Cloverfield

Directed by Matt Reeves
Written by Drew Goodard
Starring Pretty People and one not so Pretty Cameraman


Your Parents lied to you.
Perception is everything.
It dictates how we learn, how we remember, how we react. And what are we without those 3 things?
Perception is everything.
You need more proof? Look at the world. Immediately after September 11th we were ready to point our guns anywhere. Piles of dead troops, a missing Bin Ladin, and a recession later --- we want to pull out. Why? Our perception changed.

Don't be afraid to say it. Perception IS everything.

That's why "Cloverfield" (a film with its fare share of 9/11 comparisons) borders on brilliant. We are no longer taking an objective approach in the monster movie. We are IN the monster movie. We are moving with the film. We become immersed in it to the point where we want the screen to turn right when we turn right. If we turn around we want the images to show us what's behind us.

It's a technical accomplishment.

Sure, it's nothing new. Subjective camera work has been around for years. Even before the underappreciated, "Blair Witch Project" and continuing past the Normandy scene in "Saving Private Ryan." But "Cloverfield" (still not sure where they got that title) is, possibly, the most competent example of it to date (barring music videos like "Smack My Bitch Up.")

The story centers around a Godzilla-styled attack on New York City. It follows a group of characters who survive the initial attack during a party for their buddy who's leaving to Japan (providing a wink and nod).

Like any horror movie it's a game of who will survive. The characters that did bite it sometimes surprised me (expect a zombie sequel) and sometimes didn't (uh-oh, sappy love story---you were warned). If I were watching a normal film, I think I wouldn't have been so thrown.

And there lies the problem with "Cloverfield."

Movies like this can't really satisfy because it's more about the experiment than the narrative (The audienced sucked teeth and booed at the end of the film, but there were screams and cheers during). Here, the experiment almost wins out on the narrative. That is until a few too many clichés overtake the film. It's the clichés that really hurt this particular style of film, because in a movie where we are put in the film, the characters do things that would only be suitable for movie characters. Not me.

Regardless, you would be doing yourself a disservice to not see it in the theatre. It's about the experience.

Aliens vs. Predator Requiem

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Logically Rated R
Starring Fodder
Directed by

There is a general template to screenwriting. It’s called the three-act structure --- perhaps you’ve heard of it, they teach a similar version of it in school.
The three act structure states the obvious (There needs to be a beginning, middle, end). And the not so obvious (there should be a rise and decline of action at specific points during the script). Some people even go as far as to tell you at what page it should happen which can be, both, helpful and daunting.
The three-act structure is universal. Next to all scripts use it. Like Ninety-Nine Percent. The other One percent ends up being French New Wave.
So why is it that Alien vs. Predator fails at following the universal format for movie writing. It should always work. Right? Nope. Despite some good action bits and better design --- sometimes a more direct approach is needed.
The problem with Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem begins with the title. The word “Versus” sits promisingly in the middle. Versus indicates so many things. It conjures up Wrestlemanias, Chuck Liddell, Kimbo, Ali, etc., etc. It prepares the viewer for a knock-down-drag-out NOT the three-act structure.
AVPR spends an agonizing, rising, first act introducing us to characters: star-crossed lovers, a duty-bound Sheriff, unapologetic jocks, an estranged father and son, and two women with missing family members. Of course these people will serve as fodder, but they are not the stars of the movie. They are too sympathetic, too limp-wristed, too Middle America to be serviceable substitutes for what we came to see: Aliens Vs. Predators.
I understand what the filmmakers were attempting to do, they were trying to make us invested in characters. Make us care so when they die it means something. But this isn’t Steel Magnolias this is an extension of two sci-fi/horror series. Those movies had characters but they were more testosterone, more aggressive, more hardened, more fitted for the carnage they were going to encounter later. The Predator had Los Angeles cops and Black-Ops soldiers. Aliens had lesbian Marines, and futuristic prisoners. The characters in AVPR are out of place for this genre and too doe-eyed to quell a blood thirsty audience. We want entrails in a versus film, but instead we get mopey exposition.
I bring up the three-act structure because AVPR uses it to follow characters around, instead of aliens. It seems certain that the three-act structure will pay off because it is supposed to. But not here. It doesn’t belong here.
The irony in all this is that when Hollywood shouldn’t follow the guidelines of scriptwriting they follow it too stringently. Any other time they just butcher it.

[Comic Book Review] Aya TPB

Aya
Written by Marguerite Abouet
Art by Clement Oubrerie
$19.95
Drawn & Quarterly

I’m a comic book advocate. Not just a fan. But an advocate. I believe in the medium more than movies or television. I believe in its’ range. Its’ diversity. Its’ abilities. It encompasses all the best qualities of any medium. Its’ weaknesses are purely its’ own.
Part of the reason I started doing these articles was to, kind of, rediscover the medium. Reconfirm what I felt it was capable of. Discover sides of the medium that make it unique and stronger than others.
Books like “Aya” could, probably, only exist in the comics industry. Largely because it is a satirical, slice-of-life story set in the Ivory Coast. It deals heavily in romantic entanglement, knowledgeable soap opera twist, and the effects hierarchy plays on all these things.
Aspiring doctor and teenager, Aya, is our main character, but she is a casual observer to lust, blind dates, infidelity, teen pregnancy, and arranged marriages.
Writer, Marguerite Abouet, manages to walk a fine line, creating a story with material that is sexual in nature but never raunchy. Just amicable and filled with a range of characters.
If you are looking for something diverse out of the industry then Aya is a pleasant addition to the medium, a story populated with black faces of that would have been dissected, miscast, and treated stereotypically if found in another medium.

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