Tag Archives: movies

Brown Bag Films – Copying again?

Via YouThoughtWeWouldntNotice:

A few months ago, someone spotted that Brown Bag Film’s “Bears” Lotto campaign looked suspiciously like Matt Everitt’s Ricky Gervais Bears. The thread on CreativeIreland.com has some interesting discussion, including a couple of posts by Matt Everitt himself, saying

I was told about this and after watching the ad (and falling off my chair) and emailed Brown Bag who of course denied that they would ever do such a thing and said that they could’nt see any similarities. What can I do? Not a lot.

Brown Bag Films defended their position by suggesting that Bears3 are “obscure” and hadn’t been broadcast.

How similar are they? You can make up your own mind

Matt Everitt’s Bears3

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Brown Bag’s Lotto Ad

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Now we have a similar situation. The new Argus Car Hire advert from Brown Bag Films looks suspiciously like the terrific opening title sequence from Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can”. Hardly something they can claim as “obscure”.

Can you see any similarities?

Argus Car Hire advert

Opening credits of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can

“Cars” 2-Disc Blu-Ray coming

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, I just wasn’t expecting it so soon. According to an article on thedigitalbits.com, Disney will be releasing Cars on Blu-Ray in June. And because of the amount of extra content and the ridiculously high resolution of the movie on the disc, they’re going to be releasing it as a 2-disc (dual layer) Blu-Ray package.

Just to put this into perspective here, a standard DVD (such as the single-disc DVD of cars that came out last year) holds 9GB of data. A dual-layer Blu-Ray disc holds 50GB of data. And they’re using two of them!

For demonstration purposes, here’s what you can expect the difference in quality to look like:

Cars on Blu-Ray

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Cars on Standard-Def DVD

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Now if only they had given the Incredibles as a 2-disc Blu-Ray release. Then I might be actually tempted to buy a Blu-Ray player.

Review: 300

So the IFF Surprise Film was 300. Not that much of a surprise. The queue was a bigger surprise – jesus, I’ve never seen anything like that. Even the premiere of the Lord of the Rings movies had shorter queues.

Anyway, 300 completely floored me. It’s a love song to graphic violence and romantic heroism, told with the most stylish visuals this side of Sin City. The movie suffers from more than a few jerky moments with a lot of the dialogue falling apart as hammy and unconvincing, but I personally found that these were mostly in the parts where the screenwriters actually tried to by historically accurate (“Return with your shield, or on it” being the most obvious). The political sub-plot had real trouble hiding the fact that it existed only as ‘filler’ and illicited an inappropriate titter from the audience, which only highlighted its awkwardness.

But who cares about all this? This movie is about the action sequences and these are what make the movie stand out. Probably not the most epic battles ever filmed, but definitely the most beautiful and balletic. The fact that this was filmed in a warehouse means we never see more than a handful of ‘real’ people on screen at any one time but the director works this to his favour, giving each individual skirmish an intimacy that would be otherwise lost.

Tremenous stuff. Gives me high hopes for what Zack Snyder can bring to Watchmen.

Review: The Fountain

Have you ever had a movie finish and end credits roll, with the entire audience sitting back in stunned silence? Maybe it’s just the type of film I tend to go see, but this has only happened to me a handful of times. The Fountain being one of them.

The Fountain is a love story. Rather, it’s three love stories, told across a thousand years. In the past, a conquistador searches for the tree of life to save his beloved Queen. In the present, a doctor searches for the cure for cancer to save his beloved wife. In the future… well… a guy travels with his tree, in a bubble, to a dying star wrapped in a nebula.

Hey – noone ever said this would be easy.

Arthouse blockbuster or blockbuster arthouse? Either way, this is not a welcoming film. At times, the ambitious storytelling threatens to derail the entire production, and the more cynical among us would almost certainly have trouble giving this film the room it needs to breathe. But for the more persistent, there’s a great reward – something completely and defiantly unique. A sci-fi movie with a very human heart. A film that can leave an entire audience breathless.

