LOOK OUT, THERE’S A MONSTER COMING

Here’s how I spent my evening:



Yes, that's right – I changed mobile phone service providers again.

Oh, and I also saw Cloverfield.

I’m lucky I saw it at all, actually – this movie got absolutely zero marketing as far as I could tell – no MTR posters, no TV ads, nothing. If I hadn’t happened to walk past the JP Cinema in Causeway Bay the other day where it was showing, I’d have never known it had opened in HK. Maybe they figured with all the Internet hype, who needs to actually know when it’s playing in town? That said, even Snakes On A Plane got more promotion than this.

Anyway, I haven’t been following the Cloverfield YouTubes hype that closely, so I only had a vague idea of what to expect. And what I got, basically, was Godzilla shot on a camcorder.

Not that this is a bad thing in theory. And as “giant monster attacks NYC” movies go, it’s interesting to see it captured from an unconventional POV.

Thing is, even that’s not an original idea – The Blair Witch Project was made nine years ago. In fact, there’s not that much original about any of it. They even stole the Statue Of Liberty bit from the Escape From New York movie poster, for God’s sake.

So, points for execution, and for keeping it under 90 minutes (because like most people, even 85 minutes of shaky handheld camera is hard for me to take on a big screen – did Blair Witch teach us nothing?). But take away the home-movie gimmick and the viral marketing bonuses, and it’s a pretty standard giant-monster movie.

Bad robot,

This is dF

FLAME ON!

ITEM [via BoingBoing]: For yr pleasure, a lighter being ignited in slo-mo.

I could watch this kind of stuff all day. There should be a Slo-Mo Channel. And yes, it should include sex scenes from those silly cable softcore movies and Playboy centerfolds giving each other bogus massages or whatever it is they do in slow motion.

Because that’s good television.

And that’s all I got for the moment.

Smoke if you got ‘em,

This is dF