I don't know how much The Fourth Kind is on anyone else's radar (maybe you've seen/heard the ads playing right now on Theater Hopper - sorry about that). Regardless, the execution of this film has me interested.
Basically, the film sets itself up as a dramatic retelling of actual events that were said to transpire in Alaska in the 1970s. Several people have been abudcted for years without any clues to their disappearances. Several years later, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (played by Milla Jovovich) is video taping disturbed patients who are subjects in a sleep study. Under hypnosis, they reveal that they have been subjected to alien encounters and experimentation.
What the film does next, I think is genius. It splices in some of Dr. Tyler's "real" videotaped footage of the hypnotized patients in with the Hollywood version and it creates a layer of fear and doubt that starts to mess with you a little.
If you do a little digging, you'll find some controversy around The Fourth Kind, but I think it's the appropriate amount of controversy to stir interest in the film and get the audience to ask sincere questions about the veracity of what they're watching.
When you think about movies like Paranormal Activity, Rec. or The Blair Witch Project and what they've done with "found" footage, The Fourth Kind is playing on another level. It's presenting to you the "real" footage - framing it in an almost truthful, documentary context - and then contrasts it with the "pretend" version, Hollywood's dramaticization and leaves it up to the audience to decide.
Smart stuff.
I don't have much more to say about The Fourth Kind except to talk it up a little bit. I've seen ads for it here and there, but I'm not really hearing any buzz. So, if you haven't heard about it until now, consider yourself informed.
Something else you should consider yourself informed about is the fund raising project I have going on over at Kickstarter to raise money for Theater Hopper: Year Three. I talked about it a little bit on Friday and explained what I'm doing to try and raise money and I'm bringing it up again today. There have been a few pledges over the weekend, but we're going to need a lot more if we're going to make goal by December 31. The holiday's are hectic. Don't let them get in the way of preventing you from pledging to the cause!
Visit the campaign page at Kickstarter to read more about the project, including details on the rewards you can receive by pledging at different levels!
Incidentally, I just got a copy of Adobe Premiere Effects over the weekend and I'm excited to record a little promo video explaining the project that I can post to the campaign page. I'll let you know when that's edited together and ready to view.
I don't know if I'll have a chance to put together the video tonight because I still need to watch the 1941 original Wolf Man for The Triple Feature. Since we were kind of rudderless on last week's show, Gordon, Joe and I agreed that we needed to get back on track and the easiest way to do that was by having all three of us watch the same movie.
So, in a fit of post-Halloween examination, we're going to discuss the classic versoin of The Wolf Man and use it as a foundation to discuss the 2010 remake starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins when it comes out. I can't afford to be dead weight on this one.
It's was a little difficult for me to run down a copy of The Wolf Man to watch before tonight's show. Cami and I canceled our Netflix account because we were terrible about making time to watch the movies we rented. I think we need the threat of a late fee to make that kind of activity a priority anymore. Either that or I need to buy an X-Box 360 so I can download movies directly from Netflix to my console and watch them when I want to watch them. I don't know if that would improve my odds of watching these kinds of movies or not?...
Anyway, Gordon pointed out that I can "rent" The Wolf Man online through Amazon On Demand, which I totally didn't know you could do. It'll kind of suck being forced to watch it on a computer monitor, but it's the best option I have right now.
Anyway, be sure to listen to the final outcome tonight at 9:00 PM at TalkShoe.com. It's always a good time.
That's about it for me. Feel free to leave your thoughts about The Wolf Man (original or remake), The Fourth Kind or our new Kickstarter fund raising campaign in the comments below!
