Flour Power

How many of the 18 references did you identify?

You can buy the Spoilt T-shirt on Threadless.

I've just seen 2 trailers for District 9 and both got me intrigued and really wanting to watch the movie. I know trailers are supposed to do just that and sometimes all the good bits are packed into them, but the film is getting some great ratings and praiseful reviews, with some people going as far as saying it's Science Fiction's Cinematic Savior.

I don't even want to go too much into reading the reviews for fear of spoiling it. Let's stick with the trailers:

Too bad it's still not out in Ireland...

Much has been written about how bad the new Transformers movie is. A quick look at the reviews on  Rotten Tomatoes (which, by the way, shows a 20% score) reveals true masterpieces of movie-dissing:

“They've managed to make a movie that is so incredibly bad that it manages to mark career lows for pretty much everybody involved.”

“Will insult your intelligence, hurt your eyes, and offend your sense of decency until you worry that your skull might explode while your brain trickles right out of your ears.”

“Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness.”

“Performance-wise, the machines do tend to upstage the humans.”

“Bay’s most unrestrained and ridiculous to date. The male teenage cinematic equivalent of snorting cocaine off a hooker’s ass.”

That alone was enough to convince me I wouldn’t waste my time and money to watch it. Then I saw this clip of “Transformers 2 in 1 minute”:

The clip was put together by Chris Phillips, creator of MTV’s Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers:

I'd written a rather critical review of Transformers 2 on my facebook blog, which a few friends had read, and it seemed to divide opinion. I'd say roughly 70% of people agreed it was a terrible film, but then unbelievably 30% kind of enjoyed it. Unacceptable. I realised that reasoning alone would not be able to crush their ridiculous admiration for such a creative traversty.

So I set to work creating a youtube clip to rival the millions of dollars poured into the film, the hundreds of experienced technicians who spent years creating the explosive robotic battle sequences, and the unrivaled wisdom of the established script writers who weaved 3 hours of narrative gold from the Transformers universe. It took me 20 minutes.

Had enough? But there’s more! If you want to know more about the “plot”, just go ahead and read Topless Robot’s Transformers 2 FAQ. It’s hilarious!

Not everything is bad, though. There’s still only one reason to just barely consider watching it:

It’s not for her acting skills, though. And I don't think she has enough on-screen time to be worth the ticket price.

So, that brings me to the title of this post. After reading so many bad things about it, now I must see it, just to gloat at how bad it is. And at how wasteful was all the money spent on cinemas to watch it. Because if you thought that such bad reviews would drive people away, think again. According to Box Office Mojo, the movie grossed nearly $420 million (about €300 million) in just it’s first week! That's more than 3 Cristiano Ronaldos!! That means it already more than paid for the outrageous $200 million it allegedly cost to make.

And that makes me sad…

Well, I guess that's Hollywood's pretty-boy stereotype.

Remember Empire magazine's Cryptic Canvas? The first time I tried it, I could only find 30 out of the 50 movies. But since I have a bit of a completion obsession, I had to go back and finish it. Here's the list of all the movies in the picture:

Brick
Iris
Snakes on a Plane
Moulin Rouge
Pulp Fiction
Children of Men
Trainspotting
Milk
Chocolat
The Thin Red Line
Walk the Line
An Interview With the Vampire
Attack of the Clones
Traffic
300
Enter the Dragon
The pianist
Swimming With Sharks
Ice Age
Crash
Signs
The Two Towers
The Last King of Scotland
The Fisher King
The English Patient
The Dark Knight
Iron man
Anchorman
Pi
The Matrix
Stardust
Saw
Happy Feet
Cloverfield
Bolt
Flags of our Fathers
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Zodiac
Liar Liar
Million Dollar Baby
Scream
Monsters inc
No Country for Old Men
The Green Mile
The Crow
Hook
Gladiator
Pirates of the Caribbean
Eagle Eye
Little Children

Was watching the first 9 episodes of Arrested Development yesterday and the whole time I was convinced that Michael Bluth (the main character) was the same guy as Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. I ended up figuring out that's not the case, but I still think they're very alike.

The graphic above was created using the Look-Alike Builder, courtesy of Totally Looks Like.

HOME is a feature film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand that addresses our impact on the planet and sets out our current situation. It was released on June 5th, World Environment Day, in over 50 countries and on every format : movie theatre, TV, DVD and Internet.

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

The movie, available on Youtube until the 14th of June, is a stunning piece of filmmaking. Shot entirely from the air (a hallmark of Yann Artus-Bertrand), it is one of the most fantastic visual feasts I've ever seen. With it comes a beautiful soundtrack that does an awesome job in setting the mood of the film. But HOME is not just eye candy, it will get you thinking about our relationship to the planet in ways few documentaries can. And maybe even wondering what you can do to help it.

I've embedded the movie below, but I highly recommend visiting the Youtube page for the HOME project and watching it in high definition. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

To celebrate its 20th birthday, Empire magazine has set up The Cryptic Canvas:

There are 50 clues to the titles of 50 great films hidden in this painting - can you spot them all? The films included all date from the last 20 years, to celebrate Empire magazine's 20th birthday - but that's all the help we're going to give you. Just say what you see, and you should get the lot!

Makes a good Sunday afternoon timewaster.

A typical movie review website will tell you all kinds of details about a movie. It will describe the plot of the movie and the role of its characters. It will discuss the quality of the acting and the multitude of technical aspects involved. Some are even all about finding out all the mistakes in movies. RunPee is different.

RunPee will tell you what are the best parts to leave the movie for a few minutes, so you can run to the toilet.

And I guess this, by itself, can tell a lot about a movie...

(via Gizmodo)

If it wasn't clear enough in my post about the conviction of the Pirate Bay founders, I'll say it again:

I don't believe piracy is hurting the movie/music/game industry.

On the contrary, I believe piracy is helping these industries, by giving even more visibility to their products, with no cost for the publishers. They're basically getting free publicity and benefiting from the fact that people who wouldn't even think about buying their album or watching their movie might just feel inclined to do it or to buy some other kind of related product.

You might argue that there's no proof of this. Well, of couse this theory is very hard to prove, but a blog post over at The Inquisitr presents some interesting facts on the recent X-Men Origins and Star Trek movies.

A month before X-Men Origins hit the movie theaters, a workprint copy of the movie was leaked to teh Internets. The copy was far from being finished, and most of the special effects were not yet included. 20th Century Fox screamed in pain and begged the authorities to find the culprits. The FBI was called in to investigate and one movie reviewer from Fox News was fired.

Star Trek had a flawless release, with no leaks or any other kind of fuss surrounding it. Pretty boring, uh?

Now let's look at some numbers, more speficically to opening weekend box office dollar figures:

• Wolverine - $85 million
• Star - $75 million

Interesting... So the movie that was leaked 1 month before the premiere and presumably was downloaded 4 million times actually had a  better opening weekend than the one that managed to remain safe from those horrible pirates and had everyone dying to watch it. I know what you're going to say. Maybe the Wolverine movie was just so much better than Star Trek, and that's why so many more people went to watch it. Right?

Wrong!

It turns out that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, X-Men Origins is pretty crappy, while Star Trek is one of the best movies of the year so far.

So there you have it folks. The movie that caused the most uproar over piracy in recent time actually earned more money than the other hot movie that garnered critic praise and not a peep about piracy. In the process an ISP data host lost millions of dollars and had their reputation severely impacted. As well a long time FOX freelance movie reviewer has lost his livelihood. All because of the pirating of an incomplete film that ended up earning more money on opening weekend box office that the golden boy movie.

Still think piracy is hurting the movie industry?