For his 40th birthday Steven Spielberg‘s friends made him this short film based on Citizen Kane (1941) about his life and career up to that point.
With a March of Time segment voiced by Dan Ackroyd, John Candy plays the reporter who is assigned the task of uncovering the famed director.
Keep a look out for previous Spielberg collaborators such as Dennis Weaver (Duel), Allen Daviau (E.T.), Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (1941) and Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (longtime producers).
You wonder how this stuff ends up online but I’m glad it did.
This short film narrated by Bill Maher points out some salient facts on the eve of the Superbowl.
Using graphics blended against the audio version of a monologue from HBO’s Real Time, it points out a valuable economic lesson in just over 2 minutes.
Notice how the light hearted, comedic vibe is a highly effective tool at communicating serious facts and opinion.
It is an irony that ‘liberal’ Europe’s brand of football hugely favours the rich clubs, whilst ‘capitalist America’ has a much more egalitarian sporting model.
Wouldn’t it be great if this screened during the half-time spot alongside the Ferris Bueller Honda ad?
The show has been running for so long that when you do a comprehensive list like this it reads like an index to a history of cinema.
A French website (‘The Simpsons Park’) has collected an incredible gallery of screen shots and animated gifs that lays out the original Simpsons episode alongside the particular film.
The range is astonishing: Kubrick, Bergman, Hitchcock, Scorsese, Lumet, Spielberg, Coppola and Truffaut are just some of the many directors referenced.
Just click on the links below to visit the relevant page – they aren’t in English, but the visuals speak for themselves.
The Muppets recently responded to criticisms from Fox News about their new film.
For a bit of context, here is the original segment piece which features the obligatory use of the word “liberal” as an insult, shouting-as-debate and swooshing graphics:
The term comes from the French director’s Be Kind Rewind (2008) where video store workers (Jack Black and Mos Def) remake films on the cheap or ‘swede‘ them.
In the film the tapes are described as being shipped from Sweden as an excuse to charge higher rental fees and longer wait times.
As part of the marketing campaign for Gondry did a sweded version of the actual movie and now he’s done this version of Scorsese’s classic of urban alienation.
I especially like how he’s done the ‘You talkin’ to me?’ speech.
With the latest Mission Impossible film opening it is time to ask the question: why is Tom Cruise always running in his films?
This compilation by Xerzes Cortes neatly showcases the films where he is running (75%!) and – for reasons of balance – points out the ones where he didn’t.
I’m pretty sure this meme all began with a spoof Nike ad in 2006, but when you see them back-to-back like this I wonder if it is a coincidence that Cruise just chooses energetic roles or if he’s now just messing with us.
Even in the Ghost Protocol trailer there are at least two sequences (involving the Kremlin and a Dubai sandstorm) where he is doing what can only be termed a ‘Cruise run’.
Maybe the on-set exercise is part of the reason he still looks so young? 😉
Steven Spielberg pops up in movies more often than you might think.
People of a certain age might remember him in The Blues Brothers (1980) but there are some that are not so well known, like Jaws (1975) and Vanilla Sky (2001).
A YouTube user has compiled this neat video of them.
“This is what happens when Wes and I sit down to watch “Inception” and both think old Ken Watanabe looks like Lo Pan”
There do seem to be bizarre parallels between the two trailers: key Asian characters who age, dreams, zero gravity fights, elevators, water and crumbling buildings.
The DVD cover for the British film Huge features a misleading quote.
Take a look at the cover below and you’ll see that someone from The Guardian found it ‘heartfelt’.
This would normally indicate a positive review, but if you actually hunt down the full review on The Guardian’s website, you’ll find Xan Brooks wasn’t too impressed.
Not only does he give it two stars, but the full sentence containing the word ‘heartfelt’ reads:
“The tale is heartfelt but the technique is shot”
I don’t know about you but the second half of that sentence isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement is it?
What about the remote chance that another Guardian writer found the film to his liking and also used the word ‘heartfelt’?
It’s obvious that this story deserves better than some wishy-washy one-off BBC2 drama, so how about reuniting the creative team behind The Social Network?
For those not familiar, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner recently confessed that was involved in lewd online exchanges with random people on the internet.
On HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host and Lynch read out one of Weiner’s Facebook exchanges verbatim and the results were predictably funny (although definitely NSFW):
(Click here to watch the video if the above one is pulled down)
The Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Austin, Texas has created this video highlighting its no ‘talking or texting during a movie’ policy.
As they say:
“We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film, we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn’t follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voicemail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome.”
The annual dinner has been a Washington tradition since 1920 and usually sees the President get spoofed by a comedian.
