March 13, 2016
10 Cloverfield Lane Review
Well I just saw the Cloverfield Sequel. 10 Cloverfield Lane is an excellent sci-fi/psychological thriller. I think it's a superior film to the original Cloverfield in many ways. This is thanks to a great story, and excellent acting. The best thing about this new film is that it opens the door for more films each with their own spin on the disaster genre. Cloverfield is now a brand.
(Warning: movie spoilers follow)
Most of the film takes place in a survivalist bunker, where Howard (played by John Goodman) an extremely paranoid middle-age man, has prepared for a major attack. The bunker is also occupied by two younger survivors who are not exactly free to leave: Michelle (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who has just woken from a car crash, and Emmet (played by John Gallagher), who as it turns out, chose to be in the bunker after seeing some of the attacks as they began.
My wishes for the character of Howard to have a connection to Super 8 didn't really pan out, and Howard actually turned out to be a far more disturbing character than I expected. And that's ok, because it's what makes this movie a nail-bitter. He really is the monster of the movie, a much more terrifying monster than Clover in the original film, or the other terrors that lurk near 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's Mary Elisabeth Winstead who really steals the show, as a very resourceful hostage plotting her survival. I found myself en the edge of my seat almost all of the movie while she dealt with the terrors of being a captive in Howard's world. John Gallagher was also really good in his supporting role. You feel bad for him, knowing he's been duped by the mad Howard, and he pays such a price due to Howard's cruelty.
Some reviewers/commentors online seem to be concerned that there is little connection between the two films. In reality there was never supposed to be a lot of connection, or it was never meant to be explicitly clear. But there actually are pretty clear connections – especially if you pay attention to the alternate reality online games that connect the two films. In the original Cloverfield it is revealed that the character Rob was going off to Japan to work for a company that was in some way connected to a mysterious Japanese conglomerate named Tagruato. The alternate reality games reveal over time that the company had made a significant discovery at one of its deep sea drilling stations, which could be assumed to be instigating the events in both films. In 10 Cloverfield Lane, there is a brief moment where the character Michelle stumbles onto some correspondence from Tagruato to Howard, who was at one point their employee after a stint in the US Navy. That aside, in the film there are mentions to attacks happening on the eastern sea board, which could be the attacks from the original film. Not to mention, the overall theme is very similar: Unknown supernatural/alien forces are wreaking havoc on society.
It's interesting that the director Dan Tractenberg had previously made the well-regarded Portal fan film, as so much of the Cloverfield franchise is aesthetically similar to the Half-Life franchise. There is definitely room for a cross-over.
Ironic movie trivia: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who played John McClane's daughter in the recent Die Hard films, gets her own turn finding out what a TV dinner feels like as she navigates the air vents of the bunker.
Labels: 1-18-08, Bad Robot, movies
January 23, 2016
A Cloverfield/Portal connection
While I was researching the still shocking revelation that a Cloverfield sequel was happening I realized that the director, Dan Trachtenberg, sounded kinda familiar. He used to co-host a couple podcasts I watched back in the late 2000s (the Totally Rad Show, and later GeekDrome), part of the Revision3 podcast network.
However, I was more interested to read that more recently he directed a pretty amazing short film based on the video game Portal. (Portal, along with Portal 2, happen to be my all-time favorite video games!) The film, Portal: No Escape, is excellent. It captures the essence of the game perfectly. This gives me some confidence that the Cloverfiled sequel could be very good. Check out Portal: No Escape.
Portal is set in the Half Life video game universe, and so this film based on Portal reminded me of the fan-films by the Purchase brothers, which are set during the events of Half Life. Produced for next to nothing, the two-part film series Escape from City 17 were so well done, they were mentioned on Valve's very own blog. Watch Part 1 and Part 2 of Escape from City 17.
