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It's all inside-baseball, Poland. Critics should be professional enough to deal with late screenings. As long as the dailies can safely make their deadlines, then I can't imagine it making a damn bit of difference.

If said professional critics take it out on the film just because Sam Ruben saw it a week before they did, then that says a LOT about the state of film criticism in the country today, does it not?

A lot of critics crying about access. But hiding it does scream that it is not that good. That is perception.

if u have it, show it. if u don't try to create buzz with what u don't see. or have ur star parade around with a starlet and jump on a couch.

How can you go wrong with Spielberg, some aliens and Cruise? I haven't even read one review on this yet but I'll see it

"Will critics and writers take it out on the movie? Unlikely."

This is, quite possibly, the most naive thing I have ever read by a person who prides himself on being a savvy industry observer.

i don't think this guy is too savvy. i don't care what his rep is

bicycle bob, do you realize that you just said Dave Poland is not too savvy? No problem with that, but I just wanted to make sure you understood what you were saying.

actually i'm talking about this rubin guy. dave is as savvy as it gets. except for his love of the rundown.

Basically the pre marketing to this movie is raisin eye brows all over the place. But i have to think that this isn't incompetence since it is a 200$ million dollar Spielberg movie. They have to have some kind of plan. Right?

"They have to have some kind of plan. Right?"

Lester, I'm sure we'd all like to think so. But what's the plan? So far it's just been flashing the words "Cruise" and "Spielberg" in the trailers and commercials. They have yet to put on display anything really special, original or innovative about the film, and I for one am concerned that they seem to be relying a little too smugly on name-brand appeal alone this close to the release date.

It's Paramount. 'Nuff said. When was the last time they ran a great marketing campaign?

I would hope a production of this magnitude has a plan. Otherwise every exec in that studio and the production office should be canned. The words Cruise only sell Star magazine and Oprah shows now.

kinda reminds me when they didn't show godzilla. look how good that one turned out

I'll keep having faith in Cruise until he really disappoints. He hasn't since Far and Away.

Were you covering films when JURASSIC PARK came out, David? I'm not trying to be snarky... I genuinely don't know when you started writing about the business.

This is the EXACT same pattern of release that he used for the first JURASSIC PARK. I was working at Universal that summer, and even the employees of the studio didn't get to see it until five days before release. There were no photos of dinosaurs anywhere. The only pre-release reviews were in the trades and in TIME and NEWSWEEK, which had to be very careful about what they did or did not disclose.

I've heard over and over that this year is 1993 all over again for Spielberg, which means he'll probably take the exact opposite approach for VENGEANCE, showing it early and often if it ends up being the film he thinks it's going to be. WOTW was always about hiding the big stuff as long as possible. Hell, remember how they handled E.T. before it came out? Most audiences didn't even know what E.T. stood for, and they had no idea what to expect from the film itself.

I think he just likes the hide-and-seek, and I don't believe it's about disrespect at all.

"Basically the pre marketing to this movie is raisin eye brows all over the place."

whew. for a minute there I was thinking I was very unobservant when last in LA. I didn't see anyone with raisin eyebrows, not even studio boot licking toadies.

Then I realised Lester forgot the "g". Raising eyebrows! Ohhhhh.

Doesn't seem to be raising eyebrows does it--I mean it's just updated Signs + a little more xenophobia + Tom Cruise in the mix.

It might be good, I love HG Wells inspired stuff hence my name, but it just seems overwrought somehow.

And the main poster sure does look like the cover of a L Ron Hubbard book. Not good.

I'll see it anyway.

Great points, Drew. Is Poland complaining because he hasn't been asked to see it yet?

It's hard to imagine a movie more xenophobic than Signs. Remember, Spielberg's a big old lefty, his movie will not go that route. (please note discussion of politics in terms of movie content).

I know about M. Night's political/religious leanings but how was SIGNS particularly more xenophobic than any other film from the genre? I thought that first WotW Superbowl teaser had a serious xenophobic vibe going on.

