1-18-08 Project Cloverfield - Warning! Spoilers

Check out the official Slusho Store for some Christmas gifts for the Cloverfield fan. You can grab Slusho shirts in light or dark for $18.00. The Slusho hats run $22 and the Slusho hoodie runs $28.00.

There's a $10 Off coupon for a hat and shirt if you use the code HAPPYCOMBO at the checkout.

• Slusho Store >
  

I bet if you order now you'll get the shirts by 1-18-08!

The (new) official site for the Cloverfield Movie has updated their menu to include a plot summary.

While this Cloverfield Movie summary does not really offer new information, it does pin down some clues that had us all wondering. The Cloverfield Monster is officially pegged as being the size of a skyscraper and the video style of the Cloverfield Teaser Trailer looks to be in utilized for the picture.

• Cloverfield Movie Official Website >
  

Via Flickfilosopher, a critics take on the Cloverfield marketing.

Cloverfield is back. Remember the trailer for an unnamed movie everyone was so excited about a few months back, the one before Transformers about a mysterious monster attacking New York and knocking the head off the Statue of Liberty? There’s a second trailer now: it debuted before Beowulf over the Thanksgiving weekend and immediately afterward started showing up on YouTube in an impossible-to-watch cell-phone-cam version.

I watched it anyway, and found myself getting a little cheesed off. Not about the movie itself, but about how Paramount is marketing this. I can’t go into a press screening without having my bag rifled and my body wanded in search of cameras and other recording devices -- when I upgraded my cell phone recently, I made a point of getting one without a camera in it so I wouldn’t have to check it with the minimum-wage “security” guards who regularly harass we critics and our guests at screenings. It’s not like those pristine DVDs and downloads of new movies are coming from critics sneaking their cameraphones into press screenings, but we get subjected to this anyway.

But Cloverfield makes it clear, I think, that Paramount wanted geeks to camcord that new trailer, wanted it to end up on YouTube. Perhaps no one in Paramount’s marketing department realized that the first teaser trailer would be such a viral hit on the Web this summer, but they had to know the second one would be. This is the first movie for which “piracy” is a planned part of the marketing.

You can now watch that new trailer (as well as the teaser) in crisp, clear, “official” versions at Apple.com, and it’s even more obvious that it was not primarily intended to be seen in theaters but in a format you can freeze and rewind and rewatch. Lots of intriguing stuff slips by a mere frames. And, of course, you don’t have to bother with analyzing it yourself: All the Cloverfield nerds have done it for you. At CloverfieldNews.com, there’s an ongoing discussion about what each and every shadowy image and garbled sound might be. The sprawling Cloverfield fan community has even ferreted out a connection between the movie and Heroes.

Some folks, like my fellow Film.com contributor Eric D. Snider, are tired of all the coyness on the part of Cloverfield producer JJ Abrams and all the literal gameplaying required to figure out what the damn movie is about. I figure the gameplaying isn’t meant for us grownups but for kids with tons of time on their hands. Who else could be able to post something like this: “For the last few weeks, we have been devoting all of our time to the myspace accounts of the characters.” Seriously? All your time? To a movie that hasn’t even opened yet, and might turn out to suck. (That site, Cloverfield Project, hasn’t been updated since August, so perhaps someone got a life.)

I wonder if all these folks realize that they’ve become unpaid marketing managers for a multibillion-dollar corporation. (source)

After being immersed in the 1-18-08/Cloverfield situation for months, it's nice to see the Cloverfield viral aspect take off. Up to now with the release of the 2nd trailer it has been rather mundane, with a few uninteresting MySpace pages and "Jamie Loves Teddy" page that may not even be related.

On the front page of Yahoo! this morning there is a feature post on the Cloverfield Movie. A small section is dedicated to the teaser and full length trailer. Also a very sparse picture section with only the poster and one picture when I checked it.


The bulk of the Yahoo! spread is centered around the Internet buzz. Yahoo! runs their buzz section based on Internet searches, kinda like Google Trends. Only Yahoo! breaks it down more like a blog post. They break down the keywords, like 1-18-08 and Cloverfield Clues along with Cthulhu to show you what people are looking for.


The Tagruato website has been a nice addition but it didn't get going until last week when it was "Hacked," fixed, and then updated. New pictures, about 15-20, have flooded the Internet along with the teaser and full length trailers.

