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Write The Future
Sure, it's an ad from a mega corporation, but ads don't get much more epic than this - just in time for the World Cup. Amores Perros director Alejandro González Iñárritu is the man calling the shots...
And while we're at it, here's a quick Nike salute to LA Laker Kobe Bryant, leading the Lakers into the NBA finals this week. Andre 3000 covers All Together Now on the soundtrack. (via Pitchfork)
4th Jun 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
This Is Not The iPad You're Looking For
what if Steve Jobs gave his briefing from Yavin?
4th Jun 2010 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
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RIP Dennis Hopper
the Easy Rider has bowed out at 74. Take a load off dude
29th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Knight And Day
new Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz spy action comedy
28th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Parallel Lines
More entertisment from Ridley Scott's RSA Films. This time they're making films in aid of hawking the latest 'innovation' from Philips - widerscreen TVs.
The films revolve around the concept of a unicorn. That's Carl Erik Rinsch's effort above. See them all and make your own over at YouTube.
27th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: MachoTailDrop
Could be interesting: MachoTailDrop looks like a goofy skateboard conspiracy thriller/comedy. starring James Faulkner, Rick McCrank, Anthony Amadorri, Vanessa Guide, Steve Olson.
26th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Don Draper Hits The Town
FBI Agent Jon Hamm is looking tough in this production still from the new Ben Affleck directed movie The Town, which sounds like a smaller scale version of Heat. Ben Affleck's last directorial effort Gone Baby Gone was excellent, in case you missed it.
24th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
30 Years Ago Today. Ish.
Nice piece up at Aint It Cool about queuing up to see The Empire Strikes Back on this day in 1980. I remember it well. The AT-ATs were incredible.
22nd May 2010 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: The Black Keys
Bikinis and a singing dinosaur. What's not to like?
21st May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
London (Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger)
cool stop motion take on London from David Hubert via @thecoldvein
21st May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Comic of the Film
nice collection of 80s comic book film & TV adaptations to download over at Vinnie Rattolle's I Love Trash blog; you forget that in the days before VHSthis was the main way you could "rewatch" films [eh? what is this non-digital madness you speak of?]
20th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Spike Spends Saturday With...
Nice series of films up at Vice Magazine's VBS.tv, with Spike Jonze interviewing various people of interest.
The owners of the fahsion store Opening Ceremony is a highlight - particularly with their stereophonic talking trick.
Other interviewees include Maurice Sendak, M.I.A and Kanye West.
18th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Pirate Bay Sunk?
Arrrrrr! is it all over for the Pirate Bay? this Guardian article thinks it might be
UPDATE: Of course not. Back online.
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18th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Why I Steal Movies... Even Ones I'm In: Peter Serafinowicz On Piracy, Downloads and the death of Hard Copies
v interesting take from peter @serafinowicz on the whole digital v hard copy debate that we know a lot of chimps out there are having at the moment
"In the meantime, I'll be suing myself for pirating my own show. And I'm pretty scared, because I have an amazing lawyer."
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15th May 2010 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Skate or die: Forties - Amigos
A stellar slice of 90's skateboarding for today's episode of Skate or Die. I've been digging around for this one for ages, so great to finally find it buried away on the defunct Google Video.
Arty pixel-vision, jazzy music and best-of-all hair-raising downhill skating on the streets of San Francisco.
Forties: 'Amigos'.
14th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Jeff Bridges HD
Some interesting stats on the lack of Jeff Bridges movies available in High Definition. Strange, considering his seemingly solid box office appeal and recent Oscar confirmed status.
All this is really just an excuse to pull a couple of quotes from the man when he recently picked up a handful of awards for his movie Crazy Heart.
On The independent Spirit Award: "Now THIS is really gonna tie the room together".
On The Golden Globes: "You're really messing with my under-appreciated status here".
14th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Stormtroopers 365
in case you missed yesterday's Metro, another fun project: Stefan Le Du has been taking pics of his Stormtroopers every day
14th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
@ferris_bueller_? @ferris_bueller_?
in another pointless/brilliant exercise from the online world, someone has tweeted the whole of Ferris Bueller - twitter.com/ferris_bueller_
13th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: The People v George Lucas
some earthbound Jedis are not going to let it lie
11th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Ken Loachtube
YouTube are still creeping towards feature film distribution - and Ken Loach is the latest director to get his catalogue online. Watch Kes, Poor Cow, Cathy Come Home, Riff Raff and more here in their entirety.
7th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Crank 2: High Voltage
We've totally missed the boat on this one, as I caught the end of it on TV last night - but thought it was worth a few bytes of your time for a couple of reasons:
1) It's the loopiest concept I have seen in a long time
2) The production is also bonkers, shot entirely with hand-held consumer video cameras - mostly at super-fast shutter speeds of 1/1000 or 1/2000th of a second
Check it out here. The trailer's probably enough for most people.
