Tag: film

Five things on Friday #50

Things of note for the week ending December 14th, 2012

MONKEY!

1. The Atlantic’s photographic review of 2012 (Part 1)
Heart-wrenching and beautiful; some made me laugh out loud, others caught my breath and made me cry – take some time of your day, and scroll your way through. I honestly can’t recommend this enough.
(Parts 2 and 3 ain’t bad either – there, that’s your lunchtime sorted)

2. Catfish now eat pigeons. PIGEONS.

In Southwestern France, a group of fish have learned how to kill birds. As the River Tarn winds through the city of Albi, it contains a small gravel island where pigeons gather to clean and bathe. And patrolling the island are European catfish—1 to 1.5 metres long, and the largest freshwater fish on the continent. These particular catfish have taken to lunging out of the water, grabbing a pigeon, and then wriggling back into the water to swallow their prey. In the process, they temporarily strand themselves on land for a few seconds.

More –

3. A New York Love Story

4. How to fix your soul
I’ve been stuck on something of late. A thought. A bugbear. An itch in my brain telling me that something is wrong. Something that sits between the impact of technology on our social interactions and the blind dependence/obsession we have developed with screens, big and small.

This past week, a dear friend (whom I shall miss) highlighted to me the above titled piece on Harvard Business Review. I read it. I read it again. It spoke to me. And so I read it once more.  In short: I’m going to try and read it every single day for the rest of my life.

Perhaps you should read it too.

5. A whole bunch of bad-ass trailers

I would’ve done separate posts for each of them but in a week where we’ve already seen Star Trek Into Darkness and OBLIVION both make their respective trailer debuts, I really didn’t want to drown you all in two minute videos (or more moaning about the over-use of HOOOONK as a large scale drama trailer device).

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Bonuses this week – Facebook really should do something about its Zombie problem. Joking aside, dead people are genuinely liking things on Facebook and it’s actually quite upsetting and offensive; next, ‘Hey Hetero, when did you realise you weren’t gay?’ – is quite the moving/hilarious Reddit thread; and finally, this City/United video from ESPN is a lot better than it should be.

OBLIVION

WALL-E with guns, innit –

I’m actually well up for this.

  1. Tom Cruise does good sci-fi*
  2. As much as ‘WALL-E, with guns’ is a joke on my part, it’s actually quite a good premise
  3. It’s directed by Joseph Kosinski, the last sci-fi flick he pulled together was the (criminally underrated) Tron: Legacy
  4. Sci-fi films that imagine future worldsproperly always get a vote of confidence from me (and for some reason, I get that vibe from this)
  5. I AM A GEEK AND I LIKE THIS STUFF

I mean come on, even the poster is pretty ace –

Well, it’s better looking than Star Trek anyway.

What do you think? Up for Oblivion?

 

 

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*Not only sci-fi, but also a whole bunch of other genres too. Yes. That’s right. I am a [closet] Tom Cruise fan. I think he’s ace. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about his apparent oddball personal life, he makes great films and should be celebrated as one of the best actors of our time. Go on, I dare you to argue with me.

NEW TRAILER: Star Trek Into Darkness

Watch this –

A few things…

  • BOOM. BOOOM. BOOOOOOM. INCEPTION button ahoy!
  • Ah yes, but if you take Inception-boom and add sci-fi-with-a-bit-of-screaming? That’s PROMETHEUS.
  • Villainy voice-over with destruction of cites and innocents though, that’s new right? OK, so AVENGERS may have got there first too.

I dunno.

Look, I’m fairly sure STID will be fairly awesome; JJ Abrams is a more than competent director (whose last STAR TREK couldn’t have been any better*) but in a world where fans drool over mere FRAMES of their favourite franchise, I think the trailer could’ve been a lot stronger.

And while some of you might already be cowing about the complete lack of originality in Hollywood today full stop, ‘how can anything be classed as ‘original’ these days’? I have two answers for you.

  1. Fair enough, but these films I’m talking about are super recent (and you expect more from Abrams).
  2. Try. Harder.

All of the above aside, there’s still Benedict Cumberbatch – who, to be frank, will be amazing. In closing:

Bring it on…

…but please make the next trailer a little more original, yeah? Please?! And show me something new, too. I mean, even the new poster (above) looks like it was borrowed from elsewhere.

