The movie is fantastic in every way. It’s a great movie in its own right and starts the Enterprise crew fresh. For this Trek fan, it was exactly what I needed from the franchise. A paraphrased conversation with my sister-in-law summed it up best:

Rebecca: “The whole time I was thinking ‘I’m watching Star Trek! This is so great!’”

Me: “The best part is that the whole time movie is pointing back at you, saying ‘I know!’”

Welcome back, Star Trek. We missed you.

(Oh, and how awesome is it that they brought back the classic logotype?)

Now go check it out on her site, which you should already have bookmarked.

Engage.

What I would like to point out is what you see if you visit www.syfy.com:

Why in the name of the sweet baby Jesus would you want your audience to read this branding nonsense and business strategy? Just take me to the site! So that I may partake of your content! This is akin to selling soda by describing to the consumers how, if they buy it, your shareholders will profit from the consumers’ complicity in reinforcing their brand strategy of stratifying them into targeted market segments.

WHO CARES?

Not their audience, for sure. This sort of business pornography nonsense is not only boring, it also breaks the illusion of the brand. It’s as though they’re reveling in their decision to shed the pretense of caring about their core audience and wanting to celebrate that fact with them. We’ll see how this works out for them.

I don’t remember the name of this kooky faux-African woodcut font (anyone?), but Taco Salad (kindly identified by Stewf) is the exact wrong typeface for this kind of thing. I typically see it attached to kid’s programs and ads for low-rent Caribbean packages. I’m having a hard time figuring out who thought this would communicate “scary” or “not featuring muppets”.

Clip embedded below the fold.

1) Someone please pack the commentators into a van and make them disappear. I didn’t even know it was possible to be that inane.

2) I don’t have an image to link to at the moment to support this, but I would like to officially announce here that I’ve renamed China’s “Bird’s Nest Stadium.” The new name is The Va-China.

Hulu, for the time being, appears to be primarily NBC Universal- and Newscorp-owned content, including some older stuff. There are some great full-length movies on there, such as The Big Lebowski, Ghostbusters, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as well as some classics. But there’s also a bunch of junk, both contemporary and B-movie. My biggest gripe is that there are so many good movies listed at Hulu that only exist as clips, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Why tease me with movies I can’t watch? Why keep the good content offline? It’s just frustrating and I can’t figure out the pattern as to what’s fully available and what isn’t. I suspect it’s either someone being foolishly cagey about their content, or a bit of market testing to see if people will watch clips on Hulu like they do on YouTube. Frankly, I think they should not try to be YouTube, and focus on their strength: full content at a better resolutions, with minimal interruptions.

If you’re willing to accept that current TV shows seem to have a strangely limited shelf-life and a few ads (usually 3 or 4 per episode/film), Hulu is a great spot for finding full-length content.

I’ve recently been working my way through the two seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a great precursor to the Twilight Zone. If you’re not familiar with Hitchcock’s work, you owe it to yourself to check it out, at the very least for his introductions and closing monologues. His humor is very devilish, and his distinct dry delivery makes it twice as effective.

To digress for moment, this got me thinking about :

Looking at these, I suddenly realized where the designers for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button likely got their inspiration (partly, at least) for the title design. I’m quite enamored with the consciously awkward type and typesetting. It feels right for many reasons. I even like the low hook of the J, which serves no purpose but to add an oddly foreboding form to the design. I’m not sure what the typeface is, but it’s complimented by the titling italic of Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ exquisite Requiem, a celebration of 16th-century Renaissance humanist forms. An interesting pairing, to be sure.

A few friends of mine and I saw Cloverfield on Saturday and I was very pleased with the film. It delivered exactly what it needed to and told a convincing and engaging tale from a unique perspective. For those not familiar, Cloverfield is the creation of J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost. It tells the story of a group of friends whose going-away party is interrupted by the violent invasion of New York City by a massive creature. However, the story is presented as the unedited contents of a video camera SD card (the reason why the movie itself is one and a half hours), recovered after the events it recorded. The novel storytelling device is what prevents Cloverfield from becoming blockbuster dreck like Godzilla and, for me, added a terrifying realism to the entire film, which grabbed me from the moment the attack begins all the way through to the end.*

Note: I give no specific spoilers, but I do occasionally describe the movie’s structure, more often pointing out what is not done. I leave it to you to decide how ‘virginal’ you want you perspective to be going into this film.

