見たmorphosis

So in the last entry I mentioned the viral sites for the movie Tropic Thunder, starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black (plus Steve Coogan, and he was wonderful in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story).

The news is that the site for the movie “Simple Jack”, which stars Ben Stiller’s character Tugg Speedman in a parody of Hollywood stars taking roles as mentally handicapped people (Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Juliette Lewis in The Other Sister etc.) in hopes of getting an Oscar. A bit more info here. I keep forgetting the word “retard” is offensive in the world outside of teens, 20-somethings and the internet. But yeah, the whole issue appears to have been that the background context (that it’s a parody of something that should perhaps be considered more offensive, yet accepted as commonplace) was overlooked and/or not known.

Here’s the poster in question. Judge for yourself.

The controversy hasn’t pulled the plug on any of the other sites though – more have gone up. http://www.jeffportnoy.com/, the site for Jack Black’s character and http://www.fatties2.com/, the site for his grossout comedy that stars him as 4 different characters. As well as that, the site for http://www.alpa-chino.com/, Alpa Chino, one of the other characters and that of his product “Booty Sweat” are also up, as well as his Myspace. Also Make Pretty Skin Clinic, Cody Effects – Pyrotechnic for hire, Tropic Thunder: The Book. I think that’s most of them.

But they still haven’t responded to my panda email :(

Tags: ARG, bloody yanks, internet, movies

So San Diego Comic Con finished recently, and with it brought a whole bunch of stuff. E3 was before that, and most people now remember it for “Wtf? Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox 360?”. There’s been a huge influx of geeky news. And there’s some news I find interesting that I haven’t written about anywhere, so it’ll all go here.

• Ghost in the Shell remake rights picked up by Dreamworks – pushed ahead by Steven Spielberg and with no one but producer Steven Paul (of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Bratz and Ghost Rider fame) attached to the project so far. And before you laugh at the hapless Shirow fans – he’s also attached to the Tekken and Castlevania remakes.
• Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse – Cowboy Bebop remake announced, with Keanu Reeves attached to play Spike Spiegel. It does say it’s just a rumour, but the previously announced info, with Keanu’s agent/manager Erwin Stoff as producer attached points in that direction. Really now. It’ll be horrible.
• Zack Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation has teaser footage released. I don’t care, to be honest. I saw the trailer ahead of The Dark Knight and it was a confusing mess. Calling Zack Snyder visionary is a joke. Dawn of the Dead came on the heels of 28 Days Later, 300 was after Sin City and Watchmen is coming after basically every single other goddamn comicbook movie. He’s a hack who makes technically sound but incredibly shallow and unsatisfying films – calling him Michael Bay for fanboys does Michael Bay a disservice. His films have the potential to be so much more, but I have this feeling that he’s sitting there in the background going “Oh shit, the audience is about to start thinking! Quick! Stop them! Spoonfeed them some more information!”.
• Just when you thought Singstar couldn’t get any gayer after Singstar Anthems (probably the best of the Singstar games out there along with Singstar 90s), Singstar: Hits from the Musicals is allegedly in development. I do like that they’re going an anti-Rock Band/Guitar Hero route with these games, and I admit, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” is damn tempting.
• Mythological Veterinarian sounds like an incredibly cute concept, though the whole point of comedies is that they’re cheap to make and this sounds like it’ll need a lot of creature effects. Still, gonna keep my eye on it.
• Spiderman Musical wtf. Directed by Julie Taymor, so obviously they want to recapture the magic of The Lion King Musical (interesting trivia – Timon and Pumbaa’s dialogue is localised for the various regions, even within countries. In the Japanese run, the Nagoya, Tokyo and Fukuoka productions each had different regional accents for the characters). But yeah.
  

  Arache, a beautiful, boastful young woman turned into a spider for her hubris and lack of respect for the gods. She subsequently appears to Peter Parker and the audience as in turn a powerful spider-woman who comes from another time to inspire Peter; an otherworldly lover; a bride; a terrifying (and sexy) dark goddess of vengeance; a dance partner in a charged and violent spiders dance of death; and, finally, a lonely, fragile young woman.”

  This just doesn’t make sense.

As well as all that, the success of The Dark Knight – currently number 1 on IMDB, breaking records left and right. And of course, the viral marketing campaign was a huge success. Indeed, even just Gotham Cable News is a good watch to prepare for the film or to watch later as a supplement.

So naturally, everyone and their dog wants to start viral marketing or an ARG of some kind.

