flip the photos over to reveal messages on the backs of some of them.
But it didn't end there. The advertising was so complete and the story so well developed that Slusho!'s fictional parent corporation Tagruato was given a website, complete with a fake history and imaginary employees. But best of all, Tagruato is hinted at being a very evil, planet raping megacorporation with many dark, nasty secrets to hide. Tagruato is Cloverfield's Weyland-Yutani.
And, of course, a fictional underground resistance has sprung up to repel these awful sons of bitches. These folks call themselves Les Guerriers de Mère-Terre, "a nonprofit, grassroots, environmental activist organization dedicated to saving our planet from the world's most nefarious corporations… founded in Paris in 1982 by the notorious conservationist known only as Le Bandit Vert." Their anti-Tagruato website "T.I.D.O Wave" is the most fucking awesome hate site in the world. Proof of its greatness: it has a list of Tagruato's crimes against nature called the "Cruel-etin Board." You have got to check it out. If there were an Academy Award for best advertising, Cloverfield would be a shoe-in. The thought and imagination put into this was truly impressive.
So where did Cloverfield go wrong? Well, for starters, none of the above is explored in the movie. NONE OF IT. All this brilliant viral advertising created a lust for information that the movie in no way satiated. The movie shows these people going through all kinds of hell and then at the end we are given the impression - not a visual mind you, but just a definite impression - that What's-His-Name and Beth are dead. That's pretty much it. We don't know what happened to the monster, we don't know where it came from, we have no idea what the hell it is or why it decided to attack New York, or why it didn't leave when the military started shooting at it. I don't recall Tagruato or Slusho even being mentioned by name in the film, and there was certainly no mention of anti-Slusho eco-terrorists. All this build up and we got nothing.
The only thing I have ever experienced to compare the Cloverfield advertising/moviegoing experience to is an unfinished blow job. You guys out there know what I'm talking about. The movie ended on a feeling of such disappointing incompletion that it made it hard to rate the movie any higher than I have. I probably could have gone for a 7.5 or even 8 out of 10 had they just given me what they hinted that I would get. But, nooooo…
I would never have gone higher than 8, however. I think that a great monster movie really needs a great monster, and in that area Cloverfield most definitely did not deliver. From very early on in the advertising campaign we were fed hints and rumors that the Cloverfield monster would be among the following things:
- Voltron
- Godzilla
- Cthulhu
- a giant robot
- a mutated whale
- a Lost/Dharma Initiative tie-in
- an alien called The Parasite
- cool looking
It was none of those things. It was a weird, wingless zombie bat looking thing with a mutated rabbit/Mickey Mouse head. As a matter of fact, it looked just like this except blurrier, poorly lit, not whitewashed, and more thoroughly obscured by Manhattan architecture:
That's supposed to be a monster from the ocean? Seriously? There's a phrase that I keep coming back to in my mind whenever I see this thing. And that phrase is "What the fuck ever."
How thoroughly disappointing and completely non-frightening is that? It's not even vaguely reminiscent of marine life. Even during the big reveal scene at the end of the movie,when Hud was standing under the thing and it bites him in half (HELL YES! HUD IS FUCKING DEAD! THANK YOU, BABY JESUS!), and the audience finally gets a really good look at the thing, there was no tension. No spark. No fear. It was as if everyone in the theatre was thinking the same thing. "That's it?" It was such a rip-off.
I'm very tired. There was a lot more I wanted to say about this movie, but I'm gonna puss out and go to sleep now. Sorry. However, I found these (presumably) Japanese characters in a Word doc where I initially saved part of this article. If I saved them, I obviously meant to give them to you as they were somehow important to me at the time. In retrospect, my reasons for that are probably something I should have bothered to jot down, 'cause I got no fuckin' idea what these things are now. But here you go anyway: 力の手.
UPDATE - 22 APR 2008: I knew I wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone.
Mark's comment about the parasites brought back of flood of things I meant to talk about, but forgot in my sleep-deprived stupor. So you can thank Mark for the number of disgusting pictures you are about to receive.