Giant monster attack movies are much like zombie movies: they draw you in with the promise of a thrilling creature or creatures, but in reality they’re simply a foil for the people affected by them. Filmmakers who don’t realize this have defeated themselves right out of the gate, by creating an arms race with themselves to keep ratcheting up the spectacle. Abrams and Reeves (the director) clearly realized this, as every device and scene is designed to put you in the shoes of the characters, fleeing an unknown in a city swarming with terror and confusion. I found myself pondering over and over: “What would I do in this situation? What will they do in this situation?” and the answer was often more frightening than the monster itself. With one big exception, I’d probably have reacted in many of the same ways, and have been just as helpless and terrified. This is Cloverfield’s real power.

Some criticism leveled at Cloverfield states that it’s essentially a monster attack movie told in a faux-amateur style, much like The Blair Witch Project, with a thin plot. The funny thing is that this is exactly what the movie is. It hits the goal it aimed squarely at. If this sounds bad to you, don’t bother watching it. If it sounds good to you, then you’ll have a great time. Unlike Blair Witch, Cloverfield has far fewer improvisational problems. Each scene is very intentionally blocked and delivered. Each interaction and even the blurry, frenetic shaking that obliterates any distinct visuals is planned to deliver information and emotion about what’s happening. The video and audio work in conjunction with each other, with little redundancy. Some scenes communicate more through background noise than whatever happens to be in the frame.

Aiding this tight immersion is Hud, a somewhat dim but well-meaning friend of the group who’s behind the camera for virtually the entire film. He takes his job of recording testimonials for his friend Rob’s going away party seriously enough that he becomes a self-styled documentarian once things take a turn. His need to fill space with slightly clueless banter is a brilliant device to allow us as the audience to not only have a narrator, but to also have a voice for our own emotions in the world. His character is very believable and what might make him annoying in real life becomes an great storytelling asset, allowing us to feel more involved in the drama and to give us a break with occasional and much-neede comic relief. Every scene carries information and implies more than it immediately conveys. But this is where the production company Bad Robot’s tendency towards convoluted narrative and hidden agendas bites them in the ass a bit.

The ad campaign, which relied primarily on the trailer, featured a great deal of viral marketing and ‘alternate reality’ content online. The campaign amped up the theorizing online (search for Slusho, Tagruato, and Tidowave to see more), and the trailer deceptively implied that there was more conspiratorial content than the final film delivers. For example, in the trailer, we get a large dose of military involvement, tents full of hazmat suits, and even a scene with a soldier’s face blurred out. Well, in the actual theatrical release, this is not the case. A great deal of conspiracy and back story was promised and not delivered. We end up with little-to-no framing story, beyond a sporadic sprinkling of the footage originally on the camera’s card. In fact, the film opens with a flat series of title cards that give bare-bones data about the tape (as one would expect in a military archive), and ends when the camera’s card no longer has any data to display. In spite of this ‘missing’ dimension, the film still brims with details and touches that add a great deal to the story and will likely reward repeated viewing. I’m sure there are websites devoted to picking it apart down to individual frames.

I’d guess that Abrams decided to remove the censoring elements because it puts the film’s power in jeopardy. We, as the audience have to believe that we are seeing a recording that’s unedited and uncensored, otherwise we begin to doubt its contents and no longer try to interpret it. Instead, we would try to interpret why we’re seeing only these scenes. It would take us out of the moment, which would diminish the most powerful aspects of Cloverfield, the very reasons to watch it in the first place. The film succeeds when it puts us in the place of the military analysts who no doubt combed over its contents for post-action data, and makes us think about how terrifying it would be to be one of the people in the buildings when an unreal gargantuan tramples past. The idea that this is an immensely valuable military asset, one of the few recordings taken from inside the conflict, compels the audience to drink up the details and interpret what they see; really getting inside of the tale. This angle is the far more powerful approach and I’m glad they decided to eschew the more played-out censorship angle.

False expectations aside, Cloverfield is an excellent, well-told tale that takes a simple plot and an unbelievably incredible event and fills it all with so much human-scale drama that, with a little willingness, I didn’t become jaded and instead became more and more intensely invested. There are only a few eye-rolling moments where the characters charge into the flames, so to speak, in typical movie fashion, keeping us in the mix. The film acts much like a tightly-constructed short story: it moves a clear purpose and little waste. While it may not be for everyone (particularly those prone to motion sickness, though I had no trouble with it), it is an excellent work and I highly recommend it. Just be sure to pay attention all the way through to the very end.** This is Abrams after all.

MPAA Review: “Violence, terror and disturbing images.”

Ad Exec Review: “Some Thing Has Found Us.”

