Discland
edited by Jonathan Doyle
Cloverfield [BLU-RAY] (Paramount Home Entertainment, 6.3.2008) Disguised under deliberately goofy, yet deliciously edible-sounding, aliases such as Cheese and Slusho, Matt Reeves' Cloverfield was produced and rushed into theaters under an equally appetizing shroud of secrecy. From last year's incredibly elusive Super Bowl ad to the film's viral marketing campaign, Cloverfield had everybody scratching their heads and drooling in anticipation. Aside from the as-yet untitled title and the Blair Witch-ian visual style, the film's biggest appeal was the enigmatic creature who was last (un)seen hurling the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty onto the crowded streets of New York City. All we knew about the mysterious beast was that it was big and angry. Now that the highy-anticipated project has come and gone, one question has fortunately been answered: Cloverfield was a major success. (continued)

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Defiance

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Cargo 200

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Silent Light

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Film industry reporters (and their

Film industry reporters (and their editors) love writing about how this or that middle-aged corporate white guy has come into power, and what they'll do when they start using it. (Or how they lost their grip on it.) Disney's Bob Iger, the guy taking Michael Eisner's place, is the current topic. Last week it was Howard Stringer becoming the first non-Japanese Sony CEO. The Weinstein brothers had the heat in February for concluding contractual talks about relinquishing Miramax to Disney, and announcing their plans to start a new operation. Paramount's Brad Grey was the guy in January...and believe me, nobody outside of a small New York-Los Angeles clique cares. Because corporate white guys don't affect the movies -- filmmakers and their producers do. Brad Grey and his boss, Tom Freston, are, in some ways, going to make Paramount Pictures more of a go-getter operation than Sherry Lansing's Paramount was...fine. And there's a certain fascination in the drama of corporate samurais acquiring and losing power. But they're all the same white guy to me...different faces, same suits, slightly different haircuts...each serving the same sociopathic corporate goals. CWG's come and go, and the only people who perk up and say, "Look...a new CWG has replaced the previous CWG!" are these reporters, their editors and publishers, and a small elite readership (i.e., regular readers of Variety, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc.) "Maybe [Iger] really has a vision for the future that Michael Eisner hasn't seen," David Poland wrote the other day. "Of course, even if he does, he has another problem: no one is anticipating real change under Iger." Uhh...David? No one anywhere anticipates real change from any CWG, ever. They couldn't be more interchangable.
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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on March 12, 2005 at 11:48 PM

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