I'm getting sick of typing "the Cloverfield creature/monster." Since one of the many, many pieces of info the filmmakers failed to provide was a name for the creature, I shall take it upon myself to do so. He will be called Mister Lawrence J. Whiskerbuttons… Larry, Whiskers, or Buttons to his friends. And before I hear any complaints from you nitpickers to the effect that he does not have whiskers or buttons, or that he doesn't look like a Larry, let me just remind you that there are no fields of clover in this movie either, so fuck you.
I think the inclusion of the parasites Mark mentioned - which were essentially giant lice that lived on Larry and fell off to eat people - was not just interesting, but necessary from a filmmaking point of view. From a monster as large as Whiskerbuttons there are going to be lots of places in NYC that a human sized creature can hide fairly safely, and its going to be a stretch to assume that even the dumbest audience wouldn't figure that out eventually. Kind of like in Godzilla (1998), when Godzilla laid all those eggs and Matthew Broderick and crew got chased around Madison Square Garden by mini Godzilla-raptors. It was something they did to keep the action going once the audience realized that, in a giant monster situation, there are numerous ways to avoid getting eaten - such as not running around screaming in front of the monster, attracting its attention and looking like convenient food. It's a cop-out, to be sure, and it would have been avoidable with a little creative writing, but I still understand why they did it.
The parasites, by the way, are based off very real creatures. Of course these things were blown up to gigantic proportions, but its not too far-fetched to believe that there are very, very big things in the ocean that we have not yet discovered. There is a biological tendency, known as abyssal gigantism, for species of deep-sea dwelling animals to grow to a MUCH larger size than their shallow-water counterparts. And many of these deep-sea giants have only been relatively newly documented; we didn't even have pictures of a giant squid until 2004, and no film of one until December 2006. And there's stuff much bigger than that, weird stuff we've never seen but know exists because people keep finding giant dead pieces, either in fishing nets or washed up on shore. There's big shit down there, people. Weird, big, mysterious ocean things.
The parasites in this movie appear to be based on whale lice and giant isopods. Whale lice, the white things above, are just what they sound like; giant marine lice that grow up to an inch long and infest whales like normal lice infest dirty human schoolchildren. And if that doesn't creep you right the fuck out, giant isopods are the god awful alien spawn of Lucifer pictured below the whale lice. They're not really harmful, and some people keep them as pets and even eat them, but it's hard to get past all that when THAT THING IS FUCKING STARING RIGHT AT ME WITH SILVER DEVIL EYES.
God damn, those things are vile. And they're not small, either. I've read that they are reported to be 14.5 inches long, but some pics make them look closer to two feet. That may not sound like a lot, but when you consider the fact that they're made of pure evil and crawled out of H. P. Lovecraft's worst nightmares to feed on human terror and the fears of children everywhere, then they're plenty big enough. I've had to look through many of pictures of people touching these things - with bare hands, ON PURPOSE - to get the pics for this review, and, seriously, STOP FUCKING TOUCHING THEM! What is wrong with you people?! Can't you see they're from Hell?! Jesus Christ, I swear to god I'm not going to sleep tonight.
Other very real, big-ass scary sea monsters include the Japanese spider crab (13 ft), the king of herrings (41 ft), colossal squid (estimated 46 ft), giant tube worms (8 ft), sea spiders (3 ft), and, of course, the largest known animal to have ever lived on this planet, the blue whale (108 ft). The reason I bring it up is that there was a rumor that hit shortly before the movie's release that Buttons was going to be a mutant whale. As crap as that sounded in print, I totally changed my mind once I saw a picture of it. I think the pic above of the concept whale-creature looks AMAZING. This is what we should have seen instead of that stupid albino bat-thing. The mutant whale is awesome. Click the pic for a super-sized image. Why, oh, why, Mr. Whiskerbuttons, could you not have been born so pretty?
