Animoto generates “shorts” compiled from your photos and set to music. They render lots of fancy effects, using your photos, apparently in time to the music. Pretty neat!
archive for the Movies & TV category
So apparently Matt and Tre have negotiated a deal where all past south park episodes are going to be streamable free online. Pretty damn shiny. Unfortunately this isn’t available in the UK yet and we can redirected to this hilarious page.
Some awesome guy has posted an episode of The Net online. The Net was a bbc show that started in 1994 that was sort of a Wired magazine on TV. It was way ahead of its time and had a brilliant “Net Cetera” feature at the end of every programme. This was where they would quickly flash screens full of information, URLS, telephone numbers etc that you were supposed to record and then play back in slow motion. Brings back memories…
- Rather similar to a lot of other Will Ferrell movies
- Incredibly similar to a lot of other underdog-team/small-town/sporting/crisis-of-confidence movies
- Awesomely funky soundtrack
- Some nice slow-mo basketball shots
Slightly comedy nazis, some good underground/resistance banter, Carice van Houten is gorgeous, Verhoeven’s usual excessive violence.
Surprisingly dark, Costner pretty good, I was pleasantly surprised.
The fifth season of The Wire will apparently start on December 6th, aces. The site also lists five of the teasers that must be airing on HBO in the US.
I keep catching bits of Californication on TV and it always seems great. Last nights episode was called “LOL” and had Hank (Duchovny) bitching about the decline of decent spoken english, very topical. It also featured this great exchange:
Hank: “B” to the “I” to the double “L”. What’s up, my nig nog?
Bill: I need to talk to you.
Hank: Well, you should have called. I wouldn’t have answered, but you could’ve left a message, which I would have quickly erased.
OK, maybe it was funnier in context. You’ve just got to imagine the half-awake, hungover, dead-pan of Duchovy’s delivery.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”
Somehow doesn’t seem as catchy as the previous titles. I’m sure it’ll grow on me.
Even though we were on the second row and one seat from the left of the auditorium this was still a fantastic movie. As always it has a superb, gritty, frantic feel about it. There’s always one stand out hand-to-hand fight in every Bourne film and this one is no exception. The fight choreography is exceptional, I think I forgot to breathe for the entire duration. I agree with Michael Heilemann’s comments though that it seems all CIA hitman have to be male models with man-bags.
The final scene nicely echoes back to the opening scene of the first film with Bourne once again floating in the water. Plus, for once it was a blockbuster that wasn’t blatantly fishing for a sequel at the end of the film.
- Very surreal scenes in the “locker”, a lot more so than I was expecting
- Faultless CGI, as you would expect from ILM
- Keira’s hair seems to change every other scene
- Keith Richard’s cameo is entertaining and not overly gratuitous
- Initially the plot is a bit all over the shop but it comes together in the end
- Good usage of Sea Turtles
- Chow Yun-Fat is nicely menacing as the pirate king from Singapore
- You get to see Bill Nighy minus CGI!
- So Jack really is mad…
In related news, I really want one of these:
- Slightly too many bad-guys.
- An even better Bruce Campbell cameo than the first two films. His French accent had Kerry in stitches.
- The plot isn’t as smooth as the first two, it was like they were trying to cram loads of “cool stuff” into the last one in the trilogy.
- Excellent sandman “sand” CGI.
- Emo spiderman!
Danny Boyle’s latest film is hugely influenced by old skool sci-fi like 2001 and Alien. Lots of slow graceful special effects shots, very reminiscent of the ballet-like docking scenes of 2001. Mixed with the claustrophobia and utility of the internal shots of the spacecraft. It has a cast of relative unknowns apart from Cillian Murphy who interestingly isn’t initially portrayed as the lead. I’d recommend seeing it at a cinema as the “solar” special effects are awesome on the big screen.
- Aranovsky’s latest is his usual bizzare mix of “what the f*ck” and amazing visuals.
- Weiz/Jackman are both good.
- Jackman crying is sad.
- Awesome space visuals especially inside a Nebula.
- Another Mayan film?
- Remember, nobody expects the Spanish inquisition…
Kerry and I have just starting watching Heroes via our friends in the USA, and it’s awesome! The best new series I’ve watched in a while. It’s a mix of the best bits of all of the recent comic-book movies. The fun bits of Spidey where he is discovering his powers and the more “real word” collisions of x-men. It’s also chock full of comic book references, geeky characters and some excellent story arcs. We watched about five episodes back to back the other night so it must be good.
Hey The Reef! (or Shark Bait as it’s known in the US) Toy Story called, yeah, they want their font back.
