Archive Category: Movies & SciFi
The Future of Hollywood… User Generated Films?
User-generated content on the internet can reach more people than high-budget films. How long will it be before Hollywood comes up with a completely user-generated film? Darius Monsef of COLOURlovers has written an article for Cineleet that looks at examples that show how close we are getting.
Spike Lee doesn’t think we’re too far off. He has teamed up with Nokia to direct a film made with mobile phone footage from every day people. “You are seeing first hand the democratization of film,” Lee said in a statement on Thursday. “Aspiring filmmakers no longer have to go to film school to make great work. With a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker.”
See video evidence in the post. Link -via Digg
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+SU10 Ethnically-Challenged Casting Choices of Hollywood
With all the money in Hollwood, you’d think that they can come up with better casting choices, especially when it comes to ethnic roles.
Take for instance, Swedish actor Warner Oland, who was hired to play Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu in the 1930s (he did it in "yellowface"). That may be norm back then, when Hollywood didn’t want to hire authentic Asian actors, but what about now?
Cineleet blog has an interesting post about 10 bizarre ethnically-challenged casting choices: Link
The Incredible Hulk Movie Trailer
A lot of people didn’t like the 2003 Hulk movie starring Eric Bana and directed by Ang Lee, but the "do-over" 2008 film The Incredible Hulk by Lous Leterrier promises to be better. At least the trailer looks like a lot of fun:
… the new trailer kicks all sorts of ass, and looks like it may easily wipe our collective memory clean of the overly-dramatic Ang Lee Hulk. Leterrier seems to infuse the picture with the sort of kinetic energy he displayed so well in The Transporter films and Unleashed/Danny the Dog, and Norton seems to fit into the role much more comfortably than in the previous trailer. I also dig the fact that they’re mining the lonely wanderer theme from the TV series, while at the same time not shying away from kicking ass.
You can check out the new The Incredible Hulk trailer at Always Watching or in high-def at Apple’s website.
R2-D2 Projector is Super Swell!
This has got to be the ultimate gadget for Star Wars lover: the R2-D2 Projector, complete with built-in DVD, iPod dock, and Millenium Falcon remote control!
Link - via Star Wars Blog | R2-D2 Projector in Action video
Building Your Own (Functional) Iron Man Suit
With all the hoopla about Iron Man, DVICE blog wonders if we can actually build a real Iron Man suit. Step one is to check out what history has to offer, and that’s Hardiman exoskeleton for humans:
Before we start building our own Iron Man suit, let’s first benefit from the experience from those who have tried this in the past. In 1965, GE (disclosure: our parent company, bless ’em) was the first to try creating an exoskeleton for humans. But the first iteration went berserk — kicking, bucking and gyrating so much, they never chanced it with a human inside. The project was scaled down to an arm that would be able to lift 750 pounds, enough to load up a bomb onto a plane on an aircraft carrier. Big problem, though: The arm itself weighed 1,500 pounds, far beyond anyone’s capacity to handle it. The idea was scrapped.
Read the rest of the entertaining article here: Link - via Gorilla Mask
Captain Jack Sparrow LEGO Bust
"Captain Jack Sparrow is like a cross between Keith Richards and Pepé Le Pew"
- Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean actor
That’s Craig Steven’s super-neat LEGO bust of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie!
Links: Captain Jack Sparrow | William Shatner | Freddie Mercury LEGO busts - via The Brothers Brick
The Toughest Movie Characters of All Time
Unlike so many lists you see on the internet, this one encompasses cinema history more than thirty years back. Cultcase looked at classic films to find the toughest (male) characters in cinema history. No special effects, just tough guys written and acted that way. Each has a video clip. You’re sure to find at least one you’re not overly familiar with, and some you may remember as awe-inspiring or nightmare-inducing. Link -via Geek Like Me
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUIn Praise of Ewoks
(YouTube link)
From Runaway Box, who brought you the One Semester of Spanish Love Song. Lyrics are available at the YouTube link. -via Digg
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUTop 20 Screen Robots
Which is your favorite movie robot?
The time when our TV and cinema screens were full of clunky dustbins and oversized toasters just happy to help has long gone.