Wikipedia (take it for what you will) posts this about the creature, and the whole thing really pisses me off:
"The creature was designed by artist Neville Page… Page designed the creature as immature and suffering from "separation anxiety". He compared the creature to a rampaging elephant, saying "there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked". Page said of the creature's backstory, "For me, one of the most key moments in our collective brainstorming was the choice to make the creature be something that we would empathize with. It is not out there, just killing. It is confused, lost, scared. It's a newborn. Having this be a story point (one that the audience does not know), it allowed for some purposeful choices about its anatomy, movement and, yes, motivations"…
Abrams described the creature as a "baby" who has been underwater for thousands of years that emerges "confused, disoriented, and irritable"… Reeves described the creature's reaction to its surroundings thus: "It’s this new environment that it finds frightening". To indicate this, Reeves suggested the addition of white in the creature's eyes so it would look similar to a horse being spooked…
Although "just a baby," the young creature is quite massive, nearing 25 stories tall and powerful, it has very tough skin and is seemingly immune to gunfire, artillery, air-launched missiles, and bombing… The creature's design includes appendages on the creature's underbelly, described by Neville Page as an "elongated, and articulated external esophagus with the business end terminating in teethlike fingers". They were designed as a device to relate the scale of human prey to the huge scale of the creature…"
Well, gee, thanks so much for telling us. Too bad I couldn't have got that info in the theatre, when I fucking paid for it. I don't like the fact that something that was built up as much as Cloverfield didn't deliver at the end of the movie. That's when all should be revealed. The climax of the movie should be the culmination of the experience, not something I should have to scurry home afterwards and hope the filmmakers reveal to me online. What the hell kind of movie making is that? If you're going to go through the trouble of writing all this crap, you should put it on the screen where it belongs. I had done enough work for Cloverfield by the time I paid for my ticket. Its bullshit to expect the audience to do even more.
Okay, I'm really done this time. Probably.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 am
A recent review of the DVD indicates that there will be some features spotlighted that might be missed in the theatrical version of this movie. An example is that, during the opening scenes of the movie when the party is going on, there is a meteor like object that falls into the ocean.
This seems to imply, but I can’t find confirmation anywhere, that the “Cloverfield Monster” is alien in nature (and not just something that came up out of an oceanic trench). However, the monster, is definitely amphibious looking to me.
I think the most interesting thing about this monster is that it’s covered in parasites or something like that. That was an interesting way to take things into the subways of New York.
Mark
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Mark, my response to your comment is getting REALLY long, so I’m going to post it as a part of the article above. Look for it shortly; I’ll post it at the end of the article after the “Cloverfield is Godzilla” math pic. - DONE
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 am
Mark, one of the things I read before I saw the movie is that there was also a splashdown of some kind in the Coney Island scene at the end of the movie, but I didn’t see it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
Looky what I found waiting in my email when I got to the office today:
Click to enlarge.
Here are a few good reasons not to buy the DVD:
First, they’re doing that store exclusive bullshit like they do with so many DVDs. Depending on where you buy it, you don’t get the same special features as people who buy it elsewhere. Thanks for finding one more way to fuck the fans, Paramount. Wait and see; they’ll pull a ton of this shit when the new Indiana Jones and Star Trek movies are released.
If you get it at Best Buy it comes with an exclusive “bonus” disc called “T.J. Miller’s Video Diary.” Who is T.J. Miller? The guy who played fucking Hud. So guess who won’t be getting any Cloverfield money from me? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with ‘Best Buy.’
If you buy it at FYE you get “an exclusive limited Steelbook special edition.” I’ve written elsewhere that I’m a sucker for DVDs and CDs that come in metal cases, and when I heard that it was also going to be a two-disc set, I thought this sounded like a pretty good deal. Wrong! The single disc and two-disc editions contain exactly the same material (except for different DVD menus, presumably). The only extra feature is the steel case, the loss of convenience by spreading the material across two discs, and the higher price tag. Plus, I have to go into a mall to get to an FYE. No thank you.
You get an exclusive ring tone with the DVD at all K-Mart and Sears retailers. Cheap!