Granted the alien invaders genre is inherently xenophobic, but there are degrees, and this was a movie about how satisfying it would be to find a home invader and beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat. Add in the fact that they were filming the movie in the fall of 2001.

Jurassic Park was a different era of marketing... and at the time it came out, it was truly one of a kind.

The point is valid. SS might be living in his past and unable to see the new trajectory.

And Joe... really... I have some critics I don't think much of, but do you really think they would raise forces against this film because they weren't in the first group of viewers? Seems self-destructive. Of course, if the film turned out to be borderline, it could tip things.

I remember being at that Godzilla junket... creepy. I thought the film was overly abused, even though it was not very good. But you could almost feel the rage grow as the day progressed.

Why let a few see it and run reviews early but not let other respected journos see it and review it? Not a good strategy. Just weird.

David: Go back and read the columns you wrote after the release of the first "Matrix" sequel. Remember the one in which you suggested (not even half-jokingly) that, hey, maybe Warners shouldn't pre-screen "Revolutions" to people who trashed "Reloaded"? Well, maybe Paramount simply is trying a variation of the game plan you suggested. That is, they’re showing “WotW” last to the snarkiest writers.

Or... more likely... maybe they're showing it to the critics/journalists they deem most likely to give it a fair shake. And in their eyes, maybe "most likely to be fair" = "mainstream press" (as opposed to bloggers, on-liners, website hosts, etc.) Of course, this COULD backfire when the, ahem, less prestigious journalists get a look. Because mediocre (or worse) critics travel in packs, and they are fearsome in their rage when they tear into fresh game.

(And before anybody asks: I don't get to see it until Monday night. So that means I ain’t got no cachet, either.)

P.S. Dave, you do realize, don't you, that after you've bitched like this in print, anything critical you say about the film will be taken with entire shakers of salt?

Joe, why you bustin his balls? We all give him a pass for his huge defense of the Matrix sequels. Time has healed all wounds.

You mean, his huge defense of Reloaded and his embarrassed avoidance of Revolutions.

I can't even think about those movies. They ruined a great first film for me. Keanu has never been cuter.

I don't know anything about WOTW other than what I've seen in the trailers/commercials and from the novel, but I'm beginning to get a real bored vibe from it. Perhaps there's more to it than I can think of, but it doesn't look like there's much meat there(and I say that as a fan of the genre and Spielberg).

Maybe it's Cruise's increasing public insanity burning me out. I dunno. But doing this doesn't increase my hope for it. Hopefully that'll put me in a position to be pleasantly surprised.

Read the book first if you want boring. I hope SS really gives us something different.

I don't think WotW is going to be anything like Signs. Signs was very claustrophobic movie where you saw the aliens for all of about 10 seconds. I think they're keeping the aliens out of the WotW ads and trailers (for the most part anyway) to keep a sense of mystery. Spielberg has said that he thinks the whole don't show mentality is the way to go.

On the review front, I'm all for reviews-at-the-last-minute thing if the movie is reliant on something the makers don't wish to get out.

Take Scream 3 for instance (two Scream references in one day, yay for me), they didn't allow critics to see it until basically the day it was being released and even then they were absolutely forbidden from releasing any minute details. And if critics hated it (which they did) they would probably may have given away bits just to punish it.

Having said that, Scream 3 is sort of like the Showgirls of the horror genre, non? Obviously it is a comedy in the form of a silly horror movie! What better way to subvert the genre even more than to make a film in a series that changed the genre a completely non-horror movie.

...(be quiet)

Signs and Worlds are going to be two different movies. Signs was about a family on a farm. Worlds is about inner city people running away from the invaders. The core is the same. Aliens come and attack. But I don't think water is going to kill the Spielberg aliens. Just a guess.

I thought Signs was the worst of the M Night movies.

"But I don't think water is going to kill the Spielberg aliens. Just a guess."

I take it you haven't read the H.G. Wells novel, eh?

