The dollars aren't disclosed, but follow the jump for a depressing if fascinating array of blockbusters for sale, the brands that bought them and the ultimate recognition of their unholy unions:

Most Mouthwatering, placement most likely to prompt an immediate purchase: Louis Vuitton in Sex and the City

Perfect Fit, best chemistry between a brand and a film: Manolo Blahnik and Sex and the City

Welcome to Reality, fictional brand that you would most want in real life: Stark Industries in Iron Man

Scene Stealer, brand that stole the spotlight from its human co-stars: Ford Mustang in I Am Legend

Bomb, placement that ruined enjoyment of a scene: Nokia in Cloverfield

Odd Couple, most awkward and seemingly ineffective product placement: LG mobile phone in Iron Man

Film Whore, film that most “sold out” for product placement: Sex and the City

We were surprised to not see Transformers and its over-the-top GM endorsements singled out for anything other than the "E.T./Reese's Award for Achievement in Press Coverage," but there you have it. Other underrepresented films included Juno (Tic-Tacs, though no mention of Sunny Delight), Wall-E (Apple, plus a nod for its pseudo-chain Big 'N' Large), 21 (Planet Hollywood) and even Alvin and the Chipmunks (Fender guitars). As for 2009's early front-runners, your guess is as good as ours: We figure Tropic Thunder's doomed mock campaign for Simple Jack should at land somewhere, and let's face it — there has never been as craven a placement as a movie simply called Milk. Shame on you, Gus Van Sant!

• 2008 brandcameo Product Placement Awards [brandchannel]

An honest mistake or a publicity grab? We'd like to believe it's the former, though you would think shooting the film in Louisiana might have opened the filmmakers' eyes a bit. At the very least, this should be a fun one for New Orleans Saint Reggie Bush (the boyfriend of Disaster star Kim Kardashian) to wriggle out of. As our tipster wondered: "Would they have premiered Terrorist Movie, a spoof of the Die Hard genre, on September 11th?" Shortly after this brainstorm, Paramount called to offer the tipster marketing duties for Cloverfield 2.

• DISASTERMOVIE.NET

Like the 01/18/08 release date that came to represent both the setting and the cultural catchphrase for Cloverfield, a quick browse through IMDB's release dates — 10/17, specifically — points to Sony's big mystery-disease horror flick Quarantine. The plot summary, which features an L.A. news crew's footage the only record of the illness ravaging the building in which it's trapped — fits as well.

So there you have it! I know, I know — you're impressed. And with only seven months to wait, at least the studio doesn't have to worry about peaking too soon.

• Case 1017 - Please help identify this [YouTube]

Matt Reeves is in early talks with Paramount to direct a "Cloverfield" sequel...Timing of the projects will depend on how quickly Paramount can complete discussions with Reeves, producer J.J. Abrams and scribe Drew Goddard to scare up another monster tale for the "Cloverfield" sequel.

Right out of the gate, C2: Rise of Those Things in the Subway Tunnel is facing both advantages and disadvantages relative to its predecessor: On the one hand, it won't be able to capitalize on the months of teasing marketing-foreplay that helped turn its opening weekend into such a climactically satisfying experience for Paramount. That said, it can still capitalize on steel-stomached franchise devotees to show up, to say nothing of the quickly-growing fanbase of sole returning cast member T.J. "Hudd" Platt, who'd pay to hear him read the phonebook, just so long as he did it really shakily and injected bonehead commentary along the way for comic relief.

• Paramount sows 'Cloverfield' sequel [Variety]

· Though Cloverfield pumped-and-dumped its way a 68-percent second-weekend drop-off after a record-breaking opening, Paramount still expects the movie to be profitable due to the studio's wise strategy of investing in hype-building marketing over needlessly expensive "name" actors. [Variety]
· Paramount establishes Dennis "General Hawk" Quaid and Channing "Duke Hauser" Tatum as the leads for G.I. Joe, the studio's latest attempt at turning a line of action figures into a nine-figure-grossing blockbuster. [Variety]
· Still trying to plug all the primetime programming holes left by the writers strike, NBC slots in unscripted-TV-pusher Mark Burnett's My Dad is Better Than Your Dad (fathers prove their superiority to their children by pummeling each other in front of an instigating Dan Cortese) and Amne$ia (contestants try to answer sure-to-be humiliating questions about their lives for money ) for mid-to-late February debuts [THR]

"This is a classic case of vertigo," said Dr. Michael G. Stewart, chairman of otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine) at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weil Cornell Medical Center. "You can look around and feel like things are moving, when they aren't."

So why does the film style affect some viewers and not others?

"People have different levels of susceptibility, similar to how some people cannot ride on a small boat without getting sick," Stewart said. "It's just a natural variation."

So if you are itching to see "Cloverfield" but are worried you might get sick, experts recommend taking a dose of over-the-counter anti-vertigo medicine, sold under such brand names as Bonine and Dramamine II. "It might not protect you from all the symptoms, but it could, and it certainly can't hurt," Stewart said.

