Web-savvy movie lovers have been buzzing about Cloverfield for months, thanks to a viral marketing strategy-meets-alternate-reality game.
Starting in early July 2007, a mysterious movie trailer began showing in theaters nationwide during screenings of Transformers. The film, which opens today, had no name, but the trailer was stamped with a date of 01-18-08 and said it was produced by J.J. Abrams, of the TV show Lost.
The curious headed online to try to track down information about the film.
Under Abrams' filmography on the Web site imdb.com, a clue was discovered — a listing for a project titled Clover, aka the Untitled J.J. Abrams Project, with a synopsis: "a giant monster movie (referred internally as The Parasite) which is shot using home video cameras from the point of view of real people who are experiencing the attack on New York City."
Followers of the movie-to-be debated what the monster could be. Was it the return of Godzilla or Voltron? Leviathan? Or a new monster?
Message boards lit up as clues were discovered, including the Web site 1-18-08.com, which contained a single photo of two women looking up in horror — at what, of course, was the question.
Other Web sites, including www.slusho.jp, raised more questions than they answered. What did this drink, with its "deep-sea ingredient," have to do with the creature that attacked New York, and why was one of the characters in the film wearing a Slusho T-shirt?
By the end of July, MySpace pages of characters in the film were discovered. Amusingly, they were blogging in real-time and have continued to do so up until the film's release. On Jan. 4, for instance, the main character Rob Hawkins blogged on his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/robbyhawkins) that he'd just been hired as vice president for marketing and promotions for Slusho and was moving to Japan in mid-January. The movie documents the ill-fated night of Rob's going-away party on Jan. 18.
Here's a trailer of the movie uploaded on YouTube:
For links to all the Cloverfield-related Web sites, and to catch up on the buzz, check out the fan site www.cloverfieldclues.com.
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technorati tags: cloverfield, slusho, cloverfield movie, youtube
The Cloverfield Hype... and Slusho
Trailer for the Batman movie sequel - The Dark Knight
For those of you like me who's also waiting for next year's sequel to Christopher Nolan's successful reboot of the Batman franchise, here's a new trailer on YouTube to get you more excited.
Titled "The Dark Knight," the next movie will feature the return of Christian Bale as millionaire playboy by day turned repressed psychopath by night Bruce Wayne aka Batman. Portraying the evil Joker will be Heath Ledger, an actor known for his versatility and not being shy in taking any kind of roles. Mrs. Cruise Katie Holmes will not be in this movie, turning down a salary estimated at between $1 million and $2 million. Other returning lead actors are Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Lt. Gordon) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox). Aaron Eckhart will be appearing as Harvey Dent, more known as district attorney turned madman Two-Face. This somehow gives a hint of an outline for a possible third film.
Some interesting facts about "The Dark Knight":
Head to IMDB for more trivia. The Dark Knight is expected to be shown sometime July next year. For more updates regarding the movie, you can visit their official website at thedarkknight.warnerbros.com
Marvel of course also has movies lined up next year, one of the anticipated is IronMan starring Robert Downey Jr. click here to view the trailer
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technorati tags: batman, the dark knight, dark knight trailer, batman sequel
More TV viewers turn to web
More television viewers are turning to the Internet to watch videos, films and TV episodes, according to a new survey.
Harris Interactive conducted the survey and Joan Barten Kline, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a statement:
"Viewing videos online seems to inspire a sense of adventure, particularly among younger viewers." More than one-third of viewers overall and half of those 18 to 24 said there is something they really enjoy about discovering a cool video online. "They seem to take particular pride in their finds online and share them with friends," Barten Kline added.
More than 42 percent of YouTube viewers said they visit the site frequently, up from 33 percent last year.
Apart from YouTube, which most people favored because they felt it had almost every video they could find, 43 percent said they have watched a video on a TV-network Web site, followed by 35 percent on news sites and less than 30 percent on search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
This is no different here in the Philippines, most pinoys are now turning to web videos to catch up with tv shows, telenovelas, or cartoon series they failed to watch on TV. Looking at Alexa.com you can see that YouTube is currently 3rd most visited site in the Philippines, another popular video site here is Crunchyroll.com which is like a one-stop video shop for all things anime. This site also has a large collection of asian tv dramas that viewers can watch for free.How about you, any video sites that are eating your precious time lately? How much of your time is spent on watching TV compared to viewing web videos?
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technorati tags: youtube, TV viewers, web videos Read more...