What Happened In Piedmont? Debunked

I was walking to work in the East Village of Manhattan this morning when I noticed a billboard similar to the one on the right. The "ad" - with white lettering on a black background - included a single question: "What Happened In Piedmont?"


My curiosity piqued, I did a google search and found http://www.whathappenedinpiedmont.com/,

which appears to be a blog written by a resident of Piedmont, Utah. Apparently something strange happened in Piedmont: all the townspeople disappeared.


Ok, so if this is all sounding a little too "Blair Witch redux" for you, then you're on the right track. Apparently A&E Network has taken a page out of the Cloverfield playbook (remember those "What is it?" ads?). And like in Cloverfield, the danger that A&E hopes to expose is extraterrestrial in nature...

The Andromeda Strain


...an alien virus carried to earth (Piedmont, to be specific) in a meteor. This should all sound familiar if you're a fan of Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Sphere), the author who started his fiction career with a novel entitled "The Andromeda Strain" (1969). Crichton also wrote the screenplay for the 1971 feature film adaptation (which currently has a 7.3 rating on imdb).

Having read the novel and seen the film about 10-15 years ago, I can tell you that the story is decent - definitely worthy of a 2008 TV miniseries retelling. I'm intrigued by the fact that Ridley and Tony Scott are producing. A&E has definitely assembled an intriguing cast, including Benjamin Bratt ("Law & Order"), Eric McCormack (Will from "Will & Grace"), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin from "Lost"), and Andre Braugher ("Homicide: Life on the Streets"). We'll see whether the 4-hour Memorial Day weekend event will attract enough critical acclaim and ratings success to justify their viral yet not-so-original advertising campaign.

For more on the mini-series that premieres in 3 weeks, check out http://www.aetv.com/the-andromeda-strain/

It made me nauseous, but I liked Cloverfield anyway

I probably should have put on sea bands or popped some dramamine before heading to the multiplex for a late-night showing of Cloverfield last weekend but, to be honest, I didn't really believe that the entire movie was going to be shot in first-person handycam. I am not a J.J. Abrams fanatic, I don't watch "Lost," and I had not been frequenting the Cloverfield clues blogs prior to checking out the film, so all I knew about Cloverfield going in was what I had gleaned from the trailer - a monster strikes NYC, threatening the safety and love lives of a few early-20-somethings. Frankly, I thought the first-person camcorder footage in the trailer was more of a trailer concept than a feature-length concept. That said, and despite my traditionally unstable stomach (I don't fare well on roller-coasters and even OmniMax films make me queasy), I was completely enraptured by Cloverfield's 85 minutes of herky-jerky mayhem.

While the novelty of an entire movie shot from a first-person-holding-a-camcorder point of view may have worn off about 30 minutes into the film, I was impressed with Cloverfield's religious dedication to maintaining its concept. From the opening color bars to the start of the end-credits, the film is presented as a single videotape that has been catalogued by the U.S. government as evidence regarding the destruction of New York City by a mysterious monster, code-named "Cloverfield." (note: the picture below is not an actual frame from the film, as the film only contains frames that would have actually been shot by the camcorder.) There are no real sub-plots, but the film does ingeniously interweave a parallel narrative by occasionally cutting to previous footage on the same videotape, footage that has for the most part been filmed over during the monster attack. The primary narrative follows the events of a few friends who are thrust from the banality of a going-away party into a frightening fight for their lives as their city is besieged by a giant monster.

Ignoring obvious reality-check issues such as battery life and the ability of a camcorder to withstand a serious beating, I loved the originality of the film's concept. While the first-person handheld video camera concept movie was introduced by The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield takes it to another level by throwing serious special effects and big-budget action into the mix. It felt fresh, personal, and immensely entertaining. By focusing on the plight of its protagonists rather than the details of the monster, Cloverfield actually becomes a lot more realistic and a lot scarier than most of its monster-movie brethren. I imagine that Cloverfield is roughly equivalent to what my or my friends' home movies would look like if we found ourselves holding a video camera at the moment that our lives became threatened by terrifying evil - whether that evil was a monster, a war, a natural disaster or a supernatural encounter.

Check it out, but don't forget the dramamine.

Cloverfield - 2.0 PB Jars

Trailer of the Month: A Rebuttal

If you want to see a great trailer, check out the preview for the new J.J. Abrams project. (If you don't know J.J. by name, I'm sure you're familiar with some of his work: Felicity, Alias, Lost, Mission: Impossible III.)

The title of this movie has purposely been left a mystery. Right now the movie is listed as "01-18-07", the date of its release. Check it out for yourself: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/