Abraaaaams!

New Star Trek trailer

New Star Trek trailer from J.J. Abrams.

Someone recorded it before watching Quantum of Solace. A more close-up view of the trailer will be available on Monday.

Helvetica--the movie

Sunday night I watched a documentary about one of the most ubiquitous typefaces (or in computer terms, font) found in the world today.

That type is HELVETICA, a font created by Swiss typographers in the late 1950s and which contributed to a design movement known as Modernism.

You've probably heard of Helvetica and you might even use it on your computer screen. (I would have set this post in Helvetica if Blogger would have allowed it.) But the movie made me realize that Helvetica is EVERYWHERE. As a representation of a modern, clean design many corporations adopted the font in an attempt to present an up-to-date, less stogy view of their identity in the second half of the twentieth century.

Here are some corporate examples--American Airlines, Crate&Barrel.

There are also many government examples--the Internal Revenue Service, for example, or the Environmental Protection Agency.

And Helvetica is used in signage style all over the world.

The movie interviews the people that embraced the spirit of Modernism and celebrate the spirit of "Helveticaness," then talks to those graphic designers in the 1970s and 1980s that reacted against the corporate/government nature of Helvetica and went in a Postmodern direction. (To learn a bit more about Postmodernism, check here.) And finally, it introduced new designers that are embracing the clean lines of Helvetica, but in their own way.

I really liked this movie and I admit that I have developed a new found appreciation of Helvetica, the font. I like its clean lines and I find myself a bit intrigued by the odd void shape within the lowercase "a," one quick way to recognize the font--at least in its lowercase form. I will be spending a lot of time noticing it everywhere.

Check the movie out when you get a chance.

Cloverfield

WARNING!!

THIS POST IS FULL OF PLOT DISCUSSION AND SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE CLOVERFIELD!

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO RUIN THIS MOVIE BEFORE YOU SEE IT, THEN READ NO FURTHER!

SERIOUSLY

STOP

READING

NOW!

YOU

HAVE

BEEN

WARNED!

First the bad news: Cloverfield is a straight up "monster destroys city" movie.

I had wild, unfounded hopes that Bad Robot--the production company that created Alias and LOST would make some sort of insane tie-in to the upcoming season 4 of LOST, my favorite TV show. (Something like, the Cloverfield monster is really the same monster that wreaks havoc on The Island . . . or something much better than that.)

Sadly, no.

As I said, it was just a monster-destroys-city movie. It was a GOOD one, though. I am not a disciple of the monster movie genre, but I know enough that this one turns one of the monster movie conventions on its head--specifically by taking the traditional omniscient observer point-of-view and placing it in the hands of one of the characters.

What I mean is, imagine if Godzilla was attacking Tokyo and the only evidence you had for this attack was a videotape taken in the midst of the attack. So you can occasionally see the monster behind a distant building, or you are in the midst of a fleeing crowd and you spin to see the explosions behind you, or you have to dive out of the way as the tanks and army dudes go running past you in the opposite direction. You get the idea.

I was worried that this movie would induce fits of nausea in the viewing audience--as The Blair Witch Project did a decade ago--but either I wasn't bothered or I just got used to it. I suppose it helped that our band of friends paused every now and then to catch their breath or to discuss what they should do next. At those points the jerkycam smoothed out.

About the band of friends that we follow around in the story, you don't really need to know that much about them, because the movie is really all about what is happening around them. They are just stand-ins for the viewing audience. You get to see them cower, see them debate what to do next, see them face terrible circumstances and wonder "What would I do?"

The movie is ludicrous, certainly. And, considering that seeing buildings collapse and random people die is not strictly fictional anymore, you might find the movie crass and offensive. But pardon me while I say that I was reminded of The Poseidon Adventure and The Blair Witch Project just as much as I was reminded of September 11th. And I have been surprised by the amount of support this movie was getting critically. Some sites you would expect them to be supportive, but it wasn't just blogs run by ubergeeks. (Watch out for language on this last link!)

I have to say too that I have loved the "Abrams style" of layered levels of meaning within his projects--Alias and LOST. I'm not trying to say that Cloverfield is deep and layer or has some sort of allegorical meaning. I just love how the stuff happening in the background might be just as important as what's happening up in front of you. LOST is like that--especially the web-based stuff in between seasons. His works seems like game sometimes--if you have the time to chase it down the rabbit hole, and if you are willing to accept that it might NOT make sense when you get to the bottom.

There are tons of things to be bothered by in the film, such as 1) the video camera operator's unflinching desire to capture every second of destruction when he should have long ago dropped the stupid camera to run more effectively or maybe help out someone in need or 2) the way the dialogue was just a bit too carefully crafted to give you verbal clues for when the next "thing" was about to happen, of 3) the resilient ability for our "heroes" to survive any number of improbable disastrous moments that should have ended the tape early . . . but if you accept the monumental impossibility of an unknown thing appearing out of nowhere to knock over buildings, then you'll accept all the rest.

I liked it and if it's your sort of thing, I'll bet you'll like it too.

My only major disappointment?

WHERE was the promised Star Trek trailer?!

All the latest J. J. Abrams news

It's a busy time of year for fans of J.J. Abrams, creator of LOST, producer/writer of the mysterious movie Cloverfield. The DVD of LOST season 3 just came out in stores. I dearly want to run out right now in the impending ice and snow to get my copy, but I am doing my best to bide my time and pick it up at Christmas time. It's hard waiting, but I'm trying to grow.

On top of all of that, we learned today that LOST season 4 is officially scheduled to begin January 31. And one of the best bits about that tidbit of news is that the show returns to the 9 pm time slot. Of course, we're only talking about 8 episodes since everything has ground to a halt due to the ongoing writers strike, but I'll take whatever I can get . . . for now. (I do admit that I am very concerned that the strike has already damaged the LOST Master Plan (16 continuous episodes for the next three seasons), but since I don't work in Hollywood, I can't do much about any of that.

The other big news regarding LOST season 4 is that YouTube has a teaser trailer for the new season. (I've chosen to provide the Entertainment Weekly link because it provides speculation/interpretation for the seemingly random images seen throughout.) After inexpertly trying to stop and start the images several times, I can tell you that I saw a strange looking pyramid of yellow ball-like stones that explode (?), an embedded number 6 (??), Hurley swimming underwater, and definitely a clean-shaven Charlie Pace. I don't know if he's back from the dead in "current time," a flashback image of Charlie before he died at the end of last season, or a flash forward to future "off-the-island" Charlie. The best news there is that two-thirds of those possible scenarios don't end up with Charlie being dead and gone from the show.

Moving on to other Abrams projects, we've got new information/imagery about Cloverfield, the movie that is turning out to seem more and more like a straight-up monster movie with bad dialogue, nausea-inducing camera work, and what else, I don't really know.

But nothing Abrams-related is complete without bizarre Internet tie-ins.

If you believe AdFreak.com, this bizarre video is chock-full of clues about Cloverfield. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you that leads to my thousands of cheap acres in Florida.

If you would rather see a clip of the movie itself, (rather than try to guess if a pseudo Japanese product is going to tell you secrets), you can always try this.

It is a chunk of the movie that revolves around stuff we've already seen in the trailers out to this point. I hope when you watch it, the video runs more smoothly than it did for me. And I hope you are prepared for the aforementioned lack of dialogue and lack of SteadyCam. (Take your Dramamine before you come to the theater with me when 1.18.08 arrives.)