*Except when the annoying banter of a quartet of teenage boys in the back of the theatre interrupted the film. Teenagers of the world take note: you are not funny, you are not clever, and you will hate people like yourself when you’re mature enough to realize that you are not the center of the universe.

**I’ve been told there’s a secret bit of audio at the end of the credits, but trust me, we stayed and waited through all them and were not rewarded for our time. If it was there, as some say, I didn’t catch it.

Have you seen the new American edition of Creature Comforts? If not, you should make a point of getting in front of your TV on Monday at 8pm and flipping to CBS. It is a thoroughly entertaining and oddly soothing bit of TV.

28 Weeks Later is a music video. Well, a series of them.

A shame, really. Its predecessor, 28 Days Later, was an excellent reinvigoration of the zombie attack genre.

Alisa and I went to see 28 Weeks last night, excited about the expansion on the sharp, distinct zombie thriller that is 28 Days. Unfortunately, the film seemed to stumble at every turn where 28 Days came out running. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (the director and screenwriter), with Rowan Joffe, Jesús Olmo, and Enrique López Lavigne had a big job ahead of them, and they did some great, great work on this film. Fresnadillo has the credentials for it (Intacto is a brilliant film), so my expectations were fairly high. But he and his fellow writers managed to pick up and drop every single interesting theme and opportunity in the film, waving them in front of us just long enough to gain our interest, then discarding them in favor of some worn-out, big-budget movie trope that was either disappointing, aggravating, unnecessary, or the cause of some eye-rolling. It’s a case of too many stories to tell with too little time for any of them.

28 Weeks picks up after the events of 28 Days: the island of Britain is depopulated as the result of an outbreak of the “rage virus”. The rage virus is essentially a virulent strain of rabies that transmits rapidly through fluids, and leave the host a hyper-violent, blood-vomiting zombie-like terror that can run like hell. This twist made 28 Days a big deal amongst zombie flick lovers, as zombies are usually presented as lumbering corpses. Well, the outbreak ran itself down after the infected starved to death (as they’re not technically dead or undead) and the UK was essentially emptied. The film picks up after a US-led NATO force came in, set up a safe zone in London and is now beginning repopulation/repatriation after about 6 months. This premise is ripe for a zombie tale, but the trick is: how do you restart an outbreak, show the reaction by the government, and create genuine human moments of drama?

Well, the whole thing plays out like a series of music videos. It was gory, no doubt. It was even effective at delivering genuine frights. (There’s a scene inside a light-less Underground station, shot through the night-vision scope of a rifle, that’s among the most powerful horror sequences I’ve ever seen.) But Fresnadillo presents us with the makings of 25 great unfinished concepts, rather than one complete one. The whole thing smells of a lethal editing process. I was tipped off at first when I noticed a few scenes in the trailer that didn’t seem to be in the version I saw in the theatre. It’s possible that I didn’t notice them, but I suspect that 28 Weeks was just too big for its own britches. I bet it had to be edited to death to keep it from sprawling and lagging as it tries to juggle all of its subplots, messages, and perspectives. In the final cut, entire themes and characters just disappear without so much as a nod. It all just ends up as a pile of thematic corpses littering the cold, dead London of the plot.

Continually, Fresnadillo does away with depth by relying on annoying and flat Hollywood tropes. One of the worst being consistently stupid children; specifically Don’s two children. You know the deal: children that act with no regard for the situation they’re in (“Let’s go wander out of the safe zone!”), but are simultaneously held up as the arbiters of unmarred moral clarity and truth (“You left mommy behind! You’re a bad man!”). Their naivete lets them behave like morons, and their simplistic view of the world allows them to pass pat moral judgement on those around them. What bothered me is not that they were fools, but that they’re presented as the voices of moral truth. Somehow, their youthful pluck and emotion is meant to show us The Way Things Are. Then, as Fresnadillo does throughout the film, he drops the issue at hand entirely, in favor of a different, much more facile conflict; one more appropriate to a slasher flick. It’s such a wasted opportunity. This is the first of many in this film.

Once the infection rears its head again, we’re flung into a noble but failed attempt to inject too much drama and depth into something we all know is coming: the breakdown of the system. We’re given a view into military high command, the ones who not only have to manage re-population, but will also have to order a “Code Red”, a military solution to an uncontrolled outbreak. Unfortunately, no one seems all that worried. The characters mention Code Red so much, in an effort to explain it to the audience ahead of time and create tension (it fails), that there’s no shock when it happens. This weird pre-explanation also leads to dialogue gems like this one:

Citizen 1: “This is madness.” Citizen 2: “What’s happening?” Citizen 1: “They’re shooting everybody.” Citizen 2: “Why? It makes no sense.” Military doctor: “It makes perfect sense. It’s Code Red.”

