You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

There Will Be Blood - I may write more on this film later, but for now ... this movie is why film is an art form. It's perfect. And I couldn't disagree more with the people I've heard saying that Daniel Day-Lewis was just "doing Bill the Butcher." Um, no. If that's all you took away from his performance, that makes me very sad. Great, great story about how entitlement coupled with a strong will can destroy your soul. And MAN, I've never seen someone verbally shred another human being the way Daniel does Eli. What a BRUTAL piece of writing and acting.

Cloverfield - I really, really liked this. And I wanted to kick the people - and there were quite a few in my audience - who made comments about wanting their money back. I'd gotten a bit tired of seeing all the commercials about it, but I tell you ... as much as you think you're seeing of this movie in the ads, you're not seeing anything. It's going to be entirely new. Loved it. There's just the tiniest bit of inappropriate preciousness, but I can easily forgive it.

Something that bugged me about it at first was the constant thought of "Why is this guy still filming? Why doesn't someone tell him to turn the camera off?" Obviously, if he did there would be no story, but there needs to be a reason for the characters to allow this to go on like it does. The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense. This is an age where almost nothing happens in private and everyone's a documentarian. Just look at all of the random footage that came out of 9/11, or even more recently, the Virginia Tech shootings. The motivation to capture a disaster is very strong, and I thought it was a brilliant and timely framing device.

It also occurred to me the other day that J.J. Abrams (this film's producer) and Matt Reeves (director) worked together on another project 10 years ago - one of my favorite TV shows at the time, "Felicity." I had a rather hilarious moment of realization looking at Reeves' name and suddenly thinking "OH! THAT Matt Reeves!" It also occurs to me that they utilized the "home video" technique on that show at least a few times, and the whole concept of testimonials a lot more times than that ("Dear Sally," anyone?).

There Will Be Blood - I may write more on this film later, but for now ... this movie is why film is an art form. It's perfect. And I couldn't disagree more with the people I've heard saying that Daniel Day-Lewis was just "doing Bill the Butcher." Um, no. If that's all you took away from his performance, that makes me very sad. Great, great story about how entitlement coupled with a strong will can destroy your soul. And MAN, I've never seen someone verbally shred another human being the way Daniel does Eli. What a BRUTAL piece of writing and acting.

Cloverfield - I really, really liked this. And I wanted to kick the people - and there were quite a few in my audience - who made comments about wanting their money back. I'd gotten a bit tired of seeing all the commercials about it, but I tell you ... as much as you think you're seeing of this movie in the ads, you're not seeing anything. It's going to be entirely new. Loved it. There's just the tiniest bit of inappropriate preciousness, but I can easily forgive it.

Something that bugged me about it at first was the constant thought of "Why is this guy still filming? Why doesn't someone tell him to turn the camera off?" Obviously, if he did there would be no story, but there needs to be a reason for the characters to allow this to go on like it does. The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense. This is an age where almost nothing happens in private and everyone's a documentarian. Just look at all of the random footage that came out of 9/11, or even more recently, the Virginia Tech shootings. The motivation to capture a disaster is very strong, and I thought it was a brilliant and timely framing device.

It also occurred to me the other day that J.J. Abrams (this film's producer) and Matt Reeves (director) worked together on another project 10 years ago - one of my favorite TV shows at the time, "Felicity." I had a rather hilarious moment of realization looking at Reeves' name and suddenly thinking "OH! THAT Matt Reeves!" It also occurs to me that they utilized the "home video" technique on that show at least a few times, and the whole concept of testimonials a lot more times than that ("Dear Sally," anyone?).