At Target you get a free exclusive mix CD titled “Rob’s Goin’ to Japan Party Mix,” which is a sort of soundtrack. Since the movie has no soundtrack, this is the music that was supposed to have been playing at What’s-His-Name’s going away party. A similar CD which I can only assume is the same thing was given away as a freebie at release parties and what have you, so it’s been out there for a while. Here a pic/track list:
Click to enlarge.
If this really is a free CD, and by that I mean they don’t tack on extra 15 bucks to the price of the DVD, I seriously doubt it will have all those tracks on it. But if it does and it is free, this would definitely be the version to buy. Any of you Target shoppers out there let us know.
Secondly, the DVD has studio-confirmed Easter eggs. The ones they’ve told us about so far are “Slusho!,” “Person of Interest - JLVD Video 2,” “Person of Interest - JLVD Video 5,” “Person of Interest - JLVD Video 9,” “Person of Interest - JLVD Video 11,” “Rack ‘Em & Pack ‘Em,” and “Fighting the X.”
I’m all for Easter eggs. I love them. I think they’re a great use of the DVD format. I’d rather be surprised by them, but if you want to tell me there are some on there, that’s okay I guess. BUT DON’T FUCKING TELL US ABOUT THEM. Part of the fun of Easter eggs is not knowing if there are any, and if there are, not knowing what you’ll get. It’s a blast to look through the disc and try to find them. The harder to spot, the better. But not only did the studio tell us there were Easter eggs, they fucking told us what they are!
What the fuck, man? What kind of fun is that? If you tell me there are Easter eggs, and then you tell me what they are, they are no longer Easter eggs. They are regular DVD features. Easter eggs should be presented like they are on the two-disc director’s cut of The Abyss; packed in all over the place, hard as hell to spot, and pretty much unannounced.
Third, the two alternate endings, neither of which sound at all interesting. Apparently they are only slightly different from each other and the theatrical ending. One of them, as I understand it, is “alternate” because there is a siren sounding in the background. Oooh, a siren! Here, Paramount, take all my money. I GOTTA HEAR THAT SIREN! What a gyp…
I wouldn’t mind seeing Cloverfield again, but not until it goes on clearance. Especially with these non-features on the disc. Once it hits $4.99, I’ll take Larry home with me and let him smash the hell out of Manhattan on my TV all he wants. But not until.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:58 am
But Chris if they show you everything in the theater then how are they supposed to bleed more money out of you with the DVD? Personally I was never really all that interested in seeing this movie, seemed like blair witch only with monsters. I would have found it much more interesting had they not shown the monster and left it kinda up to the audience to decide what it actually was.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Your Blair Witch comment is pretty accurate, babe, but to be fair I’ve gotta say that in my ceaseless rant above I failed to mention all the things that made Cloverfield good despite all that crap. For all its flaws, it was better than Blair Witch (which I found to be very disappopinting and not at all scary).
I couldn’t agree with you more on the fact that I don’t want to pay for a DVD after I’ve paid for the movie in order to see something that should have been shown to me in the theatre in the first place. If studios really are losing as much money as they whine about, its because audiences have gotten hip to that sort of bullshit the studios pull, and they’re sick of it. Piracy, my fat white ass; movie ticket sales are in a slump because studios are going with effects heavy flicks with no substance, and people are getting bored with it. I know I am.
And people are doubly sick of the DVD sales turnaround. Why should a group of friends go out to a theatre and pay $10 each to watch a movie that is going to be available on DVD in two months, which they can buy and watch forever at home now that everyone has a huge TV and theatre-quality audio? There is no reason why. That’s why people aren’t doing it.
If the studios and cinema chains are interested in getting asses in seats, there’s only one thing they have to do - MAKE IT WORTH IT. Shoot and frame films for the big screen, not for the DVD, so they can remind people why going to the movies is so damn fun. Make the theatre clean, comfortable, attractive and noise free. Hire ushers to kick people out if they talk too much or disturb others, just like they used to. Enforce stricter age controls to prevent packs of unruly teens from ruining the moviegoing experience. If you provide all that shit, which is easily done, ticket sales will increase. Movies will cease to be something to do and once again be an event. That’s my 2¢.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
HIDDEN!
