VIDEO - ‘Everything Wrong With Skyfall In 4 Minutes Or Less’
I love the internet for videos just like these. The dudes at CinemaSins posted this latest video in their ‘Everything Wrong With..’ series a couple of months back and thanks to the power of Facebook, I am only getting around to see it now.
This time around it features Skyfall, a movie I happen to really, really love.
Alas, after watching this brilliant takedown of it, I don’t think I will be able to look at it the same way. Who am I kidding? This video and the film it is based on are both awesome.
So without further ado, I present to you: Everything Wrong With Skyfall In 4 Minutes.
Original Article http://bit.ly/11VLpWU
VIDEO - Extremely Proud To Launch The First Ever “Xavierpop Movie Minute” Previewing Marvel’s “Iron Man 3”
I am fiercely proud to announce a new feature here as we launch our weekly video series the Xavierpop Movie Minute. Our goal with this video is to give a quick preview of the films opening that weekend – should you watch it? should you skip it? We will let you know.
And we haven’t steered you wrong yet have we?
First up is a super-extended version that features the first big blockbuster of the summer – Marvel’s Iron Man 3.
We hope you like it and keep coming back.
Links mentioned in this video:
- Star Trek Into Darkness trailer - Epic Man Of Steel trailer - 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival Announces Lineup - Xavierpop’s full coverage of Marvel’s Iron Man 3
Original Article http://bit.ly/Y1Zql6
Preview Trailer & 20+ Images For This Weekend’s “Doctor Who” Episode ‘Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis’
This season of Doctor Who is rolling merrily along. So far, except for that submarine one, we have had some great episodes. It is all leading up to the season finale where we apparently find out the answer to the question ‘Doctor Who?’
Can’t wait.
In the meantime, we have a preview and some images from this weeks episode titled Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis.
Check them all out below and see you this weekend.
Original Article http://bit.ly/15KwmDL
Best Documentary Short ‘Inocente’ makes history as first Kickstarter-funded film to win Oscar
Amongst the hubbub and craziness that is the Academy Awards, something very cool happened for nerds everywhere.
Fine Films’ Inocente made history during the ceremony as the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar. Taking the prize for Best Documentary Short, Inocente is directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine and follows the story of a “15-year-old homeless and undocumented girl living in California who refuses to give up on her dream of being an artist.”
What I really like about this is that while Kickstarter has been an excellent outlet for those with a dream, this Oscar win is the first real sign of legitimacy for the concept for crowdfunding.
Last month, Kickstarter announced that it helped raise over $100 million for film projects, with roughly 40 percent of those funds going to fund documentaries. As more and more people jump on board this methodology of getting money to bring products to market – in this case film, I would imagine that with this win, we will start to see bigger and bigger names dipping their toes into the idea and using Kickstarter to do so.
Congratulations to all.
Check out the video below that, pardon the pun, kickstarted it all. Watching it, I am very glad that this documentary was made and how it was made. Here’s hoping that Kickstarter, and us as supporters, can help more stories like this be told.
Original Article http://bit.ly/15f1DLQ
Xavierpop Does The Oscars - Footage From EVERY Best Picture Oscar Winners All Cut Together For One Very Cool Video
To get you in the mood for the Best Picture Category tonight for the 2013 Academy Awards (which I have picked to go to Argo), check out this great video that cuts together video montage featuring footage from all 84 years of Best Picture winners to date.
It’s kind of fun to watch and see when the Academy got it so right and the times they got it so wrong.
Check it out the video below:
Original Article http://bit.ly/YqlIe1
Xavierpop Does Oscars - Check Out All 7 Of The Seth MacFarlane Oscar Promo Videos
Outside of the pomp and circumstance around the films and the awards, one of the most hyped aspects of this year’s festivities is around how the host Seth MacFarlane will do.
If folks thinks he is going to hold back, then we are in for a very interesting night.
Leading up to the Oscars, ABC has been promoting the ceremony with a bunch of TV spots featuring the Family Guy/American Dad/TED creator. They are actually pretty funny. My favourite is the Ask Your Kids one.
Check them all out below:
Original Article http://bit.ly/XVfhxq
Xavierpop Does Telluride - First Reactions to Ken Burns’ “Central Park Five”
And the beat goes on with the Telluride Film Festival. Basically we are all getting a preview to #TIFF12 and whether or not you should use one of your precious slots with a particular film. Next up we have Ken Burns’ Central Park Five which had its premiere earlier.
Check out the buzz in the social sphere below. Quick note, if you are interested in this doc but its sold out already a TIFF, check out the very well-made West Memphis 3. You will thank me later.
Xavierpop Does Telluride – First Reactions To Greta Gerwig’s “Frances Ha” (Time To Juggle Your #TIFF12 List)
I have seen a few “film-critic’s” TIFF12 lists saying that the Greta Gerwig starring Frances Ha and directed by Noah Baumbach is going to be a turkey. It just had its screening at the Telluride Film Festival and it seems that these critics are going to be eating crow (as they usually do anyways) because the response has been overwhelmingly positive about the film.
Check out a snapshot of the social conversations below:
Xavierpop Does Telluride - First Reactions To Argo As #TIFF12 Get Beatens To The Punch
I think I am really beginning to like Telluride. Not only is their movie line-up really stacked, I am rather enjoying this focus on good movies thing they have. Unlike the Toronto International Film Festival which has plenty of questionable choices, it seems that if it plays in Telluride, it will be a great watch.
The festival opened a few hours ago with a surprise announcement being Ben Affleck’s highly anticipated Argo and word is that it’s really, really good. Check it out the reaction on the social spaces below and stay tuned to Xavierpop as the Canadian Site to bring you the best and most in-depth coverage of the fest.