I would say this is as close to unmissable as any movie I can think of.

Jameson Dublin International Film Festival – Update

Back at the start of February, I was talking about the films I was looking forward to at the Dublin International Film Festival. Talking about the surprise film, I said

A tenner says that this will be Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain

Well, I was wrong. Sorta. Shortly before the festival began, I got an email to say that the showing of Sunshine was cancelled and they would be showing The Fountain in its place.

So instead, the surprise movie was…

300

Yeah, it wasn’t the cleverest movie shown at the festival, but personally, I couldn’t have been happier. I’m a huge fan of the comic, and of Frank Miller in general, and this was the most beautiful adaptation of his work so far.

Fast Food Nation

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For his dramatization of Eric Schlosser’s tell-all expose of the Fast Food industry, Richard Linklater chose to focus on just two points from the book.

  1. The meat packing industry is ruthlessly exploitative.
  2. There is shit in the meat.

Although they’re both very important points, they are stretched past breaking point across a two-hour movie. This means, worryingly, that by the fifth time someone on screen has repeated “there’s shit in the meat”, it’s lost all of its emotional impact.

And though there is a token discussion of the morality of the fast-food lifestyle (courtesy of a brief appearance by Ethan Hawke), this thinly-veiled sermon is so naive as to be offensive.

Heavy-handed and overwrought. I wonder if a documentary might have been the better option for this material?

Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

Advertising in videogames isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In games set in a ‘realistic’ universe, it can add an extra element of realism. Except when there’s just one product being advertised. For example, Rainbow Six Vegas – are you trying to tell me that only ads on the main strip in Las Vegas are for Axe Deoderant?

Well, that’s what it’s like in Dublin this morning. Overnight, virtually every advertising space seems to have been taken over by ads for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which ‘launched’ last night.

There’s a complete list of the movies on their website. Here’s the ones I’d be interested in seeing:

This is England

Shane Meadow’s previous film, Dead Man’s Shoes absolutely blew my socks off. Can’t wait to see what he does with this story of a gang of skinheads in the 80s.

Half Nelson

Y’know… I might take some shit for this, but I really enjoyed The Notebook. It was cheesy and soppy but it had James Garner bawling his eyes out, so I figure it’s okay. And Ryan Gosling was pretty good as the lead. And with an oscar nod for his performance in this, I’d say it’s worth checking out.

The Dreamers

Eva Green in the nip.

Once

This Irish movie did really well in Sundance. But will my seething hatred of Glen Hansard keep me away? Probably.

Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch! On the big screen!

Fast Food Nation

Dramatization of the non-fiction account of the crazy goings-on in the fast food industry. Eric Schlosser was interviewed in last week’s Observer and came across as a thoroughly nice bloke.

Sunshine

Any movie that can draw comparisons to Tartakovsky is at least worth a look. The fact that it’s Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Cillian Murphy together again? Well, that’s just a bonus.

Surprise Film

A tenner says that this will be Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain.

Indiana Jones 4 to start production in 2007

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From Lucasfilm.com

In a long-awaited announcement, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg revealed today that the fourth installment of Indiana Jones will begin production in June 2007. Harrison Ford returns in his role as the daring Dr. Jones for the new adventure. The film will be produced by Lucasfilm Ltd., directed by Steven Spielberg and released by Paramount Pictures throughout the world in May 2008.

You have no idea how happy this makes me.

Charlie Kaufman I’m not

I have been itching to do a screenwriting course for ages now. I’ve got a bunch of movie ideas that I don’t really… I don’t know, I don’t necessarily expect to do anything with them, but I want to get them out of my head, just so my brain isn’t cluttered with half-started/half-finished projects. The problem with the way I write, as you probably noticed, is that I find it hard to stay on one track for any length of time. Whenever I would start a screenplay, I would write the ideas I had in a half-assed way and then just hit a wall. I guess this stems from the way I come up with ideas for movies. For example, I want to write something called “JOHN STEELE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO DIE“, but where the fuck do I begin?

