What does the future hold for THE MUMMY? What is to come to our screens this May 7th? So far you have had only my word, and that of our dear Moriarty to excite you about this film. But last night the first test screening of THE MUMMY unfurled. This was a very rough print, it was timed at around two hours and ten minutes, but this was a 'loose edit' meaning that it was long for a reason... To see what worked and what didn't. 'thus the term TEST SCREENING...' There were almost NO COMPLETED VISUAL EFX. There are huge portions missing, some FX shots are 10-20% complete, some are just indicated by words on the screen as to what will go there. The beginning visuals of ancient egypt and the climactic battle sequences with the mummy are very, very incomplete. Or at least that's what the Wrap Artists said. And now.... it's time for our good friend Ardath Bay to take the floor... There is still much to see from this film, can ILM pull their magic off? I hope so...

Thanks to your tip and the efforts of a mole in the exhibition community down here near the birthplace of the late great Richard M. Nixon, yours truly got to see what amounted to a really unique film -- unique on a number of levels...

I guess the reseearch types thought it was clever to describe the film as a major adventure film with visual effects from a major studio, but I gotta say a few people in the line-up took it kinda hard when some clipboard-toting geeks came out and told us that we were not going to see Star Wars (hello?), but that we were gonna see THE MUMMY. That was a little weird. What was the point of that?

Anyway, it looked like an important screening cause there were quite a few limousines pulling up and depositing suit-types.

Anyway, we all scrambled inside, took our seats and waited. At 730, an older man walked to the front of the theater and told us how we were going to see a film that was more of a work in progress than is usually presented to an audience, that there would be scenes where no effects were present, others in a semi-completed state etc, and we would please bear with it, knowing that all would be perfect when the movie is released. Off he goes, and the picture starts, beginning (very cool) with the classic Universal logo (the airplane circling the globe).

What can I say that harry and others haven't said already? I was kinda blown away by how much I liked THE MUMMY... I wasn't really prepared that it would be so rich-looking, so detailed and so very funny in a few places. The lack of finished effects did kind of bother me, surprisingly, but none of it was hard to follow or imagine.

The cast. Brendan Fraser, who I never liked til I saw him in Gods and Monsters is great as O'Conner (O'Connell? I swear he's called both)...the other people in the cast aren't known to me except the other male lead, who I know was in Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. He's very very funny. The girl in the lead (she plays a librarian who wants to be taken seriously as an Egyptologist) is SO beautiful and such a great actress... I dont think I've see her before (she has a British accent, but I'm not sure if she' s actually British). The Mummy (who isn't seen very often in full human form) was played by the guy who was the bad guy in John Woo's Hard Target with Jean Claude Van Damme.

Its a very old fashioned, rousing adventure movie...a little Gunga Din, a lot of Raiders of the Lost Arc, even a little Journey To The Center Of The Earth (there are two opposing teams of treasure-hunters)

This remake differs considerably from the original, as the regenerated mummy is able to bring plagues to the earth (there are amazing scenes with locusts and scarabs, and a firestorm hitting Cairo) and is able to command the elements. There's a scene where he causes all the sand in the desert to whip, take form and "attack" a plane. mazing stuff, and so unexpected. There's a lot of temp CGI stuff aving to do with the Mummy, and a very "Jason & The Argonauts" scene at the end where Fraser battles hordes of mummies.

Whats weird about the condition of the movie they showed tonight is that, in the scenes which were in the trailer playing in theaters now or on the commercial in the Super Bowl, those effects looked more "finished" than the same scenes did tonight. Anyone know why that is?

There were no credits or anything, and a lot of the music they used was from "Dracula" and "Waterworld."

Anyway, if anyone was there tonight, i'd be curious to hear what they think.

Thanks guys,

Ardath Bay