Now robots look more like supermodels and want to wipe us out. In fact, some of them are more hard-on than hard disc. Well, that’s progress for you. But we still love them, right? Despite the fact they want to kill us.
Whether you agree with the rankings or not, you can relive some memories with this list, with video clips for each robot. Link -via Digg
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUIron Man Redesigned by Fans
In honor of the upcoming Iron Man movie and the new monthly comic series by writer Matt Fraction and artist Salvador Larroca, Project: Rooftop and Westfield Comics held the Iron Man: Invincible Upgrade fan-art contest.
They’ve just chosen the Grand Prize Winner: the artwork to the left, drawn Daniel Krall.
What Daniel’s done here is not simply show off a neat alternate version of the character. With this one illustration, he’s rebuilt him, including character traits and building a story that informs the design. This Iron Man is the Howard Hughes-inspired Tony Stark. He’s proud of his work. He’s bringing us into the future. The actual design goes far beyond the fun of this magazine ad illo, though. It looks functional. It’s stainless steel and rivets.
Find out more about Daniel’s winning design and the rest of the winners: Link - via Super Punch
Previously on Neatorama: Wonder Woman Wardrobe: Wonder Woman Redesigned by Fans | Superhero Costume Redesign
Ultimate Summer ‘08 Movie Guide
This summer, over 50 movies are slated to be released - and keeping track of them all is a big chore. Fortunately, the good folks at Always Watching have put out a guide on which movies to watch and which to skip.
I’m looking forward to this one (oh, do I love silly comedy) : Tropic Thunder, Directed by Ben Stiller, Starring: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr.
Synopsis: A group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie are captured by enemy forces and find themselves needing to become the soldiers they’re portraying.
What to Expect: Robert Downey Jr. as a black man. That alone has guaranteed my ticket bought. The fact that the rest of the film looks great as well is just a bonus. It really seems like they’ve worked out the perfect combination of action, comedy, parody, and shit blowing up. And I gotta admit, it’s nice to see Ben Stiller taking another temporary break from playing the whiny, awkward dork we always see him as.
And why, here’s the trailer, of course:
Excellent! Here’s Always Watching’s Ultimate Summer ‘08 Movie Guide
Star Trek Bottle Opener
Open your beer with the starship Enterprise! This item should be in stock by the end of June, but you can preorder now. Link -via Gizmodo
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUAttack of the Drunken Darth Vader: the Video Clip!
We’ve posted about the attack of Jedi Master Jonba Hehol (known to his friends and family as 36-year-old hairdresser Barney Jones and founder of the Jedi Church in Holyhead, Wales) by a drunken "Darth Vader" before.
Well, the BBC has a video clip of the attack:
Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, from Holyhead, Anglesey, admitted assaulting Barney Jones and cousin Michael with a metal crutch. They suffered minor injuries.
Hughes, who was drunk and dressed in a black bin bag, shouted "Darth Vader!"
Earlier, when Hughes failed to arrive on time, District Judge Andrew Shaw issued an arrest warrant, adding: "I hope the force will soon be with him."
Real Sarah Marshalls Mad Over Movie Ads
A lot of people liked Judd Apatow’s latest comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which billboards peppered many cities in the US with sayings like "YOU SUCK, SARAH MARSHALL" and "MY MOTHER ALWAYS HATED YOU, SARAH MARSHALL."
Needless to say, the real life Sarah Marshalls weren’t amused:
one of the several thousand real life Sarah Marshall’s in the U.S., this one from Greenfield, Massachusetts, has been seriously irked. "I was shocked to see all the billboards and posters that hated against me and people with my name," she says. “It’s just so bizarre.”
To say the least. "My friends are kind of picking on me about it,” she says of the in-Sarah’s-face promotion campaign for the Judd Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall [watch the movie trailer and see interviews with the film’s cast]. “I had a neighbor who said they saw all these ‘I hate Sarah Marshall’ signs, and I saw the TV commercials.” That’s when the snit hit the fan for this Sarah Marshall and she decided to mount her own campaign. Call it “the Marshall Plan.” She made her own sign. It said, “YOU SUCK JUDD APATOW.” (Source: Fancast by Quendrith Johnson, Photo: Sarah Marshall (duh!) at Fancast - Thanks Linnea!)