• What looks like it’s trying to be this year’s Halo 2 Ilovebees – Resistance 2 has a game going on at http://www.getawarjob.com/, where you can sign up to join their army (but I wouldn’t recommend it – they’ll test drugs on you).
• Need for Speed has a viral site up at http://www.whichroadtotake.com/, which is… kinda lame really. You click around and find video clips. The weird numbers spell out “Undercover” when inputted into a cellphone with predictive text.
• The game Too Human has a weird one up, apparently about the Goblin Man of Norway. Yeah I don’t know what the fuck.
• Apparently there’ll be some sort of Watchmen related viral material – naturally, they’re all about the bandwagon. The source for this is apparently somewhere within G4’s coverage of SDCC, but… ugh, don’t want to touch that shit.
• Lost is starting up again, apparently. They had a fairly successful campaign a few years back, and at this year’s Comic Con was recruiting for the Dharma initiative.
• Tropic Thunder, the comedy about a group of actors filming a war film (Kung Fu Panda and Iron Man go to the Jungle), has a few viral marketing sites up which are rather giggle-worthy. http://www.tuggspeedman.com/ and http://www.kirklazarus.com/ are both up, as are the various websites for the movies they’ve been in. I tried emailing the Panda Relocation Foundation regarding a panda, but they haven’t gotten back to me…
• Can probably expect something from the upcoming Star Trek film as well – the creator JJ Abrams is big on the viral thing, what with Lost and Cloverfield both having big online campaigns.

Whew, I think that’s it for now.

Tags: adaptations, Anime, ARG, bloody yanks, gaming, internet, movies, Playstation 3, Sony, sucks to be me, sucks to be you

I went to the grand old Civic Theatre and sat on my arse from 11am to 6pm, watching three movies (with breaks in between, of course). I figure since no one in their right mind would want to see Flight of the Red Balloon and anyone who wants to see Be Kind, Rewind will already have some idea of what it’s like, the first film I review will be Ben X.

Ben X is about a boy called Ben with Asperger’s syndrome (a type of autism). Online, he’s a powerful warrior called Ben X, but in real life he’s a shy, misunderstood bullied teenager, and the film details his struggles.

Personally, while it was ambitious, I thought it failed on a number of levels. There were a few neat factors – most notably the incorporation of the MMORPG ArchLord and it was reasonably competent, but it just wasn’t mindblowing on any level. And I expect mindblowing from my festival films dammit!

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Tags: gaming, MMO, movies, ramblings

It’s that time of year again. Programmes are out for this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival. Listings are also available online at the site here.

To be honest, this year I’m pretty underwhelmed by the range of films. I’m usually pretty big on seeing anime at the cinema, but there isn’t even very much of that. But this is a long entry nonetheless…

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Tags: Anime, antipodes, movies, sucks to be me

A few bits of upcoming movie info that pinged my radar.

1. Gore Verbinski to direct Bioshock. I’m pretty average on the American Ring remake – it’s not bad, by any means, just not as good as the original. I am however impressed that he managed to make three ridiculously high grossing movies based on a Disneyland ride (The Haunted Mansion, anyone?), something that I don’t think anyone could have predicted would happen (to be fair, a lot of that credit is due to Johnny Depp). But really, if anyone can make a really good videogame movie, I imagine it would be him. He’s already proved he can work with CG and big budgets, not to mention shooting around water, after all. His films turn out pretty but shallow though, so I hope he finds a good writer.
2. Timur Bekmambetov set to produce The Knights Templar. How can you make a movie about the Crusades more interesting? Add the Russian director of Night Watch and Day Watch (which I still haven’t gotten around to seeing), though his upcoming comic adaptation Wanted looks like it may be a big fistful of fail (I’ll still probably see it in some form or another, given it stars Angelina Jolie as an assassin). Also, add a vampire army and the holy grail. If done well, it’ll be beautiful. But most likely, it will be really bizarre, and probably terrible, in a hilarious way. Can’t wait.
3. Guillermo del Toro to direct The Hobbit and sequel (a bit late, but I needed a third item for my list…). I’m not as hugely enamoured by Hellboy as everyone and their mother seems to be (quite literally – my mother of all people is a huge fangirl of it). Plus I never got around to seeing Pan’s Labyrinth. But I’m hugely relieved by the news that he’s taking the whole thing very seriously, with Ian McKellan and Andy Serkis returning, the Hobbiton location being reused and all that. Plus committing four years of his time to live in Wellington, that’s one hell of a sacrifice too. Everything seems to be there for it to go well, let’s hope it does.

Oh yeah, and talky bitch from Juno/pedobait from Hard Candy is going to be Jane Eyre. Bah, I don’t care.

And I want to see Speed Racer, for some reason. Somebody stop me!

Via Comingsoon.net and TheOneRing.net

Tags: adaptations, movies, wtf