The Onion Takes On Perception of Obama As Elitist


Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans


This is amazing, especially the opening graphic for "War for the White House."



Dr. Ronald Chevalier Teaches The Art of Relaxating

This is amazing and is part of the viral marketing for the new film, "Gentlemen Broncos" by "Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess and starring Jemaine Clement ("Flight of the Conchords").

Can't wait for the film.



Paris Hilton Responds to McCain's "Obama" Ad



Earthquake in LA

It's not surprising that the 5.4 earthquake that hit LA today (where luckily no one was seriously hurt) was documented via personal web cams, television tapings, and other video devices.

Here's a interesting cross-section of videos I found on YouTube:



And of course there's always fakers:



Oliver Stone's "W." Teaser Trailer

Hmmmm, looks a bit caricaturish to me.



Darren Aronofsky to Helm New "Robocop"

Robocop is back...

From WENN:

Robocop is returning to the big screen - 15 years after the cyborg crimefighter handed over his badge and gun.

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky - famous for movies Pi and Requiem for a Dream - has signed on to direct the fourth installment of the franchise, reports Daily Variety.

The movie, a 'noir' take on the story about a murdered cop who is brought back to life as a robot, is slated for a 2010 release.


Meanwhile, check out the trailer for the original release back in 1987. Was such a different time when these types of films weren't a dime a dozen... Hopefully Darren A. will do something interesting with this.



Almost As Good as THE DARK KNIGHT



Text Message Hook-Up

OMG, this is 2 much. More from the folks @ Current TV on txt msg relationships.

ROTFL!



Myspace Vs. Facebook

Brilliant. (Thanks for the tip, Luci..)



Perfectly Dreamy

M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel (She & Him) perform "Change is Hard" on The Late Late Show with Craig's Ferguson.

(Wait for her smile at the end.)



Trailer for Coen's "Burn After Reading"

After the dark waters of "No Country for Old Men" it looks like the Coens are returning to "Big Lebowski" territory... Looks promising.



Ewoks

I have no idea why I posted this either.



Lemon Incest

While I'm on the post-Cannes french kick, here's another video by Mr. Gainsbourg himself, featuring his daughter, twelve-year old Charlotte. The song caused the typical controversy that Serge always seemed to attract...



C'est Vrai




Battlestar Galactica Season 1-3 8.5 Minute Video Recap

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For BSG fans, this is amazing! iMDB is hosting a recap of BSG Season 1-3 to get newbies and hardcore fans alike up to speed for the final season of the series that premieres Friday, April 4.

Great job in editing down a complex storyline down to 8 1/2 minutes, with a witty voiceover.

Check it here.



On Location With Darren Aronofsky's New Film "The Wrestler"

From IMDb:

"The Wrestler" is the story of retired professional wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, making his way through the independent circuit, trying to get back in the game for one final showdown with his former rival. The film stars Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei.

This is a scene on location for a shoot at a wrestling arena in Pennsylvania (2/9 CZW show in South Philadelphia) where they apparently used real wrestling fans (very rowdy wrestling fans) as extras.

Nice touch with the Guns N Roses tune.



Two "Killer" Music Videos

I haven't listened to "The Kills" too much, but these two new videos from their third album (out in March) sure are intriguing, exuberant sleaziness and all.

"U R A Fever"

"Cheap and Cheerful"



A Little Brigitte Bardot For The Masses

Because the French know how to do it.



Ending to TWBB

SPOILER ALERT, this is part of the ending of "There Will Be Blood." Watch it while you can. This is for folks who've SEEN the film.




Huckabee and Chuck Norris

Just in case anyone missed this. How odd. Amazing he even got Iowa.

Or maybe, just maybe, Obama should get this guy for his next campaign ad.



Batman "The Dark Knight" Trailer Online...


...and it rocks.

It can also be downloaded here.



Wow, Someone Really Misses Their Jimmy Dean Sausage

This is too good to be fake. I was raised on this stuff growing up in the South myself and haven't had it since living in NYC, but THIS GUY, I mean to get so upset over 4 ozs?

That's called passion.


(thanks for the tip, J.D.)



A Finger Lakes Thanksgiving OR How Not To Worry About Sundance

Taking a nod from Tully's advice to filmmakers on how to best avoid Sundance stress, I also did not make a film this year. Instead of checking my cel phone every twenty minutes for that long awaited call (which never has happened, but the folks at SXSW have been super nice), I spent this recent Turkey day in the Finger Lakes wine area of upstate New York with this outside my hotel room window:

We also did a nice drive to check out this lovely winter waterfall:


And don't worry, we did get some sunny days:

fingerlakes.jpg



Battlestar Galactica Razor Webisodes

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This is a shout-out to my fellow iW bloggers (you know who you are) who are Battlestar Galactica Fans: Check out the webisodes that go along with the BSG Razor TV movie coming out in a few weeks. They're pretty cool and follow Admiral Adama in his youth as a pilot fighting in the first Cylon War. Some great effects in Part 3 and 4.

To all the non-fans: Well, this probably doesn't mean very much. Carry on.



MindTrip



This would make Bunuel and Dali proud.

I particularly like the Atari 2600 style music. And C-3PO doing the motorcyle jump over numerous R2-D2's at 3:42.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

(Thanks Perri for the tip.)



Gearing Up for Halloween...


...with Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," which must be one of the scariest films ever made.