Another strain of the outbreak, which similarly causes dizziness, light-headedness, and violent vomiting, seems to be limited thus far only to the producers and stars of Mad Money. Doctors warn that the same motion sickness drugs used to combat the wider strain will do little for those symptoms, which are likely to relapse every time they consider how the Godzilla-sized release trampled their small comedy at the box office.

• Scary movie making viewers sick [CNN]

1. Cloverfield - $41 million
Slight spoilers ahead: Can you say Best. January. Opening. Ever? Paramount can, and will—a lot, as the Siberian gulag of a movie-release month miraculously thawed in time (Al Gore warned us!) to bring the studio the kinds of numbers one might expect from a July release that ends in 3. A lot was at stake for Cloverfield, as some wondered whether relying so heavily on internet-disseminated buzz could have easily spelled a Snakes on a Curse for the YouTube-Eats-Manhattan movie. At the end of the day, however, it was its utter lack of irony—the dire, matter-of-fact style in which it documented the horrors of CW stars being eaten by Rottweiller-sized crab lice—that was the secret to Cloverfield's success.

2. 27 Dresses - $22.4 million
Fox will likely attribute the success of 27 Dresses—the 8th! Best! January! Opening! etc. etc.—to its positioning as attractive counter-programming to Cloverfield, but we suspect that to be only half the case. In an inspired, soon-to-be-studied-at-Annenberg marketing phenomenon, we think Dresses's hefty take was the result of mass chick-movie/guy-movie bartering agreements, with couples throughout America agreeing to see one if their mate agreed to accompany them to the other. As a result, the adventures of a shrewish, unmarriable Katherine Heigl acted not unlike a Rottweiller-sized crab louse, hanging off its much larger box-office-monster host-body.

3. The Bucket List - $15.1 million
With Jack Nicholson's recent admission to AARP The Magazine that he "can't hit on a girl in public like he used to," the legendary ladies man has begun compiling a sexual-conquest-themed bucket list of his own, beginning with the elusive Me With 17 UCLA Co-Eds fantasy he's meant to accomplish since Chinatown days.

4. Juno - $10.25 million
Certainly Oprah having designated Juno as an official Steadman's Movie Club™ selection and "fresh" couldn't have hurt the indie teen pregnancy comedy at the box office this weekend. We doubt, however, that Dr. Phil's decision to then jump on the bandwagon and ambush Juno in her hospital room with TV cameras and a lecture on sexual responsibility did much to affect the bottom line.

5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets - $8.1 million
You mean to tell us there was still $8 million worth of people meaning to getting around to seeing Secrets, who finally did so this weekend? What could they possibly have had going on in their lives that kept them away for three weeks?

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE January 18-20, 2008 [BoxOfficeMojo.com]

· "Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film - it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie." [austinchronicle.com]
· "A film that delivers a clever twist on perhaps the oldest sci-fi/horror staple of all: The Giant Monster Movie. It's not the life-changing movie experience the intense viral marketing attention would lead you to think it is, but its decision to focus on ground-level humanism rather than epic disaster is what separates it from the pack." [Premiere]
· "It's dumb but quick and dirty and effectively brusque, dispensing with niceties such as character. It is the endlessly, cruelly commodified images from Sept. 11, 2001, that "Cloverfield" pursues with a vengeance. Skyscrapers collapse and send dust clouds barreling down narrow Manhattan streets. Loose-leaf papers flutter down from the sky." [Chicago Tribune]
· I'm not sure I agree with the decision to make a quartet of bland proto-yuppies the center of the action, but we all look pretty much the same once we're crushed/eaten/disemboweled. "Cloverfield" is clever enough in its mindless violence to keep you engaged for the brief (84 minute) running time. And stick around during the end credits for what might be the best part of the film: Michael Giacchino's score, itself an homage to the bombastic soundtracks of monster movies past. [Film Threat]
· "[C]ombines unpleasantness and stupidity to a degree that would be difficult to match unless you were stuck in bed with a case of the shingles while being forced to watch "The Ghost Whisperer."" [NY Post]
· "[U]nlike Brian De Palma's recent Redacted and Romero's forthcoming Diary of the Dead— both of which use subjective cameras as a way of questioning our YouTube-d universe and the trust we put in recorded images — Cloverfield's first-person ­videography has little sense of purpose. It's just another salable gimmick in a movie whose closest kinship to Blair Witch may be the genius of its ad campaign." [LA Weekly]
· "Projected on a building-size screen, "Cloverfield" is a relentless, I-thought-my-eyeballs-were-bleeding exercise in visual disorientation...So what does "Cloverfield" offer? Bad taste? Dialogue that consists largely of OH MY GOD!!? The anti-cinematic aesthetic that is coming to govern our visual lives? All of the above, plus another slimy monster, engaged in an extreme makeover of Manhattan." [WashPo]
· "Like "Cloverfield" itself, this new monster is nothing more than a blunt instrument designed to smash and grab without Freudian complexity or political critique, despite the tacky allusions to Sept. 11. The screams and the images of smoke billowing through the canyons of Lower Manhattan may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination. (The director, Matt Reeves, lives in Los Angeles, as does the writer, Drew Goddard, and the movie's star producer, J. J. Abrams.) But the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence, and the monster does cut a satisfying swath through the cast, so your only complaint may be, What took it so long?" [NY Times]

As for the premiere, a circular black carpet started at the Bronson Gate, then rounded the lot's now-famous headless Statue of Liberty replica, where stars from the casts of Lost, The Office, Heroes, Entourage, the Star Trek movie, and various basic cable realitainments were on hand to lend the evening their B-level glow. And then there was Lindsay. Oop! We've already given away too much. Our amateurish-in-execution-but-pure-of-intention gallery is accessible here, or by clicking any of the thumbnails below.

