The News: Cloverfield -- You're Invited! (Sort Of)

(Photo: Paramount via MySpace)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--In keeping with its aggressive meta-pseudo-disaster campaign pushing Cloverfield toward a Jan. 18 release date, Paramount is inviting 200 of the film's MySpace friends to "Rob's Surprise Party" on Jan. 17 -- a sneak preview staged as the same party that the film's monster so rudely busts up in the trailer. This is the cleverest thing Paramount has done in years. The catch: Attendees will be chosen at random from RSVP's submitted by Jan. 10, and the movie has about 8,400 friends at present. So you might want to buy your opening-day tickets anyhow. [H/T: CHUD]

--Noted Staten Island "studio" proprietor and ex-con film producer, Lloyd Grove leg-puller and LA Times-suer Julius Nasso is taking over from the deposed Peter Guber as the Staten Island Film Festival's Film Industry Chair in 2008. Nasso's most recent producing effort, The Poet, won a basket of awards at the 2007 festival. Not that they're related. Not at all. Nope.

--Don't buy for a second Juno's meretricious debate over Herschell Gordon Lewis versus Dario Argento, write the authorities at Snobsite: "The concept isn’t bad, but the scene is about as believable as the name Diablo Cody."

--I'll get to this in depth after I've had some time to digest it, but a group of documentary filmmakers and programmers have gathered to offer a counterpoint to the Oscars -- "a way to focus on some of the craft elements in non-fiction filmmaking" as opposed to Hollywood issues du jour, director AJ Schnack tells indieWIRE. Not that a lot of the short-listed selections -- including Lake of Fire, Taxi to the Dark Side, No End in Sight and Sicko -- are defiantly underground, irreverent or ignored by Oscar's own short-listers, and all have theatrical distribution. In any case, nominations will be announced during the Sundance Film Festival and one lucky winner will collect hardware at an event March 18 at IFC Center. Congrats to everyone.

Posted at January 8, 2008 6:59 AM