Cloverfield

[goldenboy]

A new trailer is here:

Empire: Movie News - The New Cloverfield Trailer (http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=21492)

So, whatcha guys think the creature or phenomenon or whatever it is, is? There are new still shots on the Net of people in hazmat suits, others bleeding from their eyes, etc. I do like the docu-feel, the 'real' factor.

[N4H]

I try not to let Abrams suck me into the hype, but you know, Hell, I'll watch that. Looks pretty good.

[prydain]

Abrams can pretty much suck me into anything, Alias and Lost are for me two of the best shows to ever debut on television, Felicity is pretty darn good, and I loved M:i:III.

[goldenboy]

Some spoilery details follow..

Cloverfield' Star Speaks At Last, Shedding Light On Secret J.J. Abrams Flick

'They've been very careful about not giving it away, because that's the fun of it,' Michael Stahl-David explains of monster movie.
By Larry Carroll

"Cloverfield" is intense. It is loud, epic and thrives in a state of secrecy. In short, the January 18 release reflects producer J.J. Abrams much like a child inherits genes from a parent. And now, after months of teasing you with random images of monsters, decapitated Statue of Liberties and bizarre frozen beverages, the "Lost" mastermind is finally pulling back the curtain on his secretive slice of cinema.

"We knew from the beginning that it was top-secret," star Michael Stahl-David remembered, speaking to MTV News about the film for the first time. "When we signed on, we signed a contract without seeing a script. From the beginning, we'd get these scripts that were red, and they wouldn't let us take them home from the offices. There was one morning where I left my script somewhere and didn't know where it was — and that was not OK. As it turned out, the cleaning lady had put it in a drawer; but there was this brief moment where it was like, 'You are going to go find that script!' "

Such measures were necessary to keep Abrams' guessing game alive, as he doled out breadcrumbs including unnamed trailers and Slusho! T-shirts, gleefully fueling Internet speculation. But now, with four intense minutes of new footage to support a "Cloverfield" contest, the cat is slowly creeping out of the bag.

"You can take this widget and put it on your Facebook or MySpace [page], and when people go to your page they can click on the widget, watch it and grab it," the 25-year-old Stahl-David said of the contest, which can be found at Clearspring.com. "The person with the most grabs wins a screening before anybody else, in their hometown. I want to do it, because I haven't seen the movie yet ... but I'm not the best person for this — I only have three friends on my MySpace [page]."

In the flick, the former star of TV's "The Black Donnellys" makes his movie debut as besieged New Yorker Rob Hawkins. "[My character] is someone who's not a big risk-taker or somebody who's very spontaneous," Stahl-David revealed. "And then there's Hud, the man behind the camera [played by T.J. Miller], who's loud and funny but not the most tactful guy, definitely — he really cares about his friends. Then there's Lizzy Caplan [as Marlena], who randomly gets stuck with us — she's not in our close circle of friends ... she's the outsider in our midst. Then there's Jessica Lucas [as Lily], who is the caretaker of my brother Jason [Mike Vogel], who is wild and reckless. She's the only reason he keeps his sh-- together.

"Then there's Beth [Odette Yustman], [and] I've always felt like there's something there between us," he explained. "We've been friends for a long time, but whenever I'm single, she's been seeing somebody and vice versa. We've never really connected, until a few weeks before the tape begins to roll — but I'm leaving, so it was just going to end where it was."

Cut to the newly revealed four-minute clip of hand-held "discovered" footage of Rob's going-away festivities — and the monster that crashes the party. "When the tape starts rolling, we're filming this tape for ourselves. We don't know that anything's going to happen," he explained. "We're just filming this party. [The actors] did a lot of improvised stuff that felt very real ... I was thrown into a room with 30 people I didn't know and had to make it feel like they were my best friends.

"Then the monster comes, whatever that is," he laughed, trying to keep a secret. "We're seeing the effects of [the monster], and what the government is trying to do against it. [The whole movie] is what's on this tape. The tape could have been used for something before, for whatever, but this is the one tape that the government found."

With Abrams and director Matt Reeves hoping to keep things real, they brainstormed such minutiae as the moment when people start snapping photos of the Statue of Liberty's severed head with their camera phones. "That's real," he laughed. "Nobody is pulling out their hair and [melodramatically] screaming, 'Why?' A lot of the footage of this shooting style was inspired by 9/11 ... it was a little weird to have the imagery in the movie. It's a disaster in New York that involves clouds of dust and buildings falling."

Cautiously, he added: "But it never heads too much in that way, because it is a monster movie. It's going to be a fun movie, but it's also going to be really intense.