• CloverfieldMovie.com

Like a triple-dog-dare calling out to Bin Laden—whom we strongly suspect is Cloverfield-obsessed io9 commenter Slush-O-Matic—there exists right now perhaps no better temporary monument to Americans' unwavering desire to have the shit scared out of them in the face of growing global adversity.

[Photo: Curbed LA]

• Headless Lady Liberty Being Pimped Out On Melrose [CurbedLA]

· "Cloverfield is a post-9.11 fever dream. As if a person who's been through 9.11 in lower Manhattan has gone to bed traumatized and shaking with dread, and this is the dream they have. Illogical, ferocious, madball, all-engulfing....but very much of our world. Not It Came From Beneath The Sea but It Came From Someplace Deep in the National Psyche." [hollywood-elsewhere.com]
We make no promises as to the authenticity of any of the following:
· Nicholas Chance, Kid Reviewer, when not solving backyard mysteries for his neighborhood friends, says he was also among the first to check out the movie, and even sketched to the best of his ability what the monster looked like. He was less impressed than Knowles: "Overall, I thought there was lots of excitement...I thought the movie was awesome as a roller coaster ride, especially as a fan of the marketing campaign since the day the trailer hit last July. However it wasn't quite the whole theme park. The characters were realistic, but rather normal. No outstanding performances, and the movie just didn't have the full-story feel of a classic five star release. In some scenes people were giggling, when the director may have meant for it to be serious." [kidreviewer.com]
· The Dint Factor blog first offers their credentials ("At 8pm EST at Michigan State University in the basement lecture hall B108 of Wells a prescreening was given for students and the public of MSU and East Lansing"), then launches into their own take: "It should be understood that Cloverfield IS NOT A MONSTER MOVIE. Well... It is a monster movie, but not in the traditional sense. It's a love story. It's a story about obsession...This is not Godzilla. There are no Matt Brodericks to tell you how it came to be, or how to beat it. There are no Jeff Goldblums to tell you to put a virus in the mothership. JJ Abrams has managed to make a movie that gives you no answers. What is it? A monster. Where'd it come from? Hell if I know." [The Dint Factor]
· OK, this one's a GIANT SPOILER, so DO NOT CLICK if you don't want to see what purports to be a detailed sketch of the monster, with the Statue of Liberty next to it for scale. Fake. [Dougbot.com]
· If you caught last night's premiere, send in your reports. We'll compile them later today.

LAist: Tell us the real story behind the title Cloverfield?

Matt Reeves: When we started the project there was going to be an announcement in the trades. In this case, they wanted to keep everything under wraps. So the movie was going to be made under this outside corporation that was basically a property of Paramount. That corporation had a name that I don't know the name of. I think Clover was the first part of it. Maybe it was Cloverdale. When Drew [Goddard, LOST writer] was putting a name to the project, there was supposed to be a name for the project like there was for The Manhattan Project. So he said, "I am going to use that weird mysterious thing," and he misheard it. He didn't even understand that it wasn't Cloverfield, it was Cloverdale. Maybe that was because of the street by J.J.'s old office, but the truth is he just misunderstood it.

Mystery solved: The movie was named after a misnomered incorporation, possibly inspired by a mid-Wilshire avenue near J.J. Abrams's old production offices, and not because the sum of the numeric value of the letters in Cloverfield equaled 169, i.e. the number of nipples on the underside of H. P. Lovecraft's mythical beast, the Cthulhu.

• LAist Interview: Matt Reeves, Director of Cloverfield [LAist]

The quality of the footage is, to be charitable, shitty; still, that won't stop fans desperate to devour any morsel they allegedly aren't supposed to be gobbling down until tomorrow from scouring the video frame by frame, hoping that somewhere in those blurry shadows lies the utterly terrifying truth about the nature of the cinematic beast Abrams and company will unleash up on the world in January.

• Full CLOVERFIELD trailer (new!!) [YouTube via Gone Elsewhere]

Perhaps the best leading indicator of an inevitable backlash is the creation of at least one hastily conceived mash-up trailer (a meme that never gets tired) for the still-shooting film, an appearance that heralds six more months of feeling like some viral marketing staffer from Paramount has planted a foot firmly on our windpipe, releasing it only long enough for us to wheeze out an affirmative answer to their repeated question, "Don't you see how fucking cool this is going to be? Come on, it's J.J. Abrams!"

• Exclusive "Cloverfield" teaser trailer MONSTER REVEALED [iKlipz]