Artist: Blue Öyster Cult
Album: Spectres, 1977
HIDDEN!
April 27th, 2008 at 8:48 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DC-UbzoM5E
April 28th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Awesome, Adam. Godzilla FTW!
May 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am
I smell desperation….
May 1st, 2008 at 6:34 pm
They’ve really fucked up the DC universe. I mean BAD. And the worst part is, they did it for reasons that I fear may spell the end of a lot of DC titles as viable franchises.
The Infinite Crisis/52 nonsense pretty much tore the DC universe down. They took the most revolutionary and creative idea in comics (Crisis On Infinite Earths) and utterly negated it. Now instead of one universe there are 52 of them. Then they killed off/removed a mass of established heroes and villains for pretty much no other reasons than to replace them with multicultural counterparts, to bring them in line with goody-goody TV/movie depictions, or just to get rid of them. Here’s a short list of some of the bullshit:
• Blue Beetle is now an unknown Hispanic kid.
• The Spectre is a unknown black guy. So is Firestorm.
• Catwoman retired and her place was taken by a blonde (like in Batman Returns).
• Hal Jordan has never been an ex-con who served 90 days in prison for drunk driving, and is Earth’s Green Lantern once again despite having murdered thousands of people.
• Vandal Savage is no longer an immortal despite previous stories having shown him to be alive at least 83,000 years in the future.
• A reformed Harvey Dent (Two-Face) is trained and put in charge of defending Gotham City by Batman when The Dark Knight leaves Gotham for a year (WTF???).
• Aquaman, who used to use the human name Arthur Curry, has amnesia and turns into a humanoid sea monster with tentacles instead of hair (Davey Jones, anyone?) and is replaced by an unrelated mutant human who happens to be named Arthur Joseph Curry.
• In one of the parallel universes Batman is a vampire.
• Supergirl is alive and well after apparently having fallen unconscious for 1000 years. She now lives in the 31st century where she awoke and joined the Legion Of Super Heroes. She joined up, but she believes she is dreaming and is still asleep in the 21st century. I’m not making this up, I swear to god.
• Diana Prince steps down from the role of Wonder Woman and becomes a secret agent for the US government. It was Batman’s idea. The replacement Wonder Woman has to spin around and around to turn into Wonder Woman, just like on the old TV show. Seriously.
• Jason Todd, the Robin that the Joker killed, is back from the dead. He now calls himself the Red Hood (an old alias of the Joker’s) and is a gang lord who uses his street gangs to fight organized crime, drug dealers and gang violence (WHAT THE FUCK???).
• The Riddler, who’s riddling was a case of OCD and other compulsions, is cured and has become a police informant.
• The Spectre, who is not a villain, overpowered the Wizard Shazam, absorbed his magic, and killed him. Captain Marvel changed in appearance to resemble Shazam, and now wears a white and gold costume and has long white hair.
It goes on. Seriously, I don’t know what to say about all of it. It’s just absolutely ridiculous.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
wow. Now that’s FUCKED UP.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:35 pm
HIDDEN!
Artist: Terence Chua
HIDDEN!
May 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I will post my response to the above picture in this thread as well.
SQUEALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is it July yet, seriously.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Wow, you squealed clean off the page. You must be a firecracker in bed.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I pulled this off of movies.com. Supposedly it’s Aaron Eckhart making as Two-Face.
Judging from this picture and what I’ve seen in the trailer, I think his face is burned off by fire and not acid, like the comic book.
Click for full size.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
That is both nasty and amazing. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if they stick with the acid story. If you’ve never read Batman: The Long Halloween (which is fucking SPECTACULAR), I’ll just give a little away by telling you that it explains that the acid is not just some ordinary acid. Carmine Falcone, the mob boss that the Scarecrow tortured in the first movie, supplied the acid from one of his construction companies, and it is used to dissolve concrete and stone. I wouldn’t be shocked that it would cause burns like this.