What added a little spice this year was that reality TV star Donald Trump was in the audience and Obama decided to have a little fun with the current outbreak of birther nonsense that has gripped parts of the US.
The White House even prepared a self-deprecating trailer for the event, using outtakes from Obama’s video addresses and Joe Biden’s gaffes:
Full video of the dinner can be seen here:
Some highlights included Obama doing the following:
Showing footage from The Lion King (1994) as his ‘birth video’ and explaining to the Fox News table that this was a joke.
Replying to Matt Damon’s disappointment in his presidency (“Well, Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau, so…right back atcha, buddy.”)
On Michelle Bachman’s possible run for president in 2012 (“I hear she was born in Canada. Yes Michelle, this is how it starts.”)
Saturday Night Live comedian Seth Meyers continued Obama’s jokes.
Check out his full speech here:
Key quote:
“Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican, which is surprising, I just assumed he was running as a joke.”
Currently appearing on the mid-morning show on ‘North Norfolk Digital’, in this episode Patridge takes calls from listeners and does an interview with Tommy (Nigel Lindsay), a former solider who served in Afghanistan.
My favourite moment is when Partridge comes up with a demented scenario involving Bill Oddie as a terrorist, or as he puts it:
“a bearded Catherine Wheel scything through the crowd”
In the movie world there appears to be two major rules regarding phones:
1. Just hang up without saying goodbye
Part of this is presumably so screenwriters can quickly get to the next scene without being slowed down by what would actually happen in real life (i.e. awkward goodbyes or ‘just another thing’).
2. Go to a place where there is no signal
This is a tool which immediately adds tension, as characters in a remote place lose the safety net option of calling the cops (although aren’t cops always late in the movies anyway?). The fact that it has been done to death has made it something of a cliche in recent years.
It depicts the (fictionalised) recording of Blue Öyster Cult‘s classic rock song (Don’t Fear) The Reaper and Walken plays a legendary music producer who suggests they include more of a certain instrument.
Aside from being a great director David Lynch has some mean skills in the kitchen.
Around the release of Inland Empire (2006) he made these cooking videos where he prepares some quinoa and organic broccoli.
Shot in black and white, they are set to some moody music as the director mentions the qualities of quinoa (“they say that it is the only grain that is a perfect, complete protein”) and he tells a mean anecdote about his travels in Europe involving paper money and sugar water.
If you have seen the film, it paints a bleak depiction of a dystopian Detroit where crime is so out of control (ring any bells?) the privatised police force have to ressurect a barely alive police officer and transform him into a super-human cyborg.
The campaign began last week when someone suggested on Twitter to the city’s mayor (the wonderfully named Dave Bing) that a statue of the character from Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film was needed.
When Mayor Bing, or someone working for him, tweeted back an internet campaign gathered steam via a Facebook group and Kickstarter (a site used to raise small donations online) was used to realise the dream of casting a big metal Robocop in the city.
The financial goal? $50,000, which was reached today. It took just a week to raise that money, thanks in part to a big donation from Pete Hottelet at Omni Consumer Products Corporation (yeah, that’s right) and more than 1700 other people who pledged cash.
And here is the latest update on Kickstarter:
We’ve reached the $50,000 goal with the help of many many supporters and a very generous contribution from Pete Hottelet at www.omniconsumerproductscorporation.com, but you can still contribute, so please keep backing the project. All the reward levels still stand, and we’re currently discussing how to branch this project and fundraising into bigger and bigger things with a better and better impact on Detroit. Thank you, everybody! Wow.
Now all they have to do is build the statue, which might not be as easy as they initally thought:
None of us have ever made a giant solid metal permanent sculpture before. It turns out to be a pretty expensive process (who would have thought?), but not too much for the world to fund. After talking to numerous sculptors and metal workers, the current game plan is this: We can take a relatively small figure of RoboCop (conceivably even an action figure), have it 3D scanned by lasers (cool!) and scale its form to create a light-weight model of any size we’d like, which can then be used to pour and cast liquid metal. Casey V. Westbrook and crew are currently leading the charge to create a weatherized 7 foot tall iron statue.
A fake trailer for a film called Don’ You Go Rounin’ Roun to Re Ro it nails the gloomy cliches, thick dialects and general air of naffness that surrounds the genre.
Compare it to the actual trailers of recent crap like Bonded by Blood (2010) and Rise of the Footsoldier (2007) and you’ll get an idea of how spot on it is: warehouse shootings, cockney aggression and overblown acting are all par for the course.
In this video a young Tanzanian boy explains the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger action film Commando.
It is the first in a series of videos for the Stop the Pity. Unlock the Potential campaign for the charity Mama Hope which seeks to re-humanize Africa as more than a place suffering from corruption and poverty.