5th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: The American
Trailer up for the new George Clooney/Anton Corbijn thriller The American. Clooney plays the American.
4th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Douglas Trumbull Speaks
2001 FX pioneer Douglas Trumbull on returning to work with Terence Malick for Tree Of Life
28th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hot Tub Time Machine
(dir. Steve Pink)
"It must be some kind of... hot tub... time machine" Craig Robinson deadpans to the camera when he and his buddies find themselves in a ski lodge in 1986. That's about the depth of the plot in this wilfully stupid comedy. Which is what makes it work. It feels like a film where they came up with a title that they liked, and then wrote backwards around it. There's the odd bit of psychological depth - dudes aren't happy with assholes they've grown up to be, could this be a chance to fix the mistakes of the past? - but it's all buried in a pacy round of 80s gags and puke jokes. Lots of 80s ski bunny action too if you've ever wondered what life was like up on the slopes then. (Bonus fact - it was shot in Fernie, Canada, and looks a lot like certain other Chimp-friendly destinations.)
John Cusack trades off his 80s persona, taking every chance to diss the decade (all "Reagan and Aids") - although it's weird having some kid play the 80s version of him as we all know exactly what he looked like. Rob Corddry plays a similar pissed-off/manic role to the one he had in What Happens In Vegas; Clark Duke is Cusack's nephew experiencing the 80s for the first time (what? no wi-fi?); Craig Robinson is funny when checking out his Kid N Play boxcut.
More 80s cameos from Crispin Glover (aka George McFly) and Chevy Chase as the possibly mystic hot tub repair man. Nice nods throughout - Bowie skiing on MTV ads, Scritti Politti sounding great (I'm ready for the greatest hits coming out soon), and some ski patrol lunks freaking themselves out over some Red Dawn-style commie paranoia.
Could do without the homophobic panic that runs through a lot of these mindless slacker comedies though, and if you think about it too hard, the ending isn't really a total win, but hey, this isn't a Brief History Of Time, it's a Hot Tub Time Machine.
28th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviewsTrailer Park: The Expendables
none-more testosterone-fuelled trailer for The Expendables action blow-out - Stallone, Lundgren, Rourke, Li, Statham etc with bonus Willis and Schwarzenegger!
23rd Apr 2010 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Best sequel news ever - with Robert DeNiro
I'd overlooked any previous talk of this, but it seems there's a sequel to the DeNiro/Martin Brest classic Midnight Run in the works....
IMDB has a holding page, while Slashfilm has a bit more info. It turns out there's already been 4 DeNiro-free TV spin-off movies...
21st Apr 2010 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The Losers
(dir. Sylvain White)
Hardass team of US army dudes get caught out on a secret mission to kill some narcos in South America. The first of many (many) explosions in this film leaves everyone thinking they're dead but (just like the A-Team) they're not. Revenge time! Hot chick from Avatar arrives, sans blue body paint. Beats up team leader for a bit, sets hotel room on fire, woah hang on, not only is she totally hot AND tough - she's ALSO on their side. Let's team up to kill the evil mastermind who's totally framed us all. And blow some more stuff up.
In the comic which this is based on, this story plays out in entertaining fashion. Here it's ok... but just all seems so... thin. Shot after shot is in slow motion, with everyone wearing shades and looking TOUGH. Then you get some bits where it's in that beer ad slow/FAST/slow style that makes the whole film feel like a trailer for itself.
On the upside, you can sort of imagine them all being in a better film with a script that has a little more depth and a little less unwarranted belief in its own amazing sense of coolness; Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian in Watchmen) is fine, Idris (I AM STRINGER BELL) Elba is credible and Chris (not that one) Evans has a few funny motormouth moments. But it all feels pretty generic and stupid, and the final action scene (SPOILER ALERT it's BLOW STUFF UP slow/FAST/slow BOOM BOOM BOOM mwah ha ha now you will see my real plan/ no wait!/ we've totally got you in our sights/ woah it's a set-up/ no! argh! BANG gotcha repeat to comedy final scene etc etc) isn't really all that exciting at all.
One to read, not watch.
21st Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 2 star reviewsStar Wars on Blu-ray
Does anyone actually buy Blu-ray? Or still watch Star Wars?
Not-ultimate-but-a-bit-more-editions of all six movies coming soon according to AICN.
Mainly just a reason to post this fan-edit that re-assembles the missing Luke-in-Happy-Mondays-hat / Biggs-on-Tatooine scenes. These were in my Star Wars book and I remember being very confused when they weren't in that first VHS edition. Geek out.
20th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Spike Jonze vs LCD
Promo up for the new LCD Soundsystem single Drunk Girls, co-directed by Spike Jonze and James Murphy. Fun video, but sadly the song falls into the annoying 'Beats. On. Repeat.' category of the band's catalogue.
19th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: The Ghost Writer
Roman Polanski's run of great movies again looks unlikely to continue, with this clunky looking thriller for The Ghost Writer, starring a host of Brits doing terrible Brit accents (Ewan MacGregor and Kim Cattrall, I'm talking to you).
