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Watchmen; who watches the Watchmen movie?
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Topic Started: Jun 10 2006, 11:29 AM (1,051 Views)
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Jeffrywith1e
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Jun 10 2006, 11:29 AM
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WATCHMEN
"X-Men 3: The Last Stand" composer John Powell posted an interesting note on his MySpace blog that he's in the early stages of piecing together his score for the upcoming Warner Brothers adaptation of Alan Moore's superhero masterpiece. "The second project [I'm currently working on] is still in preliminary stages," Powell wrote. "It is entitled 'The Watchmen,' based off the famous graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. No release date has been set for the film, but I'll be sure to update you if you're terribly curious ... I am working on the next 'Bourne' score, for the record. Filming for the movie hasn't quite begun yet, but, like 'The Watchmen,' I've begun to scribble a few things down."
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Jun 15 2006, 03:24 PM
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Who Watches …? Thursday June 15, 2006, 12:00 pm
O Lord, why do you tantalize us with these impossible questions, which set our minds aflame in futile attempts at reason-driven answers?
Of course, I’m talking about how to do a Watchmen movie.
Plok is only the latest blogger to declare Watchmen unfilmable, or (more particularly) to state that any adaptation of the work destroys at least one layer of its meaning. Even apart from trying to stuff everything into a 2-3 hour movie, he argues that
[t]o do Watchmen, you’d have to switch focus a lot, imply progression and regression at the same time a lot, not rely on the mere progress of subjective time created by the frame-to-frame unreeling of film, but create a mood of time in the mind of the viewer that is quite different from the one you pick up quite automatically from the flow of a regular movie.
Now, as we all know from Scott McCloud, comics are particularly good at manipulating time. When movies try to do it, though, it tends to look “arty,” not to mention obvious, because we are used to 24 frames per second and we can tell (as in those old Babe Ruth highlight films) when things are out of sync with real life. Watchmen wants to mess with our perceptions without us noticing the messing.
Remember issue #9, with Laurie and Jon on Mars, where the perfume bottle falls slowly throughout the whole issue, spilling as it goes, and finally crashing upon the horrific revelation of Laurie’s secret history? Picture that issue, filmed “straight,” unspooling over, say, 10 minutes of screen time. In my mind it plays like bad David Lynch, but any director would have to handle that stuff extremely delicately, or risk being laughed out of the theater. The whole book is like that, and to a certain extent, that’s the point: everything fits together so delicately that any upset throws it all off.
Still, I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t have some hare-brained hypothesis to test, and it comes from another “unfilmable” adaptation:
A Prairie Home Companion.
Although a PHC movie could easily have just dramatized Guy Noir or Lake Wobegon stories, that approach would have slighted the music, commercials, and other radio staples the show exploits so skillfully. Instead, the movie fictionalizes the show itself, stepping outside it to use it as a metaphor for the inevitabilities of life and death. The show is there every week until one week, suddenly, it isn’t — but the last show demands no more and no less enthusiasm than any other. The performers don’t act differently on stage, and nobody tells the radio audience the show’s about to end, leaving us moviegoers to supply our own pathos. The movie therefore doesn’t try to substitute for the original, but works to make the audience appreciate the original. All things end, the movie says, so enjoy them while they are here. I know I listened to the radio show a little more attentively this past weekend.
Anyway, maybe a similar approach would work for Watchmen. Set the movie in the world of the book, but just outside the events of the book. Maybe focus instead on a pair of filmmakers looking to make a documentary on the Comedian, and intersperse the “real” events with the documentarians’ investigations. For example, open the movie as issue #1 opens, with the camera pulling back from the bloody happy-face, and have that segue into the documentarians looking at storyboards for a possible opening sequence. Under the Hood, Rorschach’s psychological profile, the Veidt interview, and the other supplemental material could be parts of the filmmakers’ research; and one of them could be reading the pirate comic, or playing with the action figures. The filmmakers wouldn’t necessarily figure out what happened — although the movie could take place after the book ends, with one of them having found Rorschach’s diary — so there could be some disconnect with what the filmmakers know and what “really happened,” which the movie could point up.
