SpoutBlog is sitting out this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, but that doesn’t mean we’re not paying attention to the geek mecca from afar. In a way, we get to have a more sane perspective without all the screaming and crowdedness (between Twilightand Johnny Depp, it’s apparently madness). Plus, we’re checking out all of the direct coverage, and I do believe we’re getting a more comprehensive experience this way.
I’ve selected some of my favorite coverage from the last 24 hours so that you may share in the appreciation as a fellow outsider (or maybe you’re there and want to see what others have seen/heard). Check out all the best comments, videos and links after the jump:
Oh, the ever tricky omnibus film. As Lauren detailed in her review of Tokyo!, three very different auteurs were ushered off to the Japanese capital to offer their takes on the city which bursts from the seams with post fire-bomb post-modernity. I had the chance this week to catch up with two of the three, the long dormant Leo Carax and the irrepressible Michel Gondry, to talk about the inspiration for their shorts, the specific difficulties of translations and what really motivated Michel to tackle Gabrielle Bell’s Cecil and Jordan in New York. …Read more
The producers of Tokyo!, three short films by two Frenchmen and a South Korean, aim to do for Japan’s metropolis what New York Stories did for the Big Apple or Paris Je T’Aime for the City of Lights. That the two Frenchmen are indie darling Michel Gondry and former film critic/Pola X director Leos Carax, and the South Korean Bong Joon-Ho, who made an international splash with The Host, would seem to lend these three very different takes on a single subject some serious cache. Unfortunately, only two directors rise to the occasion, leaving a gaping hole in an otherwise thoughtful trilogy.
FilmDrunk learns us that Michel Gondry directed an episode of HBO hipster musical sitcom Flight of the Conchords last night. Behold a dance number from the episode.
In a couple of weeks it will have been 25 years since Ridley Scott’s hammer-tastic 1984 commercial introducing the Macintosh was seen during Super Bowl XVIII. Though it wasn’t seen on television again until popular demand brought it back years later, it wasn’t for lack of quality. Ridley Scott was just coming off of Blade Runner, and the spot, which cost over a million dollars to produce, has been named the best television commercial of all time. Not too shabby.
But in a day and age of TiVos and DVRs, are commercials still relevant? In fact, it’s hard to remember more than a handful of commercials that have had the cultural impact of Scott’s 1984.
Ad agencies often turn to big talent to try and draw attention to a commercial, and the pendulum often swings the other way when Hollywood taps a commercial director to direct a feature. That’s what launched the careers of David Fincher, Michael Bay, and many other high-profile filmmakers. While 1984 might be the most famous commercial by a famous director, there have been a slew of others that have been equally as strange, from artists ranging from Spike Jonze to the Coen Brothers. Here’s a look at a some of the better ones, including both Ridley Scott’s 1984 (and it’s updated 2003 version, along with the Hilary Clinton version from last year’s Presidential race).
I had a chance to see Quantum of Solace last night, and while I didn’t enjoy it as much as Casino Royale (is Daniel Craig already wearing out his welcome as the new Bond?) it does have some spectacular action sequences. However, if the Blonde Bond wasn’t enough to shake up the franchise for long, what could happen if Bond were re-imagined by some of Hollywood’s top filmmakers? There are a lot of different things that could be done with the character if someone were given free rein to reinterpret Bond as they saw fit.
After the jump, we imagine the five hypothetical films that five wildly different working filmmakers might make if Bond were put in their hands. We’ve taken a bit of license here (although not a license to kill), so use your imagination with the Bonds that could be, no matter how extremely loosely interpreted.
It’s super-old news that Michel Gondry has published a comic book called We Lost the War But Not the Battle. In fact, Vulture published frames from the book almost a month ago –– which, ironically, we missed while we were at Comic-Con. But due to a confluence of forces through which you probably don’t hare to hear about, today I stumbled on Jog The Blog’s review of the book, which very much piqued my interest. An excerpt:
There’s certainly a winsome appeal to Gondry’s curly graphics, and anyone who draws their own back-of-issue merchandise ad gets a smile from me. The story, however, is also about what I’ve come to expect from the solo Gondry (more solo than usual, this being a comic), chock-full of knotty thematic threads and some determined immaturity, this time with an added splash of over-the-top misogyny, underplayed narratively so as to become disquieting nonetheless.
A bit of a surprising “splash”, considering I’ve always found Gondry’s work to be rather worshipful of women, even if it’s always really about adolescent boys. The the rest of the post basically spoils the plot of the book, but it’s a great read. Suffice it to say, “blood is spilled, sexual organs are unveiled, and Mia Farrow appears to fuck the main character, which I think is funny?” if you’re still interested (or, more interested?) you could buy We Lost The Warhere for $5.99.
Fantastic Fest, held at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin in September, announced a number of films and events today. As expected, the Jean-Claude Van Damme meta-biopicJCVD made the cut, as did the Leos Carax/Michel Gondry/Joon-ho Bong omnibus, Tokyo! Other highlights:
Wicked Lake, in which “four buxom ladies head out to the country for some good old-fashioned naked lesbian Wiccan frolicking.”