Another Sarah Marshall complains about the choice of words in the ads:
"When you’re walking down the street, it gets a little wearing even though you know it’s not you and has nothing to do with you," said Sarah Marshall, 34, who lives in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. "You see . . . words like ‘hate’ and ’suck’ with your name over and over again. It just doesn’t feel pleasant inside."
Her mother, 70, who has the same name, says she cannot wait until the movie debuts and the signs are taken down. "I’m very, very upset," the upper East Sider said. "I’m an old person. It’s today’s lingo and today’s jargon but it’s a little rough for my taste." (Source: NY Daily News article by Jessica Durando, Photo: Antonelli/News)
But not one particular Sarah Marshall was quite happy with all the attention: a professor of art at The University of Alabama, who owns SarahMarshall.com, is thankful of the 20,000 people who have (mistakenly) visited her website since the movie was promoted.
Now, in her own "Marshall Plan," Sarah Marshall (the professor) is asking all Sarah Marshalls of the world to unite in respond to the ad campaign!
8 (Pointless) Laws All Comic Book Movies Follow
If you watch many of the big-budget superhero movies, you’ll begin to notice how many stylistic and plot devices they have in common, especially when there are sequels and more sequels. With millions of dollars on the line, Hollywood isn’t about to take any chances! If you haven’t seen that many of the movies, Cracked has a guide to the eight rules comic book movie series must follow. Link -via Digg
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SU10 Best “Robbery Gone Wrong” Movie Scenes
In movies, as in life, things often don’t go as planned. And when plans go awry during film robberies, things can quickly spiral out of control.
The folks at Always Watching blog have a list of 10 scenes from botched movie robberies. The results are sometimes funny and sometimes tragic, but always extremely and uncomfortably tense: Link - Thanks David!
Best Bed Sheet and Pillow Case EVAR!
Photo: Crys [Flickr]
When Alice Taylor of the wonderful Wonderland Blog visited her in-laws, she was greeted by the best bed linen evar: ET bed sheet with Star Wars pillow case! Link
Suffrage Slapstick
(YouTube link)
In this silent film from 1899, two ladies (male actors play the parts) are engaged in some sort of excited exchange when two men play a trick on them. From the YouTube page:
The film doesn’t make clear why they deserve this attack, but an accompanying set of cards produced by the production company indicates that the ladies were engaged in a discussion about the then pressing political issue of women’s suffrage.
From the British Film Institute National Archive. Link
The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen: A Mashup
Those of you who are huge Coen brothers fans like me know that despite being set in a variety of outlandish places (e.g. Arizona in “Raising Arizona”, L.A. in “Barton Fink,” Brainerd in “Fargo”) a lot of their films have similarities: ponderous voiceovers, psychotic white males, copious amounts of gunplay. But this brilliant mashup by Youtube user barringer82 not only reveals the visual and aural similarities between many of their films; it also does an excellent job of showing you how diverse and compelling their films really are. Bonus points if you can identify every single one of the films used.
Speed Racer Trailers
Good news, Chim-Chim! There are now 4 trailers for the new Speed Racer movie coming this May. You can view ‘em all at the movie’s website: Link - via Always Watching
Now, every time I think of Speed Racer, I can’t help but hum the theme song…
Savage Chicken: Do You Know What a Bat’leth Is?
Savage Chicken: Trekkie
1. Yes 2. No 3. Yes!
According to Klingon lore, the first Bat’leth was forged around 625 AD by Kahless, who "dropped a lock of his hair into the lava from the Kri’stak Volcano, then plunged the fiery lock into the lake of Lursor and twisted it to form a blade. After forging the weapon, he used it to defeat the tyrant Molor, and in doing so united the Klingon Homeworld. This first bat’leth was known as ‘The Sword of Kahless’" (Source)
For more Savage Chickens, visit Doug Savage’s website: Link - via Locusts & Honey
Citing Concerns for Kids, Venezuela Replaced The Simpsons with Baywatch
Venezuelan broadcasting regulator Conatel has forced The Simpsons off the air during the morning cartoon hours, calling it a bad influence on children, and replaced it with … Baywatch!