It’s tacked on, sure, but it might still allow the audience to appreciate the original book’s complexity and self-referential nature. No film could really reproduce the cumulative effect of issue #9’s slowly tumbling perfume bottle, so a director would have to find some other way of conveying the book’s clockwork. If nothing else, those hypothetical documentarians could get just as frustrated as we fans have been. Watchmen has become so influential, twenty years later, that it no longer works just as a “realistic” take on superheroes. The trick now is in evoking the larger themes of time and fate.
(By the way, I keep saying “movie,” when I’m really thinking “miniseries.” All this stuff is definitely too much for 2-3 hours.)
Still, the more I think about this Rosencrantz & Guildenstern idea, the dumber it sounds. To adapt Watchmen it almost seems like the difficulty of a good adaptation must be acknowledged metatextually, and that sounds like the Charlie Kaufman movie Adaptation – which, as it happens, I haven’t seen. (At least this post has some recursivity to it!) However, the Prairie Home Companion movie made me realize how powerful the evocation of a work can be, as opposed to the mere translation of said work.
Or, wait — what if Watchmen were animated…?
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Jan 26 2007, 02:02 PM
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interesting little almost missed rumor interview with Darren Aronofsky this is a snippit:
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Daniel Robert Epstein: You came really close to directing Watchmen. Darren Aronofsky: I got involved and I got that setup at Paramount and then they fired me. Well they didn't fire me, but they wanted to go now. They wanted to be in pre-production in January and I've been working on this for six years and I clearly have a hard time doing two things at once. I can do one project well so I couldn't really do it. As soon as we setup, they got really excited and wanted it in the summer of '06 and I was like, “This isn't a film you can rush because if you smurf it up there's going to be a lot of angry people.” The funny thing is that when I went to meet Bowie, one of the first things he said was, “Oh, are you doing Watchmen?" It turned out that he was developing an opera out of Watchmen. I was like, “If I do this film and I smurf it up, I'm going to piss David Bowie off.” The reason that I got involved is because David Hayter’s script and I thought that it was a great adaptation. I thought that it was better than any of the Sam Hamm scripts. I wish them all the best luck but I can't do it that quick. I have to take my time.
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Feb 1 2008, 11:08 AM
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production of this film has been underway for sometime now!
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Jeffrywith1e
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Mar 6 2008, 11:53 AM
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IMAGES!
 
 
 
 

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Gregums
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Mar 6 2008, 12:28 PM
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HOLY CRAP!
Just from seeing those, this may be the greatest comic movie of all time!
They absolutely NAILED those characters!
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"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education." - Teddy Roosevelt
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Jeffrywith1e
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Apr 7 2008, 11:56 AM
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Watchem behind the scenes video log
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Jeffrywith1e
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May 27 2008, 06:16 PM
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some big Watchmen news....

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We've got a 1940's Picture of THE MINUTEMEN from WATCHMEN - and tis exclusive for all yous!
Hey folks, Harry here in LaLaLand - I know, I know - 6 days ago I was under the knife - and now here I am after a day of air travel relaxing in my room writing a story about something awesomely geeky cool. If it helps any, I have been having a bitch of shoulder pain - damn co2 bubbles!
Anyway - that's not why you're here. Zack Snyder and crew decided that the day after MEMORIAL DAY was probably the most awesome day ever to remember and to expose some of our most awesome heroes of yesteryear. And I say AMEN to that.
In the brilliant WATCHMEN story - there's a history - a universe and a specific world that the characters exist in. That's what makes it so great, so thorough and something to pour over.
What we have below is a photo that the Minutemen took - Who are the Minutemen? Well in WATCHMEN - it was the first TEAM of superheroes that formed in 1939 and pulled a BEATLES in 1949. In the pic below you'll see the classic SILK SPECTRE and NITE OWL... you'll see CAPTAIN METROPOLIS, MOTHMAN, SILHOUETTE, COMEDIAN, DOLLAR BILL and with the noose... HOODED JUSTICE.
I love this photo... just look at those costumes, the hairstyles and makeup. Isn't that classic? It's that attention to detail that I think bodes very well for this project. Cuz with WATCHMEN, the devil's in the details. It is the most richly textured and nuanced comic story ever completed - and this is yet another reason to be excited!
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in other news...
