First Test Screening of ANTZ: Third Review!!!

Ahoy senor Harry and co.

I got to attend a screening of an ANTZ rough cut monday night in portland, Oregon. so i thought i'd do my patriotic duty and share it with you and yours. Call me Skintaco. I've been following your site for a long time, and was overjoyed when i finally got to take part in some of this zany trivia(l?) spy stuff. :^}
so anyway, i broke it up into a "screening experience," and a "spoiler section."

______________MY FIRST SCREENING EXPERIENCE____________________________

Monday night we went to lloyd cinemas (a big theatre complex in portland). my friends had gotten a flyer when they saw armageddon there last wednesday. The flyer asked for your name, address, etc., explained that the movie was a rough cut, and gave a little blurb about it.

So we're waiting in line and are constantly set upon by suited ushers and such, taking our flyer, giving us a ticket. lots of movie theatre etiquette one liners/pointers.

We get in and find some good seats, as the auditorium fills. Several seats here and there (the last 2 rows, some aisle seats on our row) were taped off... for what exactly, i was not sure. The audience was mostly filled with kids, and their silly stereotypical parents. 800 seats in there i'm told. all filled.

So me and my pal are chillin', waitin' for our friends to get in, when this red-faced energetic dude (named kevin it turns out) in a suit walks over and asks us our names. grills us on how many movies we've seen recently. my pal fails miserably (more of a business geek), but i've seen every one he mentions. He says that the editors will be around after the show and could we stick around to answer some questions. so we got to grinnin'.
(but after the show he says "The editors decided not to do it, so he doesn't need us after all." frown. grumble. sigh. Was it my cologne? lack thereof? No! It must have been my friends!)

Some people fill the taped off seats just before the lights went down. the two closest had some strange stuff. one had a glow-in-the-dark pen & a notepad, and the other had some kinda box attached to a cord, with a simple red dial on top. WTF? i've no idea.

So the energetic guy inna suit (names kevin it turns out) walks out and addresses the crowd, thanks us all for coming, etc. tells us we're the first audience to see the film nation wide. (wee) Then begins to explain that the movie is still very rough,and runs us through a few examples on video tape.

he shows a scene comprised of badly animated story boards (voiced over).

then the same scene with blocky floating polygon models (no roundness).

then fullbright walking models (with no textures or shading, no moving lips, but fully round/polished models).

then finally the same scene fully rendered, shaded, textured, and beautiful.
then some random unfinished water effects (looked like tons of flat shaded blue balls. nifty). and lastly some quick editing stuff (like 2 black bars that sweep the scene, with out the actual dissolve, or cut, etc.) he explains that we'll see each of those stages of animation in the movie. then he exits, the lights go fully dark, and the movie starts.
the movie, kicks booty.
then the lights come back up. kevin runs up and informs us the editor's won't need us, cuz they smoked to much crack during the movie and decided not to quiestion us (or something) (we were probably just a few too many). Questionaire's are handed out along each aisle. and hastily filled out. Question's like "what was the best scene?" "Please rate the character's voice-overs" "Did any part of the movie confuse you?" "which of the following phrases best describe the flic", etc. There were even two sections set aside for parent's only. wacky.
They collected the questionaire's in trash bags at the exits (hmmm), and we went off to the mall for some anti-consumer antics.
Twas much fun. anterrific.

_______________________SEMI SPOILER STUFF_______________________________
I was thinking of doing the best (worst?) spoiler of all time. running through each scene, explaining what was ready what wasn't, sketching all the characters and scenes and such. but that would be pretty rude (save that for the blood-buddies), and a little over-zealous. So here's a few choice notes:
AUDIENCE: the movie seemed geared towards young teens, if not young adults. there was no real kiddie humor (fart jokes, physical comedy, etc.). But the character's weren't exceedingly deep/wordy/philosophical either. Yet, only old farts will understand some jokes, and only small kids will appreciate some visuals.
NITPICK: Bugs don't have lungs right? (Mimic taught me that one). So why would two ants be choking and spewing air bubbles when caught inside a water droplet? hmmm...
VIOLENCE: they had the coolest fight scene early on. The ants take on a nearby termite colony. Its like something out of starship troopers. Termites are lifting ants up in their jaws, while getting stabbed to death. Termites are spittin' acid on ant soldiers, and we get to see em dissolve. it was intense! It even seemed like a nod to starship troopers when danny glover's ant hopped on one termite's back and rode it around, stabbing it all to hell. kid movie? hmmm. i think not.