No. Really. Link
(The Simpsons are also causing controversy in another South American country, Argentina, when the show talked about Juan Perón)
Westerns for Guys Who Don’t Like Westerns
Cineleet has a neat post about a few movies that have the basic tenet of a Western film (morality tales featuring an antihero, code of honor and ruthless villains) for guys who don’t like Westerns.
Take this Japanese samurai flick, for instance:
Yojimbo (1961)
This film, along with Seven Samurai, is the prototype for what would be known as the Spaghetti Western. Both are directed by Akira Kurosawa, a master at his craft. Kurosawa himself was inspired by the classic westerns of John Ford, (and also in part by film noir and Dashiell Hammett novels) so in a way this could be considered an “Eastern”. The hero is a nameless wandering swordsman (Toshiro Mifune) who happens to wander into a village where two rival gangs are feuding over who gets to subjugate the local villagers, and take their resources. Perhaps acting out of a sense of justice (though he would never admit it) this bodyguard, or yojimbo, decides to pit the two gangs against each other, to the benefit of the villagers. The two gangs inevitably destroy each other, the villagers are saved, and Mifune’s nameless swordsman wanders off into the sunset.
Link - Thanks David!
Scenes from the Morgue: Retro Pulp B-Movie Ads Galore!
Neatorama reader Melia Gleason wrote to us about Scenes from the Morgue blog by Chad Plambeck, a blog dedicated to retro-pulp movie ads that appeared in the The Grand Island Independent newspaper published by the company she works for.
The term "morgue," Melie explains, is the archive department. It’s where a copy of every issue of the newspaper is kept. Usually, this is located in the basement.
Link (don’t miss the "Yuk" Buffet one) - Thanks Melia!
High Tech Noon
(YouTube link)
Darryl Gold re-edited the classic western High Noon to include killer robots! -via b3ta
Tetris the Movie
It’s only natural that the best-selling game of the 80s is being made into a movie. That’s right. Here’s a trailer for … Tetris, the Movie!
Link [embedded YouTube] - via Blue’s News
(It’s a making of a blockbuster! Get it? Okay, I know. I’m sorry but I couldn’t help it.)
If Star Wars Was Real
ISWWR is a site that collects and catalogs photographic “evidence” of Star Wars characters and objects in real life. The picture above shows a Spanish peace summit in the 1920s, attended by Queen Jamillia of Naboo. Each photograph has an explanatory history. Link -via Dump Trumpet
10 Most Badass Geeks in Film and TV
Always Watching blog has a neat post about the 10 Most Badass Geek in Film and TV. Now, I’d never thought I’d see the words "badass" and "geek" all in the same sentence (discounting the obvious "badass beats geek").
For example, here’s MacGyver:
Secret agent Angus MacGyver (yes, his first name is Angus) is such a geeky badass, he’s even got his own Wikipedia page dedicated to the 100+ problems he’s solved in awesomely creative ways. This includes everything from defusing a highly advanced nuclear warhead with a paper clip to plugging a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate. And that’s just in the first episode. Need more convincing of his geek-tastic badassery? Just check out that hairdo.
Link - Thanks David!
There Will Be Monopoly
Do you love There Will Be Blood? Do you wish that there’s some sort of a board game to go along with the movie? Something that you can play while drinking some milkshake? Well, fret not. Here’s There Will Be Monopoly.
Link | You can try to snag it on eBay
Lifesize Alien Statue
Psst! Got a spare $5,200? Then you can buy this lifesize Alien statue from Monster Galaxy:
Stands 7 feet 7 inches
Resin and Rigid Foam Head
Transparent Dental Acrylic Lips
Vacu-Form Dome
Steel Armature, Armature Wire in Tail to pose
Wood Base (4′ by 2′) Heal Pins into Steel Bracket
Latex and Polyfoam Body & Tail
Link - via GeekAlerts
Aw, too rich for you? How about this Mahogany Hellraiser Puzzle Box? Just $375.