A new official website for the movie, Cloverfieldmovie.com, was rolled out and a small bit of advertising appeared. A brand new poster featuring the "Cloverfield" title was also released. Even the hit TV show Heroes featured characters drinking the viral Slusho.


Cloverfield Trailer

The long Thanksgiving weekend is over and I'm still full of turkey and stuffing. Everything from my template to sitemeter to youtube was down at least part of the weekend which is extremely frustrating.

Another site that was down was the Tagruato Corp. website (see: TAGRUATO IS DESTROYING OUR OCEANS) which was "Hacked" and an image with the caption "Tagruato is destroying the world's oceans" was put in place of everything.

Today, the site is still not up but there is what looks like an "Under Construction" symbol present. The previous picture that the "hackers" put up is riddled with clues, according to many fans. There are roman numerals and names hidden in the drawings.

For a more detailed description of those findings check out this post at Cloverfield Clues.

The original template for my site has been fixed and as you can see is up and running. Hopefully, there won't be that problem again.

While I was doing the usual run through of the various Cloverfield related sites I saw that the Tagruato Corp site has been set up to looked "hacked."

It looks like environmental concerns, which have been debated as a possible storyline in various circles, is starting to show up.

The "hacker" claimes Tagruato Corp is destroying the oceans with its drilling and exploitation. An image is set in place of the website which used to have a nice, multi-page site with detailed descriptions of Tagruato and its subsidiaries, which include Slusho.

The image in place shows the chairman with devil horns photoshoped in along with various pictures drawn into the blank areas. The ocean is dirtied up and includes a nice rendention of the famous "Japanese Wave" woodblock print, The Great Wave, by Katsushika Hokusai.

Also drawn in are a crab, jelly fish, really ugly fish, and a octopus. The image is also labeled image #9 which makes me wonder if they have more in line to plug into this "Hacked" theme or not.

• Tagruato Corp. Website >
  

/Film got their mitts on the new official Cloverfield Poster. The title has been added to the bottom instead of the top as earlier this summer (See: )

Also noted in the unFiction area, there seems to be a rather obvious lack of Liberty Island with that black shape below the Statue of Liberty. However, that is just the base of the statue blacked out to give that illusion.

• Official Cloverfield Poster >
  

jawbone at UnFiction has found that the Tagruato Corp. site has updated. Tagruato is the parent company of Slusho and one of the spin offs in the Cloverfield universe. Here's the info on the updated information:

http://tagruato.jp/investors.php?story=news_07_11_21
Which leads you here...
http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=372553
to see this..
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee91/jawbone00/pic.jpg

NBC's hit TV show, Heroes, has more in common with Cloverfield than Greg Grunberg. Director/producer Greg Beeman has posted some relevant pictures in regard to Cloverfield.

I noticed in the comments that blkrose saw these pictures of the Heroes online and that someone else on unFiction found that Beeman staged various cast members of Heroes with Slusho cups on his blog.

Here's how Beeman described the photos:

Just saw the first Cloverfield this morning on Yahoo! Sports.

Cloverfield now officially has its own website.

With the latest trailer released this week, the J.J. Abrams produced monster flick was officially given its name as "Cloverfield."

With the addition of the Hi-Resolution trailer to the Apple trailer site, the domain name cloverfieldmovie.com went active. Thanks for the Anonymous tip whoever you may be.

For now the cloverfieldmovie.com site only redirects to the Apple trailer site, but we can expect some updates soon.

• Cloverfield Official Website (Cloverfieldmovie.com) >
• New, Hi-Resolution Cloverfield Trailer Online >
  

A quick viewing of the new Hi-Resolution Cloverfield trailer had something strike me as odd. I have yet to check with UnFiction to see what all they dug up, but hopefully some of these can be useful.

First off, did they redo the entire scene where Rob enters his Farewell Party?

Sure enough they did.

The opening shot of both trailers shows Rob entering a surprise party. In the latest trailer his hair is sticking up a little and he's got a new, geeky friend.

Most telling are the touch ups done to the Statue of Liberty's head. Note the glossy look in the new trailer with the added claw marks. Also, a muted green look is added to the trailer instead of the original , reddish street light look

Rob introduces himself. The image is blurred and some digital code-looking jargon covers the screen.