Into the third month of 2009, and so far it's been... *meh*.

Last weekend was The Oscars, and that was completely *meh* - no surprises there, except for Sean Penn winning the award over favorited Comeback Kid, Mickey Rourke...
I don't hate The Oscars, but I don't get as worked up about them as I used to -- going through the collection of movies that I keep (and you can do this as well - this is the Home Game), I find a lot of good movies, a few Great ones, and stuff that doesn't bore me...

What I DON'T find is a lot of Oscar winners... Oscar sort of loses it's glamor when attached to names such as Marisa Tomei, Helen Hunt, Danny Boyle... well, you get the idea.

That doesn't prevent me from adding this, however...





Another *meh* event is the opening of WATCHMEN this weekend, which is sort of like the Second Coming for Geeks if you've been following the hype for the past year or so.
It'll make a ton of money in the first weekend, then taper off -- then will make another pile of money when the DVDs are released, "Director's Cut(s)", Special Edition(s), and THE COMPLEAT WATCHMEN by Christmastime, including THE BLACK FREIGHTER, all deleted scenes and outtakes.
My bet - it'll hopefully be no worse than V FOR VENDETTA was, which also bent over backwards to duplicate the look of the comic, and took liberties with adapting the material.
I still don't think that it qualifies Zack Snyder as a "visionary".
Personally, I would think that an HBO show would've been preferable, but no way was HBO going to shell out $150 million + to do that -- I think that it would've been a decent way to handle the adaptation, but who really cares about THAT?

Random Thoughts after watching "CLOVERFIELD"

The movie was OK - I liked it more when it was called MIRACLE MILE... and it certainly ain't no HOST.

I fully understand why people are giving this high praise, much like BLAIR WITCH when it was first released... on its own terms, it's a pretty decent flick with some good scares and lots of frenetic camera shakiness that we all accept as a totem of 'realness'. It's a thrill-ride movie, and it makes for a good matinee or date movie when you and your date want to jump out of your seat.

But I'm not jumping on the Abrams bandwagon. I'm not going to harp on little things - the big thing for me is that I just really didn't give one damn about anyone in the movie... not that character is a BIG concern in a monster thrill ride, but it certainly helps (see the two films that I referenced in the first sentence of this post). It's a clever movie - the conceit of GODZILLA, or whatever giant-monster-on-the-rampage visualized from the viewpoint of a person at Ground Zero is a fun conceit, and THAT is what is garnering all the good praise, as well it should - it's a brilliant idea, after all.

But clever only goes so far, though it seems that Abrams and Co. have been coasting on it for years (see ALIAS, LOST, FELICITY); and it makes me very nervous at what the STAR TREK 3.0 reboot is gonna be like.

I would have thought that CLOVERFIELD would have been The Awesomest Shit if (1) it had been 20 minutes long -- the setup wears out its welcome after 10 minutes -- and (2) if the filmmakers had licensed the trademark Godzilla scream and NEVER shown the monster onscreen. You'd only hear it - though that might have been too much of a conceit to go over successfully with audiences. And Toho Studios probably would have wanted too much money.

Oh, and the shrimp/bug like things that make you explode after they bite you - overkill. Keep it simple, guys -- Big Fucking Monster Stomping Shit was plenty.

How big is this thing supposed to be? It's big enough to knock the head off of the Statue of Liberty, stomp tanks flat and knock over buildings, but the one good glimpse that we see of it (before eating a character who I was praying would either get crushed by falling debris or shot), it doesn't seem to be quite that large to do those things...

Now we'll just have to prepare for all the CLOVERFIELD knock-offs and YouTube spoofs that show up through the rest of the year.