City of Ember

[Banquet]

It sounds interesting...but I wish the trailer would have stopped flashing, that got really annoying.
I'm sure the whole film isn't like that though...
I'll probably see it just for Saoirse Ronan, because she was fantastic in Atonement.

I have never seen that movie... partially because Keira Knightly annoys the crap outta me.

 

[Electrix]

http://filmonic.com/city-ember-poster

 

[Dr. Fate]

http://filmonic.com/city-ember-poster

Neat poster, nice pics as well.

 

[Gotham]

I love that poster. Beautifully drawn.

 

[Darkfly]

I have never seen that movie... partially because Keira Knightly annoys the crap outta me.

I hate her too but she wasn't all that bad in Atonement I'll give her that.

 

[terry78]

Just saw a preview on Cartoon Network..I may have to check this out.

 

[thejon93]

I'm not sure, but I believe this is the first review for 'City of Ember' from the guys over at 'Spill.com'(Review by: Cyrus):
I love subterranean mutants. It’s why I hang out at Spill. Many of you are milky-eyed mutants. I know I am. The only color I have is from my cathode tan. Maybe that’s why I was disappointed in "City of Ember." With any underground civilization, there’s the promise of sun-starved monsters, but in Ember, there was nary a gibbering kobold to be found.

Rather than cannibal cave men, we have Doon (Harry Treadway) and Lina (Saoirse Ronan), two starry-eyed denizens of Ember, despite having never seen said stars. Like the rest of the folks of Ember, their ancestors fled to catacombs deep beneath the earth’s surface, trying to escape some undefined apocalypse. For generations, the people lived in their decaying city, hoping that their aging generator holds up. They live blind and dumb lives, going through the motions of their socialist pseudo-nation and genuflecting to the almighty Generator that powers the city. The mayor of the city (Bill Murray), a fellow so recognizable his presence is almost distracting, keeps the denizens of Ember living in fear of the endlessly dark outer world. There’s no hope of escape, until a long-lost time capsule surfaces with a cache of cryptic maps and messages.

The design and art direction of the film is stellar. The set design team went above and beyond to develop something that felt real. There’s CGI there, make no mistake, but this is far from the artificial environments of something like ‘The Phantom Menace’. The stone here is real and it’s dirty, creating a convincing sense of place. The people of Ember are dressed to match their failing-Steam punk retreat. They look as though they belong there. Each of them is unique, but they’re all from the same lot of threadbare villagers. Imagine the people of Zion if they weren’t so preoccupied with raves and potato sack fashions.

For a story so rooted in the depths, there’s no small amount of irony that everything ends up being so damned shallow. I enjoyed the film at first glance, but when I raked my nail across the surface, the veneer came off. There are plot holes in these caverns, more gaping holes than a van full of University of Texas cheerleaders. It doesn’t take close scrutiny for you to come up with a number of unanswerable questions. I won’t give anything away, but once you start to consider these issues, the under-developed nature of the entire setting becomes apparent. Is this the entirety of humanity hiding in Ember? Were there more of them? Why are they down there?

The story offers up some great teases, but never delivers on them. The pieces are set in place to introduce an entire menagerie of evil beasties that lurk in the darkness around Ember, and yet we’re only introduced to two of them. A giant beetle, heavily foreshadowed in an important scene, was never mentioned again. Never shown. Never explained. You could have at least given us some monsters from ‘The Descent’ or a little Drizzt Do’Urden. Instead, the closest things we have to threats are a giant mole and Bill Murray, playing the same self-absorbed jackass that he usually does, but this time, it’s in the role of a flaccid, ineffective villain. The film never reaches for the Jules Verne level of fantasy that it pretends to be. The world creation wasn’t taken far enough. They only skimmed the surface of a literally and figuratively deep world. It’s a shame, really, since they spent much of the film injecting these elements for execution. Even the ending whimpered to its conclusion, and this was after a build up to what should have been a rousing cataclysm.

The facade of the rich world they establish is nice to spend a bit of time in, but in the end, it’s fragile. You can’t live there. By the time the characters have unraveled the mystery, they haven’t left enough time for the adventure. It’s an interesting and momentarily exciting film, but falls short of all its promise. All of the thrill and enthusiasm bleeds away with the light of day. They should have had albino cave monsters. It couldn’t have hurt.
http://my.spill.com/profiles/blog/show?id=947994%3ABlogPost%3A637740

 

[Octoberist]

Is it me, or is this movie poorly marketed by stupid fox?

 

[thejon93]

Is it me, or is this movie poorly marketed by stupid fox?

Absolutely, look what they're doing to 'Wolverine'. They haven't even released a teaser poster, let alone a teaser trailer.

 

[TNC9852002]

I saw this today.

IGN gave it a 6/10, so I went in with low expectations and I still walked out disappointed.

I'll have to give it a 5.5/10 or around the same score. It seemed so bold and disjointed. There was a good story here, but I really disliked the editing and how everything was put together.

-TNC

 

[DDS]

Might see this soon...doesn't sound that great though.

 

[TNC9852002]

The trailers that played in front of my showing:

-Inkheart
-Paul Blart: Mall Cop
-Delgo
-HSM3 Senior Year
-Marley & Me

-TNC

 

[Theweepeople]

Another film that does poorly domestically by Fox. This truely is remarkable. They haven't had a film that did well domestically since May. I know Fox poorly marketed this film but, I didn't expect the film to do this bad(budget 38mil, domestic gross 950,000). Babylon AD looks like a hit compared to this disaster.

 

[I Am The Knight]

I want to see this movie. I loved Monster House, and I love Bill Murray.

 

[Octoberist]

god, fox blew the marketing on this one.

 

[Arbiter]

The trailers that played in front of my showing:

-Inkheart
-Paul Blart: Mall Cop
-Delgo
-HSM3 Senior Year
-Marley & Me

-TNC

ive heard of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and HSM3 Senior Year Marley & Me but what movie is TNC?

 

[I Am The Knight]

ive heard of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and HSM3 Senior Year Marley & Me but what movie is TNC?

I think...

 

[tzarinna]

Hmmm, I saw this last night. It left a lot of things unanswered. I was hoping for more shots of the city and its glow. It was a cute story, not much of an adventure story I thought it was going to be, that part was close to the end and quite short lived. It did provide, for me at least, some child like wonder with all the secrets coming to light. I could just be a big dork. The score was pretty sweet.

I'll have to agree on the lack of promotion. My friend and I were the only ones in there, other than a guy that I assume was there to make out with an usher, and our presence ruin his smooth moves, lmfao.