So, after putting it off for months, I finally signed up for the filmbase course – “Screenwriting for Beginners“, which finished a couple of weeks ago.

I found the whole thing very useful. I learned all the sorts of useful ‘cheats’ to get you past the various stumbling blocks you’re likely to run into. Like how to flesh out your characters before you ever put pen to paper (or uh… fingers to keyboard) – useful because you know exactly how your characters will react in any situation you put them in. Or the other cheat of buying a book of baby names for when you find yourself struggling to find a decent name for your characters. (Which led to an interesting moment when I went into Waterstones to buy a book of baby names and got served by a friend of mine – so that’s what gobsmacked looks like).

And the tutor, Lindsay Sedgewick was friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Whenever I gave her ideas for her to look over, she seemed to know exactly which bits I was unhappy with and always gave me useful suggestions for how to improve them. Although she did poo-poo one of my favourite ideas (involving a lost commune of hippies who have to re-join society after their crop of weed fails), but never mind.

So after finishing it, I started reading a few books on the subject: Joseph Campbell, Robert McKee, etc. So far, doing a good job of avoiding Syd Field. One of the books has really stood out for me: Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat”. This one stands out because it doesn’t shy away from the ‘high concept’ side of screenwriting. In fact, for this book, the higher the concept, the better, as long as it sells. Which is just fine by us here on lowbrowculture.com. Unfortunately, his IMDB credits make it a little hard to take the whole thing seriously… would you take advice from the guy who wrote “Blank Check” and uh… “Stop, or my Mom will Shoot!”?

Ugh.

But seriously, any other potential would-be-but-not-really screenwriters out there on the interpod could do a lot worse than to check it out. Especially if you would rather be the next Shane Black than the next Wes Anderson.

Oh, and while you’re at it, you should check out Celtx, a free (as in ‘speech’) screenplay editor that is replacing Final Draft for a lot of people.

Halo 3 Trailer

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The new CGI/live-action trailer for Halo 3 that ran during Monday Night Football in the USA hit the interpod yesterday. You can check out the crappy-quality Youtube version or download the high quality version from Xboxyde.

There’s something important to note about this trailer. This is less a trailer for “Halo 3″ than it is for “Halo” as a brand. And there’s a real simple reason for this: it’s a dual purpose trailer. First, it’s meant to remind people of Halo’s (and Microsoft’s) relevance in a post-PlayStation 3 environment. And secondly, it’s meant to “sell” Halo to the movie studios after Universal and Fox got cold feet and pulled the plug on the Halo Movie. Before, they were being asked to put up $135m on a first-time director based on Peter Jackson’s word and they said “no”. Now they’re being asked to put up $135m based on a well-received, highly-polished trailer.

Let’s see if they’ll change their minds.

Update: I thought this trailer was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who was lined up as the director of the Halo movie before the plug got pulled. It was, in fact, directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously directed the awesome, beautiful “Mad Love” trailer for Gears of War.

District 13 Dubbing

Before you press “play” on your new District 13 DVD, make sure you turn on the English dubbing. For one, playing it with subtitles will fool noone; the movie is thick as pigshit in any language.

But mostly you’re only getting half the value for money with the subtitles, because the dubbing is easily more entertaining than the movie itself. Bizarrely incongruous with the rest of the movie and the rest of the cast, the main character and his sister have thick, Colin Farrell-esque Oirish accents that had me laughing my ass off every time they spoke.

Worth the price of the DVD alone.

Vincent Schiavelli 1948 – 2005

Vincent Schiavelli, who died of cancer at his home in Sicily on December 26 aged 57, was a popular character actor noted for his roles in films such as Ghost and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Schiavelli’s somewhat hangdog countenance appeared in more than 120 film and television shows; he excelled at parts which required an eccentric presentation, and in 1997 the magazine Vanity Fair declared him one of the best character actors in America.

