I Love this. How absolutely honest. So enough bitching on Facebook and Twitter about the nauseating sparkly vampires and how your wife/Significant Other has forced you to watch yet another one of the barrage of chick flick which have flooded the scene.
It’s time you got off your ass and put your money where your mouth is. Prove you’re a man!
Gentlemen, it’s time we get out a bit more. By its 2nd week Rambo was beaten by 27 Dresses and Hanna Montana. Stallone ripped a man’s throat out with his bare hands! We can’t let this happen again.
One thing you have to keep in mind when watching movies is that they are very similar to products. They have a specific target market. So to be true to any particular movie you will have to judge it not only from a “movie buff” perspective but also from the perspective of “is it good for the target market”.
So when it comes to Eclipse… let’s face it, The movie (and the franchise) is an amazing success. It’s not secret who the target market is either (the throng of giggling teenage girls at the cinema when it premièred is testament to this).
So my likes and dislikes about the movie?
1) Rosalie’s story about how she became a vampire could’ve been done much MUCH better. From reading the book, I was expecting Kill Bill style action around the story of revenge. I think an entire movie can be made around this one.
2) Anyone else notice Bella has Buckteeth? Damn those incisors were huge.
3) Bella is a ho. No other girl would be tolerated running around kissing two boys and getting away with it. Also, you can notice Stephenie Meyer’s mormon beliefs coming through with all the sexual tension and Edward’s view of getting married first, etc. To me it’s all just very confusing.
4) The Cullen’s look AWESOME when they stand together in all their vampire paleness awaiting a vampire army onslaught. I really liked the beauty of that picture.
5) The Werewolve/Vampire Fight was pretty good. But then again, we had to wade through a lot of soppy lovey-dovey stuff and a LOT of sexual tension before we got there.
Okay so after this… what do you have to look forward to from the next set… Well, from what I heard from all the conversations after the flick… “I can’t wait to see the wedding!”
That should give you enough insight into who the target market is and it all can get very nauseating.
Product placement is getting far more blatant in Movies nowadays and you can think up quick examples just from the top of your head like Audi and Iron Man for example or Up In The Air‘s constant jabs with American Airlines. But let’s look a little deeper at the thinking behind it and how far things will go.
Brands are getting involved far earlier in the screen-writing process and interrogating characters and how their brands can fit into their lives, I wonder if it goes as far as introducing character traits which would enable the brand to feature, for example, give the title character a streak of environmental friendliness and let him drive a Toyota Prius. He could’ve been driving a Hummer before, but Toyota’s paying more.
The New York Times had an interesting tale of how this all works and this little snippet I found pretty interesting and just reinforces the point I made above.
“‘You’ve written Gray has a Dodge Ram,’ Mr. Yospe began, discussing a character. ‘Does it have to be a Dodge?’
‘What’s wrong with Dodge? What have you got against Dodge?’ said Mr. Orci, a soft-spoken 36-year-old.
The group began debating. In the script, Gray is described as ‘soldier-fit’ but with ‘psychic damage.’ Could someone like that drive, say, a Lincoln Navigator?”
I wonder if this level of intrinsic involvement from brands will affect the quality of the movies being made. It could border on the ridiculous. But, taking a step back, Brands are ideas in themselves. This point was alluded to earlier with the environmentally friendly guy example. Brands have the innate talent of transferring meaning to anything they are associated with. Think Armani and Gucci and you immediately get the meaning and emotion of glamour, now associate them with a character in a movie and some of that glamour rubs off. Get it? So they do play a role in making meaning far more clear simply because brands have spent years and years of advertising making sure that meaning is drilled solid into our thick skulls.
You can imagine that this is particularly useful in movies who need to convey as much meaning as possible, especially when they try to make movies from books and epically fail, most of the time.
And then you get the movies which actually make fun of the entire process and looks at itself and society in general. Cue The Joneses (trailer below). Just watch it and you’ll get the picture. On a similar note though, if anyone has read Jennifer Government, the movie is in production, I am increasingly curious as to how they are going to portray the brands in the movie as they were ripped apart and portrayed as murderous corporate bastards. Google it. It’s going to be brilliant.
Straight off, I was not totally impressed with the book. That is not to say I do not share an empathy with the subject matter. I see a lot of myself in the search Elizabeth goes through.
I am all for being open-minded, we will never know everything and there are many who know much more than we do. We do need to let go of all the petty things we cling to, what is really important? If you haven’t figured it out, what’s important to you right now? Nobody is ever fully right or fully wrong, there’s good and bad in everything and sometimes it’s only a matter of how you are looking at things.
I still can’t figure out why the book did not gel with me very well. I have read many self-help, zen, search/journey for the truth books and this one does not particularly stand out for me as one of the top ten. Maybe it’s only because of relevance, but I also feel there was something in the story which just does not click with me. I imagine it would with women, and especially women living in western societies, a whole lot. There may be oceans of relevance and mirrored reflections of thoughts, feelings and experiences.
Given all that, I love the journey itself. The intent behind it, the search for the truth, for something greater and the realisation that it starts with one’s self. Only one’s self, and it can not begin anywhere else. Outside holds no answers if the inside has not been reconciled. Elizabeth’s journey is just one of those journey’s and I can say it is one of many, by countless citizens of earth with varying resources who will suck up meaning from the greatness of mountains to the simplicity of children playing with marbles on a street corner.
The movie is coming out in the last third of this year , and it looks pretty good. I do think Julia Roberts is a great choice to play Elizabeth in the role and I suspect I will feel better about the movie than the book. Which would be the second time for me ( I always thought the Godfather movie trumped the book).