They’re drawing a lot from The Long Halloween for The Dark Knight, and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s a phenomenal comic. “I Believe In Harvey Dent,” the phrase used as an online marketing slogan for the movie, is a recurring phrase from the comic. So is the idea that Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent were, if not exactly friends, then on very good terms with one another before he was disfigured. It also shows the very disturbing, very gradual way that Harvey Dent’s insanity manifests itself. It makes Two-Face much more important to the Batman mythology. If the movie holds true to the comic, I don’t think anyone will be disappointed.
A hint at the story of The Long Halloween can be heard in one of the Dark Knight trailers. Alfred’s voice-over has him explaining that the mob were monsters, but they’d hired someone to work for them that was more monstrous than they could have ever possibly understood. Referring to the Joker, Alfred indicates that Falcone did not understand that the Joker was a whole different kind of criminal, and one that was both beyond the control and the influence of the mobsters that run Gotham City.
Similarly, in The Long Halloween Carmine Falcone hires Gotham’s relatively unknown “freaks” (Poison Ivy, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, and the Mad Hatter) in an attempt defeat Batman and restore power back to the Falcone family. In the end, Falcone discovers that the freaks, although of questionable sanity, are far more powerful and intelligent than he expected. Falcone finally comes to understand that he has unwittingly given them access to the city’s organized crime infrastructure, which they have infiltrated and used to increase their own influence. Pretty soon the criminal underworld of Gotham City is fractured into the established organized crime families and the breakaway factions being controlled by Gotham’s most horrible psychopaths. Psychopaths who, thanks to Falcone’s tremendous lack of foresight, now have the manpower and influence of low-level mob bosses themselves, but no loyalty to nor fear of Gotham’s ruling mafia families. He finally sees the truth, that he has effectively handed the city and his crime empire over to madmen. And thus the careers of Gotham’s most dangerous villains are born.
Its just an incredible story; I really can’t recommend it highly enough.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Hey I just got this off the Blackberry Smoke message boards and thought readers of this fine site would be interested. It was posted by Brit the drummer so I believe it’s legit. Not necessarily sci-fi related, but interesting anyway
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a friend of ours is doing this site. he is a major film writer, producer and director. he is responsible for writing and directing WKRP in CINCINNATI , POLICE ACADEMY 1 AND 2 . FIRST WIVES CLUB AND MANY MORE. anyway…. go on this site and watch these movies and pitch the next scenes, you could win 500 bucks for ever scene chosen.
http://www.pitchamovie.net
May 8th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Ok, I know I’m a little late but I just read this whole article. Back to Cloverfield…. some things that I remember reading and find out is that…
1. What’s-His-Name actually works for Tagurato, which is why he is moving to New York.
2. Tagurato is the reason why “Pinky” (I named the monster too) came to Earth….because Pinky is mad at the big Japanese company.
3. The end, where they show the Coney Island footage, actually has a date after the invasion….not sure that matters b/c my old 35mm had the date of 2/18/65 on it the whole time I used it.
Noodle on that.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Marvel releases date of Iron Man 2…..and Ant Man???
http://movies.msn.com/movies/hitlist/05-09-08_4?GT1=7701
May 14th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I haven’t been able to preview it yet but here is a trailer for the X-Files movies:
http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/379767/the-x-files-i-want-to-believe/videos/xfilestrailer_050908.html
May 14th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
This is hilarious:
May 14th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
This is going to be a movie? Seriously? That’s fucking retarded.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Sorry about the silence, gang, I took a few days off and I was away from el computador. Here's what's gone on in my absence:
First, I saw Iron Man. It was GREAT. Saw it for free. Even MORE GREAT. Explanation and review forthcoming (in time for the DVD… maybe). But don't wait 'till I review it, go see it now. It's well worth your time and money.
Secondly, congrats go out to our very own K-Dizzle who got engaged this weekend. That's her ring up above. She was eating very hot popcorn fresh out of the popper last night, and when she pulled her hand out of the bowl I think I noticed a slight glow. I'm not saying anything about anything, but if she starts acting crazier than usual or calling herself precious, I'm gonna have to bite her finger off and drop that little fucker into a volcano. More on that as it develops.
Bat-click to Bat-enlarge.
