the WAR OF THE WORLDS are just about to begin

[AndyDursin]

Cruise and Spielberg were just in Connecticut to shoot at an old factory -- the story ran yesterday in the local papers up here (I forgot the name of the town). Apparently they wanted an old New England-esque mill/factory of some kind, I'm guessing for the scenes when Cruise and Co. flee out of the city.

[Eric W.]

Cruise and Spielberg were just in Connecticut to shoot at an old factory -- the story ran yesterday in the local papers up here (I forgot the name of the town). Apparently they wanted an old New England-esque mill/factory of some kind, I'm guessing for the scenes when Cruise and Co. flee out of the city.

You didn't crash that party?

[romanD]

trailer hits the internet.. well, as expected you don't see much actual footage from the movie, but still a good idea for the trailer and it kinda scary. It has a little bit of that feeling from the 50ies movie, but I hope Spielberg doesn't remake that, but the original story. To set it apart from ID4 he at least has to bring on the Tripods...

[romanD]

http://www.dreamworksfansite.com/waroftheworlds/


here you can read several reports from extras (thatmust be fun!)... and the new teaser poster, which is kind of uninteresting... also there are little pictures of Tripods everywhere, but none to click on and look at full glory. At least they kept the Tripods... however I don't like the look of them much.. if they are supposed to be them or just some conceptual arts... I dunno, somehow I feel they look too technically advanced (actually they look like those tiny funny spiderbots from MINORITY REPORT)
... I always liked the idea (paired with the setting at 1900), that the aliens are not that technically advanced. They shoot themselves down to earth, crashland there and then the put together those tripods with cranky, rusty metal. You know, that they are like that Spider in WILD WILD WEST... of course, set in present time, that wouldn't be a menacing enemy. So I guess they have to be these superpolished things, but then I rasie the question: Why Tripods? If they are so advanced, why don't they just fly around with spaceships? Walking around in a Tripod doesn't seem to be the fastest and safest way to conquer Earth...
well, will see... oh, it would have been so much more fun to have them in in the 1900th century...

[romanD]

hey, does anybody know or remember those books and the british TV-show TRIPODS?
That is more or less a sequel to WOTW, showing a future, where the Martians have won and hold the human race in slavery. Pretty good and inspired. Loved it as a kid, though they never brought the Tv-Show to an end. The books however had a full conclusion.
Nice idea to take a classic story and expand on it like this.

Also liked that the future still looked liked 18th Century, the Martians not allowing humans to develop any technical things. It led up to a final battle, where humans were flying with Hot Air Balloons...

quite exciting. Maybe an option for a movie, if WOTW succeeds...

highly recommended to check out...

[romanD]

oh my... just when you were thinking about it, it becomes true. According to AICN movies based on the TRIPODS books shift into pre-production. I don't know whether this is a really good idea right now... it might look like a cash-in-cow on WOTW or a sequel, which Spielberg and Co. surely don't appreciate.

The books are really good and are in fact an unofficial sequel to Wells' WOTW, so I would be really looking forward to movies made out of them. But whether right now this is a good idea... I dunno. Spielberg will kick their ass I guess.

Apparently the director/writer is the director of BUFFALO SOLDIERS and NED KELLY... haven't seen either of them.

Any comments?

[romanD]

new trailer... and slowly the movie takes shape and seems pretty cool.. the ship sequence promise to get really cool and you see there a short glimpse of a tripod!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount ... rge_2.html

strange the thing with the lightning... is that supposed to mean the aliens are coming from in side the Earth???
Spielberg stated that the Aliens are NOT coming from Mars, but some place else (maybe another dimension?).. as apparently in the novel it is never said where the Aliens are coming from and they wanted to come up with something original...

[Eric W.]

Hard to tell, but is this going to be shot in that same, bland, virtually no color scheme that AI and Minority Report were shot in? I don't think I can sit through another one of those.

[romanD]

well, when Aliens attack there is nothing anymore to be happy about.. so drain the color, man!

hm, dakota fanning is acting a little to grown up for my taste in the short scenes you can see...

still, will have great effects and blows up stuff real good... and a kickass actionhorror score by the maestro...

[Eric W.]

well, when Aliens attack there is nothing anymore to be happy about.. so drain the color, man!

hm, dakota fanning is acting a little to grown up for my taste in the short scenes you can see...

still, will have great effects and blows up stuff real good... and a kickass actionhorror score by the maestro...

