Thursday, August 30, 2007

Cloverfuckit

Ain't It Cool News is reporting some totally made up bullshit about 01-18-08/Cloverfield/Cheese/Voltron/Godzilla/Son of Kong/Captain Planet/Who Cares. "Sources" describe a new scene involving Rob, some guys from Army, and Nicole Richie bleeding from the eyes.

I dunno man, I'm kinda bored with this whole thing already. Feels like it totally blew its load way too early. Through no fault of the people behind it, mind you. I blame all the rampant "internet sleuths" for trampling this thing into the ground before it even left the gate.

Anyway, if you're tired of hearing about this too, here's something else for you.

Runnin' with the Devil

Hell is hosting the Ice Capades and pigs have taken to the skies, Van Halen is going on tour with David Lee Roth for the first time since 1985. Sort of.

Eddie Van Halen + Alex Van Halen + David Lee Roth - Michael Anthony ≠ Van Halen

Eddie is an idiot if he thinks this is going to work with his 16 year old son taking Michael Anthony's place. Michael Anthony was responsible for at least 50% of the vocal duties in Van Halen. All those high backing vocals, that's Michael Anthony. The fact is, David Lee Roth couldn't sing live even back in Van Halen's heyday. Michael Anthony was there to carry Dave when he was too drunk/stupid/bad at singing to hit the notes himself. Without that net, and with Dave being 25 years older, they don't stand a chance. Eddie fucks up yet again.

This is gonna be a train wreck of epic proportions. Sign me up!

On a positive note, Alex Van Halen will still probably sound excellent.

On a strange note, has anyone seen a picture of Alex Van Halen lately? He looks like an old black man.



And as an added bonus, here's DLR drunk onstage at the US Festival in '83. The single greatest moment in live Van Halen history occurs at the 1:37 (-2:55) mark.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

From Grindhouse to Shithouse

Soooo, Planet Terror and Death Proof are being released on dvd separately and a month apart. Each gets a two disc set with extra footage (plus the “missing reels” restored), but no mention of a theatrical version and a restored version without all the aging and stuff (as previously rumored). Also, no trailers. At all. On either set. Totally lame. I’ll netflix it. Way to fuck up every aspect of releasing and promoting this movie Weinstiens.

If they were disappointed with box office sales, they’re gonna be even more disappointed with dvd sales. They lost a huge amount of their potential box office audience because their marketing/advertising on the internet was completely non-existent. Everyone in the movie was running around to every talk show they could get to. They had the entire cast on the fucking Tyra Banks Show! (this is a shitty clip someone made from their tv with a webcam or something, but you can see that everyone is there) But there was absolutely nothing online. No ads, no myspace, I’m not even sure if there was an official website.

Did someone really think the housewives that watch Tyra Banks’s show were going to jump at the chance to see Planet Terror? And who watches Late Night talk shows for news about upcoming releases? I watch them because they’re on every night and they’re easy to fall asleep to. Most of the time I don’t even make it to the first guest on Conan. So they totally missed about 80% of their audience right there. If they had so much as a myspace page, I bet the box office would have doubled. And even the advertising and marketing they did apparently didn’t do its job because people were walking out after Planet Terror because they didn’t realize there were two movies. Theatres were posting ushers at the exits to remind people that there was another movie coming up.

So, take the number of people who went to see the movie, subtract those who mistakenly walked out after Planet Terror, then subtract the people that stayed but hated Death Proof, then subtract all the people that were going to buy the dvd until they heard it would cost them $60 to get both movies and even then they wouldn’t get the trailers (which were some people’s favorite part), and you’re left with very slim pickings when it comes to dvd sales. And bad dvd sales do not equal second edition.

This was a fuck-up of gigantic proportions. There are so many ways this could have been handled better.

On a lighter note, I saw this Grindhouse book the other day and it looks really cool. I may have to pick it up in the future.

Grindhouse Book

Friday, August 10, 2007

Holy Viral Marketing Batman!

01-18-08

I’ve been reading all about it on AICN for weeks. Almost getting tired of hearing about it because people just won’t give it a rest despite the fact that nothing significant has come to light for a couple weeks (the latest big revelation? The title they’re using on set is “Cheese”. Big fucking deal). But it’s been kind of quiet this week, so that’s been a nice break of sorts. Guess there was some other news happening so everyone could stop repeating the same theories ad nauseam.

That said, the trailer was cool. The website with the movable pictures isn’t as interesting to me as it seems to be to everyone else. I haven’t even bothered with the Slusho site. Too much garbage to sift through when I could just wait for someone else to find something significant.

Viral marketing’s cool, but it’s annoying when something is talked about so much that it gets old within 24 hours and you’re tired of hearing about it before it even has the chance to do anything but put out a mysterious trailer. Especially when people are so desperate to figure it out instead of waiting patiently and letting it play out, that they start grasping at anything that might potentially be a clue and end up wasting countless hours on what turns out to be a puzzle site for a completely unrelated video game’s viral marketing campaign. Which is thereby ruined once it comes to light that it has nothing to do with the original project everyone is scrambling to figure out. “Sorry a bunch of rabid lunatics ruined your viral marketing by mistaking it for someone else’s viral marketing.” That sounds so absurd. But watch, when this viral marketing shit isn’t just a few and far between deal, but everyone is using it for everything, there will be situations like this all the time. One campaign will accidentally be absorbed by another, completely ruining one or both in the process.

Now, an example of a viral marketing campaign done right in every way: The Dark Knight. Everyone knows about it, but it’s not over-hyped like “Cloverfield”. It’s being done in a very calculated and genius way. The games, the cooperative scavenger hunt at Comic Con (including skywriting, creepy recorded phone messages), the anonymous defaced playing cards and dollar bills being randomly scattered across metropolitan areas, the mysterious websites. Pure genius. If someone were to write an instructional book on viral marketing, they could just outline this campaign. The End.

I don’t know if this 1-18-08/“Cloverfield”/“Cheese” thing is going to end up being anything special, or just another big spark with little bang. But I can guarantee you that The Dark Knight is gonna be awesome. That has a lot to do with the people involved, but the excellent marketing sure isn’t hurting.

The Joker