Craig’s worst nightmare… realized. In an example of synergy synergyzing to the synmax, Paramount/Viacom’s Tropic Thunder character Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) appeared on Viacom’s MTV Movie Awards for an excruciating dance sequence with Jennifer Lopez. All of this was a subtle way to test the viability of a Paramount feature starring Les Grossman. So get ready for 90 minutes of f-bombs, booty-shaking, and Ludacris. You can’t beat synergy. It’s bigger than all of us.
Get excited. New Schnabel, this fall, starring Slumdog’s Freida Pinto. While more overtly political than the stunning Diving Bell and the Butterfly (the film focuses on the Israel-Palestine issue), it will still most likely contain the heart and humanity that made his last picture one of the best of the decade as the film follows an orphanage created in Israel by a Palestinian. It will release this fall, if the Weinsteins can stay in business that long. (via Elsewhere and Goldenfiddle)
There goes Christmas.
In a bad sign for everyone, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s first film as co-writers/directors, Cemetery Junction, is going straight to DVD in the States. The film has received, let’s say, mixed reviews, but it’s still a shame to see the next brainchild from the The Office and Extras masterminds fall by the wayside. It drops into your living rooms August 17th. (via Vulture)
If you’re with it, you’re with it. There seems to be little reason to argue about the aesthetics of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, and now Micmacs). Either you find the style endearing or cloying. Micmacs more so than any of Jeunet’s other films is unconcerned with whether you like his style or even with questions of plot or character. If you’re game for the trip, then hop aboard for a joyous celebration of entertainment.
The film is not really about Danny Boon’s bullet-in-his-head Bazil. The film is about films, as evidenced right away by Bazil’s job at a video store and the classic Warner Bros. opening title cards. In its self-reflexive love of cinema specifically, it recalls The Life Aquatic or 8 1/2 even, films that feel more like fever dreams than three-act filmed plays. Jeunet has characters drive by posters for Micmacs itself, even sometimes completing the tableau, constantly reminding the audience that they are watching a staged entertainment, something created for their enjoyment.
And Jeunet does not stop with film. Micmacs praises and plays with all forms of mass entertainment, from mime to street performance to stage acting to puppetry to radio to the cinema. With its storybook junkyard aesthetic, Micmacs celebrates creation itself, succeeding where Michel Gondry failed in Be Kind Rewind. Jeunet explores the little tricks and sleights of hand that give scrap metal life and personality, that make a canvas a work of art.
The last shot of the film perfectly summarizes the feeling Jeunet has been trying to capture the whole time. A blouse and skirt hang limp, and then a machine starts twirling the hanger, giving the clothing volume and bounce. Life. A bewitching woman dancing. As the camera slowly tracks by, the machine stops, and we again see that there’s nothing more there than a blouse and a skirt. Art comes not from the objects but from what we do with them, how we infuse ourselves in them, how we create something anew and beautiful with someone else’s refuse.
In a world constantly consumed by megapixels, dpi, resolution, and DSLRs, the message feels more relevant and timely than ever. It’s not the tools that make the characters artists - and it’s not the camera, the lenses, or the lighting rigs that make Micmacs great - it’s the joy of creating, of making something, that makes Micmacs a joy.
One day very, very soon, I will tell someone I used to cut with a mouse, and that person will look at me as if I said I could dial a phone by saying “Klondike-558.” (via AT)
Part 1 of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “Your Studio and You.”
Your Studio and You is a comedy short film created in 1995 by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and commissioned by comedic filmmaker David Zucker. It was to be played at a party Seagram threw for its employees acquired as a result of its Universal Studios take-over. It parodies the style of 1950s educational films such as Duck and Cover, while poking fun at Universal and its talent. It was shot in the Universal Studios backlot[citation needed], and it runs approximately fourteen minutes.
Upon commissioning the duo to make this film, David Zucker failed to mention that there was no script, so everything was written by Parker and Stone less than an hour before it was shot[citation needed]. The two were up for six and a half days straight filming, the longest they had ever gone without sleeping[citation needed].
The film is notable in that it was Stone and Parker’s first Hollywood gig.
I’m still not sure how or why this exists, but it’s beautiful in its deadpan absurdity. Parker and Stone had it from the very beginning.
(short via Dan, info via Wiki)
Success: We cut the leaking oil pipe!
Wait, what?
I would be angry at the seeming laissez-faire approach by BP and Obama if I thought anyone had any idea how to fix this thing.
The Internet: Fair and Balanced.
(Re: this. On the plus side, a lot of kids are learning about Irish literary history today.)
