Last night, a crowd in Austin surprisingly found themselves at the U.S. premiere of the new Star Trekmovie after being duped with promise of a new print of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (and a mere ten minutes of the upcoming film). Of course, this being Aint It Coolterritory, there were movie blog people in attendance, and of course these guys have given the reboot glowing reviews. But their praises can’t simply be explained away by the fact that the audience is part of the Trekkie choir, because certainly those fans don’t love every Star Trek movie. Otherwise there wouldn’t be such thing as the “Star Trek movie curse” on the odd-numbered installments.
Maybe they were just positive in their reviews because that’s what these kinds of guys do in situations like this. Think of it this way: if diehard Superman II,Raiders of the Lost Arkor The Empire Strikes Backfans were lured in with the promise of new prints of those films, hosted by Richard Donner or George Lucas or Harrison Ford, and the respective hosts surprised the audience with pre-release screenings of Superman Returns, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skullor The Phantom Menace, they would have been disappointed and some would possibly have written negative reviews. But if those fans were the type of movie bloggers who post reviews in between uploading photos of themselves with celebrities on Facebook, then there might be something more to it than simple fan-based bias.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these kinds of bloggers, of course. I actually appreciate that they love movies as much as they do. And certainly anybody who criticizes their positivity is only jealous that they didn’t get to see the movie yet. So consider that when reading the following responses: …Read more
Oliver Stone’s W. opens tonight. For a little perspective, we decided to watch a different movie made in an era of political transition and economic collapse. Gabriel Over the White House (1933) tells the tale of a slacker president who undergoes a religious conversion, after which he consolidates executive power and sponsors an enormous financial bailout. Sound familiar? It should, FDR personally approved the script, then went on to enact half of the film during his presidency, but the parallels echo through many administrations.
Though it’s long past the point of Cloverfieldbacklash, I was only recently beginning to think the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie could actually suck. I thought: this really is just going to be like TheBlair Witch Projectmeets Godzilla, isn’t it? This is really not much more than a movie based around an idea. This is just a camcorder-shot sci-fi action movie, and it’s not going to be pulled off well enough to hold my attention all the way through. It didn’t help that the widely read review on AICN makes the movie sound so awesome that it’s writer, Neill Cumpston, sounds like a plant. I’ll admit that I skipped most of the review to avoid spoilers, but Stu’s excerpt at The Reelerwas enough to convince me that NOTHING can be as cool as Cumpston makes it sound. It was just another thing that made me realize that no matter what, I’m going to be disappointed with the reality that will be my experience with the film.
Then I watched this new TV spot that comes to us courtesy of Movieweb (via Cinematical), which shows us that Cloverfield will not just be this hand-held-video perspective of chaos. Well, actually, it will technically just be this hand-held-video perspective of chaos, but it will at least be more expansive than I previously assumed it would be. Check out the cityscape shot from atop the roof, for instance. I didn’t expect to see jets in action. Nor did I think there’d be much action at all, not like those ground troops shooting at the monster. Am I being once again suckered by the hype? Maybe, but I enjoy playing hokey pokey with movie marketing and this time I have my right foot in. Any day now I’ll be back to the part where I take my right foot back out, but it’s very possible that by the movie’s release date, I’ll be at the point of having my whole body in, and shaking it all about.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Last night, a crowd in Austin surprisingly found themselves at the U.S. premiere of the new 