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*Aside from one teeny tiny issue with evolution, obviously.

Review: The Master

Disappointment-meh

Lovely to look at, arresting to experience, The Master ticks a whole load of dramatic boxes but ultimately leaves you empty and feeling a little bit like you’ve missed something.

As I said to a friend recently [after seeing said film], I feel like I’m the guy at the back of the room asking ‘Hey, is that Emperor actually wearing any clothes?’

Don’t get me wrong, visually The Master excels and if the two leads, Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, aren’t up for best and/or best supporting actor come Oscar time, then there’s clearly something wrong in the world – they’re both at career-best level and push each other brilliantly. It’s just such a damn shame that director, Paul Thomas Anderson (someone whose work I have admired for a long time) forgot to add any kind of story.

Like I said from at the outset, maybe I’m missing something. Maybe those new threads are really quite shiny and beautiful…

Or maybe you should just go see ARGO instead.

Disagree?

Tell me in the comments below –

 

Five things on Friday #48

Things of note for the week ending November 30th, 2012

[click to embiggen]

1. Pacific Rim
I first blogged about Pacific Rim back in July (when it was merely a launch poster at Comic Con), and this past week a blueprint for one the giant robots – or ‘Jaegers‘ – that feature in the film has turned up as well as the first part of the teaser campaign, below –

A few things –

  • I love Guillermo Del Toro and I’m quite close to believing that he’s never made a bad film.
  • The tech blueprint is a MUCH BETTER example on how to do tech blueprints (back of the class please Prometheus).
  • I’m well up for this film, 3D-post-conversion and everything.

2.  Deadmau5 + Nokia
The Lumia 920 launched in the UK this week and, to celebrate, Nokia threw a(nother) Deadmau5 gig somewhere in the south of London.

Deadmau5

It was a bit nippy, but overall we had a good night. I grabbed an awesome video and a decent collection of photos too. Check it.

I’m using a Nokia Lumia 920 myself at the moment and, if you’re interested, initial thoughts are up over on The Voicemail…

3. Is Twitter ruining the celebrity endorsement?
This article, from The Verge, dissects the current trend of celebrity / technology placement and is fantastic food for thought, in more ways than one.

“As sales of physical recordings continue to decline, it no longer makes sense to spend six figures on a video that might not pay. That doesn’t change the production cost of a video, however, so product placement is increasingly used to fill the gap. Nokia has been particularly active in this space, with Lumias popping up in videos for Flo Rida, M83, Ke$ha and Katy Perry. Often, the deals are limited to the budget of the video itself, which can leave the performer unsure of his or her obligations once production is done. Was Flo Rida just playing a character who loved his Lumia phone, or was the “Whistle” video really a window into his life? Either way, it’s hard not to feel like someone’s pulling a fast one. Finding him tweeting from an iPhone would be like catching Bad-era Michael Jackson drinking a Coke. We can overlook a low-level sellout, but switching sides is just bad form.”

That last sentence kind of nails it for me. ‘Bad-era Michael Jackson’ wouldnever have been caught drinking a Coke because Bad-era Michael Jackson was around in the disco/pop, cash-rich, yuppy/money-can-buy-me-anything world of the 80s. NOT the new media/capture-and-share-anything-and-everything world of the post-noughties social media generation.

Basically, what I’m saying is, there’s nothing wrong with these placement deals – of course there isn’t. It’s just another form of marketing and advertising and, believe it or not, it does actually work. However, what’s required is a more in-depth contractual commitment that lives past the 4min music video. An arrangement that not only guarantees that you hold device X for one shot, but also defines that you throw device Y in the bin as you do.

The answer to the question is: NO, Twitter isn’t ruining celebrity endorsement. Poorly thought-through modern-day endorsement contracts are ruining celebrity endorsements; Twitter is just pointing out the holes.

When it comes to placement, brands need to think harder, and work smarter.

The end.

Sidenote: I love you Mike.

4. This Cheetah is Beautiful

Play it fullscreen, in HD.

You won’t regret it.