Tex Kennedy For President!


Tex Kennedy is running for President. You may have seen him in "The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell," (in theaters now, thanks to the folks at National Lampoon), where he takes on the challenge of reshaping a new America in 2097 and the dangerous road that leads him to a giant sea snake, the great, great, great grandson of Fidel Castro, a powerful communication radio tower, and the spawn of Satan himself.

In this clip, he takes on the 2008 presidential candidates and clearly owns them.

(Props to my West Coast cohort Scott Addison Clay, who was Associate Producer on "Beach Party.")



Homoerotic Candy Bar Commercial

How this 1980's Australian candy bar commercial ever got broadcast I do not know, but I bet it was fun to make. And they did name it "Violet Crumble."

(Thanks to Carrie White Burns in Hell for the tip.)



Francois Hardy Loves You



Wes Anderson's Short "Hotel Chevalier" Online Now!

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The Wes Anderson short "Hotel Chevalier," which accompanies his new film, "The Darjeeling Limited" is available for free download via iTunes now. What a great marketing idea. And of course the much hyped (and tasteful) Natalie Portman nudity probably doesn't hurt the buzz either. And yep, most of it (minus the beginning) has already hit YouTube, but we'll see how long that clip stays up.

UPDATE: Check it on Google Video.



Because It's Friday, That's Why...



All in one take, too. Damn.



Someone Should Ask This Guy Why Americans Can't Locate the United States on a Map


The totally tubular Malibu from American Gladiators.



This Scares Me. Seriously.


Whatever can be said about Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, at least she never committed anything like this to videotape.



Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912-2007


Don't ever look back. A classic scene from Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger," starring Jack Nicholson, who called the film "the biggest adventure in filming I ever had in my life."



Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007


A classic scene from "The Seventh Seal," directed by Ingmar Bergman, who passed away today at the age of 89.



Laszlo Kovacs 1933-2007

A scene from the classic 1970's film "Easy Rider," shot by the late Laszlo Kovacs, where a wonderfully subdued Peter Fonda and trippy Dennis Hopper teach Jack Nicholson how to smoke pot and have a very spacey conversation about UFO's. Brilliant.



DeBlending Michel Gondry's "Science of Sleep"



Old Yeller Unrated

Good Old Yeller.. what a champ.



An Au Revoir Simone Concert Online!

The lovely ladies of Au Revoir Simone returned to NYC recently to perform at Webster Hall after touring all over the place with Voxtrot. Baeblemusic.com professionally shot their entire show which you can check out on their site.

Here's a performance of ARS's very David Lynchian "A Violent Yet Flammable World" from their latest album, "The Bird of Music."



Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor" Continues to Jolt

I've been checking out some of classic films of the original American indie auteur, Samuel Fuller for the first time recently, including the brillantly economical "Pickup on South Street" and "Shock Corridor," Fuller's crazy take on a newspaper reporter that commits himself to an insane asylum to solve a murder story. The tabloidly, b-movie quality of the film in no way diminishes its greatness in illustrating the failure of the American dream in Fuller's gritty, sometimes looney story. Check out the trailer above and in particular, the nympho attack scene.

Shocking.



The Death of Cinema, Again and Again and Again

I've been watching (and re-watching) Eric Rohmer's brilliant "Moral Tales" series of films he made in the 1960's and early 70's recently via the gorgeous Criterion Collection boxset. A 1978 interview with Rohmer on the "La Collectionneuse" disk particularly struck me as he discussed many of the exact same issues that filmmakers and the industry talk about today, like how easy it is to make films now (back then via 16mm cameras), lack of funding, lack of exhibition possibilities, etc.

Rohmer pointed out when he made "La Collectionneuse" (his first big breakout film) that it showed on one screen in Paris and how it was impossible to produce the films that he and Godard and the other French New Wave were making at the time through the film industry so they did it independently, working with their friends, using cheap cameras, and shooting quickly. Sound familiar?

As I was sitting watched a beautiful restored version (overseen by the director himself) of a film from 1967 it made me think that today it is easier than ever to make a film and to have it seen. Whether you watch it at any of the hundreds of film festivals around the world (where you can always find good stuff), download it illegally off Bit Torrent, get a nice DVD mailed to your house, or just put the whole thing up on YouTube, who can really complain that cinema is dead or that is impossible to get work out to audiences?

Sure there's a glut of stuff, distributors seem pickier than ever about what they acquire, and very few people can make a living off of filmmaking, but when has that ever not been the case? Even Rohmer pointed out that he taught for many years and even still had one foot in the door of academia at the time of the 1978 interview.

Probably the biggest issue facing cinema today is the domination of crappy Hollywood three-quels that keep pushing out the real art from the multiplex. But as box office receipts dropped this summer, hopefully the public and the industry will tire of this.

As actress Catherine Deneuve noted in indieWIRE recently at Cannes:

"I've heard that for such a long time," she said of the death of cinema, "It's a very slow death...since the end of the New Wave..." Concluding the thought, she added, "It is still very alive, I think."

Long Live cinema.


[On YouTube, the opening scene of Rohmer's "La Collectionneuse"]



More Than Meets The Eye

I don't even know what to say about this, but I guess it's nice that people have something in their lives to keep them focused and creative.

Um, wow. I wished someone would have done Megatron though.



"Monster's Ball" Director Marc Forster to Helm Next James Bond Movie