16th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Anatomy of a car crash
Nice article from Wired about film maker Arev Manoukian's career-launching short film Nuit Blanche, which saw him get picked up by the William Morris Agency.
14th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Star Wars Uncut
The crowd-sourced remake of Star Wars is 'finished'. The film stiches together scenes from hundreds of fan-recreated elememts to fill out the entire original original movie. Better than Attack of the Clones ....but it's not even widescreen.
That's the trailer above and a scene called 'The Escape' below. See more on the project's website.
Via Wired
13th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Erasing David
Interesting surveillance doc - you can run but can you hide? cinemas from April 29th; More 4 on 4th May.
See the film's website here, the website set up by the private eyes chasing him here (Spoliers!) and the private eyes' own site here.
12th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Digital Economy Bill Slips Through In Wash-Up
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8th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Monsters of Folk
Two nice promos up for Dear God, the album highlight from last year's Monsters of Folk album. The video above was directed by Laura Faggioni, while the one below was fan-made, and the winner of a competition run by the band....
31st Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Megamind
fun trailer for new supervillain comedy Megamind w Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hil
25th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Mia Doi Todd, dir. Michel Gondry
Great new Gondry video up for Mia Doi Todd's Open Your Heart.
via Sound Theory
23rd Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Greenberg
James Murphy's soundtrack for Greenberg is up on iTunes - film stars Ben Stiller, written by Noam Baumbach. Some JM solo stuff, one new LCD Soundsystem track, that's a lot noisier than most of the new album.
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23rd Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Kick-Ass
(dir. Matthew Vaughan)
V enjoyable superhero flick that does exactly what it says on the tin. Adapted from the comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr, it follows the adventured of Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) a high school fanboy who asks a simple question and then follows it to its logical conclusion: why hasn't anyone tried being a superhero?
After a few half-assed encounters with some low-level street thugs (basically involving him having his ass-kicked), his scuba-suited antics get picked up on YouTube and he becomes something of a local hero. This brings him to the attention of a far more organised duo - Hit Girl and Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage on great form) - who show him (and us) what real-life vigilantism would actually look like - basically, some unhinged people running around with a lot of guns and weapons.
The action is fast-paced, the nods to comic books on form without being overbearing (one flashback scene all told with comic panels is brilliant), and the dialogue a deft balance between hilarious and daft. Aaron Johnson (last seen as the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy) is an engaging lead, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin in Superbad) has a good sense of comic timing, and it's always good to have Nic Cage in a role where you don't hate him for not being as good as he used to be. 12 year old powerhouse Hit Girl is a force of nature too, she gets some of the best lines, and this could easily be a breakout role for Chloë Moretz.
Chuck in the odd disarmingly moving scene, some gore-packed fights and a plot that keeps just the right side of almost-believable, and it's a winner. Totally not suitable for kids though, will be interesting to see how well it does without an underage superhero audience packing it out (although, let's face it, there are probably more than enough grown-up superhero fans around these days...).
23rd Mar 2010 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
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Promo Promo: Martini Ranch
Interesting slice of 80's pop trivia - a promo for Bill Paxton's band in the 80's, Martini Ranch. Forget the forgettable track, but check the wild west/sci-fi video, which was directed by James Cameron and features a handful of cameos (including Reiser and Henriksen from Aliens) in support of Paxton. And presumably wishing to keep Cameron on side.
Most interesting cameo? Cameron's previous wife and now Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow.
Reach!
22nd Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fresh Pots!
Dave Grohl has a coffee problem.
Via Sound Theory.
And speaking of drumming, I'm starting to feel like I may have under appreciated Will Ferrell's Chad Smith's drumming...
18th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Ohayou Goizamasu!
8.58am in London, 5.58pm in Tokyo - where me, BC and HHG are on a mission. Fashion, then snowboarding - but not in order of priority.
Barrage of photos to follow for sure, but for now start the day Japanese style.
Arigato goizimasu!
18th Mar 2010 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Predators
another franchise that just won't die: here comes... PredatorS
16th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Robin Hood
long trailer for Ridley Scott's upcoming Robin Hood
15th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
20 x 5 second Films
Watch the 20 best five second films. It'll take less than two minutes of your time. http://bit.ly/9fqZfM (via @dannydoom) RT @wired
12th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
RIP: Corey Haim
RIP: Corey Haim. The original Lost Boy. "Are you freebasing? Enquiring minds wanna know. "
10th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Star Wars On Earth
Star Wars On Earth - great set of photos from Cédric Delsaux over at WorldFamousDesignJunkies
10th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
IMDBPhone
It's been a long time coming, but IMDB finally have their own iPhone App. At last, you can recall what Mel Gibson is actually famous for from the comfort of your local pub (Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, surprisingly not much else).
It's a pretty thorough recreation of their comprehensive website - and in many ways is a lot more intuitive.
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4th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