I'm hoping that's what happens.

[Harry Chen]

In the final trailer at apple.com, doesn't Tim Robbins say that they've been waiting a million years to exterminate the human race?
So I'm wondering how does he know? Does the movie have characters that speak alien? It better not have Apple Macs that can hack into alien spacecraft!
The effects look good though...
I noticed the draining of colour too. Kamiski's style, no doubt. Cinema verite, idyllic American life becomes disaster movie. Hope it's better than Minority Report.

Harry Chen
Hong Kong

[romanD]

well, it is still not clear where the aliens are coming from... maybe the were laying dormant (?) deep in the ground and the lightnings from above set them free or something... like REIGN OF FIRE...

the FX are good, still I dont get overly hyped by the trailer... you can already tell the whole story by it and that isnt very exciting (, aliens arrive, escape from the city by boat, fall into the water, hiding in an old cabin... end of story)...

but maybe they leave out major plot points... 200 million dollars have to be spent somewhere and so far the trailer doesnt look that expensive...

[AndyDursin]

I noticed the draining of colour too. Kamiski's style, no doubt. Cinema verite, idyllic American life becomes disaster movie. Hope it's better than Minority Report.

Am I the only person who can't stand Kaminski's style? Even THE LOST WORLD had these really odd sequences where light would pour in from a window for no reason whatsoever, obscuring the basic look of a sequence (I believe it was one of the early scenes with Richard Attenborough).

It's funny -- I received an email from a reader asking me if I had "second thoughts" about a movie on a repeat viewing, and if I changed my mind about it from my initial reaction.

I have to say the first thing that came to my mind was MINORITY REPORT. I was excited by some of the individual set pieces when I saw the film the first time, but after I saw the movie on DVD, I was more agitated by some of the "gritty" elements Spielberg brought to the movie...the kind he tried so desperately to bring to A.I....that it left a bad taste in the mouth and really soured the movie for me on its second go-around. I have a hard time explaining it -- it's like watching someone trying so hard to have "an edge" that it obscures what kind of filmmaker they are. For example: the scene with Cruise and the crazy doctor; the amount of time Spielberg lingers on the grotesque, like the "pre-cogs" or whatever they were called; I dunno, it really felt to me, when I saw it again, that I was watching a director who I grew up admiring trying to be something he's not.

Overall Spielberg post-Schindler's List has really been a different, and far less consistent, filmmaker. THE LOST WORLD is as bad as any film he's made, I thoroughly disliked A.I. (I absolutely disagree with anyone who believes it's going to develop this fervent following in future years), THE TERMINAL was a mess, and even a light entertainment like CATCH ME IF YOU CAN felt like it was thoroughly restrained in terms of its emotion. Still a good movie, but not a great one. AMISTAD for me is one of his best in the last decade, but it's no EMPIRE OF THE SUN.

WAR OF THE WORLDS is going to be interesting. Maybe 20 years ago I would be really keyed into this film. Now, Spielberg doesn't seem capable of producing a no-frills "summer fun" movie with the kind of kinetic energy he brought to nearly everything up until SCHINDLER'S LIST. After that -- and winning his Oscar -- it seems like his movies reflect that they're not his #1 priority. He's got his family, his studio, and somehow his movies feel like the work of another person...someone straining to be taken "seriously" (as in those uncomfortable elements of MINORITY REPORT and A.I.) but against the basic fabric of his style.

You can really divide the path from 1993. Every movie from SCHINDLER'S previous really felt like a "Spielberg film." Good or bad, the visual designs, Williams' music, and the cinematography -- be it from the likes of a Dean Cundey or Mikael Salomon or Allen Davieu -- was consistent and felt like the "Spielberg" style.

I'm just happy he didn't discover Kaminski before...can you imagine what E.T. or JAWS would have looked like with him behind the camera??

[romanD]

I forgot to add that too... hate Kaminski, too... always the same look, alsways that light through the window with some smoke in the room.. yawn...

I wonder how Kaminski made the jump from Corman-Dreck to Spielberg movies in no time...

doesn't look Spielberg will replace him with another dop in the near future...

rest I agree totally with you about Spielberg.. gone are the days where you got excited about a new Spielberg movie... now it is just "we'll see..."

[AndyDursin]

I wonder how Kaminski made the jump from Corman-Dreck to Spielberg movies in no time...

Marrying Holly Hunter couldn't have had any bearing on his career status, right??