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Warner Tries a New Tactic to Revive Its DVD Sales Article Tools Sponsored By By BROOKS BARNES Published: May 26, 2008
LOS ANGELES — Retail’s love affair with the DVD is on the rocks and Warner Brothers Entertainment would like to patch things up. Skip to next paragraph Clay Enos/Warner Brothers Pictures
In the movie “Watchmen,” Jesse Reid reads “Tales of the Black Freighter,” which will appear as a DVD within days of the film.
Faced with a decline in DVD sales, Warner Brothers, part of Time Warner, is planning an unusual effort around its upcoming adaptation of the popular graphic novel “Watchmen.” Directed by Zack Snyder and set for a March 2009 release, the big-budget movie tells the story of a group of retired superheroes who are tied to a conspiracy that could change history.
The twist is that Mr. Snyder, known for turning the Spartan comic book series “300” into a global hit movie, is also directing a separate-but-related picture that Warner plans to distribute exclusively on DVD.
The second film, tentatively called “Tales of the Black Freighter,” follows a side “Watchmen” storyline about a shipwreck and will arrive in stores five days after the main movie rolls out in theaters. The DVD will also include a documentary-style film called “Under the Hood” that will delve into the characters’ backstories.
Warner, the No. 1 distributor of DVDs, bills the effort as a way to renew retail excitement for little silver discs now that the once-booming market has matured.
After years of blistering growth, domestic DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year to $15.9 billion, according to Adams Media Research, the first annual drop in the medium’s history. While it is still a blockbuster business, any decline is cause for concern because DVD sales can account for as much as 70 percent of revenue for a new film. Results for the first quarter this year were mixed, with overall sales flat but notable softness for some new releases like Warner’s box office hit “I Am Legend.”
As a result — and as consumer adoption of the next-generation Blu-ray discs lags — some important retail partners like Wal-Mart Stores have been starting to rethink how much shelf space they devote to the category. Also up for discussion is to what degree retailers market new releases in circulars and with in-store promotions.
“There is a fear that if the DVD category declines over time that any well-run retailer is going to re-evaluate its commitment,” said Ron Sanders, the president of Warner Home Video. “We are offering retailers a meaningful opportunity to be involved with the theatrical event, to have a product that will generate foot traffic and sales.”
If that sounds like spin, to some degree it is. The movie studio would not be drafting one of its top filmmakers and sinking millions into “Tales of the Black Freighter” if it did not see a direct benefit for itself.
The immediate goal is for the parallel release to help start a potential new movie franchise. As television advertising becomes less effective because of declining TV viewership, movie studios need to reach a mass audience somehow, and having what amounts to ads sitting on store shelves is seen as a crucial antidote.
The effort is also a way for Warner to get more DVD bang for not many more bucks. The “Watchmen” film, Mr. Synder said, will probably generate at least three DVDs: “Tales of the Black Freighter,” followed about four months later by release of “Watchmen” itself, and then an “ultimate” edition in which the two are edited together into one megamovie.
“The überfans of this property are going to go crazy for that,” Mr. Snyder said.
Warner has another reason to make nice with retailers. The studio, under added scrutiny from Wall Street now that its corporate parent plans to spin off Time Warner Cable, has annoyed chains by leading a movement in Hollywood to simultaneously release titles on DVD and on video-on-demand services.
Retailers worry that DVD sales will suffer from the lack of exclusivity, but Warner — which enjoys 60 percent profit margins for video on demand, compared to half that for physical DVD sales — says there is no cannibalization. Warner said this month that it would distribute many new releases simultaneously to DVD and on-demand services.
Warner downplayed any friction from the growth of video on demand. “Our retail partners haven’t seen a dramatic impact one way or another on their business, so they’re allowing us to work on it,” said Mr. Sanders.
Retailers seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach to Warner’s olive branch. Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest DVD retailer, with as much as 40 percent of sales, declined to comment. Target, which has historically accounted for about 15 percent of DVD sales, said, “We’re always looking for opportunities to generate excitement in our entertainment business.”
Tom Adams, the founder of Adams Media Research, predicted that retailers would embrace the “Tales of the Black Freighter” strategy. “They have every reason to try it,” he said. “It’s a fresh idea and it’s something that will be of value to movie fans.”