Thanks, I had no idea. I’m still wondering why we were shown the NATO high command. They provide no surprises or depth, and they explain away major plot developments before they happen. The focus should have stayed on the grunts and the low-level personnel. We don’t have the time to sympathize with the high command, and they never question their orders. As it stands, this entire swath of the film just shows up, ruins the plot, then leaves without a word. But this film seems to have trouble knowing when to show something, when to say it, and when to let us fill in the gaps on our own.

In 28 Days, Danny Boyle made great use of two of the most fundamental devices in horror: good pacing and the viewers’ anticipation. In other words: what’s scary isn’t seeing the bogeyman, it’s knowing that we’ll have to open the closed door he might be behind. So don’t throw a relentless series of bloodbaths and monsters at the viewer. Give them just enough to keep the threat in the background. Fresnadillo eschews this device almost every time, instead focusing on the raw rage-driven brutality of the infected, kicking it into overdrive. The film becomes a non-stop spray of blood and screaming at almost every turn, which loses it effectiveness and descends into numbing shock rather quickly. There’s very little down time, but how could there be when the film plays out like a long string of 3-minute music videos?

For example, in 28 Days we hear a survivor’s account of being in a packed Paddington station when the infected get loose. The images and questions brought up are chilling and stay with you. In 28 Weeks, Fresnadillo finds this situation irresistible and re-creates it in a half-lit underground bunker. What starts out as a scene just dripping horror and panic, with a single infected looking out at a parking bay lit only by lighters and flashlights, packed to bursting with panicking refugees, ends up playing out like a strobe-lit blender full of people. The sprawling horror of the scene’s potential is flattened to a one-dimensional frontal assault of gore and squelching, bloody crunches. What a waste. The sequence runs for minutes. It required only seconds. Just the sounds of that scene receding in the distance could have cut so much deeper than the bloody zombie dance party we’re made to sit through.

But perhaps the biggest let-down is that Fresnadillo seems not to understand that zombies aren’t characters. Zombie movies vary in the specifics, but one thing remains constant: zombies are not individuals, they’re an overwhelming mindless force, a manifestation of larger fears. What we human survivors do in the face of such a relentless and inhuman enemy forms the real emotional core of these tales. In an eye-rolling move, Fresnadillo tries to infuse distinct personality and motive into one of the infected. He’s traded off the chilling terror of a relentless horde that can turn you into mindless killing machine for the scares of being pursued by one madman. He reduces the zombie flick to the slasher flick, but without adequate time to infuse the antagonist with the menace appropriate to that sort of character. But he made sure we saw him jab his thumbs into someone’s eye sockets until they were dead, which isn’t nearly as effective, but at least it’s unnecessary and nauseating.

In a story of this scale, the plot is driven by the fate of the country, while the interest and depth springs from the fates of the individuals we focus on. But the film couldn’t commit to either. So we get a frenetic split; cutting around too often to settle on one element long enough to develop a genuine empathy or smooth narrative thread. The characters are flattened, the story’s drive becomes mechanical and a bit forced (I’m sorry, but the re-spreading of infection seemed a bit too easy to me. Lock a door, people!), and the entire film just felt cold and removed. This one film fails to show the military breakdown and swarming enemy so well delivered in Aliens, while also failing to show the chaos and decay of society ripped apart by the military so brilliantly shown in Children of Men. I’m not sure anyone could pull off what 28 Weeks tried to do.

In the end, 28 Weeks Later will probably be quite popular with a number of horror fans and zombie flick aficionados. There’s a lot for horror fans to like. But all I see is wasted potential and a franchise that lost its way. Fresnadillo is clearly a gifted filmmaker, but this project just didn’t hold together like it should have. To watch this film is to go on a tour of Things That Could Have Been. There are too many individual instances of things left unaddressed or unexplained to list them here. Cuts that should have been made in the script obviously weren’t made until the editing room, or were tacked on afterwards. They drained the blood out of the storytelling so it could be sprayed out of the the extras in arterial jets. But don’t worry! The infected manage to spill through a nice, big plot hole into the cold light of trilogy potential. A chance to redeem the series still exists, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Ad Exec Review: “Eradication. Sterilization. Re-population. Re-infection.” “When days turn to weeks.” MPAA Review: “Strong violence and gore, language and some sexuality/nudity.”