Fear(s) of the Dark, a collection of six animated horror shorts by acclaimed graphic novelists (see trailer above).
Santos, which has probably the most baffling film festival catalog capsule description I’ve ever seen: “A wild, sweeping tale of comic book nerds versus superheroes in a battle for the future of mankind. Think Ultraman with a Latin American brain transplant.”
Also: at 2pm EST today, if you’re on Twitter (check) and you’re planning to attend Fantastic Fest (check), you should send the following message to your followers:
I’m heading to Fantastic Fest (Sept 18-25)! Join me there and pass it on! New films and fun announced at http://www.fantasticfest.com
Those who mass tweet will be get themselves on the list for the Fantastic Fest opening night after-party.
No, it’s not just an urban internet rumor: winners of Webby Awards really are restricted to five word speeches. Last night at the Webby Film and Video Awards––the slightly lower-key web video-centric run-up to tonight’s big real super Webbys proper––host Judah Friedlander threatened to kill any winner who went over the limit. I guess the finest minds in the world of web video live in fear of comedians with gimmicky hats, because by my count, only one winner went over, and Friedlander decided to let her slide on the grounds that she was “pretty hot.”
So: it now falls to us to hand out our own awards, in our own totally made-up categories, for the best and worst use of the alloted five words of the night. The nomination and selection process was extremely arbitrary; all voting was done by me whilst sitting in the back row of the show, and the results were undoubtedly influenced by the 2.5 glasses of complementary chardonnay that I enjoyed at the pre-show reception. The full list of winners and losers after the jump; the winning video from one of our Best Speech winners is embedded above.
“Over the last 10 weeks, the independent film “industry” has been restructured before our eyes,” writes Bob Alexander at the Indiepix blog. “Is the world of indie film burning up? Or is a new era about to emerge?”
Defamer points to seven clips from the Sex and the City movie, posted over at BlackFilm.com. I couldn’t get any of them to play all the way through, but the above screencap of Chris Noth (who’s starting to age into some kind of Tim Burton-era Batman villain…Melt Face?) looking like he’s going to eat Sarah Jessica Parker is proof that I tried.
The Playlist points to an Onion, um, exclusive: “Michel Gondry Entertained For Days By Cardboard Box.” Who’s the Gondry impersonator?
The Auteurs, a newish film site previously mentioned here, is hosting a short film competition at Cannes. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington has a prediction: “These movies are going to be awful.”
Twitch has a trailer for Tokyo!, the omnibus film with contributions from Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon Ho which will premiere next week at Cannes (ed. note: ahhh! I’m going to the South of France next week!). As far as trailers go, it’s not much of anything––it’s basically just footage of the directors working, interspersed with the title flashing on the screen––but I know a lot of people are excited about this movie, so I thought it was worth a re-blog.
Rock musicals about rock stars are almost as tiring as independent films about independent filmmakers. They’re too self-involved and too self-satisfying, and they typically have nothing for an objective viewer to grab hold of. But at least with rock musicals, if the audience can dig the music, they can maybe dig the movie, too. This has been the case, for me at least, with such films as Velvet Goldmineand Hedwig and the Angry Inch, neither of which I would have been so into were it not for their excellent glam rock soundtracks. And now the same goes for Rainbow Around the Sun, a neat little low-budget musical fantasy, which interestingly enough also has a touch of glam in its songs, about a very cliché band leader and his very cliché drinking problem and his very cliché story of heartbreak.
Here, more than the songs, though, it’s the musical numbers, many of which work on their own as great music videos, that really kept me interested. That tired tale of the troubled, tortured artist/poet/rock star is merely a thin thread for Rainbow Around the Sun, which was adapted from an autobiographical album of the same name by Matthew Alvin Brown, who also stars in the film as singer-guitarist-drunk Zachary Blasto. The plot is like an afterthought, concocted only to connect the album tracks and their “videos”, and though the songs seem like they’re supposed to comment on the story, it’s really apparent that it came about the other way around, that the story is in fact meant only to put the songs into a context. I’d probably have enjoyed it as much, if not more, though, without the loose narrative and its underdeveloped scenes. The film could still have been what it actually is anyway: a cinematic concept album.
A call with Michel Gondry clears up our misconceptions of Be Kind Rewind–a movie I think is deceptively amazing but Kevin’s on the fence about–and both of us decide he’s a fascinating director. This Sunday, Diablo Cody will be crowned greatest screenwriter of 2008 at the Academy Awards (I predict) for Juno and I also predict it will crush her (and I’m not just saying that because I’m bitter there’s only a minute worth of interview to play here).
*Transcript of Michel Gondry interview after the jump
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
Oh, the ever tricky omnibus film. As Lauren detailed in her review of Tokyo!, three very different auteurs were ushered off to the Japanese capital to offer their takes on the city which bursts from the seams with post fire-bomb post-modernity. I had the chance this week to catch up with two of the three, the long dormant Leo Carax and the irrepressible Michel Gondry, to talk about the inspiration for their shorts, the specific difficulties of translations and what really motivated Michel to tackle Gabrielle Bell’s Cecil and Jordan in New York. …Read more