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Warner Tries a New Tactic to Revive Its DVD Sales Article Tools Sponsored By Published: May 26, 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
Warner knows releasing a related film on DVD at the same time it is trying to motivate people to buy tickets to “Watchmen” is not without risk. Consumers could become confused about which is which. And if they are disappointed in the quality of “Tales of the Black Freighter,” the plan might hurt sales of the “Watchmen” DVD.
“We feel a great responsibility to do this well for exactly these reasons,” said Diane Nelson, president of Warner Premiere, the division responsible for direct-to-DVD projects. “The movies that we do under this parallel content strategy have to be viable in their own right.” Although Ms. Nelson declined to reveal the budget for “Tales of the Black Freighter,” she said it was 30 percent to 50 percent higher than a typical direct-to-DVD effort.
Still, some concessions were made because of the budget, Mr. Snyder said. The original plan was to tell the “Black Freighter” story in a visual style similar to the mock-historical “300.” But an early budget was approaching $20 million and the studio balked, he said. Instead, the feature will be animated.
Mr. Snyder said he was eager to head a direct-to-DVD project, in part because it would allow him to use more material from the “Watchmen” graphic novel.
“I thought the ‘Black Freighter’ story would never see the light of day,” he said. “The main picture is nearing three hours long and I know I have a fight on my hands just with that.”
In addition, the studio plans a dozen 22- to 26-minute Webisodes to help make the complex story easier for the uninitiated to digest. Called “The Watchmen Motion Comic,” it will be a panel-by-panel slide show of the graphic novel narrated by an actor.
Although no decisions have been made, Mr. Snyder, who is overseeing the digital component but leaving the details to others, said the Webisodes would probably be combined for later release on — you guessed it — DVD.
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Jul 7 2008, 09:27 AM
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Here's a cool video blog from the original artist on Watchmen as he saw the set from the film.
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Jul 17 2008, 08:53 PM
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and finally, here's the trailer... WATCHMEN
oh wow.
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Gregums
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Jul 18 2008, 09:36 AM
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- Jeffrywith1e
- Jul 17 2008, 08:53 PM
and finally, here's the trailer... WATCHMEN oh wow. Oh cool!!!!
I will sooo be seeing that!
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"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education." - Teddy Roosevelt
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Gregums
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Jul 18 2008, 10:25 AM
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comparisons
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"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education." - Teddy Roosevelt
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Jeffrywith1e
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Aug 7 2008, 05:24 AM
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Watcmen video journal #5 about the construction of Nite Owl's ship
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Aug 19 2008, 05:17 PM
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Some complications have come up with the release of Watchmen. This may delay at best the release of the movie. At worst...
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Watchmen Film Imperiled by WB/Fox Legal Battle by Andy Khouri, News Editor
Updated: Mon, August 18th, 2008 at 2:59PM PST
Nikki Finke is reporting at Deadline Hollywood that a federal judge has denied Warner Bros.’ motion to dismiss 20th Century Fox’s attempt to preclude the production of Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” film, a development that could potentially have immense ramifications for WB in 2009.
In February of this year, Fox filed a lawsuit to prevent the WB project from going forward, claiming Fox had the exclusive rights to develop, produce and distribute a film based on the hugely popular DC Comics graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Warner Bros. motioned for a dismissal of the lawsuit, and U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess denied WB’s motion last Friday. No decision has yet been made regarding Fox’s desire for an injunction of the entire WB project. A Fox source told Finke, “"While the Judge's opinion is preliminary and his views could change in the course of the litigation, his current take on the facts is consistent with our position."
This news comes after the recent announcement that the Warner Bros. film “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” would be rescheduled from this November to instead premiere in 2009. Should 20th Century Fox manage to secure any profit from Warner’s “Watchmen,” the studio will need to count on the revenue generated by the Harry Potter film to maximize the year’s earnings.
Of Fox’s claim to the rights to “Watchmen,” Finke’s source said, “In essence, the Judge appears to conclude that Fox retained distribution rights in Watchmen through the 1991 Largo quit claim, and he concludes that, under the 1994 turnaround with producer Larry Gordon, Gordon acquired an option to acquire Fox's remaining interest in Watchmen that was never exercised, thereby leaving Fox with its rights under the 1994 agreement.”
More on this as it develops. link
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you see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
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Jeffrywith1e
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Aug 21 2008, 07:37 PM
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Ad comparisons...
    
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