Spiderman.

May 3rd.

Just.  Breath.

Why?  Is this film about Altoids?

It's pathetic how much I cannot wait.  I just hope its another X Men and not another Batman & Robin.  The casting's good, Sam Raimi was once brilliant, I have high hopes.

So. Excited.

But I do wish they hadn't removed the WTC. I don't know why, but I just wish they had left it. It is nice to remember it.

But - Sam Raimi and LL? Yeah - I know it's a cameo, but I'll still be there. Oh, and Tobey. I likee Tobey.

Spiderman=the answer to "what movie am I going to watch the weekend after next?"

This movie looks so great. But who is LL?

That would be Lucy Lawless, who appears - I think more or less as an extra - in a street scene.  Dressed as a punk, for some reason.

Whee!  It comes out on the last day of my classes.  I can't think of a single person that I can drag along to celebrate with me, but I'm working on it.  It looks so fun.

I already have tickets.  Fandango.com is my new best friend.

FYI, the Trade Center will still be visible in the background.  All that was cut was a small aspect of a chase scene, I believe.

What you may have heard about was actually a vignette trailer that's independent from the movie.  It was taken off the website and out of theatres, but can still be tracked down somewhere on the Internet.

For some reason I really want to see Spiderman as well.  It's odd for me because I'm not a comic fan or a Spiderman anything else fan.  It's not really my genre either and I had to be dragged (drug?) to see X-Men (although I did enjoy it).  But every time I see an ad or some merchandise for Spiderman I get excited.

Maybe it's the suit.

It's all about the suit.

How fabulous would I look in that suit?

It's the Final Countdown!

27 hours.  Just one nights sleep and one short day of work.

Get me, I'm in a tizzy.

Whee! Thanks to the glorious Pandrea, I got to see it this morning, and I loved it. Lucy was mental, and I didn't realise it was her until she was nearly off the screen, but Uncle Rory as the wrestling MC? BWAH! As Pan said, it was like everyone went to Raimi and said "Can I be in it? Go on... just a wee part? PWEASE??". Joxer the ad guy? Hee!

Anyway - upside down kissing is hot, and Tobey's still cute as ever.  Kirsten needs to figure out how to actually act different characters, and not be Torrance in every film from now on.

I don't know much backstory, but I really enjoyed it. I really do think that they took out any shot of the towers, because I find them really jarring when I see them, and they were just not in it anywhere. But I did love the Globe office being in the Flatiron building. That made me giggle.

Lucy was one of the punk rock girls taunting him before the wrestling scene, since no one else would answer that question! :P

Liked it quite a bit too, I'll definitely watch it again.  I didn't care for the ending all that much though.  That last fight between the GG and Spidey felt like a mid-movie fight, not an ending type fight.  As a result I felt like the pacing of the movie was a bit off with that, but at the same time I didn't realize how long it was until we were actually out of the theatre.

Eh, no - Lucy was the punk with the orange spikey hair that was 'interviewed' on the street, after he started becoming famous. She said "A guy with 8 arms? Sounds hot!" or whatever Lejo posted above. She had a nose-ring in, wearing tartan trews too.

And as a point of "Who is she? She's dead familiar!", who was the doctor that was showing the class around the lab at the start? The Asian chick - she's SOOOO familiar, but I can't figure out who she is from IMDB either. HELP!

The WTC was definitely there, but just a little.  There weren't a lot of downtowns shot in general, focusing more on midtown.

I'm almost positive that one of the close up shots of Spidey's eyes had the towers reflected in one of them.  Either during the montage, or at the end.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it too.
Tobey's performance, Kirsten and the changes to MJ's character, pacing, sense of place and the world he inhabits, web-swinging CGI, J Jonah Jameson, Raimi gang cameos, music: all great.
Green Goblin costume and mask, Dafoe (much as I love 'im) emoting wildly as he struggles with the Goblin within, Aunt May's clothes, initial voiceover (If they told you this monologue made sense, they lied): very silly.
I don't know if it's the kind of film I'll rush to see again, but I can see it turning up on TV regularly on holidays and me catching bits of it every time.  And I'll be up for the sequel.  Good stuff.

But WHO IS that woman?  I think she must be Nicole Bilderback.  I seemed to remember her being in Bring It On (as Wh-wh-wh-whitney) and Clueless (as Summer), and a check reveals that her IMDB pic certainly resembles the woman in Spidey, though why she's not credited I dunno.  Amusingly, she also played Ready-To-Have-Sex Girl in Can't Hardly Wait.  With a character name like that, I bet you don't have to ask the director what your motivation is much.

See, I thought it was her at first, but then couldn't find her credited anywhere.

And her character in Can't Hardly Wait is the one who's just been dumped, and announces to her friends (in Kenny's earshot) that she's just going to have sex with the next guy who talks to her. At which point, he falls off his chair. Quite amusing.

Nicole Bilderback is also, of course, the Cordette who gets sucked on first by the Master's big machine in "The Wish."

If it is her, then this must be the first time she's played someone out of school - big departure.

QVC, the shopping channel, are having a Spidey special just now.  Man, there's some crap out there - why don't they manufacture those web-shooters?