Just read an excellent article on why the new series of Battlestar Galactica is awesome in todays dead-tree Guardian. I heartily agree with everything said, plus they mention Firefly so the author obviously has some taste and knows what they’re talking about. You can, of course, read it online.
I watched a very interesting documentary called Shadow Company the other night. It’s all about the rise of Private Military Contractors, or Mercenaries as they’ve been better known throughout history. It loosely follows the story of one young British guy joining a mercenary company and getting shipped out to Iraq. In between the narrative there are interviews with people from all over the mercenary world; active guys, heads of companies and retired guys. The overall design of the film is very slick and all the captions and neat on screen displays are very well designed. It also has some brief forays into animation, being used to humourlessly describe the different types of mercenary and tactical situations.
The core of the film is why do these man do it? and the big question of what drives a man to fight, for money, if not for his own country? Is it even right to fight for money if you don’t have a cause? There is also an underlying issue that mercenaries are not governed by any law except general Human Rights conventions. Under the “new” Iraqi law, no contractor can be charged with any crime. Now that doesn’t seem right…
Well, this was a total snooze fest. I was expecting another noir-ish cop thriller like L.A. Confidential or maybe The Untouchables. But this is just a very stylish mess. The plot is hardly even attempted to be explained and it just meanders between Scarlett looking teary to Josh looking confused. The first film for a while where I was actually mildly bored.
Jason Statham (The Transporter) is the bus from Speed. He is double-crossed by his gangster boss and injected with a synthetic Chinese drug. If his heart rate slows below a certain rate he dies. Great! As this means the film doesn’t damn stop for the next hour and a bit. Chuck in some hilarious David Fincher style camera zooms and on screen explanation, a pumping sound track and you can’t go wrong.
Just watched Running Scared and I have to say, I was pretty impressed! It’s another of these gritty movies that deals with the low-level mob dudes that do all the real dirty work. Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker, the guy from 2 fast 2 furious) is the mob guy who “disposes” of guns when some shit has gone down. Except he doesn’t dispose of them, he stashes them in his basement… Pretty dumb huh? As you’d expect, this leads to shenanigans and the film follows the next 18 hours of his life as he tries to put everything right. It’s style is very similar to NARC, Training Day and Four Brothers. It is pretty violent and has a particulary twisted moment in the middle which is very un-settling. Has an ace gun fight at the end and even has the bad guy from Hell Boy in it! Oh yeah and there’s a twist…
I made my first purchase from Warp’s super cool DRM free music download site bleep.com this week. It was cheap, easy and gave me a plain old mp3 out at the end. The way iTunes should be…
Saw this with Kerry and Jed yesterday afternoon after a cracking ‘Hangover Cure’ breakfast at Double Dutch. This being the second in the trilogy it was always going to be the film stuck in the middle. This is slightly noticeable in the film as the sheer amount of quests and sub-quests they’ve managed to cram in to speed the story along is a bit too much. But, put all of that aside and it’s still an awesomely fun movie. Johnny is still up to his usual tricks and gets his character fleshed out a bit more, Orlando is watchable but as dull as a plank and Keira does her usual hot and feisty pirate wench stuff. Jack Davenport makes a good return as a washed up, bitter (ex) Commodore Norrington. Bill Nighy and the CGI team are excellent as Davy Jones, his tentacles and the rest of his crew were some of the best CGI I’ve seen. Likewise for the Kraken, Jones’ pet sea monster that pulls ships down to the Big Black. I would have liked more naval type engagements and less running around with comedy “natives” and sharp sticks, but hey, this isn’t Master & Commander. Throw in a creepy voodoo fortune teller (straight out of Monkey Island), all the English extras from the first film, an evil scheming Empire East India Company and you’re on to a winner. By the time it got near the end I’d forgotten it was a cliff hanger and so was surprised when it suddenly ended! I think that’s a good sign.
In Joe’s never ending world domination scheme he has now made it on to Radio Scotland’s Radio Cafe progamme, talking about graphic novels and their corresponding movies. You can of course hear the show online thanks to those nice people at the BBC.
Wow, Revolver is a total head-f**k (to put it mildly). It’s a surprisingly cerebral movie for Guy Ritchie and I’ll be honest and say that I Googled for an explanation of the plot as soon as I finished watching. Revolver is absolutely nothing like Lock Stock or Snatch other than it has Jason Statham in it and it’s vaguely about gangsters. Ritchie has definitely matured with this movie and I had to shift my brain out of comedy gangster movie mode and up a notch to take this in. I can’t really describe much of the plot without giving it away but there is lots of voice-over and innner monologue from Jason Statham. André Benjamin (from Outcast) is also very well cast in it and Vegas, as always, makes a gorgeous backdrop. I’d recommend giving it a watch, its central theme about the “ultimate con” is intriguing.
