1-18-08

[bratpop]

Is there a "don't show smileys" button?

However as a filmmaker, or if I were a filmmaker, I would find it offensive since the camera work was done by one of the actors who didn't even KNOW he'd be holding the camera for the whole movie.

Are you serious?

Am I serious about being offended or am I serious about that being true? Yes, it's true. The actor was just handed the camera and didn't know he wouldn't be ON camera. Am I serious about being offended? Hmm, I'll never tell!

Is there a "don't show smilies" button?

[Zardoz!]

One issue I have: How could the 911 monster have knocked off the statue of liberty's head without taking her torch arm off in the swing? I guess if it was standing at her side, the side where she has the arm down and swung from that angle it could, but from the front, face on I don't think it could have knocked the head off and missed the arm.

If it hit from the side, I think the head would have ended up in the water, not on land....

[bratpop]

It carefully removed it by sawing with its fingernail.

[Rude]

Yes, it's true. The actor was just handed the camera and didn't know he wouldn't be ON camera.

I would love if you could do a little research on that and get back to me. Just ya' know... for my sake.

-Rude

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

as in site your sources you silly git. 

[esoobaC .T bocaJ]

The truth about the name

Matt Reeves, Director of Cloverfield

"When we started the project there was going to be an announcement in the trades. In this case, they wanted to keep everything under wraps. So the movie was going to be made under this outside corporation that was basically a property of Paramount. That corporation had a name that I don't know the name of. I think Clover was the first part of it. Maybe it was Cloverdale. When Drew [Goddard, LOST writer] was putting a name to the project, there was supposed to be a name for the project like there was for The Manhattan Project. So he said, "I am going to use that weird mysterious thing," and he misheard it. He didn't even understand that it wasn't Cloverfield, it was Cloverdale. Maybe that was because of the street by J.J.'s old office, but the truth is he just misunderstood it."

turns out my first post on the name was "sort of" wrong.

[JoshWay]

My wife asked me how I would describe the movie after I saw it, and the best I could come up with was "a documentary about stupid people."

But I did enjoy it. I don't think it's as groundbreaking as some would suggest, but it was intense and fun to watch.

Sorry if I'm repeating a nitpick, but doesn't the caption at the beginning of the movie say the video is from a memory card? Memory cards save videos as individual files, so the "taping over old footage" device wouldn't really work. But then some characters do refer to it as a "tape" in the dialog.

Also, giant monsters with lice aren't real.

[Cthulhu Bob]

In regards to the dispute over the movie's similarities to certain aspects of 9/11 (and it was 2001, the year before my brother died so let me just kill that snide comment right there):

Movies since the beginning of film-making, especially horror movies, have always been a reflection of the fears and hopes of the populace at the time they were made. A prime example of this that is over-used is monster movies from the 50s and early 60s being a representation of the Communist Red Scare and on the flip-side, the witchhunt for imaginary communist sympathizers in Hollywood. So you had Them! on one side and The Thing from the Another World on the other. In the 70s you had a general distrust of authority, government and ourselves in movies such as The Exorcist and Colossus: The Forbin Project. The list goes on and on.

Yes, Cloverfield is just a giant monster movie and can be enjoyed simply on that level but it is also a safe way to look back on a number of tragic events from the past few years in a safe and non-threatening way as well.

[FordPrefect]

Note: If you're reading this and haven't seen the movie yet, stop and go watch it. A lot of the appeal of the film is the element of surprise. I think I'm being very careful not to give anyone I talk to much info about the film. When someone asks me what it's about, I usually say something like, "Oh, it's about 84 minutes long.  What else? Oh, it's in color....it's a talkie." 

I love how the filmmakers deliberately took efforts to not tell us hardly anything about the film before it came out. We live in an era of media saturation where you're constantly reminded that a movie is coming out everywhere you look. We have trailers tell you nearly everything that happens in the film, except for the ending which you can probably make a good guess at. I think it would have been interesting to have lived in a time when people didn't know what was going to happen in films like the original Planet of the Apes, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Empire Strikes Back, and Back to the Future. Even casual trips to the internet to find out more about the film just raised more questions. Heck, after watching it we still had questions. The filmmakers really took the old saying "leave them wanting more" to heart.

I saw this movie Friday night with a couple of friends. After the credits started rolling were were all like, "...........um....wow." We were all really impressed with it. One friend liked it so much she thought about seeing it again that night and taking another friend who hasn't watched it yet. We decided to wait till tomorrow night though, because it will be cheaper.

I think it's the first movie of it's kind that truly impressed me. I've seen tons of movies and I don't say that a lot. Sure it's not perfect, but I still enjoyed it more than a lot of similar films. People keep saying it's Blair Witch meets Godzilla, but I like it  much better than either of those. Somebody mentioned Alien earlier and I think I like it a little better than that, but I haven't seen it in a while. I'm pretty sure the enjoyment I'm feeling isn't going away and I'll be buying the DVD when it finally comes out.

I'm glad it was short. I hate how a lot of movies seem to have their running times artificially lengthened just to fill out more space on the DVD. Speaking of the DVD, I wonder how much (if any) of the bonus feature material will go along with the idea that the Cloverfield incident really happened.

I've read that some people thought that Hud holding the video camera the whole time was stretching it, but if you can suspend your disbelief for everything else that's going on, I don't think the camera thing is that unbelievable. Especially in the youtube era where people go for long stretches of recording comparatively mundane stuff. The battery power thing doesn't take me out of the film either since they keep turning the camera off at various times throughout the night. As for the rescue attempt, considering the random destruction caused by the creature and it's parasites, I don't think there's any guarantee they would have survived even if they hadn't attempted it. The creature being able to survive anything that's thrown at it makes sense since we don't know anything about it.

