Ah, took some digging over at Something Awful, but here it is again: Closest Picture of Cloverfield Monster. (that I could find anyway)
Here’s someone’s MS paint version of the “lice”
(kind of silly)
Ah, much more ‘monsterish’. I thought the other one looked like some sort of lost and benign looking whale/crustacean that had sprouted tentacles. Thanks for your trouble.
Indeed.
I got a “403 Forbidden” message. What gives?
So did I. I wound up copying the link URL from Properties, then pasted that in the address field and hit enter. Here it is:
http://legalcondom.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/b4/b4be771832d48bf43ac9a720e5cf0ed547096833.jpg
I don’t think that fan drawing looks much like the actual monster. I thought it was more humanoid looking than that, the head anyway.
Animated screen captures of the actual monster:
You’re right; the head, neck and shoulders are much more humanoid. Thanks.
Awww. It’s cute. Has lobby taken to drawing stuff from movies now?
I saw this movie yesterday. The theater was almost empty; my impression is that word of mouth from the mainstream audience is pretty bad. People want “explanations,” they want “heroes,” they want resolution (i.e. “monster gets dead”). This isn’t that kind of movie.
Me, I thought it was a pretty middling film (doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, doesn’t have a lot of depth, isn’t really about anything), but a great Ride. It’s remarkably intense, and for what it sets out to accomplish, it just plain works.
Personally, I didn’t expect that from the film. I went into it assuming that nothing concrete about the monster would be explained until the sequel (you know there’s going to be one, regardless of the world of mouth).
As for the criticisms that the protagonists are too “pretty”, it didn’t bother me that they were all handsome & pretty. But it did bug me that they were such bland, generic, personality-free characters. In any disaster movie, you’ve got to have strong, stand-out characters who you like, and want to root for to survive. I didn’t feel that at all. In fact, the first half hour with it’s “Gossip Girl” level soap storyline irritated me. (“Like OMG! Rob and that brunette chick totally DID it! But, like, now the chick has a new BF! That is SOOOOOO totally…like…OMG!!!”) Even before the monster shows up, I was rooting for them all to die. In the part of the movie when I’m supposed to be worried about whether Rob’s girlfriend is alive or not, I spent more time wondering what that chick did for a living that she could afford a one-bedroom in the Time-Warner center, with a view of Central Park.
And as for the monster, a friend I had dinner with last night posited an interesting take on it: The monster is less a metaphor for the 9/11 terrorist attack than it is for the currently unstoppable real estate juggernaut that is plowing down huge sections of Manhattan, replacing long-standing buildings with banal glass (poorly-made) homogenous towers, and making it impossible for common people (i.e. anyone other than neo-yuppie, trust fund brats) to afford to live there. IMO, that makes the movie much, much more interesting.
It was her dad’s apartment.
We didn’t have time to get much backstory on the characters, or see what they were like when they weren’t either half-buzzed at a party, or terrified out of their minds and trying to stay alive. I would have been tempted to make them more interesting at the beginning; but I guess the idea is to have a sort of Everyman point of view.
Well then I guess the lesson to be learned from this movie is that giant monster disaster / horror movies and cinema verite/ handheld camera POV movies are two genres that just don’t mesh well. Didn’t in “the Blair Witch Project”, didn’t here. It’s like mixing lobster bisque and crunchy peanut butter - two great tastes that just don’t gel together.
That wasn’t so annoying for me…I mean, I spend a lot of time obsessing over relationships/friends…for me, that was one of the more fascinating parts of the movie. Especially paired with the Coney Island vid–it seemed really poignant. And all the levels of uncomfortable-ness and awkwardness at the party when Rob has to deal with Beth’s new guy. I felt like that made it more real. I mean, none of us has or will ever (hopefully) live through a monster attack. But I feel like most of us know what the other kind of drama is like. Relationships, sex–we’ve all been there.
I agree. I actually thought that the first half an hour or so of the movie was pretty interesting, and I would have kept watching even if I hadn’t been waiting for a giant monster to show up.
A movie filmed in the same style that was just about relationships or whatever could be pretty cool.
To each his own.
Ah, like “The Real World”? 
Haha, but seriously, I, and the person I went with, both liked the lead up to the monster. Without it, it’s just some random people attacked by a monster. This way, it’s people who have relationship problems…they felt more real. I mean, for me, it is the way that real people act–dramatic and over the top or not.
See, the former sounds great, and the latter was kinda dumb, IMO. Everyone has relationship problems, it doesn’t make me want them to die/survive any more.
They could just as easily tossed Liberty’s head down the street two minutes into the movie… just enough time to convey that these people know each other, and to give a reason for one of them to have a camera.
It’d probably be tricky, but I bet a talented director could present the characters as they scramble around. Just putting myself in the characters’ shoes, I have a pretty good idea of how I’d act and who I would (and wouldn’t) be worried about when the shit really hit the fan, and it probably wouldn’t be hard for a third party to pick up on stuff like that.
Either way, presenting the characters does assume the risk of the audience disliking the characters, which is what happened for me.
I just watched The Host, which is a very different film, but I felt was much better at establishing the characters, AND delivering some great monster carnage about 2 minutes into the film. But then again most of the film is devoted to the characters, so you lose a lot of that sense of “the shit is going down” feeling of Cloverfield. So, yanno, it’s tough to please everyone I guess.
No you don’t! What have you ever been through that’s even remotely comparable?
I was in a traffic accident once in New York! And I watched video of 9/11 and actually was in the city a couple of weeks later doing volunteer work (putting in IT infrastructure and the like). I also was up in the Statue of Liberty once and…a nasty sea creature once bit me on the toe. Well…ok. It was a turtle. But it was from the ocean!
What do you have to say now??
-XT