Viggo Mortensen is excellent in this David Cronenberg directed movie. I watched this knowing nothing about the plot and so was pleasantly surprised at the twists and turns it throws at you. The plot is simple but nicely presented and keeps you guessing right until the end. In typical Cronenberg style the move is very raw, and the violence is sudden and explicit, much like The Sopranos. The ending is Hollywood but not too much of a cop-out and leaves you upbeat but still reeling.
I saw this in Forbidden Planet yesterday, it even comes with a copy of Canned Heat on CD. Awesome 😀
Kerry and I were invited to a combined Halloween and Flat Warming last night at Anna & Jen’s new place. Kerry was unforuntely working and so I went alone, without a costume. I did bring snacks, liquer and wine so they still let me in. Lots of people had cancelled and Anna wasn’t very well so the back-up plan of heading to the Auld Hoose swung into action. We somehow got stuck watching Bound (the Wachowski bros. film before The Matrix) and ended up at the Hoose just after midnight. It was packed out with lots of kerazy dressed-up folk, so I had a quick drink and then escaped to annoy Kerry at work.
Kerry and I watched this last night and it was pretty good! If you’re expecting a Gladiator-esque Crusades movie, this is not it. There is actually quite a bit of plot and acting around all the usual Ridley Scott high speed photography battle scenes.
It’s a wee bit slow at the start but picks up towards the end with the siege of Jerusalem being a high point. Very nice CG, as pretty as Lord Of The Rings but not quite as ‘magnificent’. Neil is right about Orlando Bloom’s character. One minute he is a lowly blacksmith, the next he is a master swordsman and siege tactician.
Serenity has been officially released now and I went to see it for a second time last night with The Gang. It was fantastic even on the repeat viewing and has been getting some great reviews in the press. Even Orson Scott Card likes it!
I just watched the first episode of the new HBO mega-series Rome. HBO are mostly known for their contemporary stuff like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under & Sex And The City. With Rome and Deadwood they are having a bash at some historical stuff and seem to be doing quite well. Deadwood has had a second series and this first episode of Rome was very engaging.
Rome also got a very British cast with him out of Dog Soliders as a Centurion and a whole bunch of others. Plus, plenty of Gladiator inspired action scenes and some well integrated special effects. It could be a promising series.
Last night was the premiere of Serenity which Kerry and I had managed to procure tickets for. The queue when we got there (an hour early) was already at least a hundred people and it continued to grow into the biggest queue I think I’ve ever been in for a film. The film itself was bloody great and I think stands up on its own as a fine sci-fi action film with all the usual glorious Whedon dialogue. Noticeably the entire geek populace of Edinburgh was in attendance, which included most of the regulars from the Hoose. This let to much clapping, not just at the start and the end, but at key moments which was a little strange at first.
I did read one review in Metro last week that said the special effects were “ropey”. I don’t know what crack that reviewer was smoking but I think the style of effects used in Firefly/Serenity is positively refreshing. They use lots of traditional camera effects such as objects being out of focus and rapid panning and zooming which all makes it look like a hand-held camera. Oh and I really liked the soundtrack, might have to buy it.
It looks to be released here in the UK on the 7th of October. I’ll be seeing it again and I’d recommend it to anyone else.
Wow, this week is a busy one. This morning Kerry and I went to view a flat on Lauriston Street that was really, really nice. We’ve asked for an application form and everything, heres hoping we’re the only ones going for it. Wednesday is Serenity premiere night (if I every get back in touch with Erin) and then on Friday we’re off to sunny Prague for James’ stag weekend!
Jed pointed out yesterday that Serenity, the Firefly feature film, is premiering at the Edinburgh Film Festival. This is a good thing, I would even go so far as saying this was a very shiny thing. Tickets went on sale today and the Film Festival website descended into a steaming puddle of slag under the weight of Firefly fans trying to get tickets. As a last resort I zoomed along to the Film House box office to be granted with a huge queue and lots of anal film fans buying 20+ tickets very slowly. Not good. I spotted both Pete and Erin in the queue. Erin was cheeky enough to pretend I was there to meet her so I “joined her in the queue” (pushed in). I completely ran out of time though, so I stuffed some cash into Erin’s hand and told her to get as many tickets as possible while I ran back up the road to work. She texted me in the afternoon to say she’d managed to get me three tickets for the Wednesday showing which is not the premiere-premiere showing, but still a kind of premier. Winnar!
