http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/medium.html
So, it looks to be exactly what it's been speculated to be... Godzilla meets Blair Witch. And the movie appears to actually be called Cloverfield.... a name of a character, perhaps?
Ellis here. I added a frame grab. Looks like Godzilla in a platypus kinda way. I'm going to give it a miss if it's 90 percent shakey cam. I can't imagine a worst type of movie experience. Someone will have to convince me it's a must see story.
I dunno. I could be cool. I will see it on opening day if I can swing it. Hey its a different take. It's a giant monster movie from and ant's perspective! Maybe they should make it a theme park ride ala "Back to the Future".
ReplyDeleteI've warmed up to the idea a little bit, but I do agree with Ellis that a hand held camera for the whole film would get obnoxious after a while.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like they want to make a giant monster movie as believable looking as possible... a cool idea, but it puts the film makers in the position of swimming up stream from the get-go. The hand held nature of the film will go a long way in giving it that sense of reality that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Seeing the events of the film from the human perspective also allows the movie makers to have the monster lurking out of site for a lot of the film… something that I thought didn’t work so well in the US Godzilla movie. The mistake that anyone shooting a giant monster movie should avoid is being coy about showing your monster. That’s why the audience is there, to see a giant monster, not for some penetrating insight into the human condition.
Also, it’s disappointing that it’s set in NY… That city has been the location of just about every disaster/monster movie of the past 10 years (including the US Godzilla movie!)… Can’t we destroy some other city?
My expectations for this movie are pretty low, so perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.
I like your new pumpkin Rick
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ellis! I made it a little oversized, so the auto scale on it is not entirely correct, but I still like it better than my old pumpkin.
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving everyone!
I actually like the coy approach to showing the monster. If done right, the slow revelation of the monster makes for a fun guessing game based on the clues that are dropped along the way. Of course it's all in the pacing. I think the original Alien movie did this quite well, and had the proper balance of action vs. focus on the characters. As cool as the Giger Alien was, the first two movies, (let's pretend there were no more after that) would not have been very interesting without the wonderful Sigourney Weaver character who was one of the first great action heroines. Go Ripley!
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see some neat creatures, check out the second half of the Mist. The first half has some terrible CG, but the second half features all manner of beastie enveloped in fog and only visible as truly terrible silhouettes.
ReplyDeleteI just saw The Mist Weezie. The monsters were good and it had a lot of good acting going for it. So I'm not officially disappointed. I've thought for a long time that The Mist was the most obvious King story to make into a movie. The silohuette monsters were the most fun.
ReplyDeleteI also read THe Road. And really liked it. Saddest thing in the world being inexplicablely uplifting. You said nothing happens. It was paced where I felt something was happening with an almost "commercial" regularity. Commercial for Cormac McCarthy anyway.
Anyway, that will make a decnt movie handled right. It'll be the world's worst movie if they get the wrong KID.
Tom... I'm talking strictly about Giant monster movies. I totally agree that some of the coolest, most scary monsters are more shadowy and our minds fill in the hideous details. Giant monsters, as opposed to more man-sized creatures, however, can't be mysterious for very long... it's giant, after all! How do you not get a good look at something that's as big as a skyscraper!
ReplyDeleteA good point Rick. It's hard to hide something 30 stories tall.
ReplyDeleteAnd as you said earlier, the P.O.V. of a hand-held camera in the hands of someone who is not a hero out to confront the monster, is exactly how they sought to solve that very problem of plausible, slow revelation.
That, plus a nighttime attack with power outage, plus television blackout, plus heavy daytime fog, plus debris clouds from falling buildings,(think collapsing Twin Towers times ten) will make a good case for delayed revelation.
It's a lot of contrivances, but if it's well-done, the audience always forgives the director, and gets caught up in the excitement.
Will it work? I'm betting "Yes". My blow-up Ranjo doll against anyone's fifty bucks. Any takers?
Just to be clear in my Mist review, I used the word "terrible" twice which may have given the wrong impression. In the first case, I thought the CG creatures that were clearly seen were neat, but quite obviously CG and not super scary. The more effective creatures were the ones glimpsed only as shadows in the fog. That's partially why I like what i've seen of Cloverfield so far rather than the Emmerich Godzilla approach where the audience sees far too much.
ReplyDeleteI'll also say that the Mist is worth seeing for the last 15 minutes alone. One of the bravest choices i've seen in a Hollywood movie in a while.
A random observation about giant monster movies: In doing some cursory research on this matter, it seems that the minimum height a monster must be to qualify for the "giant" category is about 20 to 25 feet; the height of a full grown T-Rex, just 2 or 3 stories tall. Any smaller and he's too easy to kill with an ordinary gun. The maximum height seems to be three or four hundred feet, 30 or 40 stories tall. Any larger and he's too hard to kill. The army needs to have at least some hope against him. The Statue of Liberty is 305 feet to the tip of the torch, so the Cloverfield monster looks to be about maximum size.
ReplyDeleteYou want to see some way cool Monsters, go see Beowulf in 3D. It was incredible. I was ready to be unimpressed. Like someone else at work said, "I'd be waiting for the game to start."
ReplyDeleteI can forecast with certainty this will become the official favorite movie of the Hells Angels.
It's like every Richard Corben sword and sorcery fantasy rolled into one. I'll definitely buy the DVD but make sure and take advantage of the 3D.
I read some sort of dumbed down kids version of Beowulf in 6th grade. It made quite an impression on me. So this movie really touched the deep down kid in me.
Saw the Cloverfield trailer for the second time at the beginning of Beowulf. You guys will have to get on here and rave about it to get me in the theatre. My head would split after ten minutes of that camera work.
"Natural Born Killers" was the worst movie ever for having unwatchable camera work. I actually did get motion sickness, and had to close my eyes a lot through much of it. I also get motion sickness from the IMAX movies and from playing too much "Doom". Taking Dramamine before seeing an IMAX movie actually works really well.
ReplyDeleteShakey camera work will give me a headache ten minutes into this film. I guarantee it. Plus I don't like visual Easter eggs while I'm watching something on the big screen. Just show the damn monster and move forward. This is just another gimmick to visually distract from obvious bad filmmaking. US Godzilla..aka:Gino. SUCKED. I predict this will fair no better.
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to write it up this morning, but I have another diatribe to spit out about The Mist. I saw Weezie's comments about the last 15 minutes being one of the bravest choices he's seen in Hollywood in awhile while I thought it was one of the frigging dumbest, typical, uncreative, and disrespectful to the intelligence of the audience endings in recent history. And I'll tell you why... sometime soon. (I'm not attacking Weezie in any way, I'll be attacking Frank Darabont.)
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