Above all, I love how the book left me with a feeling of confusion within myself, and that is ALWAYS a great place to start. Never doubt that. Go read the book for yourself, and when it comes out, watch the movie. There is a nugget of something great and personal in all of it.
The Placebo soundtrack on the trailer really drew me in. That and the tag line "The Matrix meets 28 Days Later." Overall, it was following the recent trend i.e. normal vampire movie with a twist. Not very engaging. The only link to the Matrix was tehir se of humans to survive… for blood this time, obviously.. not being used as batteries. The Matrix had it done better though… they had a plan in place to replace dead humans… here the dead humans just die… leaving a blood shortage.
Anyway… it was a filler movie. something you can waste your time with and would be just as good if you got it on DVD or waited for it come on TV.
What was great about it was the colouring and the cinematography. It was noir in a modern way and the soundtrack fit the movie really well. Also, Ethan Hawke makes a really good vampire. On the plot… I like how they put in all the normal stuff that happens after being a vampire becomes normalised. Things like the economy, class systems, food shortages, etc. start to take over the agenda.
Best Agency Christmas Present I ever received… so far.
"So what the hell does that mean?" is probably going through your head. Well here’s the rub… the Poster design for Inglourious Basterds was akin to having a great shot of a fishfinger on a pack of… well.. fishfingers. No differentiation, nothing to build the brand. Bland. Blends into the background. Status quo. Following Market conventions… Don’t agree? Let me prove it.
Exhibit A: The Inglourious Basterds Poster (Mainstream)
Exhibit B: The Valkyrie Poster
Spot the difference. None… design-wise anyway. Now you can see Brad Pitt in typical fish-finger style… blending into the background of mediocre poster history. Why would Tarantino bow down to corporate pressure like this and risk his almost instantaneously recognised style and colouring for mass-produced crap like this?
To be fair… there were incredibly great-looking posters made alongside this one… the issue I have is that the mass-produced poster was the most ubiquitous. Which was a shit move, marketing-wise. I’d fire whoever approved it, and am highly disappointed with Tarantino for condoning it.
Anyway… here’s the great ones…
So there you have it. On the mass poster, Brad Pitt is a fish-finger. That poster should not have been made, let alone be put up as the main attraction. The movie was fucking awesome, regardless.
The Twilight Series, Blade, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood and a whole host of other new-age vampire manifestations with varying theories on what vampires are, what they can do and what kills them. But I don’t care about all that. Why do we find them so interesting that we give it all of our attention and warrant throwing all our money at Hollywood to go see them?
I think the main hook is their immortal nature. We’re drawn to something that is, in effect, infinite. Granted in our daily lives or even just by thinking we can not fully grasp the concept of infinity, or eternity. By nature we are finite beings and hence vampires, by subverting this fundamental aspect of humanity, are made far more intriguing as beings we aspire to. And we DO aspire to them, what after how glamorous they are made to look in modern literature and cinema.
But still, glamour aside, we subconsciously want the infinite and with most people writing off conventional religion and embracing the religion of atheism, vampires are the only somewhat-infinite idols they can turn their attention to. For the general religious populace, those who believe in God and the hereafter, vampires give us a glimpse of what we want to be… happy in eternity (without all the bloodsucking and free of any need, ofcourse).
This is a very cool animation I came across… it makes me feel good, you know. It’s got good direction in the way you see one scene fading into the background as the new one takes precedence and the way the characters are introduced is done very effectively.
Promotional Poster for the movie parodying Obama’s famous Campaign Poster
One thing you have to admit… British Comedy has the uncanny ability to force the laughter out of you. With its heavily-laden sarcasm loaded with metaphors and similes and utterly, utterly offensive bad language. Some of it will make you cringe while you’re splitting your sides.
‘In The Loop’ is one of those comedies you really must watch. It’s a political satire split halfway between America and the UK and deals with different political relationships and the ‘politics’ behind them. It also puts politics as a heavy-handed one-up-manship between countries (USA and UK) and within the governments of those countries. Now this all sounds very serious but look at only two aspects… the relationships and comedy. These are the classic hallmarks of great comedy. Pissed off Brits taking the mick out of each other doesn’t fail to please either.
I loved the movie and I highly recommend it.
To get the nitty gritties out of the way (director, plot, etc.)… here’s the excerpt from Wikipedia…
In the Loop is a feature film directed by Armando Iannucci. It is an spinoff from the BBC TV series The Thick of It satirising Anglo-American politics in the 21st century. The film was released on 17 April 2009 in the United Kingdom.
In the film, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom are looking to launch a war in the Middle East. The plot follows government officials and advisers in their behind-the-scenes efforts either to promote the war or prevent it. It stars Tom Hollander, James Gandolfini, Chris Addison, Peter Capaldi, Anna Chlumsky, Gina McKee, Steve Coogan and David Rasche. The film is a joint collaboration between BBC Films and the UK Film Council.
Another one of my ‘most awaited’ remakes of all time. I remember growing up with Alice in Wonderland as a story and no doubt later recalling how that particular story had shaped my perception and shaped my life. I felt the same way when I first saw the Matrix. It had the effect of a crow-bar prying open my mind to new possibilities and opportunities. I loved it.
And here it is again… so far only a few pics of the movie have been released and the cast looks brilliant, with a few staples from the Tim Burton toolbox. Namely, Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen of Hearts. The nice touch is Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.
The movie is set to release on 5 March 2010. Here’s an idea of what it’s going to look like…
Alice in the Caterpillar’s Garden
Johnny Depp – The Mad Hatter Helena Bonham Carter – The Queen of Hearts Anne Hathaway – The White Queen
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