drink it up

saw cloverfield and there will be blood (for the second time) yesterday.  my brother and i caught the former at a 12:45 pm showing and even then it was crowded (w/ mostly brosephs). the relentless hype had a negative effect on me and i was basically sick of the movie weeks ago, but once it started i got into it and thought, well, okay, yeah, this might actually kick some ass.  

until, that is, the fucking thing showed up.  jesus christ, the monster is whack.  ive never been so thoroughly not scared by a mankind-crushing creature in a movie before.  the completely abrupt transition from twentysomething melodrama ("i wuv my best friend but i cant tell her, man, im going to japan anyway, so whats the point, man?") to rampaging chaos was brilliant, but once footage of the monster was shown they done lost me. and it sucks b/c the possibilities were fucking endless!  and they had to go and throw a sea creature at us?  meh.  

what really cheeses me about the movie was that, a few years ago during a tumultuous break up, i had a very similar dream-- it even took place in upstate new york.  in the dream my then-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend and i were in albany, where shes from, and im basically moving my shit out of her place one night when suddenly a really intense aurora starts filtering across the sky, casting everything in these intense blues, greens, and purples.  then these lights, which look like comets, start streaking across the sky and crash on the horizon, detonating on impact. my ex and i, and everyone on the block, are dazzled but quickly it turns to dread and panic when we realize "something really terrible" had just invaded.  insert long, dramatic run-for-your-life sequence which ends in me getting killed trying to fight off some nutjob who, during the course of all this chaos, attempts to rape my ex (i guess my subconscious thought looting was too cliche?).  then i woke up.  it was a pretty amazing dream/nightmare and i really wanted to turn it into a movie some day, but cloverfield totally fucking ruined it.  and the fucking creature sucks.  the aliens in my dream were unprecedented-- ive never seen this sort of thing in a movie or read about it in a sci/fi book before.  im not going to say what they were b/c i still want to run w/ this idea.  i believe in it so strongly that, ultimately, i wont let cloverfield ruin it for me and im convinced i could hustle a studio into bankrolling it.  

on the other hand, there will be blood is inexplicably rad.  i wont wax blog about it, since tons of others already have, but i will say that daniel day-lewis absolutely tears it up and his performance marks you.  paul dano does an admirable job of countering him.  intense shit.  i was never a paul thomas anderson fan before, but hes won me over w/ this.