I just noticed looking at the ad in the Phoenix that CLOVERFIELD was written by Drew Goddard. Huh.

Dude, that's part of why I've been so excited to see it all these months!

I wanna see it, but apparently it has the whole "hand-held-camera-induced nausea" factor. I had to move to the back of the theater for Dancer in the Dark and leave the theater for 5-10 minutes during The Blair Witch Project due to this, so I'm a bit wary....

That's what I heard, Tommy. I couldn't watch the last half of the second Bourne movie (um, Identity? Conspiracy? Supremacy? Cupidity?), so I figure I'll at least have to wait for this to hit DVD, where I can control the nausea in the privacy of my home.

But the cameraman is named "Hud." How fun is that?

The shakycam aspect is the one thing I'm concerned about—I've never watched something shot in that style on the big screen, so I don't know how it will affect me. Planning to take some pre-emptory Aleve before entering the theater tonight.

The cast-of-Friends-gets-squashed-by-Godzilla premise that some people are complaining about was actually what sold me on the idea of the movie in the first place, though.

I read a few adoption related blogs and those people all, like every single one, hated the movie and thought it was deceptive and did a real disservice to pregnant teenagers. But everyone everywhere else, here, for example, has seemed to really enjoy the movie - thought is was great, in fact.

One of the reasons I won't be seeing it is that I've read too many firstmother blogs. I'd be busy worrying about Juno in a year, in two years, etc. One of the big concerns they have--and granted, you're not exactly going to run into a huge number of blogs about a subject where the blogger is passionate because they're so content--is that the movie sells the whole image of adoption that they found appealing when they were pregnant, yet found after placement wasn't the case.

Domestic adoption in the US is a huge, thorny mess. It is one of the reasons that when we were having difficulty getting pregnant, I didn't look at adoption as a next step in our road to parenting.

In the end, the film heartily endorsed the agenda of a return to the bad-old "baby-scoop" days and thus yes, a return the days (if they are indeed over) of women's sexuality being shameful and not within women's own control. And thus yes, a return to the days (if they are indeed over) when abortion was not readily or safely available.

I don't get this at all. I can understand the whole "adoption's not like that" feeling, but, hey, welcome to Hollywood.

ION, I finally watched King Kong. Actually, I watched it in 3 parts because, good god, that's a long movie.

I'll say one thing for it, though, I can't think of another movie that actually activated my fear of extreme heights. The last bit had my heart going a mile a minute.

I'll say one thing for it, though, I can't think of another movie that actually activated my fear of extreme heights.

Uh-huh.

I'll say one thing for it, though, I can't think of another movie that actually activated my fear of extreme heights. The last bit had my heart going a mile a minute.

The otherwise-okay-as-long-as-you-forget-it-has-anything-to-do-with-Asimov's-novels I Robot triggered my extreme heights fear, as did PJ's Kong.

In Kong, it was because Naomi is up on that tiny little disk of space at the very top of the building, and keeps getting knocked around.

In I Robot, it was because of the spinny-cam thing they did during the climactic fight on a catwalk several hundred feet off the ground.

I'm not sure why I saw Cliffhanger (the Sylvester Stallone rock climbing movie), but just typing about it now makes my palms sweat. Yikes.