The shakey-cam stuff doesn't bother me since a) it's actually part of the storyline and Hud isn't a professional b) there wasn't any actual movement while I was watching the film. If the theater was shaking while I was watching it, I might have been troubled but that wasn't the case. A friend of mine who caught a different showing thought the scene at the end with the creature and Hud looked a little off scale-wise, but it's kinda hard to tell with the sky in the background. I'll be thinking about that when I see it again though. In an interview from before the movie came out, somebody was asking them if the audience would ever really see the monster. Someone responded, "Oh you'll get to see the monster alright. Up close and personal." At the end I knew what they meant. Roger Ebert ticked me off a bit because in his review he not only semi-spoiled the ending, he apparently interpreted it wrong. If you read his review, you'll know what I mean.

I've read various complaints in reviews about the film "exploiting tragedies like 9/11", but I think that any movie that involves large scale destruction in a city will have a hard time avoiding comparisons. Particularly if they're trying to take the fictional events seriously and aren't camping it up. Bratpop mentioned D-Wars. I've avoided it because I have yet to read a positive review of the film. One online reviewer even gave it a "Mystery Science Theater 3000 Award", because he says the only reason that the movie would be good to see at all is if someone is making fun of it. I can only hope the Rifftrax guys are looking into this.

And using the monster from Cloverfield as an example of a new paradigm is baseless since it was actually contained by the military on the island of Manhattan. Not exactly a good example of America's newfound national vulnerability.

What gave you the impression that the military contained it? The creature wasn't defeated and I'm guessing the parasites are still around.

However as a filmmaker, or if I were a filmmaker, I would find it offensive since the camera work was done by one of the actors who didn't even KNOW he'd be holding the camera for the whole movie.

Are you serious?

Am I serious about being offended or am I serious about that being true? Yes, it's true. The actor was just handed the camera and didn't know he wouldn't be ON camera. Am I serious about being offended? Hmm, I'll never tell!

Is there a "don't show smilies" button?

How do you know that the actor was just handed the camera and didn't know he wouldn't be on camera for most of the film?

As for the Statue's head, I'm guessing that he chomped on it, didn't like it, and spit it out. 

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

...

Yeah, i saw that sign when i bought my ticket. Reminded me of the gimmicks that William Castle used for his films~

-Rude

That sign tells me that it's true that this "jerky camera" thing really does make people ill....

The theaters are covering their asses so they don't have to get into an argument when people want their money back for leaving in the middle ("Well, we had a sign up and warned you....").

The William Castle/"Free Coffin" thing was a lot of happy horseshit to compete with TV...everyone knew that.

[FordPrefect]

...

Yeah, i saw that sign when i bought my ticket. Reminded me of the gimmicks that William Castle used for his films~

-Rude

That sign tells me that it's true that this "jerky camera" thing really does make people ill....

The theaters are covering their asses so they don't have to get into an argument when people want their money back for leaving in the middle ("Well, we had a sign up and warned you....").

The William Castle/"Free Coffin" thing was a lot of happy horseshit to compete with TV...everyone knew that.

I'd like to think it's a little of both. Of the various people I've talked to about the film, only one person got dizzy. Even then she didn't feel dizzy enough to get really sick. Alex Nicol was actually the one behind the "Free Coffin" gimmick, William Castle just did practically everything else.

[Rude]

...Spoilers...

What gave you the impression that the military contained it? The creature wasn't defeated and I'm guessing the parasites are still around.

What gave you the impression that they didn't? We just have what the movie gave us. I saw a monster in it's death throes. So obviously i imagine that the "hammer down" strike eventually worked, and you don't. There's no proof one way or the other, really... so it'd be silly to go tit-for-tat arguing that point. Of course, i'm sure there will be a sequel so you'll probably be proven right eventually!

But my comment was part of a bigger point. The attack was made on a very small part of our country, an island off the coast actually. And our military responded very quickly and forcefully to the threat. Both of those plot points sort of undermine this idea that Cloverfield plays on America's newfound vulnerability as a nation.

At least, it's my opinion that if they were truly attempting to blatantly use the feelings of helplessness and frustration from our recent national tragedies... they could have found much more effective ways to do so. As it is, Cloverfield is brilliant in the way it subtly captures an ambiguous theme in an otherwise ordinary monster movie.

-Rude

[jasimon1]

...

Yeah, i saw that sign when i bought my ticket. Reminded me of the gimmicks that William Castle used for his films~

-Rude

That sign tells me that it's true that this "jerky camera" thing really does make people ill....

The theaters are covering their asses so they don't have to get into an argument when people want their money back for leaving in the middle ("Well, we had a sign up and warned you....").

The William Castle/"Free Coffin" thing was a lot of happy horseshit to compete with TV...everyone knew that.

I'd like to think it's a little of both. Of the various people I've talked to about the film, only one person got dizzy. Even then she didn't feel dizzy enough to get really sick. Alex Nicol was actually the one behind the "Free Coffin" gimmick, William Castle just did practically everything else.

I'll step up as a person that came very close to being ill. I had to close my eyes every time they ran and had to sit a few minutes after it ended to make sure I didn't get sick. I walked in knowing it would happen because the trailer had the same effect on me.

[bratpop]

How do you know that the actor was just handed the camera and didn't know he wouldn't be on camera for most of the film?

Cos he said so on Attack of the Show?

I still want my free coffin since I died while watching The Screaming Skull. Or maybe it was during Robot Rumpus. I can't remember.

[Rude]

...

How's that research paper coming along bratpop? Was the whole movie actually shot on a camcorder by the actor, or what?

-Rude