Interesting; I know some folks in the FBI cyber-crime division (and many of the related organizations). I vaguely remember reading or talking to someone who indicated that there is a lot of technical accuracy in the film. Time will tell. (FWIW, no website is truly untraceable, although there are a lot of dead ends and false leads involved when taking down a site. And in the premise of this film, the site could have been taken down or blocked in any number of ways.)

Warning: This trailer gives away *way* too much information (e.g. the car trunk contents and accompanying dialog). You have been warned.

I'm supposed to see this movie, but I don't think it's screening in advance.

Always a good sign.

Christian wrote:
: I'm supposed to see this movie, but I don't think it's screening in advance.
: Always a good sign.

Then again, it's a Screen Gems film, and Screen Gems has been withholding its films from critics more often than not, lately.

On the other hand, they DID show First Sunday to critics -- and it got panned, savagely. Not sure what that means.

And this movie is opening on the same day as Rambo IV, which is ALSO not being screened for critics?

And it's ALSO opening on the same day as Meet the Spartans, which is a Fox movie made by the same people who made Date Movie and Epic Movie, all of which almost certainly means that THAT movie won't be screened for critics either?

Looks like the only wide release that day that will get a critics' screening is How She Move. And I missed yesterday's press screening because, y'know, a child is born and all that.

I can just spare everyone the suspense by doing what Diane Lane should have done:

I'm just waiting for the day when a movie will ONLY be screen for critics and not for the public.

Doesn't The New World almost qualify?

Zing!

Nice one, Mando!

Diane Lane should have called Sony Pictures?

It is SO not that easy, Mando. I'm involved with this sort of stuff professionally; in fact I oversee programs that address these issues.

When you're dealing with a comprimised Chinese server bouncing packets off an Israeli server, then a Libyan server, and finally through a page buried on a subsite of a .ru domain registered by a name register associated with the Russian mob--over which you have no control--taking down or even tracking down the owners of websites is no simple matter (and the data in the .RU registration is bogus). And those are the easy ones! You start by finding someone who can read and speak Chinese technical terms, available during Chinese business hours. Then repeat for Libya, Israel, and Russia. Assume they're uncooperative, maybe without a single full-time staff member. So now try to find a U.S.-based lawyer and involve law-enforcement to identify local actors in each country, and on and on. OH, and by the time you track it all down, the bad guy has moved everything.

Plus, there's no reason that such a criminal couldn't just use an IP address without any registered domain name at all, while hosting a load-balancing server that actually hosts the page in a distributed zombie network...but I digress.

Alan, I think your dedication to your work is crowding out your sense of humor. Sort of like why you shouldn't tell light-bulb jokes to a janitor.

There are some promotional bells & whistles for the film at the Web site in question. I just wanted to see if they'd done anything cute or mysterious with the domain registration, and apparently they haven't. It's hanging right there for anyone to find with a simple Whois search.

I agree with Alan about the trailer -- I feel like, aside from the inevitable tensely scored climax -- they give everything else away. Is it just me, or is this just a trend for trailers that's cropped up in the past few years?

Ha! Try watching some trailers for films from the '40s sometime!

Good point. I have (I'm a big classic-era buff), and they basically tell you the entire plot upfront. Maybe that's because as good as some of the films were, people really were more interested in the entertainment factor?

Wait, I could be talking about present-day moviegoers too....

The trailer reminded me of a film from a few years back called Fear Dot Com...

mrmando wrote:
: Doesn't The New World almost qualify?

Nah, cuz the first cut DID play for the public for at least a week.

A better example might be Kate & Leopold. The version released in theatres was NOT the version shown to critics like me (and thus, my review of the film happened to zero in on a scene or two that were no longer IN the film by the time the public got to see it; among other things, I believe I mentioned a plot point that was not a "spoiler" in the version that I saw but it WAS a "spoiler" in the version shown to the public). I believe BOTH versions were included on the DVD, but if the question before us is whether the film screened for critics was ALSO screened on the big screen for the public, then the answer is "no".

Peter, I took Mando's reply to mean that the public wasn't interested in the film and didn't bother to show up, not that the studio kept it from the public. Maybe I misread it.

Well, I did say "almost."

OK, gotcha. Also why you don't say 'yeah, sure, I have a bomb' to TSA personnel.

Here are my Great Observations about trailers: Great trailers give away the mood and themes of a movie but very little of the plot. Conversely, bad trailers give away much of the plot, leaving you feeling like you already know the story. There is no relationship between the quality of a film and the quality of its trailers.

This was a bad trailer for the reasons I've listed. It tells too much of what happens and precious little of what the film is about.

Christian wrote:
: Peter, I took Mando's reply to mean that the public wasn't interested in the film and didn't bother to show up, not that the studio kept it from the public. Maybe I misread it.

Well, I was reaching back behind mrmando's quip and running with Jason's original question.

On a semi-serious note, we can say that The New World wasn't screened long enough to find its audience. Jeffrey's praise of the film did in fact make me want to run out and see it, but it just isn't that easy for someone with my domestic situation to manufacture a free evening on short notice.

mrmando wrote:
: On a semi-serious note, we can say that The New World wasn't screened long enough to find its audience.

Oh, so you were referring to the second cut (too)? Ah, that changes things.

FWIW, a lot of the details mentioned in this article make me thing that some real technical know-how went into the writing of this film...

'Untraceable' Cyber Criminals? Former FBI Agent Says There's No Such Thing (MTV.com)
If you're reading this article on a computer, we know. If you've clicked to this site from an outside link, we know. And if you leave here and go somewhere else, somewhere you're not supposed to go, well, we don't know — but someone does.

"Is a Web site completely untraceable? No. It goes through mirrors, through proxy bounces, it goes international. To solve that it takes time, but it's just a simple factor," former FBI special agent Ernest Hilbert told MTV News. "The FBI has a whole division just to deal with this. There are 65,000 doors and windows on a computer that can be opened. You look inside of them, you own that box."

For eight years, Hilbert was one of 1,000 agents who focused on cyber investigations and computer forensics. Now a director of security for MySpace.com, Hilbert lent his years of expertise to director Gregory Hoblit's new film "Untraceable," which centers on an FBI agent (Diane Lane) who uses computer technology to track a serial killer through his Web site.

...

Note to Christian: How official is the absence of press screenings? I ask because I saw a promo/ad in the paper today for a preview of this screening that will take place here in Vancouver on Wednesday the 23rd -- two days before the film opens -- and unless critics are being barred from that screening, that would seem to qualify.

Peter: I received an official invitation yesterday to a Tuesday-night screening of this film next week. So although I had speculated that this one might not be screening, I was wrong. The lack of any notice about the screening until a week ahead of time is a little unusual, but not completely out of the ordinary.

Sorry for any confusion my comment may have created.

DNS tools play key role in Hollywood thriller 'Untraceable' (Network World)

When the FBI agents in Sony Pictures’ upcoming "Untraceable" movie need to catch a killer, they turn to network technologies IT pros have been using for years, such as whois domain name lookup, traceroute and ping, via products developed by DNS tools vendor DNSstuff.

...

"Untraceable" reaches for high-tech thrills but falls short (Network World)
Film’s focus on the Internet as a vehicle for cyber crime loses sight of plausible crime story, gets preachy about American Web habits