Posts Tagged ‘movies’
I’m Gonna Start a Rock’n'Roll Group
Well, actually, I’m not. But, in 1957, John Lennon did. The band was called The Quarrymen and the rest is history, as they say.
Nowhere Boy, a new film and directorial debut for Sam Taylor-Wood, chronicles the teen years of Lennon and the set-up of skiffle band The Quarrymen, later to become The Beatles. Lennon is played by Aaron Johnson, with Kristen Scott-Thomas playing his Aunt Mimi.
The film is based on the book Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon by Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird.
Opens in Australian cinemas on 26 December 09.
Film | Paranormal Activity (2009)
“It’s not a ghost. What is it?”
Oren Peli’s first stab at film-making is a fun, truly frightening experience in the style of The Blair Witch Project.
Meet Micah and Katie. They’re your normal (if not, annoying) young couple, living together and “engaged to be engaged”. But something paranormal is happening to them – they’re being haunted by a malevolent spirit. Intent to capture said spirit on film, Micah purchases a hand-held camera to record movements in the house.
It’s this camera that tells the story. Each night they sleep, Micah sets up the camera in the bedroom, positioned (teasingly) to overlook the hallway. In their waking hours, it’s following their movements. Much of the non-still filming is done by Micah.
Film | 2012 (2009)
The Ancient Greek pantheon of gods was rife with tussles for preeminence between the immortals. And quite often the mere mortals were Sim-like pawns in these wars of might.
After watching 2012, I can’t help but think that God and Roland Emmerich are two such immortals pitched in a battle over who can play out the best disaster on the world stage. Emmerich’s thrown everything at it for his latest pitch.
For those who’ve escaped the epic promos, 2012 is a movie about the end of the world. It is the final year of the Mesoamerican calendar and, as legend has it, the final year of existence too. And this is the basic premise of the movie — surviving apocalypse.
In 2009, a group of scientists discover the world will indeed end in 2012. World leaders listen and act, collaboratively setting in motion plans for nothing less than the survival of the human species (remember, this is fiction). Of course, the citizenry are not informed, else anarchy break loose.
Web | Promoting the End of the World Online
2012 is the new movie from Roland Emmerich about the end of the world. It’s due for release in Australia on 12 November 2009. You can read about the movie and watch the trailer here.
But in this post I’m going to talk about the movie’s online presence, because one of the really fascinating things about 2012 is its online promotion. This movie has not one but eight websites, and with some really fun interactive content, as well as an interesting use of social media.
A lot of work has gone into “spilling” the film’s narrative into real life through the web. Of course, the film has an official movie site, but the remaining sites are for organisations and characters. You might recall the promotion for The Blair Witch Project, a groundbreaking campaign that unfolded the story on the internet before the release to give the impression that this mockumentary was actually based on real events.
The use of the web to promote 2012 is very similar, though less about creating an impression of reality and more about extending the experience of the movie to the net.
Anyway, without further ado, let’s take a look at the campaign.
Film | 2012 (or, Three Years’ Away From Doom)
Forget Copenhagen and climate change, people, because the world is going to end in 2012. At least according to upcoming disaster flick 2012 from apocalypse obsessed director Roland Emmerich — who also brought us Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow.
The year 2012 is eschatologically significant — it’s the end of the Mesoamerican, or Mayan, calendar. More precisely, 21/23 December 2012 of our Gregorian calendar. Legend has it that 2012 is not just the end of the calendar, but of the world as well. And this is the basic premise of the movie — surviving apocalypse.
In the eye of the storm is a broken Curtis family – science-fiction writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and their kids. Disaster movies classically involve a broken family that’s restored through the natural disaster (what else would get you back together with Tom Cruise other than human eating plants?). It’s the usually subtext in these movies.
Film | Moon (2009)
Ground Control to Major Tom … or in this case, Sam Bell. Moon is the Space Odyssey 2001 meets Philip K Dick film from director (and Bowie son) Duncan Jones.
It’s the not-too-distant future of a post-climate changed planet Earth. Us humans have discovered a new and seemingly sustainable source of energy — fusion power from the Moon. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell; Frost/Nixon) is stationed at a base that harvests the energy on the moon. For the duration of his 3-year contract, he’s pretty much alone. Well, all except for GERTY, an artificially intelligent computer modelled on Space Odyssey’s HAL9000 and with a penchant for using emoticons for expression. GERTY is voiced by Kevin Spacey.
Film | Elegy
Elegy is a brooding, poetic look into a man coming to terms with his autumn years and about to discover the fragility beneath his virility. The plot’s a little insubstantial, but the movie is redeemed by stellar performances from its leads — Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz.
David Kapeesh (Kingsley) is a 50-something cultural critic and academic who’s starting to reckon with getting old. He emancipated himself from marriage early on to lead an independent, epicurean life in a stunning New York apartment. Everything is as he wants; he’s playing it all very cool. That is until he catches the eye of his student, Conseula Castillo (Cruz).
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Fashion | Chanel Before “Coco Avant Chanel”
Dollish Amelie star Audrey Tautou is the new face for Chanel No 5, teaming up again with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet for the fragrance’s latest advertising campaign. It comes ahead of a mid-2009 release of Coco Avant Chanel in which Tautou plays the fragrance’s inventor, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel.
Film | The Music Video That Changed History?
Film | The Bad Apple: Monsanto’s Dirt File
If sin was a government office building, then an entire floor would be devoted to the file on the world’s largest biotechnology company, Monsanto. At least if this documentary is anything to go by.
The World According To Monsanto (Le Monde Salon de Monsanto) is this file. It was first aired on French and German TV, and I believe is yet to be broadcast in America.
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