4. Live from New York
This gorgeous anecdote, via Bill Murray, over on HuffPo made me add ‘Live From New York‘ to my Amazon wishlist (hey, feel free to buy it for me won’tcha?) – and I’m fairly sure it’ll have the same affect on you too.

5. Laker Bros

For no reason whatsoever.

Like Deadspin, I just can’t stop looking…

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Before I dive into this week’s bonuses, a moment to pause –

This week I realised that this post marks the 48th part of a 52 week promise I made myself at the start of the year. A blogging challenge if you will, to reflect on the week that was and – at the end of the year – have a single blog post for every week that would show what I’ve achieved and/or done with my time on this earth.

I won’t lie. This year has been tough. For both me, and my partner. As we head into December reflecting on 2012, the year of awesome, is hard. Professionally I’ve had ups and downs, winning my first major pitch for Ogilvy was a definite highlight, but the low-points – in general – include more character assassination attempts than I’d care to shake a stick at (from friends, (ex)colleagues/girlfriends and enemies alike), as well as dealing with a few health issues affecting the one I love…

Somewhere along the line the Five things on Friday changed. Changed from things I found awesome and wrote in my Moleskine, to things I’ve found on the internet and thought you should read. I don’t know how I feel about this change. I don’t even know if I want to continue with the weekly thing [once the 52nd week comes to an end].

I guess my question is, to you dear reader, what do you think? This project was going to be a one year only deal, things have been mad – hectic even – is it worth carrying on into next year and beyond?

Let me know…

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Bonuses this week; Mark Ritson on John McAfee is an incredible read; if you’re a Mac user and need to brush up on your Lord of the Rings knowledge, it’s OK there’s an Easter Egg just for you; and finally, and rather unsurprisingly, China has a food problem.

 

Whatley out.

 

Five things on Friday #45

Things of note for the week ending November 9th, 2012

1.Heard of Vlad Rodriguez?
Up until earlier this past week, I hadn’t heard the name before either. But loving a bit of pop-culture/movie-driven art as I do, I found him over at So Bad So Good and his work is incredible. The Bladerunner one above is a fave, but his takes on both The Shining and Fight Club have to be worth a look too.

2. Bat for Lashes, covering Rhianna ‘We Found Love’

Blissful.

3. The Girl Who Would Be King
I’ve been following the progress of this book (and Kickstarter project) ever since I first discovered the first part back in June (see item 5) and I must’ve taken my off the ball a little bit because the whole thing is now available for just a few quid over on Amazon.

Blurb:

‘A novel about two teenage girls with superpowers and radically different agendas, destined for a collision that will rock the world:

Separated by thousands of miles, two young women are about to realize their extraordinary powers which will bind their lives together in ways they can’t begin to understand.

Protecting others. Maintaining order. Being good. These are all important things for Bonnie Braverman, even if she doesn’t understand why. Confined to a group home since she survived the car accident that killed both her parents, Bonnie has lived her life until now in self-imposed isolation and silence; but when an opportunity presents itself to help another girl in need, Bonnie has to decide whether to actually use the power she has long suspected she has. Power that frightens her.

Across the country, Lola LeFever is inheriting her own power by sending her mother over a cliff…literally. For Lola the only thing that matters is power; getting it, taking it, and eliminating anyone who would get in the way of her pursuit of it. With her mother dead and nothing to hold her back from the world any longer, Lola sets off to test her own powers on anyone unfortunate enough to cross her. And Lola’s not afraid of anything.

One girl driven to rescue, save, and heal; the other driven to punish, destroy, and kill.

And now they’re about to meet.’

My copy is sat on my Kindle waiting for me as I type.
I’d recommend you go take a look too.

4. Music + Social
I’ve read a couple of really good music posts this week. This first this one from Songkick talks about how they worked with Hot Chip using their ‘Detour‘ product to help book some new (and off-the-beaten-track) destinations for their upcoming tour –

We picked 3 towns they hadn’t headlined before and created a Detour where each of those cities had a chance to create a show on that spare night. We emailed all of the Songkick users in those cities tracking Hot Chip and things started to take off. We wanted to raise 200 pledges to be confident of demand and rapidly all 3 started to get momentum. What happened next though was incredibly exciting. A bunch of superfans in Folkestone decided that they were going to make it happen. As one fan said, “Most bands don’t come to this part of Kent, they tend to stop at London.” They got super proactive and started to email all their friends and even petitioned the local radio station and newspaper. It exploded and went completely viral in a matter of hours through fan to fan word of mouth marketing, Hot Chip sold out.