"They've been very careful about not giving it away, because that's the fun of it," he explained of the secrecy for his no-stars movie, normally reserved for blockbusters with roman numerals after the title. "It's gotten way more attention than it would have otherwise."

As such, Stahl-David can't even acknowledge the "Cloverfield" existence of a certain icy drink that recently launched a bizarre commercial online. "The concept of Slusho! is something that I'm not at liberty to discuss," he recited robotically, only half-kidding. "I think [my character] might've been better off if he found some Slusho! [during the attack], but that would've been too much like Popeye eating his can of spinach."

We did, however, learn that the monster is not named in the movie ("We took to calling it Clover ... when the movie comes out, people are gonna name it"); that "Cloverfield" contains "Speed"-like nonstop scenes as high-adrenaline as the clip ("There's a couple points where we can't run anymore and we have to sit with ourselves, but other than that, the movie is about you being with us, and us trying to survive"); and that a climactic scene takes place in the NYC subway system.

"The whole scene in the subway," Stahl-David said when asked for his favorite moment. "Once we go in there and get stuck and have to walk through those tunnels ... it's not a nice place to be ... I can't wait for the world to see that, and to hear their reactions."

If all continues to go according to plan through January 18, the mind behind "Lost," "Alias" and the upcoming "Star Trek" movie will have another success on his hands. And the first one Michael Stahl-David has ever seen.

"I'm not that familiar with his work, honestly," he admitted of Abrams. "When I went into the audition, I didn't even know who J.J. Abrams was, which made it easier. But I do know that he knows what the people like, and that he knows how to deliver pop culture."
'Cloverfield' Star Sheds Light On Secret J.J. Abrams Flick - Movie News Story | MTV Movie News (http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1576563/story.jhtml)

[Black King]

I like the look of this. I like how its shaping up with the man on the street feel but for the love of god what in the world is this movie about??

[Sin]

When I saw the trailer at I Am Legend, right out loud I was like "oh my god, it's godzilla." Then I watched Beowulf and a boy I was with was like "oh my god, it's godzilla."

I laughed so hard and no one had any idea why.

[goldenboy]

Found a long, detailed piece with the director, Matt Reeves. A little snippet:

Asked how the project came about, Reeves explained, "J.J. had just finished 'Mission: Impossible III' and they were doing the premiere in Japan. He brought his son, Henry, with him because he wanted to show his son Japan (and) he loved Japan. They went to a toy store one day and when they went in there they both were struck that there were shelves and shelves and shelves of Godzilla toys. Just the idea of seeing all these Godzillas (made them feel) like that was so clearly part of the national identity. It's their national monster. He just started thinking, 'Well, we need to have that.' He was thinking that King Kong is sort of that, but not really. So that was where the seeds of it began."

After that, Reeves continued, Abrams spoke to Drew Goddard, "a writer from 'Lost' who also (has) kind of a cult following of people who watched the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' series. They both were very excited about the idea of doing this kind of monster movie. Around the same time there's a movie, 'The Invisible Woman,' that I wrote that I'm directing and producing (next) -- and J.J.'s one of producers -- and we were casting that. J.J. after having finished 'M: I 3" was just setting up a deal to do movies at Paramount and the idea was that not only did he want to write movies and direct movies, but he also was really excited about the idea of producing movies under his Bad Robot label.

"So the thing he told me about right away was, 'Gosh, the first movie I really, really want to do, which I'm hoping that they'll let us do, is this giant monster movie.' He was telling me about it and how he thought (it would be great) if it were all sort of Handycam. I thought it was a fantastic idea. I thought it sounded really exciting and never ever ever thought that that would be something I would end up getting involved in or that he would ask me to get involved (in). But what happened was that time passed and we were casting my movie and there was an actress that we cast and she ended up falling out because she got pregnant. It's a more independent movie and you go through this sort of casting dance and as all of that was going on J.J. came back to me one day and said, 'Remember that monster movie I was telling you about?' I said yeah and he goes, 'Well, Paramount just gave it the green light.' I said, 'Oh, that's fantastic!'"

To Reeves' surprise, Abrams had him in mind to direct it: "He and his partner Bryan Burk, who is another friend of mine that I've known forever -- Bryan Burk actually produced my student film in college at USC and we have a long history together. J.J. and I have known each other forever. We met making 8mm films when we were kids. So we've always sort of like shared this creative camaraderie -- came to me and said, 'Look, we know you're going to do 'The Invisible Woman' and you have to get that made and we're really excited about that, but why don't you do this first because we just got the green light?' I was like, 'Well, let me read the script.' And they said, 'Well, there is no script right now. All there is right now is a very, very detailed outline that Drew Goddard has written based on the story that he and J.J. talked about.'