Updates: Glad to see that Matthew and Neil managed to get some. Also, they’ve aranged two more showings due to the extreme demand!
Even More Updates: The Wednesday extra showing apparently sold out in ten minutes 🙂 Hope you guys grabbed some tickest. I also heard from Brad that if you were trying the website on the Friday some bookings actually went through so check your bank statement.
“The Inside” is a new Fox drama created by Tim Minear & Howard Gordon who between them have directed and written for Angel, Firefly, X-Files, 24 and, er, Lois & Clark. Anyone involved in Firefly, 24 & X-Files gets my vote and the first episode is pretty good as first episodes go. The series revolves around a small team inside the FBI’s serious crimes division. The people that track serial killers, murderers and profile psychos, that kind of thing. It’s sort of a mix between CSI, Without A Trace, Seven, Silence Of The Lambs & X-Files with a dash of the Joss Whedon-esque humour thrown in. Of course, as it’s a decent Fox show not getting multi-trillion digit viewing figures they’re already threatening to cancel it. It’ll probably never see the light of day on UK terrestrial so you’ll just have to use the Internet’s various resources.
Awesome, totally up there with Spiderman 2 in the brilliant comic book movie list. There is a lot of story before batman becomes the batman we know, kicking ass in Gotham City. It’s all good though as this mostly involves ninja training, more ninjas and amazing scenery in the far east. Christian Bale is pretty awesome as the Bat and he certainly looks the part with his chiselled looks. The casting of other characters is also great; Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as the bat weapons expert and Rutger Hauer as the evil company chairman. The batmobile in this movie is quite a change from the streamlined, sleak versions of earlier movies. It’s more like a souped-up tank, which kicks ass :). The only downsides were Bale’s silly “batman voice” and the lack of the original batman theme.
Kerry and I went to the see TES tonight at the Film House. He was showing a re-editing of the ‘The Warriors‘ with a live hip-hop soundtrack. It was prety damn cool. I’d never seen the film before but Kerry loves it, and now I want to see the full version. He was powering everything off a powerbook aswell, which added to the geek factor 🙂
Kerry and I went to the cinema last night for the first time in ages. Constantine was the only thing on that we both wanted to see and to be honest: we weren’t expecting much. I was expecting something on the sillyness level of Van Hellsing but Constantine was actually quite good! It was very much in the same vein as HellBoy (though not as good), lots of religious/occult overtones, a decent main character but with less nazis. It was quite quite noir-ish in places, with Keanu chain smoking throughout the film and his dusty offices above a bowling alley seemingly always at night. They also covered a lot of ground in the film using quite a few characters that felt as though they had a lot of back story behind them. I wanted to know more about all of these characters. I’m tempted to go read some of the Hellraiser comics that it is based on now. Peter Stormare was excellent as ‘Lou’ and Tilda Swinton as Gabriel (yes, the angel) was disturbingly deranged.
We also saw a trailer for Sin City which looks excellent and has Jessica Alba (remember her) looking extremely hot with blond hair. A bit of IMDB later and I find that she is also in the Fantastic Four as The Invisible Woman. The studios do like their comic book adaptations at the moment.
Kerry and I went to see Hellboy last night and damn it was good. I read the graphic novels a few months back and was pretty impressed. The stories have everything you’d want: nazis, the occult, general mythology, demons, secret government projects, more nazis, crazy nazis, clockwork nazis and some more bonkers nazis. I was pretty hooked and ploughed through all of the trade paperbacks quickly. Anyhoo, the film certainly lives up the novels and they didn’t tone it down a bit. Thankfully the crazy nazi characters are still there and have not been turned into comedy villains (a la Indiana Jones). Ron Perlman was made for this role, its just like they painted him red and he became hellboy. Great fun, although I’m amazed it’s only rated 12, in places it’s pretty nasty.
Just remembered, there was a trailer for Blade 3 (trinity) on aswell. It actually looks pretty good. I really didn’t think the blade franchise would last long but I was impressed by the freshness of the Blade 2. Maybe they’ll pull it off again.
One of my favourite films.
Hrmmmm, interesting: Pattern Recognition (2006)
Many thanks to Jed for pointing out that the Film Festival programme is out for this August.
Some good stuff aswell: Tokyo Godfathers, Primer and Mirrorball Japan all look very interesting.
Going to see Prisoner of Azkhaban tonight. Will report back tomorrow.
This is the prototype Marvin costume for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy feature film, sculpted by the Jim Henson Creature Shop in September 2003 to fit actor Warwick Davis. I like it a lot, nice visual style. This film could be good.