The post has more (as well as a pretty awesome chart comparing the fans in Folkestone to the rest of the competition) and is well worth a read. It’s a great case study on how activating fans can yield phenomenal results too.

This second post, this time picked up from the guys over at Fresh Networks, talks about how Lady Gaga’s team use the listening data from Spotify to help choose her music set in each different country that she plays.

So simple.
So obvious.
So brilliant.
So go read.

5. The D is silent
Django. Trailer 2. Bring it.

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Bonuses this week; Sharp suits – amazing (and actual real life) client feedback, turned into hilarious posters (for charity), great stuff; this interview / battle between Jeremy Paxman and Conrad Black is fantastic watching; and Sarah Silverman does an amazingly filthy thing with a relatively harmless iPhone (be warned: kids will be doing this next week).

’til next time.

 

Five things on Friday #44

Things of note for the week ending November 2nd, 2012

Wolverine Poster

1. New poster for The Wolverine
This dropped earlier this week and it is gorgeous. Bold, stark and perfectly reminiscent of the 1982 mini-series that the film is based upon. It’s a little less controversial than the first teaser poster (apparently the locals weren’t happy with the apparent destruction of their flag) and alright we’re going to have wait until July to see if James Mangold‘s version will be anywhere near as good as I hoped Aronofsky’s version would be but still, it bodes well.

If you want to know more about The Wolverine, I’d suggest you go and watch this video (featuring my friend Ryan, and posted by my friend Rob – the guys I mentioned I last week), which features an interview with both the film’s lead and director.

2. Taste the rain

I have a love/hate affair with autumn at the moment, but this piece of art speaks to me on so many levels. I just, I just can’t stop looking at it. It’s crying out for breath. There’s so much going on. I adore it.

via

3. Halloween!

Beetlejuice + Grandmama

Any excuse for dress up, right?

Two parties, one costume.

Epic times.

4. Muse are hilarious
This is old, but I don’t care. I liked it. Apparently, Muse don’t like to mime.

Brilliant.

5. Rob’s THINGS
This week I (re)discovered the blog of Rob Hinchcliffe. He does a similar thing to my Five Things but his is called ‘Inspiring and Interesting Things This Week‘ or ‘I.I.T.T.W.‘ (catchy, I know). If you’re after a source of interestingness (hey, that might a reason you’re reading this post right now), then I recommend you go have a look.

Seriously, without it I wouldn’t have discovered the by far away best thing I’ve read all week which was this fantastic three page long interview with the master magician Teller (one half of Penn & Teller).

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Bonuses this week; apparently psychopaths are more attractive than the rest of us (this explains a LOT); all the 2screen reports you’ll ever need (big love to The Guardian for that one); and this piece from Warren Ellis is a damn good read too. 

 

Whatley out.

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EDIT: Apologies to those of you that subscribe by email and received an unfinished article in your inboxes early this morning. God knows how I managed to hit the publish button by mistake, but I did. And hey, if you don’t subscribe by email, why don’t you give it a go? You’ll never miss a post and it’s easy too – you just have to pop your email address in one of the boxes on the right and you’re away!

Review: SKYFALL

[no spoilers]

It’s been five months since I first blogged about Bond’s latest outing and back then I said the following:

‘Already this looks like quite possibly the most gorgeous Bond film to date… with the tonality of Craig and the emotive & visual depth of Mendes, the third of this generation’s Bond is set to be the best one yet.’

Having just got home from catching up with Bond at London’s BFI IMAX I am ridiculously happy to report that I was 100% correct with my prediction:

SKYFALL is magnificent.

Historically, I like to keep my film reviews spoiler free. This review is no exception; there’ll be no giveaways here.

So, where do I begin? With Bond, of course.

Daniel Craig is perfect.