"It was like a 60 page really dense outline, very detailed. Upon reading it, my first reaction was, 'Oh, my God. This is enormous.' It read in terms of scope and size like a Roland Emmerich size movie. It was just enormous. It was clear that there would be a tremendous number of visual effects and all of these things. I said, 'Guys, you know I'm very flattered, but why are you thinking of me? This movie is wall-to-wall visual effects and I have never done visual effects.' And what they both said was, 'The thing is, we feel like there are a lot of obvious choices for a monster movie, but we don't want this just to be a monster movie. We want this kind of realism -- this kind of Handycam aesthetic -- and we know that's the kind of thing that you are really into, which is that you care about character.'"


'Cloverfield' monster movie hoping for monster business (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/columns/e3ic57162ccf8c18bbf0aba8f82e3c2c593)

[goldenboy]

Harry Knowles got a sneak peek and had a conniption fit - in a good way.

What is CLOVERFIELD?

For the past year or so, that’s been the question that everyone has been asking. Well… they also wanted to know: What was that trailer? What’s the name of this movie? Who are those actors? What is a SLUSHO? What does any of this mean?

Having seen the film, I can tell you – I have completely forgotten the marketing. I no longer care why the film is titled CLOVERFIELD, I don’t think it has a secret meaning – other than the fact that the movie that the marketing would lead you to, if it will… will knock your cinema-going mind into the floor of the theater.

CLOVERFIELD is a bold genre-reinvention unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

The basic premise that we know is there. The film is found footage, not an assembled film. The footage is recovered in Central Park. From trailers and ads you know that it probably starts at a party, something happens, and we think there is a giant monster. You’re pretty sure there’s a giant monster attacking New York City… specifically Manhattan.

Well, I’ve just come home from watching CLOVERFIELD. The security on me and my wife for seeing this movie was un-frickin-believable. I suppose some would have the temptation to snap a pic of the monster and send it out online to end, forever, the “mystery” – but folks… there’s no mystery.

The movie is f***ing brilliant. It’s what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension.

And it goes on and on, with some spoilage...

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35236

[prydain]

Guys, I loved this movie.

If you haven't seen it yet, don't read this post, unless you wanna be spoiled....I'm gonna put the entire thing in spoiler tags.

OK, so, overall I found this movie to be completely exhilarating, cool, scary, fun, sometimes funny, and very tense. I liked nearly all the characters so whenever they met their fates I actually felt really bad, unlike most monster movies where I don't give a damn about the people. I'm glad they spent the first part of the movie just showing them at the party, it gives you a chance to get to know and care about 'em.

Also, I loved that a simple love story was the heart of this movie, it sort of took me by surprise and made me feel more connected emotionally to the film.

However, I can't come to a conclusion about the ending. It wowed me, and at the same time it really disappointed me, I figured everyone was going to die but watching those two go out like that was really sad, yet at the same time I was sort of "touched" by how much they still loved each other. And I guess in that situation death wouldn't be so horrible, I mean after living through that you'd NEVER be the same again so I guess moving on to the next stage of existence wouldn't be so horrible.

At the end of the credits, according to the internet, audio is played backwards that says "It's still alive". I guess we're getting a sequel.

BTW, I just wanted to comment on some of the reviews I've been reading. Why is it that so many old critics hate movies with younger characters? No matter what the characters do the reviewers go on about how shallow and vapid they are. Reviewers, remove the stick out of your asses before going to see another movie please.

Also, a lot of people accused this film of being insensitive to 9/11, to which I say "Give me a break".

[Sin]

I saw it too. It was like he said - so amazing.

The guy who is filming the whole time is hilarious.

When that girl (idk her name) started bleeding everywhere after she got bit, when they took her into that secluded place and killed her, i was like "oh my god" right out loud..

This movie is gonna stick in my head forever. And it definitely wasnt like any Godzilla movie I've ever seen. Lol :)

[Padfoot723]

Idk about you guys, but I have mixed feelings about "Cloverfield". I love J.J. Abrams but ... well, I just don't know. I mean, it doesn't seem all that originial (keep in mind that I haven't seen the movie yet so it could be way off base from what they've shown in the trailers). I mean, aliens/taking over world/killing spree and then mix that in with a bunch of hot 20 something yuppies dying and shake. Hmm ... have they done that before? But, I still want to see it.