also, they killed this lady wasp at one point with a fly swatter. showed her squashed gooey corpse afterwards. kinda weird. a sudden change of pace (it ended a kinda-funny exchange). people would've been ill had it been the same style of scene with human counterparts. hmm. but they were only bugs...
PROBLEM: why the hell where they attacking the termites? they mentioned it briefly, maybe i missed/forgot it. But it makes no sense for hackman's character to waste army ants once we find out his "future plans" for the colony!

Also, they mentioned that the point of the termite attack was to find the queen and kill it. but we never saw or heard of that. ???!?!?!?!
COOL: I thanked god when they actually supported "the rigid system" during Gene Hackman's speech to the rebellious workers. Seems so many of these movies tell people to think for themselves and screw the system. So it was nice to take a moment to point out what the system had achieved and that the hero had really turned his back on the rebels by taking off on his own adventure. That was the only part of the movie where i dug hackman's bad-bug character. It was a good speech.
PROBLEM: We needed more Jennifer Lopez... J.Lopez is a goddess among sex kittens in my opinion. Why couldn't she have had some small amount of screen time to herself? her character had little point and no depth. It sticks out to me as the only big name voice to kinda get the shaft, script-wise. She's the secondary love interest (hooks up with sylvester stallone's character), so i guess they didn't want to distract from the main hero's relationship, by developing her. (or maybe i'm just too focused on her :^).

And frankly i was heartbroken when stallone's ant oggled her (as any self respecting man would do), and we only got to see spindly ant legs. weep.
BUMMER: it was interesting to me that one potentially exhilarating scene was totally unfinished. There's a point where Z (the hero) takes a ride on the back of a drunken wasp to get from "insectopia" back to the anthill. we just got a storyboard of a take off, then a story board of a crash landing. but that coulda been quite a cool speed scene with flybys of all the "landmarks" Z had passed on his way to insectopia. maybe they didn't want to show the "landmarks" from the tiny ground perspective, or give away the _actual setting_.

PURE SPOILERS (don't read it! you'll go blind!):

the one scene that we all talked about afterwards was this "feet of the behemoth" sequence. Sharon stone's ant gets stuck in gum on a sneakered foot. Which then seems to launch miles into the air and away. Z hops on the other foot to follow and attempt to a rescue. it was amazing. reminded me of clive barker's short story "in the hills, the cities" (if you've read it, you know what i mean. totally intense).

there was funny reference to pulp fiction during an ant dance sequence. That mia wallace fingers-over-the-eyes sweep. It gave the movie a (rare) "hip" feel.

the water effects were awesome! a huge flood occurs at one point (barely unfinished animation), and it was so strange to see hundreds of blue balls act just like an onrush of water. In a way it was much cooler than normal water would have been. I kinda hope it doesn't get "too real."

I coulda sworn Z's model mouthed "god damn" when the voice said "geesh" at the beginning. hmm.

what kinda kiddie movie mentions drinking from a bug's anus? seriously, Z says something like "i'm not in the mood to drink from some (grub)'s anus" in a bar scene. (instead of like beers, they have these little bugs to drink. i don't remember what type of bug they were supposed to be).

and thats all folks. (speaking of clive barker, the story "how spoilers bleed" comes to mind. eek. ick. ...) annnyyyywaayyyyyyyyy the movie was pretty close to done. and way past "kickin ass". big hit, i predict.
toodles senor harry,

skintaco.