I’m dying to see J.J. Abrams‘ Cloverfield. That’s all that matters now….for the next few days. Forget the awards season, forget the strike. It’s all Cloverfield, Cloverfield, Cloverfield…the ultimate 9.11 flashback freakout movie of early ’08.

A famous Manhattan armageddon shot from When Worlds Collide

“After 9.11, we all thought this was going to be a verboten practice, that no one would ever dare show New York being attacked again in movies,” says James Sanders, the author of “Celluloid Skyline,” about the history of New York in movies, in a 12.26 N.Y. Times “City Room” piece by Sewell Chan.
Thing is, the Manhattan skyline “is too much of a ‘global shorthand’ for filmmakers to hold off,” Sanders explains.
“What would be the point of showing a demolished suburban street? You’d get the point but it just wouldn’t have the punch. You take the most familiar, iconic symbol of civic society in the world — a big city, and for Americans, that’s New York — and that’s where disaster is going to be the most powerful.” He added that New York serves as a yardstick — what architects would call a scale — that illustrates the magnitude for a disaster.”