Six hours ago

Christophe knows all

No time for love, Dr Jones

Who’d have thought having fun could be so tiring?

In Cannes for the film festival. Well… part of the film festival.

Night of the Lepus

I haven’t had the opportunity to get on Seesmic much since… well, I guess since going out to San Francisco and hanging with the Seesmic team. When I got back from that trip work just exploded and video was just too much a time suck. Over the last week or so I’ve been easing myself back into the video conversation arena, both on Seesmic and Phreadz.

Last night was my first sustained stab at conversation since Christian came over and we got drunk.

One of the longer running threads was about the vogue for comeback movies - older characters being brought back for another go at the franchise - sometimes with mixed results. I was keen to know what (probably unnecessary) sequels people would like to see and kicked things off with my need for a new Mad Max movie.

We soon had a good rambling squabble about Ghostbusters III, Big Trouble in Little China II and Three Men and a Little Crack Whore. Twas a fun night.

A lot of emotion came spilling out I’m glad to say and at one point we got this memorable post from Dana about James Spader:

This is why I missed Seesmic.

If Adventure Has A Name

Just like some trailers are way better than the eventual movies I have no desire to work through xx* years of X Men comic books, but I could look at this poster every day:

See what I did there? 45 years actually. Fuck that.

But THIS poster:

I may just get this poster tattooed.

Eric Tan… we need to have a conversation.

I Cannes Has Filmburger?

Friday morning I leave for Cannes.

Saturday is going to be fun.

Gotta find somewhere to crash on the Friday night. Should be seeing a few familiar faces out there…

We were directors once…

… and young:

The new trailer for Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull popped up before Iron Man on Friday night and it’s the first preview in ages that had the audience cheering through it. There was some of this back before Phantom Menace but the demographic for that was always skewed away from the women folk, who just rolled their eyes at the nerds they were with.

Indy has a more unisex appeal.

In fact just today over lunch it was remarked to me that there’s quite a lot of expectation laid on Harrison’s shoulders from gals eager to see him don that fedora one last time…

For myself the excitement is growing after the initial ‘meh’ of the first trailer. There’s more than a glimmer of the old magic in trailer number two and I’m already tapping into a rich vein of fan excitement over this one.

Just watching the Twitter time line get all nostalgic over a screening of Raiders was a good gauge of the Indy love out there.

Fingers crossed…

Pertwee’s Painting & Decorating: No Role Too Small

Suffered through Doomsday yesterday. If ever a director showed a complete misunderstanding of the films that influenced him then it’s here for all to see. What really struck me though was the always awesome Sean Pertwee in yet another ten minute role. Someone please cast him as the next Dr Who and give the guy some regular work.

Or is that he already has a living and acting is just something he does on the side?

Director
Smashing to have you on board, Sean.

SP
Shut it. Gotta get this wrapped before lunch. Got a plastering job in Croyden to get to.

Black Sheep have a Long Tail

It is difficult to explain what makes any great work great, and particularly difficult with movies, and maybe more so with Citizen Kane than with over great movies, because it isn’t a work of special depth or a work of subtle beauty. It is a shallow work, a shallow masterpiece. Those who try to account for its stature as a film by claiming it to be profound are simply dodging the problem - or maybe they don’t recognise that there is one. Like most of the films of the of the sound ear that are called masterpieces, Citizen Kane has reached its audience gradually over the years rather than at the time of release.

Pauline Kael, Raising Kane, 1971.

Note: Spinvox initially transcribed Citizen Kane as Sits in the game. I fucking love that.

Full Metal Jacket

The Iron Man multimedia screening was last night which means it should be ok for me to talk a little bit about the movie…

More detailed discussion once the thing opens I guess.