On form, settled in and completely existing within James Bond, when people cross him and damage the things that matter to him most, you feel his anger and his vengeful determination. The darkness (that must exist for Bond to be true) is present, but coloured with a dark humour. A flash of a wink, a half-smile – this is the 007 that has been stirring underneath Fleming’s pages since he was first committed to paper back in 1958.

It’s true: Bond has never been better.

For this to work however, our excellent hero needs an equally brilliant villain – and in Javier Bardem’s ‘Silva’, we have just that. Flirtatious, dangerous, enigmatic, and bizarrely sexually charged, Bardem delivers a performance that is reminiscent of Christopher Walken as Max Zorin (in 1985’s View to a Kill).

At first I thought it was the hair, but not so. With Silva there’s that same sense of wild destruction, that flair for the theatrical, that reminds me of Walken so. And yet, whilst Bardem never reaches the sinister heights of his career-defining turn in No Country For Old Men, the character of Silva doesn’t really demand it. He’s cunning, meticulous and driven – and a superb foil for our lead protagonist.

However if this film was ever to be defined as a two-hander, it would not be Bardem who would take the co-starring role next to Craig. No no. That role would go to Dame Judi Dench: giving us (and Bond) the most active and versatile ‘M’ we’ve ever seen – allowing her professional veneer to only just cover the maternal pride and instinct she hides throughout, Dench excels as the head of British intelligence.

In fact, I would go so far to say that SKYFALL is more about Bond’s relationship with M than it has ever been (in more ways than one).

As is standard procedure, the supporting characters are also given their fair share of the limelight. Ben Whishaw as Bond’s new Quartermaster plays it with just the right amount of humour that is fitting for the role (ie: not too much, with a distinct air of competence and respect for what is his domain and what is not). I look forward to where this goes, much.

Ralph Fiennes is surprisingly good as governmental envoy Gareth Mallory, as is Naomie Harris as Bond’s agent support, Eve. However, I think a special mention should go to Rory Kinnear, whose ‘Tanner’ is understated, under-played and every bit as believable as he should be.

Which brings us to Mendes. Sam Mendes. It has to be said:

Bond is beautiful.

Several times throughout I audibly gasped at the images thrown in front of me. From the rooftops of Istanbul through to the casinos of Macau, the splendour of Skyfall really has to be seen on the BIG screen to be appreciated (I mean it, if you can see it at the/an IMAX then do so), a fist fight in front of an electric jellyfish is a stand out.

As I type, I’m listening to the Skyfall OST on Spotify and being reminded of just how awesome and lifting it is. Reflecting backwards, and at the same time springing forward – the score is as every bit a celebration of 50 years of Bond as the film.

Visiting the world of Bond through the eyes (and ears) of Mendes is a gift. I said it before and I’ll say it again: the colours, the composition; all of it is just so visually sumptuous you can’t help but be drawn to this film.

It enraptures and snares, it casts all of what you know aside and starts again all over without fear and without folly.

This is not the Bond you used to know, but in a way – it’s the Bond you’ve always known.

Skyfall is incredible.

When the final credits roll, you’ll wonder how the 50 years of Bond on film have passed so quickly and yet you’re left kind of knowing exactly how the next 50 years are going to roll.

Well done, 007.

 

Very well done indeed.

 

 

Lumia 800 spotted in The Wolverine?

Yeah, I think so –

Wolverine 2, aka ‘The Wolverine‘, is coming / rising soon. Filming is underway right now and slowly but surely set photos are leaking their way onto the internet. So far, we’ve only seen snaps of our eponymous hero but today, we got a peek at the two main villains he’ll be facing up against: Silver Samurai and Viper.

The really interesting thing is that the latter of the two has been spotted sporting what seems to be the Nokia Lumia 800.

Take a look –

That certainly looks like a Cyan(?) Lumia 800 to me. The flash is in the wrong place to be anything else.

But why?

Nokia has previous when it comes to placement in superhero films (trust me, I know), and it works best when it’s actually part and parcel of the film’s storyline as opposed to being fudged in at the last minute. Fortunately it’s looking very much like the former here – which is ace.

However, all I’m left wondering is: why the Lumia 800 and not the Lumia 820, or the 920 for that matter?

If I were a bad-ass super villain, I don’t think I’d settle for WP7.8.

 

#justsayin