Today I attended a bloggers screening of Watchmen held at Paramount Pictures International in Chiswick, London.  This is the second screening I have been to like this, the first was City of Men, last year.  Attendees were invited via twitter and I knew the assembled company would be good, so I thought I’d go along.

Watchmen is not the sort of film I would normally go and see.  I don’t really class myself as a sci-fi person and I’m not a great lover of comic films.  I also had a public bashing on twitter for admitting that I actually liked Superman 3.  Although maybe that was more to do with the fact that I was watching it on my Nokia N95, rather than the film.

If you are unaquanted with Watchmen, as I was, Wikipedia reliably informs us:

Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics in single issues during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form.

So another superhero film.  Having not read any of the comics, I was heading into the film cold and had no idea what to expect.

The cast is not star studied, but there are some great performances.  I particularly liked Jackie Earle Haley who played Rorschach and Jeffrey Dean Morgan who played The Comedian.  I enjoyed the sound track too, including 99 Red Balloons in German.

Watchmen will be classed as an 18 in the UK.  There are some extremely violent scenes.  Almost disturbingly so at times.  But in a comic way.

Visually stunning, Watchmen is a work of art and is a well crafted and produced movie, which you would expect for the $130 million.  I particularly loved the eye masks and costumes, and a serious attention to detail.  This goes hand-in-hand with the special effects.

Overall I enjoyed the movie and I’m glad I went.  Watchmen is two and a half hours long.  Did I want it to end so I could get out of there?  A bit.

I’ve never to been to a screening before, so part of me was going out of curiousity.  I hadn’t heard anything about City of Men before I saw the film tonight, which according to wikipedia:

It is often cited as a ‘spin-off‘ of the film; City of Men is a less violent and more light-hearted affair with dramedy elements (the film adaptation is darker, sharing its roots of City of God). However, the two do share some common aspects: the directors, some of the actors, and the setting of the Brazilian favela (slum) with its background of gangsters and poverty.

City of Men, or Cidade dos Homens in Portuguese, is a subtitled film and focusses on the friendship between 2 characters caught up in the daily life of living in the favela.

I love watching subtitled films.  I always try and match the words to the sounds and try and work out whether the words don’t match the spoken dialogue.  I find it also focusses my attention more on the film too.  It takes more thought to watch a subtitled film.

I enjoyed watching City of Men.  I thought the camerwork and imagery was stunning, the characters convincing and the scenario mind boggling.

It was also great to see the bloggers that went along.  Here’s a few of them in a video I shot just before we went in.

Thanks for inviting me along to the screening Dan and Mike, looking forward to the next one.