Finally got a look at the new Bat-suit. NOT A FAN. I know it doesn't matter since Batman will probably never be this well lit in the movie, and all those highlights will probably not be nearly so noticeable in the final cut. But still, I'm not digging the new threads. That's okay, though, 'cause I really didn't like the Bat-suit in Batman Begins either, and that movie kicked ass.
Also, finally saw The Simpsons Movie. Incredibly enjoyable. I should have seen this when it first came out. Plenty of Spiderpig, plenty of Disco Stu. And the scene with Bart’s dick was HILARIOUS. “Bountiful penis!” Too damn funny.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:51 am
HIDDEN!
Artist: Bloc Party
Album: A Weekend In The City (reissue), 2007
HIDDEN!
May 16th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Saw the X-files trailer that Dan M. posted above, basically it shows you nothing although it has been scrutinzed to death by people over at the idealist haven. I mean I’m not kidding threads disecting it frame by frame, even a few threads on rating the trailer. I had no idea that you could rate a trailer. Glad you liked the Simpsons movie Chris I only saw it once in theaters, but I thought they did a good job with it, some great animation stuff and over all it’s a pretty funny movie. Much funnier than most of the epsiodes that they’ve churned out over the last 2-3 years.
May 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
X
X
May 17th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Ant-man sounds familiar.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Before you read, know there are potential spoilers ahead.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I fear how Bay will screw with Soundwave. If he doesn’t keep the voice, he’s an idiot.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Just popped over to The X-Files: I Want To Believe official web site. Damn good to see the original logo back again. I was not a big fan of the giant red X in the sky promos and posters from Fight The Future. They just never felt right. But that has been corrected. Once again I am feeling some vibes of awesomeness coming from July 25. I’m looking forward to this movie.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
Haven’t they butchered this series enough? Let it go people!!!
May 21st, 2008 at 2:36 pm
You know, no matter how many times I hear it the term “reimagining” irritates me to no end. Its such a feel-good, Disneyesque, sleazy corporate thing to say that I kind of hate the idea of remakes just because they’re described with this stupid word so often.
As far as Highlander is concerned, I propose a new quote for the Immortals: “There should have been only one.” The original movie doesn’t need a remake, because its already outstanding. Nothing like it had been filmed before. It was a rare, rare thing - a completely new story told in a business of constantly regurgitated garbage. No wonder it failed at the box office; I doubt the studio had any idea how to market it. And no wonder it did so well with fans and has lasted so long. It still holds up to this day, hand-drawn animated effects and all. Its just too bad all the sequels are crap. In all honesty, I don’t see how a remake could be any worse than what they’ve already done, but then again the first movie is the only one that doesn’t need to be remade.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Captain America, Thor Details Leaked
Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, confirmed that the upcoming The First Avenger: Captain America will be a World War II period piece, like the comic book on which it is based, and he shot down a rumor that Matthew McConaughey was in line to play the hero.
Feige, speaking to online journalists at Universal Studios on May 21, added that Captain America would help set up the eventual Avengers movie, which follows six weeks later. (Feige also confirmed what many fans have speculated: that the star-shaped object in Tony Stark’s workshop in Iron Man is indeed part of Cap’s famous shield.)
Feige also talked about the upcoming Thor movie, confirming that it will take place mostly in Asgard, the mythical Norse realm of the gods, and not in the contemporary real world. “The film is not all Asgard, but it will be a big chunk in Asgard, yeah,” Feige said.
Feige promised an announcement about a director for Thor “later this summer.” Mark Protosevich (The Cell) is drafting a script, which should be submitted in a couple of weeks, he added.
Feige also confirmed release dates for Marvel’s future slate of superhero movies: Iron Man 2 on April 30, 2010; Thor on June 4, 2010; The First Avenger: Captain America on May 6, 2011; and The Avengers on July 1, 2011.
As for a second Iron Man movie, Feige said that talks are underway with director Jon Favreau to return and that he hopes to wrap them up soon.
Feige spoke at a preview of footage from Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk, which opens June 13; look for a report about the preview next week on SCI FI Wire