I hope that this Cloverfield micro-budget sequel generates enough money so Bad Robot can make a feature length Portal film! There were conversations not long ago between Gabe Newel of Valve and Abrams about working on a film version of Portal and/or Half-Life. Watch this video of a convention between Abrams and Newel about video game and film possibilities. Perhaps there could be a cross-over between Cloverfield and Half-Life. The Cloverfield monster does seem very much like a creature you might encounter in Half Life, it would fit right in.
Play the game
I could go on and on about how awesome are Portal and Portal 2. If you consider yourself a casual gamer and have never experienced either, then I have to recommend trying out The Orange Box. For just $20 you can get the original Portal, Half-Life 2 (including Episodes 1 and 2), and Team Fortress. You can buy it through Valve's Steam video game service for PC and Mac, or pick up a copy for Xbox or Playstation. It really is the best deal in video game history.
Labels: 1-18-08, Bad Robot, movies, portal, video games
January 16, 2008
1-18-08 ... roundup
I've been making a list of upcoming movies for 2008 that look the most interesting; first in line is Cloverfield, so I thought as its now down to the wire (2 days to go), I'd write a final posting for the 1-18-08 movie phenomena, I've posted on this mysterious film three times before (click here for 1st, 2nd, 3rd).
Its just a couple days away now; So here's What We DO Know...
Title: Come to find out, the title is indeed Cloverfield, which had previously thought to be only a code-name for the film.
Plot: It is definitely about a monster attacking New York as told threw shots from at least one hand held digital camera (or more) (with 35-mm film segments slipped in). In a recent article in the New York Times about Paramount's chairman Brad Grey, it describes Abram's as figuring “[...]he could make the modern-day equivalent of “Godzilla” for $25 million or less, if he hired a bunch of no-name actors, shot much of the movie with a single $1,500 hand-held camera and threw the rest of his cash into special effects.”
Setting: Location is New York City. The events of the movie are set to occur as the movie premiers, 1-18-08; which is indicated by the time shown on the photos available at 1-18-08.com.
As for What We THINK We Know: The creature itself likely comes from the ocean. Evidence to support this includes: the official poster shows a trail under the water between the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan, the actual roar of the creature (see the BLOOP Theory), and actual clues found in several of the viral marketing sites that were created for promoting the film.
The BLOOP theory: the nature of the 'roar' heard in the preview actually matches closely that of an actual moan from an underwater creature that was recorded by US Navy researchers in 1997. According to those researchers, the source of that moan would have to have been something living and much bigger than any known creature due to strength of the roar at that depth.
As for the viral marketing evidence, read below in the list of websites relating to the film, specifically the mentions of Slusho.jp and Tagruato.jp. Also, fairly recently a video was released mimicking an actual news report of a ocean oil rig owned by the fictional Tagruato Corp. being mysteriously destroyed. It seems to be being pulled down from below.
here's a list of websites relating to the film:
1-18-08.com
This site coinsided with the release of the first surprise teaser at the wide-release of Transformers back in July (at this time, the movie production was only about a week old; the trailer was filmed before the rest of the film). It offers little, except some floating photos taken the night of the party during which the Cloverfield movie takes place (the same time as it's wide release). As time as gone by, more photos have been added, including some very recently that appear to be of military ships and planes engaged in serious combat.
Slusho.jp
Also immediately coinciding with the release of the first surprise teaser was the fictitious Japanese beverage company's website: Slusho.jp. The Slusho logo is shown in the trailer in the main character's shirt. But how is it related to the film? The Slusho site (unlike the 1-18-08 site) is extremely elaborate; full of quirky flash animations.
In fact, if you look around the Slusho site you'll find a bunch of clues about the nature of the “monster” that is attacking the city--like these I found while looking around the Happy Talk section. One statement reads: “Am I a Whale?” Might I presume that this statement implies the creature comes from the ocean? Another statement reads: “Can I have a Slusho T-shirt size XXXL?” Can I presume this statement is implying that the creature is massive? Well, I think so for both counts.