[Sin]

You're right - you haven't seen it. This movie is so great. It's not like anything I've ever seen before.

[prydain]

They didn't kill her, she exploded. Remember the guy they wheeled out with the gaping chest? He got bitten too.

[Padfoot723]

Okay, thanks a lot Sin. Now I'll definitely have to see it this weekend.

Edit:

Prydain, this is absolutely nothing wrong with hot people. I love them.

[Sin]

You're right - you haven't seen it. This movie is so great. It's not like anything I've ever seen before.

Gosh, I kinda sounded bitchy. Not intentional. Sorry :)

[Black King]

I just saw this very enjoyable gave me that nice freaked out feeling the first Blair Witch movie did.

[Vilandra]

I saw it today too - yes, it was awesome! I didn't like the Blair Witch-y ness at the end though. I also spent the last half hour with my eyes closed because I thought I was going to vomit in the middle of the theater. So anyone with carsickness issues, sit on the aisle.

And I just have to say, kudos to Drew Goddard for being realistic in his characters. The New York bitch is so self-centered that she gets all her friends killed trying to save HER.

[prydain]

She was not a bitch. I <3 her. :) It was their choice anyway lol

[Vilandra]

Come on, she was a completely unsympathetic character. You only <3 her cause she's hot. It's so typical of Manhattanite chicks, to call some guy they treated like crap and expect them to come running. Anyone who really cared for their friends, wouldn't have called and asked their friend to come get them in a collapsed building, they would have told them to get themselves the hell out of the city.

I forgot to say I think I was at Coney Island when they were filming the scenes there.

:)

[Black King]

i think the sadder part was the idiot came running idk about you but if i see half collapsed building I'm assuming your dead. BTW anyone notice what happened in the last scene at Coney island, my brother says he saw something fall in the water before they cut away to "I love yous" but i didn't see it.

[Vilandra]

Easter Eggs Abound In Cloverfield

The mysteries surrounding Cloverfield do not stop with the film's release on Jan. 18: According to director Matt Reeves, there are little easter eggs scattered throughout the film itself. That's in addition to the viral marketing elements all over the Internet that provide hints about the history of the monster that destroys New York City. (There are spoilers ahead!)

For example, after the credits roll audiences can hear some static-y noise, followed by a few indistinguishable words. Reeves, who actually spoke those words, coyly refused to reveal what he said.

"I can't tell you that," he said during an interview with reporters on opening day. "At the end of the thing we were doing the mix. We were just about done. We'd mixed all of that great music and I turned to [co-producer] Bryan [Burk], and we said, 'Let's just do one more little thing.' There was a thing in [the] teaser trailer where I'd jumped up to the mike and said, 'I saw it! It's alive! It's huge!' And that all got turned into people thinking we were doing Voltron, because I speak so quickly that they thought I said, 'It's a lion. It's huge.' But I actually said, 'It's alive.'"

Some enterprising fans have decoded the message (SPOILER: he says what sounds like "It's still alive!" played backward).

"I apparently have some diction and enunciation problems," Reeves added.

There have also been rumors that there's something--perhaps a creature in the water--in the last shot featuring Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman) in pre-attack happier times at Coney Island. Again, Reeves played it coy.

"Is there a creature?" he asked rhetorically. "I will tell you, there is something in that shot as well. There is something. You have to look at that shot. There is something going on in that shot. Whether or not it's a creature or something else ... "

Reeves added: "The thing about that shot is that almost nobody sees the shot, but once you see the shot and the thing in it, you'll never stop seeing it." Cloverfield is in theaters now. --Ian Spelling

Source: SCI FI Wire | The News Service of the SCI FI Channel | SCIFI.COM (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&id=47531)

[Black King]

Now every time i see this movie I'm going to be looking at insignificant detail for some brand clue.

[Vilandra]

And that's bad, why? lol

I need this to come out on DVD soon so I can actually watch the whole thing lol

[Sin]

Ooh, I was looking because I figured they would have put something in that last scene but I never saw something so I just figured I was being silly. Did anyone see anything?

[teentitan]

This movie screams sequel! Didn't see anything in the final shot but man I hope the DVD comes out real soon. I can see it loaded with extra footage because everyone in the movie had either their cell phone camera going or a cam corder etc. Plus the DVD would be another huge teaser for the production movie.
The shaky camera work was not as bad as everyone said and as for the guy going back for the girl...hey it was in the script and if he didn't go to save her then it wouldn't have been much of a movie now would it have???