You can watch them in full here. I should probably say something meaningful, but I'm still at that stage where I can only stare in awe at the amazing visuals.

Eta: "Video has been removed at the request of copyright holders." The original site cannot be found. Sigh.

Author: Bitterfig

Title: All Tomorrow’s Parties

Character: Ursula Zandt (the Silhouette), the Minutemen.

Word Count: 939

Warnings: Language, sexual innuendo, references to violence.

(All Tomorrow's Parties)

Director

Apparently the film version of Watchmen is going to be directed by Zack Snyder, whose last film was an adaptation of another graphic novel, Frank Miller’s 300.  He also directed the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead.  I haven’t seen either of these films so Snyder is more or less and unknown entity to me.  300 was really popular, which makes me a little nervous.  I’d really rather not see Watchmen made into a dumbed down summer blockbuster.  Of course just because a film is wildly popular doesn’t mean it has to be vacuous.  Terminator 2 was a huge hit and that was my favorite movie for several years.

Cast

Billy Crudup (Stage Beauty, Jesus’ Son) as Dr. Manhattan. 

Patrick Wilson (Little Children, Hard Candy) as Night Owl

Carla Gugino (Night at the Museum, TV’s Karen Sisco) as Sally Jupiter/Silk Specter

Jeffery Dean Morgan (TV’s Supernatural) as the Comedian

Matthew Goode (The Lookout) as Ozymandias

Jackie Earle Haley (a veteran actor, he’s been around since the 1970’s but recently received an Academy Award nomination for Little Children) as Rorshach

Malin Akerman (the girl Eric and Sloan have a threesome with in Entourage) as Laurie Juspeczyk/The Silk Spectre

No big stars, which I think is for the best.  Characters tend to be altered to fit the persona of a star instead of the star actually acting to become the character.  I was afraid we’d end up with Bruce Willis as the Comedian or Tom Cruise as Nite Owl pretty much ensuring 90% of the series original content would go out the window. 

I’m not too familiar with most of these actors work through I was impressed by Patrick Wilson as the charming pedophile who finds himself at the mercy of a fourteen year old girl in Hard Candy (though I didn’t exactly like the movie overall).  Matthew Goode also made quite an impression as Gary Spargo, a manipulative bank robber in The Lookout (I never would have guessed he was British based on that performance). 

Overall I’d say the one thing that seems a little off with the cast list is age—most of the actors seem a little on the young side.  I have a little trouble imagining Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl simply because he’s so fit and I see Nite Owl’s middle-aged paunch as an essential part of his character but I suppose in any film adaptation you have to expect that a lot will be changed and put aside what you know of the original text.  I really liked the first two X-men movies as well as V for Vendetta and both of those differed greatly from the familiar comic books. 

Alan Moore is of course against the making of the Watchmen movie, arguing that the series was created specifically for the medium of comic books.    He has said of Watchmen “It was designed to show off the things that comics could do that cinema and literature couldn't."  He has a point.  Part of the reason Watchmen works is because it’s a comic book about comic book.  It also tells an incredibly dense and multi-layered story that’s going to have to be pruned to within an inch of it’s life to fit in a two hour movie. 

Still, we’ll have to see.  I’m hoping for the best because I’ve already decided I’m going to see Watchmen when it’s released in 2008 and admission will probably be about $15 by then so I’d love for it to be worth my money.    

For more information on the Watchmen film:

Official Warner Bros. Site

 Watchmen on IMDB