This can never hope to match Emmerich's mastery at breaking various statues and buildings you recognise through the power of his special effects.

Boom! Take that, giant doughnut in Los Angeles!

!

Ping! Fall over, that half MacDonalds archway thing from St Louis!

Pow! Fuck off, statue of president Lincoln that is now best remembered as being a part of the ignoble ending of Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes remake!

Christ, I don't even know what I'm going on about here. Sorry about that.

Okay, I don't really mean that...keep making all the "let's fuck up NYC" flicks you want, just so long as you actually shoot here, because you're paying my rent.

Actually, I DO mean it...I am sick of all the CGI fests. There are plenty of real-life disasters. Knock it off already with more movies about the destruction of this or that city etc...

Yes, it's exploitation, and no it's not. One thing to keep in mind about the rash of NYC films: the city and state have been very aggressive with tax incentives, and while shooting in NYC is a major pain in the ass logistically, it's very attractive to producers. We have first-rate crews here, and it's a fantastic city to shoot, but as soon as the tax breaks go away, then producers will go back to using Toronto and other cities as stand-ins for NYC.

And if you're too chickenshit to come to NYC and call New Yorkers pussies, then tell me where you live and I'll send a PussyGram your way.

Did I mention you can suck my balls? I haven't showered today, so they're probably pretty choice. Mmmm, balls. Suck 'em.

As for CLOVERFIELD, it could be all right, it just comes down to execution like anything else. But if it's one of those things that's high on "high concept" (ie. the gimmick is that all the footage you'll see in the movie was supposedly culled from various people's camcorders that day) but then turns out to be low on pay-off (ie. we never really see a monster and so on), then the word will spread fast that it's a hollow movie overall. Not to mention that whole "it was all shot on camcorder" bit could get tiring really, really fast -- not to mention if they go overkill with "shaky cam" footage that could be TOO headache inducing and also kill the movie. In other words, the gimmick is that people caught footage as they were running around, but the end result is that we're all sitting in our theater seats constantly craning our heads around to figure out what the hell is happening on onscreen.

But the teaser trailer sounds fun, sort of the way that the "White House gets blown up by the alien mothership" trailer got everyone excited about INDEPENDENCE DAY. The problem for CLOVERFIELD though is how people then react. What most people forget -- as a bit of film trivia -- is that the ID4 teaser played SOOOO well that Fox suddenly realized that peoples expectations for the scope and scale of what they were expecting to see in the movie was much higher than what Emmerich and Devlin had filmed. Hence Fox had to suddenly pump like another 20 million into the movie to "up" the effects work to make it a true summer popcorn flick.

So JJ and crew might be saying NOW the whole point of CLOVERFIELD's gimmick is to keep the cost down, but if people get totally jazzed and now expect far more, don't be shocked to see the budget going up more and more as they get closer to the final release date to make sure the final product doesn't backfire and UNDERWHELM audiences...

On the one hand, obviously 9/11 deeply affected everyone in our country -- NYers in particular. I'm a proud born and bred NYer. I grew up there and lived the bulk of my life there, until a few years back when I moved to LA where I now live and work. So I can certainly appreciate that there will be those who might have a particular emotion over seeing NYC hit again and again on the big screen, whether its through a mock movie terrorist attack, mob criminals going crazy and having huge shoot outs with explosions going off left and right, or even because of a giant ass monster strolling down Fifth Avenue toppling buildings.

On the other hand, let's be honest -- its undeniable that NYC is one of the most famous, most select cities in the world BECAUSE of everything that's there. You have the sheer amount of people, which gives you great "screaming in panic" crowd scenes... you have all the corporate headquarters that are situated there, which gives you unlimited settings for politcal or mystery/murder thrillers... you have world famous sites like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or Natural Museum of History... Central Park... the United Nations... the Empire State Building... the Statue of Liberty... Yankee Stadium... I mean, the list goes on and on. Having THAT much wealth to use as background material obviously makes NYC a prime setting for a multitude of stories.

In fact, right now I've been shopping on a preliminary basis a pitch/screenplay about...well, let's just say something big happens to NYC on an epic scale...and the one thing that the producers I've talked with so far have realized and accepted and liked is that the NYC setting MAKES the movie. Because you really could only stage it THERE due to particular story reasons. And to be frank, "Terrorists or Mob Bosses or Giant Monsters attack Cleveland" really doesn't generate the same grand scale, epic feel that good ol' New York can instantly evoke.

And keep one other thing in mind: money. After 9/11, you had the Republican Convention and all sorts of other things taking place in NYC -- the idea being that the more "business" that could be directed towards the city was a good thing. The more business taking place there, the better it would be for helping NY get its legs back under it. So while it seems a weird contradiction at first, movies SHOT in NYC -- even though they're ironically about NYC getting hammered or destroyed -- actually HELP the city's bottom line both immediately (in terms of the production revenue it instantly brings in) as well as long term, too -- that is, the movie comes out and thus continues to popularize NYC as a location where you can "set" things, thus keeping NYC atop all other cities in the world as a preferred shooting location.

Like I said, I can see it both ways. As a New Yorker I don't want to see people upset, I want to respect their feeings...yet on the other hand you just can't COMPLETELY STOP all movies or things from being set in NY out of post-9/11 sympathies, however well intended they might be. I mean, there's a bit of wacky logic to saying "Godzilla can't run amuck in NYC because of 9/11 and the feelings you'll bring up." Basically, I accept that you have to acknowledge the horror of what happened that fateful day...you don't trivialize it, you make sure you honor those who died and always remember them...and yet meanwhile at some point, yes, you ALSO have to accept that life does go on. At which point like most things in life, we all just have to choose "how" we want to continue on and what we're willing to accept or buy into, versus what you want to confront and object to and so on...