MTV.com just released an exclusive clip from 9 that features my favorite character in the film: a sewing snake-like beast that Shane dubbed "the Seamstress." Throughout production, I kept begging for more Seamstress, and now to see it fully animated and rendered, it gives me chills. It's so exciting because I got to hobnob with the storyboard artists while they were boarding and re-boarding this sequence, watching it evolve up until the last year of production, and apparently Shane has added a little twist to the sequence since that last time I saw it. I can't wait to see what other surprises are in the final film. 09/09/09 is just a few months away...

Link: http://www.pixelnitrate.com/aig_catcher.php

Fellow UCLA Animation Workshopper Joaquin Baldwin has created a great little Flash game called AIG Exec UFO Catcher (NSFW). Joaquin combines excellent animation and simple interactivity with apropos social commentary to let players punish AIG execs for their shameful spending of bail-out money on opulent self-indulgence. There's something satisfying and charming about being able to (literally) "bring down the hammer" (in the form of an old-school "UFO catcher" vending machine claw) on effigies of these real-life corporate criminals. I just hope they face real punishment (though I'll settle for huge fines and/or prison time instead of death and dismemberment)...

You can play the game on Joaquin's website:

AIG Exec UFO Catcher (NSFW, especially if you work for a big corporate bank)

Also, check out his award-winning animated films Papiroflexia and Sebastian's Voodoo, which was just won the Grand Prix in the 2008 aniBoom Awards.

Shortly after getting back from working on 9 in Toronto, I started working for Illumination Entertainment on a film code-named "Project E". For months, people kept asking me questions about it, but thanks to an NDA and an overall level of secrecy among the production crew, I kept quiet. I didn't even tell Sam.

Now after many months of secrecy, the cat is out of the bag with a press release in Variety. Here's a snippet:

Illumination Entertainment topper Chris Meledandri has kicked off his Universal Pictures-based family film unit with "Despicable Me," a 3-D CG-animated film that has Steve Carell voicing the title character.

Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Danny McBride, Russell Brand, Jemaine Clement ("Flight of the Conchords"), Jack McBrayer ("30 Rock") and Julie Andrews are providing the other lead voices. The film will be released in 2010.

Carell's title character is a deplorable man known as Groo who masterminds the mother of all heists when he plots to steal the moon. Egged on by an evil mother (Andrews), Groo finds one obstacle in his way: a trio of orphan girls who temporarily come under his care and won't leave.

...

Meledandri said the spirit of the film came partly from taking his sons to see family films and discovering they always most loved the villains

So it turns out that if you Google "aristocrats paul provenza" my Film Diary post about The Aristocrats directed by Paul Provenza is on the second page of results (it's the 69th result directly below Roger Ebert's review of the film).

I'm guessing that's how The Aristocrats director Paul Provenza found my post, because he actually read that Film Diary entry and left a detailed comment that challenged my assumption that "Eddie Izzard and Chris Rock were drunk as fuck during their interviews."

I guess I should be more careful about what I post on this here blog because apparently it's not entirely unlikely that the people I write about might actually read it themselves. I've said some nasty things about a few of the horrible films that I've seen, but I usually remain from saying anything negative or undeserving of the filmmakers themselves.

Luckily I had nothing but positive things to say about Provenza's film. I just wish I hadn't made misinformed comments about Eddie Izzard and Chris Rock. For the record, they are two of my all time favorite comedians and I've seen them both live and up close. I saw Chris Rock live in concert for my birthday in 2004 and I saw Eddie Izzard in person hanging around outside of a Dylan Moran show.

Thanks Paul Provenza for reading my blog and taking the time to set the record straight about Eddie Izzard and Chris Rock. My previous post stands corrected.

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Current Mood: 8|
Currently listening to: Made in Usa by Pizzicato Five

Bright Future
dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2003

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) has made a name for himself as a director of horror/suspense/thrillers, but he departed from his previous work to create Bright Future, an enigmatic exploration of slacker youths.

Most reviews that I've read (see links below) have been quite unfavorable, but there is something about this film that really resonates with me. Maybe it's because I myself am a huge slacker searching for that "pet" project to spark my motivation, or maybe it's cuz I'm a huge a Tadanobu Asano fan.

Reviews:
Midnight Eye
Onion A.V.

Hana and Alice
dir. Shunji Iwai
2004

Yakuza Horror Theater: Gozu
dir. Takashi Miike
2003

Takashi Miike has directed some of the weirdest films I have ever seen, and Gozu is his most surreal film to date. The film is very reminiscent of David Lynch's work, particularly Lost Highway, and after watching the special features on the DVD, I now know Miike was intentially eliciting such allusions.

Reviews:
Midnight Eye
Onion A.V. Club

All About Lily Chou-Chou
dir. Shunji Iwai
2001

All About Lily Chou-Chou is yet another one of those films about which I could write a book, and so, I will probably spend so much time trying to collect my thoughts that I will never getting around to finishing this post.

In the mean time, I will say this: I consider myself lucky to be among the "handful of highly evolved film watchers," as Roger Ebert puts it in his unfavorable review. While I agree with Ebert that the film is very "enigmatic, oblique and meandering," I think All About Lily Chou-Chou and it's exploration of adolescence and bullies will still resonate with anyone who gets to experience the film. Part of me wants so badly to share this film with everyone I know, to make them love it as much as I love it, and yet the selfish part of me takes comfort in the notion that I am one of the few people who will ever really appreciate such a beautiful a film as this.

So I was snooping around FilmBrain's Asian Film blog while looking for a review of Failan when I found a post linking to a spoof on pirating movies from the CBC show Rick Mercer's Monday Report.

I've been browsing the several hours of the "Back Issues" archive of this hilarious political satire from Canadia, eh. Rick Mercer's Monday Report is exactly like the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, only it's Canadian and on Monday.

Rick Mercer's weekly rants are witty, socially critical (especially of Bush and American conservatives) and highly informative. I've never learned so much about the way Canadia works. One of the funniest regular segments are the Celebrity Tips, where Canadian celebrities like Geddy Lee or Pierre Berton give advice on things like tobogganing or rolling a joint (cuz pot is legal in Canadia). The show also features skits that are just as subversively funny as the masters of Canadian sketch comedy, The Kids In The Hall. One of my favorite skits is this one about the "Traditional Family".

This show is yet another reason to move to the Frozen North. Progressive politics, rocking music, and whatever it is in the water that makes Canucks so goddamn funny... Canadia rulez, eh!

(this post was basically just a sad attempt by me to see how many times I could type "Canadia" instead of that other way where the only vowel in Canadia is an "A")

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
dir. Chan-wook Park
2002

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is actually even more fucked up than Chan-wook Park's follow-up revenge masterpiece Oldboy.

Usually if I cry during a movie, it's at the end of the film, but this movie made me cry right smack dab in the middle. And as soon as I wiped away the tears, the cringing violence starts, and the blood slowly flows right up until the final frames of the film.

When it comes to torturous violence,Oldboy seems rather tame compared to this predecessor.

I hope a domestic distribution company has the balls to release this film on DVD in the US because I'd totally buy it. I also eagerly await Chan-wook Park's next film, which stars Choi Min-shik from Oldboy and the english title is Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (though this may be more indictative of a marketing ploy than a true sequel).

UPDATE (08-22-2005):
Tartan Films will be distributing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance theatrically and on video in the US and I went to see it in the theater.