Abigail M. Schilling

Last night Carolyn and I watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and I cried no less than three times. I also made a lot of incredulous sounds, like when the 8-year-old versions of the friends talk to each other like colleagues. But I really love the movie and I have to agree with Alexis Bledel in the featurette, "A Video Commentary" when she says that this is the first time a teen movie has really dealt with actually issues.

After we had finished pantsing it up and after we had finished buying out Target (Snickers Ice Cream Bars!) I began my usual post-film internet searches. Blake Livey, who plays slutty soccer girl Brigette, is in an upcoming film with a secret title and secret plot.

At imdb it's listed as "Untitled J.J. Abrams Project" but it's been billed under many fake titles. It's about an attack on New York City as told from the viewpoint of a small group of friends. I've even seen the teaser trailer which only tags the movie with a release date 01-18-08.

People are going crazy. Absolutely crazy.

The title of the movie was supposed to be released at Comic Con a few weeks ago but a poster got leaked days before increasing speculation. Abrams and Paramount decided not to release the title.

The net is a flurry of questions. People are stalking the sets, posting photos, getting cease and desist letters. There is commentary on how far is too far with this secretive marketing technique. I guess when the movie was cast there were no scripts sent out, no readings at auditions. And the whole movie takes place on hand-held cameras.

People say it's going to be the next Blair Witch Project. Now, I was a wee thing (as was the internet) when Blair Witch came out but I distinctly remember the fan craze. I remember it being on every magazine cover and every news outlet. It was breaking records with it's low budget and high ticket sales. It was being reviewed as the best horror movie of our time.

I'm not going to lie: I got totally sucked into the blogs. I mean, Paramount is pulling out all the stops. The movie went under the fake name "Slusho" for a while which is a tribute to the second episode of Alias (another Abrams project). There is now Slusho gear for sale and it's part of the marketing plan. Even the box your t-shirt comes in has clues.

I have, of course, read everything remotely related to a spoiler for this movie. Normally, I won't read anything about a movie or watch anything except for a trailer, but THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT MUST BE TASTED. I saw a video that might be one of the final scenes and now I want to see the movie to see if it was! I have the bug! Help me!

In other news, tomorrow kicks off my week of birthday activities. I won't be blogging much but I will be posting a photo every day from that day's events. It will kinda be like live blogging. What if I didn't tell you what I was doing and then you had to figure it out from the photos? And I was shrouded in such mystery that I had fancy lawyers send cease and desist letters? What's that? You don't care that much. Yeah, I figured.