Argh! I just had a split-second flash where I remembered exactly where I had seen that actress before, but I lost it just as quickly. It's definitely not Nicole Bilderback. It's someone a little older than her. I keep thinking that I've almost got it, but then it goes again.

Edited to add that persistance can sometimes be a very scary thing. Here's Una Damon in a picture from The Truman Show. Although, I think I remember her more from Deep Impact.

I can now say with absolute authority that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

On seeing the movie a third time I didn't notice the Towers.  As such, I went back and reinterviewed my sources.

Everybody says something different.  My roommate claims they were removed.  My friend Adam who's followed Spiderman so closely every time Raimi stopped suddenly he rear ends him, claims nothing was changed.  My own magazine collection includes an interview insisting it's left in and a web site I frequent claims changes were made.

Regardless, there's ground zero footage in the public reaction montage.  The construction worker is standing in front of it.

I swear, getting to the truth in Hollywood is like getting sincerity from a stripper.

lejo, there's 2 different issues here.  There's the issue of "Were the towers in the background shots at all?" as in, were there shots of downtown and a big gap where the towers should be?  And then there's the issue of the actual scene (seen by many in the trailers released before Sep. 11 which were subsequently pulled) where Spiderman traps the bad guy helicoptor by spinning a web between the 2 towers.

For the former- I'm almost positive I saw it.  As for the latter- I read an interview with Raimi (TV Guide I think) where he says that he took that scene out.

Which one are you talking about?

I don't even know anymore.  Although I was pretty sure the helicopter was a seperate vignette not intended to be in the film.

At this point, I won't argue any position anymore.  I'm flustered, darn it.

Raimi says he took out the towers from the 'celebratory' shots, because it seemed inappropriate.  Which I'm taking to mean that they were in the background of the scene where the people on the bridge rally round and also possibly in some of the whee-look-at-me-I-can-fly shots of him careering around the city.  Also, the last confrontation was re-shot.

Thanks Jen!  How bizarre.  She seems incredibly familiar, much more so than I'd expect when I've only seen one of her movies, The Truman Show.  However, that may be because I'm mixing her up with Bilderback.  They would be good casting for sisters, wouldn't they?

You know, first time round we were so excited we had a whole thread for this movie ... but does anyone care about the second one? I find that I do not and will probably not see it unless I hear a lot of raves. In fact, I was surprised to see that I'd rated it so highly above, because it really isn't a movie that has stuck in my mind positively. In fact, I haven't bothered seeing it again and remember it as a little dull.

The trailer for the sequel doesn't inspire me to see it at all, especially as it's one of those which gives away the whole plot. I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I'm kinda surprised it's even getting a sequel as I've hardly heard anyone mention the Spiderman movie since it came out - don't get the impression anyone was gagging for it.

Maybe my expectations of blockbusters has just gone up since LOTR etc.

I enjoyed the first one and while I'm not exactly gasping to see the next one, I want to see it enough to have started *cough*downloading*cough* it.

Getting to the cinema isn't as easy as it used to be.

The reviews I've read have been relatively kind and Sam Raimi films are generally pretty good value. I think part of the problem is that comic book films are becoming a dime a dozen with a lot of them being pretty ordinary. The original film was at the start of comic book craze and the idea was a lot fresher then,

Was it? I would have said X-Men was the start of the new wave of comic book films. Still, I suppose it was perhaps one of the first. And maybe the blockade of things like Hulk, Extraordinary Gentlemen etc has made it seem staler.

Yeah, I meant towards the beginning of the current craze rather than at the beginning. Though the original does feel like it was longer ago than 2002.

I loved the first one when I saw it in the theater, saw it twice and everything. And then when it came out on DVD I realized I had no desire to see it again. The problem is that the story is good, great even, but I don't really care much for any of the characters. They aren't...how shall I put this? Delightful? MJ is so very dull, Harry is whiny, Peter is cute but...that love story is insipid. I just don't have any real desire to spend more time with these people.

That said, I'm sure I'll be seeing Spidey 2 in the theater, as it does look good, and my mother- who loooooved the first one- is dying to see it, so I'll probably see it with her.

As SNeaker says, the first one didn't stick with me. But I was still psyched for the second, and we saw it last night.

I saw the trailer, and I don't remember thinking it gave away the whole story. There was certainly plenty that surprised me in the movie, in a good way.

There were some definite flaws. The sentimental Peter-questions-being-Spider-Man moments go on too long and become terribly mawkish. But there are 4 scenes like that counterbalanced by lots of really fun character moments and action scenes, and some hilarious music cues, so in balance I give it a big thumbs up.

Alfred Molina is wunnerful. MJ is... well. More complicated, definitely. I thought she was very good, but I understood why some of my friends didn't like her.

Peter has developed Frodo eyes. I don't know what this means, but it's disconcerting.

Well, there is one scene with an extreme close-up where Tobey Maguire looks virtually identical to Elijah Wood. I never thought that they looked that different in the first place, but this was striking.

I loved the first movie. I loved the second one much, much more. I think it's the best comic book movie that I have ever seen, and the best movie Sam Raimi has ever made. Certainly there are flaws, but overall, it's just a fantastic movie.