Tagruato.jp
If you look closely enough on the Slusho.jp site (specifically, the Distribution Opportunities page) you'll see that Slusho is a fictitious subsidiary of it's fictitious parent company Tagruto (Website: Tagruto.jp). Tagruto's stated principle business is deep sea drilling, which gives credit to the idea that the monster in Cloverfield is from the ocean, and is
Of course, all of this viral marketing, from the Slusho shirt in the trailer to the fake TIDO Wave organization website could be an extremely elaborate ruse to distract fans from the actual creature that attacks in the movie.
There are also various Myspace pages for the principle characters of the film, which have been updated to add to the anticipation of film's release.
JamieandTeddy.com
The most significant finding related to the Myspace pages was a personal site for two of the film's characters Jamie and Teddy, a seemingly personal site where videos are created by Jamie for Teddy who is away on business. You have to find the password to access the videos. And while everything seemed to be going well for these two, and some speculated that this site actually had nothing to do with Cloverfield's viral marketing at all, but a recent video seemed to say otherwise...in the latest video (the ninth), the cryptic responce from Jamie (who does not believe Teddy's claim that he's in trouble) states that she's seeing things much clearer now thanks to the 'stuff' sent from Teddy. Could this stuff be related to Slusho??
Cloverfieldmovie.com
This official promotional website isn't really part of the viral marketing campaign, but once the hype for the movie had extended to a more mainstream audience, and just in time for the 2007 holidays, two new trailers were shown, extending what we already knew about the movie, several new TV-spots and at least one radio spot was released, apparently some huge posters have been seen on buildings in NYC promoting the film, and now there's an official promotional website for the film: cloverfieldmovie.com. Things seemed to be quickly revving up in a more traditional marketing approach.
Official sites NOT directly related to the film:
Bad Robot
The second site I ever visited relating to the 1-18-08 movie phenomenon when I was searching for clues was Bad Robot's official site (badrobot.com); after all, aside from the date, and JJ Abrams name, the Bad Robot logo was all I remembered accompanying the very intriguing trailer. So far, the site has had nothing more than the static Bad Robot logo.
The Third Floor
The Third Floor is a company that did the previsualizations for cloverfield. Its mentioned in the company notes section in vague terms such as “After being tapped by JJ Abrams’ production company [bad robot] to work on the super-secret “Cloverfield” trailer, (as seen in front of Transformers); The Third Floor delivered previs for the entire feature – coming soon (01-18-08?) to a theatre near you! ” and “The Third Floor is thrilled to announce that our artists have been requested for JJ Abrams’ newest directorial project.” The Third Floor has also worked on Lord of the Rings, The Star Wars Prequels, resident evil 5, to name a few, so we can likely expect some amazing visuals for this film!
Unofficial sites relating to the film:
They certainly know who they're dealing with. Our first glimps of the Cloverfield phenomena was a surprise trailer that caught everybody off guard, shown before Transformers, where a bunch of unsuspecting (and lets be honest) nerds (myself included) were eager to see Transformers. Thats a smart way to target their audience, but I wonder if they had any idea just how effective their viral marketing strategy would be???
The most remarkable thing about this movie (I think) is the cult following that has sprang up following it. One of my favorite sites is 1-18-08news.com. The Forums there have been my preferred way to stay up on information relating to the film. Users there were able to confirm a detailed description of the new teaser trailers weeks before they were released.
There is also 1-18-08truth.com (which has a really nice flash-into parody of 1-18-08.com)
Well, Cloverfield has created an enormous cult following of fans for a movie even before its released and despite that they know next to nothing about the film beforehand. This is a completely opposite approach from the traditional Hollywood trend and so far its proven quite successful. This is what I find most interesting of all. Might this be a sign of things to come?
it really is genius, targeting nerds by setting the film to take place simultaneously as its released (which is unprecedented)and teasing them with shreds of carefully hidden information, causing them to become obsessed with a film. Who wouldn't be there at opening night??? I think very likely this will be a huge box-office success for Paramount, but I'll be surprised if the actual film lives up to the massive hype that has preceded it.
Labels: 1-18-08, Bad Robot, Slusho