Big Cities and The Monsters Who Terrorize Them

So...I went to see Cloverfield. I went in expecting to see Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project. And that's pretty much what we got. The thing that surprised me the most was that it took 8 years for someone to make this movie. It was a fun rollercoaster ride and probably not worth seeing more than once (unless the DVD is so jam packed with extras to "enhance" the whole concept of seeing "footage found by the government"), but it worth paying $6 in the theater (and no sitter needed since the wife didn't care to see the film anyway).

Saying anything more about the film would not only ruin the "surprises" but also be kinda pointless because its just a mindless popcorn film and little more.

I also watched a movie I hadn't seen in years. Someone recently asked me about movies where the actors had bad Chinese accents (she is auditioning for a show that needs them). So I mentioned both The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu with Peter Sellars and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen with Peter Ustinov. I hadn't seen either in AGES and couldn't find my old VHS versions (Fu Manchu was available on LD but I never picked it up for some odd reason). But I did find a bargain DVD of CCatCotDQ (since people love to abbreviate movie titles like this). Now, for $5 I didn't care that the film wasn't widescreen (its an open matte movie, so technically I could do it myself by "zooming" in on the TV screen), but oddly enough some genuine work went into this DVD. The picture looks better than I ever remember seeing it (and I saw the damn thing FOUR TIMES in theaters back in 1981) and there even some half-assed extras that aren't too terrible to sit through.

As for the film itself? Well...that remains little more than a load of dumb fun. With a cast that also includes Lee Grant, Rachel Roberts, Roddy McDowell, Angie Dickenson, Richard Hatch (fresh off of the original cheesy Battlestar: Galactica) and a very young Michelle Pfeiffer how could you go too wrong...especially when you recycle gags from Get Smart among other sources. A silly way to spend an hour and a half, but there are sillier ways.

Be seeing you.