SLUSHO Is Still People

As the notorious Anonymous has just informed me,

At 28/7/07 3:05 AM , Anonymous said...

Slusho! is people? You wrote this on the 10th, yet as far as I know this quote did not appear on the Slusho site until very recently... where did you get it from?

I just may be in cahoots with ol' J.J.

But cereal, folks: I don't know what J.J.'s tryin' to pull, because I only used the "SLUSHO Is People" gag to reference, in my nerdly way, the Charlton Heston classic Soylent Green. Which, if you've never seen it before, I guess I may have just spoiled the ending for you. Sorry.

Well, now I'm clearly curious again. Mr. Abrams may have just lured me back to figuring out all this 1-18-08 bullshit. Well played, Mr. Abrams. Well played.

SLUSHO It Is Then

Well, I just learned from my string of contacts (re: reading old news from Aintitcool.com) that the Ethan Haas stuff is actually part of the marketing push for a game from Mindstorm Labs, ALPHA OMEGA. All this makes me feel kind of like an idiotic sheep, since I had actually heard about ALPHA OMEGA somewhere, but completely pushed it out of my mind as soon as AICN connected CLOVERFIELDS with Ethan Haas and Cthulhu. I am but another victim of a media source's instigation of apophenia, and for that I feel... less confident. Less whole.

I feel a little like the scientists who tested Uri Gellar and numerous other "spoon-benders." The researchers thought they were seeing results that proved the existence of psychic phenomena because they simply could not conceive that the subject could be lying to them or tricking them. They were so used to the data being divorced from intent, to nature simply conforming to what nature does, that they couldn't anticipate that what was happening was anything other than what it claimed to be. They weren't frauds or con-artists, they were scientists - and so, they saw the world as scientists.

And that's me. I trusted AintItCoolNews because they've been my trusted source for "leakage" for a few years now, and because I figured that they had inside sources in most of the major studios - after all, some of the stuff that they've been able to find out has been remarkably on the mark. Now, I must learn to investigate further than one site's word when it comes to movies, as I do with other topics.

Damn, that seems like so much more work, and so much less fun, than just credulously repeating what I read on message boards as gospel. Why did you have to make the entertainment industry be subject to rigorous testing, AICN? I was happy in my blissful acceptance of anything you said.

In other random speculations, to show that I haven't learned my lesson one damn bit, Indiana Jones 4 is apparently titled "Indiana Jones and the Left-Overs From Stargate."

SLUSHO Is People!

You know what? I'm out.

Says here that the Ethan Haas site (sites?) is apparently not affiliated with Abrams' production...or it is, and this is J.J.'s way of spreading misinformation...or it is, but it's the studio that's doing it, and they haven't told Abrams, so he doesn't know anything about it...or something.

So I've decided to opt out of playing the guessing game. I'm not calling it stupid or a waste of time, because, hey, it might be fun for some people to try to get "in on it," and it's definitely spurring interest in this movie - if it's even that. I'm just not interested enough in something I know nothing about to go scavenging around the 'net for any strange sites that might have the slightest stamp of an "Abram-ism."

Of course, this could all be some kind of passively aggressive way for me to express my disappointment that CLOVERFIELDs was indeed not a code-name for "Star Trek" (I still believe! I believe!). Regardless of my motives, I will try my damndest to refrain from getting sucked into J.J. Abrams' little mind-games. I will resist!

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ADDENDUM:

CHUD has a neat little article about viral marketing's problems.

Also, check it out: the SLUSHO site is Japanese. Quick - I want you to name as many Japanese pop-cultural icons that deal with the apocalypse as quickly as you can, so that the rumors can spin way the fuck off-base. The more we guess, the higher the odds will be that we'll be right.

CLOVERFIELDS Gets Weirder and Weirder

Apparently, the CLOVERFIELDS project (which is disappointingly not Star Trek), has some connection to the following sites:

http://ethanhaaswaswrong.blogspot.com/ <-- The Truth of Ethan Haas http://www.ethanhaaswasright.com/ <-- which is apparently some kind of puzzle game. After you "solve" the first sequence, you're treated to a grainy, spooky, little video from a guy who claims to be one of Ethan's followers and that you must be "one of us" if you are viewing it. "Everything has happened just as he said it was...and then there's the predictions of the future..."

It's only rumored that these are connected with the CLOVERFIELDS project, but no one (except for maybe J.J. Abrams and Paramount) knows much else other than there appear to be a few references to... ugh... H.P. Lovecraft.

Could someone please explain the fascination with Lovecraft and his many-tentacled abomination? Lovecraft was a horrible writer. Is it like the "pirates and ninjas" thing? Is it just one of those inexplicable internet-anomalies that pops up and grabs a hold of LOLing freaks everywhere to construct flash animations, webcomics, and poor blogs around? I'm not asking it rhetorically, either - I'm genuinely curious.

CLOVERFIELDs Forever

So, apparently J.J. Abrams, can-do-no-wrong producer of Lost and the eventual producer/could-be director of the next Star Trek film, has been working on a film called Cloverfield for a while now, and has had it cloaked in secrecy locked up so tight that a sonic screwdriver couldn't budge it.

But I'm thinking... what if this is the Star Trek film? What if "Cloverfield" was a name they decided to use to maintain utmost secrecy while working on the project? The Star Trek guys know what negative vibe can do to a movie, and that Trekkers/Trekkies have been spoiling movies since long before the internet ever reared it's multi-mouth'd head (Spock was "killed" in the opening minutes of Star Trek II during a simulation to try to keep the surprise of his real death). Numerous movies before have used this tactic as well - George Lucas shot Return of the Jedi under the assumed name of "Blue Harvest" so he wasn't ripped off when paying for film services (or besieged by fans, for that matter).

Five bucks says Cloverfield is Star Trek: Incognito, and that the trailer described here is a plant. "Moriarty" thinks that the trailer will be attached to Transformers, which, for the record, is a movie from Star Trek's company, Paramount. Here's hoping.