Mel Gibson Has Officially Lost It.

The trailer for Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” has emerged from the ether with Kottke and others are pointing out how awful-looking it is. And true, at this early stage it’s like a heavy-handed mix of Terrence Malick and Baraka (but without any of the nice things such a mix would suggest).

He’s got a bit of reputation as a ‘prankster’ director (on one of the making-of featurettes on the Braveheart DVD, you can see Gibson reading “Directing an Epic for Dummies”). But I’m going to say that this is just a ruse. Gibson has officially Lost It and is now certifiably batshit insane. As evidence for this, I present this image which you will find as a single frame cut into an intense part of the trailer. You’ll have to go through the trailer frame-by-frame to find it yourself.

Southpark may have been closer to the truth than we know. Kaablaa!

Trailer for Sophia Coppolla’s new movie “Marie Antoinette”

Direct Link – 21MB Quicktime

I have to say, I wasn’t too impressed with The Virgin Suicides, but I really enjoyed Lost in Translation. So I’m willing to give Sophia Coppolla the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her new movie, Marie Antoinette, a biopic about the life of… well, Marie Antoinette. Right now, it looks like Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon set to some 80s New Wave music.

And even if the trailer didn’t attract me (and it does), the cast is eclectic enough to pique my interest, with Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, Steve Coogan, Marianne Faithful and Kirsten Dunst all running around in period costumes. I’m looking forward to it.

The Brothers Grimm

I’m a huge fan of Gilliam, but I had heard enough about this movie to know what to expect – Gilliam at his most mediocre. But to be fair, the movie isn’t nearly as bad as people are making out. It’s got a lot of dud moments, far more than any other Gilliam movie I’ve seen, and it takes a long, long time to get going. But when it does (roughly around the third act), it is almost worth the previous hour or so of drudgery.

Think of it as a panto writ large and you’ll enjoy it a whole lot more.

Dead Meat

Released under the Irish Film Board’s recent ‘microbudget movie’ scheme, Conor McMahon’s Dead Meat attempts to drag Ireland’s horror movie output from the ditch it was thrown in and left in to die by the insufferably bad Rawhead Rex. And although it was clearly lovingly crafted with a definite knowledge of the genre, it suffers greatly from its lack of understanding of the genre, or the techniques it attempts to mimic.

The premise, although just a rehash of countless previous zombie movies is still an effective way of presenting both a humourous and local view of the situation: BSE has mutated into something that first kills and subsequently zombifies anyone it infects. Having run into car trouble in the middle of farm country in Leitrim, Helena must escape and make her way back to safety while avoiding the hordes of undead (both human and bovine) roaming the countryside.

Somewhat unfortunately compared to Shaun of the Dead on release, Dead Meat is similar to Shaun in that it draws on its rich knowledge of horror movies to create a pastiche of the significant releases, such as Night of the Living Dead and Evil Dead. But unlike Shaun of the Dead, the makers of Dead Meat create their movie without any actual understanding of what made these movies so scary in the first place. As a result, they fumble many of the shots they are aping, sometimes missing by a hair’s breadth, but just as often they miss the point completely.

This would be forgivable if the movie had a solid story to support it, but this seems to be missing as well. The story stumbles from one situation to the next without any indication of a solid vision driving it forward. Without a compelling story, it’s left to the actors to bear the weight of the movie, and they’re just not up to it. It’s not until the final act, with the introduction of Eoin Whelan’s Cathal Ceaunt character that we’re given a something that is genuinely lively and entertaining.

The DVD also features a making-of documentary, which was actually more entertaining than the movie itself.

In the end, it’s hard to recommend this movie to people. Fans of the Zombie genre will certainly get something out of it, but what exactly, I’m not sure.