I haven't and if what you are getting at is true then I don't think I even want to see this.

If this be anything like Signs than we all in big, big trouble. So is Spielberg.

I thought "Signs" was nifty. "The Village," on the other hand, I still haven't decided if I was really clever for figuring it out the first time William Hurt spoke; MNS was insulting my intelligence by making it so ridiculously obvious; or he was just being really, really friggin' lazy.

"God's great plan" for Mel aside, Signs was considerably influenced by WOTW, book and movie, ending (of the aliens) included. The difference between farm & city is kinda immaterial IMUHO.

The new WOTW may really good, but I really hated the xenophobic preachiness of Signs and the ending, so I hope SPielberg hasn't upped the cheese but advance word on the ending is not what I'd like.

It would be a more interesting movie if the humans lose big-style, but no chance. Tom Cruise must win.

It will be interesting to see if Spielberg is more faithful to the original novel, which differed from the 1953 movie in many significant ways including social commentary & gross differences in technology between the aliens and earthlings.

The social commentary in Signs was Fundamentalist, I do hope there is less of this and more of Wells in Spielberg interpretation of WOTW.

Signs was terrible.

Nifty? Wow? Get a life.

I thought Signs was terrible, but I can't help it when I see the WOTW trailer, that I think of Signs.

Maybe instead of stabbing/killing/eliminating aliens Tom will just try to get them "CLear" then we can all be friends.

I think Mark needs to settle down. Geez. It's only an alien movie!

I thought Signs was actually really good. Had a great atmosphere, had some very scary moments, some inspired moments, technically it was very good and while the very end was a misfire it didn't bother me that much,

The birthday party scene scared the pants off of me (and everyone else in a cinema of 500)

Drudge has latched onto this story.

I'm so turned off by this film now, even though I had been looking forward to making it my summer concession to mindless big event movies.

Tom is just getting weirder and weirder, with his Scientology cult out in the open so boldly, and his cult approved bride to be... his head splitting uncontrolled inappropriate laughter, sofa jumping and Steven's cowtowing to it all. I've got no choice now. My personal little boycott of WOW won't mean a thing to anyone else, but I'll sleep easier at night knowning I didn't buy into the mess. Besides, Dakota Fanning is annoying.

It wont matter what the critics say today or next week about the quality of the film. No one under 30 pays any attention any more. The younger audience choses to attend movies based on hype.

It's called foreplay, guys.

After almost ten years of internet spoiling our movie experience, Uncle Steven, thinking he's got lightening in a bottle, is merely trying to save a few experiences for the audience. There might be a big spoiler or two that he doesn't want revealed. I think the embargo is very much in line with the marketing. For some reason he really wants us going into this one only knowing the first 13 minutes. And you have to admit, as we move closer, the Tom/Katie thing is starting to push away and the possibility of a new Spielberg classic really looms.

"AI" or "Private Ryan?" We're about to find out, kids.

In case you were under a rock or something but the movie is based on a book written over 100 years ago. And yeah it was a pretty popular work.

I do not think there has been anything weirder or more strange than the very public meltdown of Tom Cruise. I think it will effect the box office of this movie.

" "AI" or "Private Ryan?" We're about to find out, kids. "

In the furture, to avoid confusion use '1941' as the example of 'bad Spielberg'.

Everyone is overthinking this issue - Spielberg is openly pissed about the TomKat uber-coverage that's predominated the press junket by the mainstream media. His only way of getting back is by clamping down on the film review itself.

It's his way of saying, "if you weren't interested in covering the film in the first place, then I'm not going to let you cover it until the last possible moment".

If it was a film quality issue, he would've had Paramount call AICN weeks ago threatening to kill Harry's deal if they ran one more review. Instead, they've put up two more in the past week.

Sorry Brett,

I did really love "AI." I just really want the level of success and public embrace for this one to be on the classic scale. That said, "1941" and "Always" are better than any Michael Bay film.

Hook is the worst.

this may be another 1941/hook.

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