Xavierpop Does #VeniceFilmFest12 - First Reactions to ‘The Reluctant Fundamenalist’
It’s having its North American Premiere at TIFF12 next week however the folks over at the Venice Film Festival snagged the World Premiere and this is the first reactions:
THIS IS HUGE! - Will And Jada Smith Produced “Making of Watch the Throne” Documentary Coming To #TIFF12
There are always a few surprises in the Magic Hat that The Toronto International Film Festival keeps in the back. We always seem to have some pretty big ‘last minute additions’ to the fest in the days leading up to it. This one is a doozy. While the internet is abuzz with the fact that Ron Howard is directing a documentary of the behind the scenes action of Jay Z’s upcoming Made In America Concert, we are now getting word that another documentary produced by Will and Jada Smith based on the making of the hugely successful album that Hov did with Kanye West Watch The Throne is not only being made, it is rumoured to becoming to TIFF12 to have its premiere.
Directed by Kanye’s Power Video director, Robert Lopuski, this is all very possible as these particular group of media barons are already working together to bring Annie to Broadway. There was a clip that dropped and exploded the interwebs last week that was quickly pulled. It was a great 12 minute behind the scenes footage of what is looking like the doc. It looked great and if we can get 90 minutes of that, than this doc just became a must-watch of the Festival.
Yeah, things just got real interesting.
IT’S OFFICIAL!! - Joss Whedon Is On Board For Avengers 2
During the Walt Disney Conference Call, they Mouse House confirmed that Joss Whedon, the main reason that Marvel’s The Avengers was such a great movie, has signed on to write and direct the sequel to the third highest grossing film of all time. That is excellent news that has a legion of nerds breathing a sigh of relief.
Carry on.
“The Reform School Ninja Girls” Need Your Help With This Great Indiegogo Project
REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS are live!
REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS is the first comic book based on the Creative Commons DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND setting. Anyone can contribute to this pulp fantasy setting full of, well, dinosaurs, pirates and ninjas, and build their own stories on top of all this great material. There are already a couple of role-playing games based in this setting, but this comic book is the first to come out of the project.
Currenty, the comic book’s prologue is available at the website for free, while Toronto-based creators Corey Reid and Dave Knox have just launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds for the first issue. With beautiful art and a high-adventure story featuring five of the coolest ninja girls you’ll find anywhere, REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS will astound readers looking for thrilling tales of ninjas, sorcerers and high school.
Contributors to the Indiegogo campaign get not only first copies of the issue, but loads of other exclusive prizes. Check it out: http://www.indiegogo.com/rsng-1
And to give you a sense of the style of animation we are dealing with:
Xavierpop Does @Shinsedai_Fest – Louis Reviews ‘Tentsuki’ 天使突抜六丁目
Tentsuki is an offbeat, surrealist film with equal doses dark humor and absurdity. Strange in the telling, it seems to relish in its characters and their quirkiness.
Noboru, upon discovering the company he works for is gone out of business, goes to collect some things from the office. While there, two yakuza guys that came for his boss decide having Noboru and no money is better than just no money. While on the run from the two, he discovers a drainage pipe and makes his escape. Once on the other side, he is helped by a high school friend who runs an apartment building. He meets his nearest neighbor, Miyuki, an odd woman convinced she is sprouting wings, a woman waiting for her dead husband to come home and a traffic guard obsessed with fossils. He begins a relationship with the Miyuki and this leads to events unfolding is some rather odd and strange ways.
Every time Noboru goes out, he seemingly gets lost in a maze of all too similar buildings. When he tries to return, he has the same problem. The crazy woman appears suddenly and at completely random times, only to disappear again. For a busy city, the streets are almost nearly deserted, though someone has decided they need fixing and the construction needs guards. The building he lives in has busted pipes, that seem to follow no real logic, as well as walls that tilt at times and are straight at others. While all of this is going on, Noboru tries to understand what is happening to him and around him. Circles play an important role as symbol, as both objects and places. Shot in a straightforward fashion, it makes the surreal that much more absurd, but it also makes it that much more amusing.
There is a great deal of symbolism at work in this film. There are some rather interesting and creative ideas at work, though not all of them come out well in the end. Not being a native Japanese speaker means alternating between seeing what is happening with reading. While in most parts seeing and reading isn’t an issue, some of the context and subtly of the language is lost in translation. Viewing in a theater with native Japanese speakers, I noticed their reaction during certain periods was markedly different than non speakers. While this is to be expected with most subtitled films, it happened often enough to give the impression I was missing something.
While overall a fun and quirky film, parts of it seems to be strange just so they could keep the weirdness factor high. This also well may be to language and cultural differences. Cucumbers are used in various scenes by different characters, and while in the west they can symbolize both sex and a phallus, there may be other symbolism not understood or readily apparent. This is a Japanese film made for Japanese audiences. It is hard to differentiate how much is just language and how much is weak points of the film.
Either way, a witty, surreal film that has it’s hero going in both literal and figurative circles.
Xavierpop Does @Shinsedai_Fest – Louis Reviews ‘Good For Nothing’ やくたたず
Good for Nothing was written, produced, directed by Sho Miyake, who also did the cinematography. This coming of age film is a small black and white wonder relatively unknown outside of Japan.
The movie follows three boys just out of high school as they enter into their first job and focuses on them trying to find the balance between juvenile delinquency and adult respectability. Working for a home security company, most of the film takes place in the small moments and hours between jobs. Along with their youngish boss, they spend as much time playing and horsing around as they do actually working. Over the course of a winter we find the boys both acting quite mature only to see them digress in the face of the opportunity to go the other way.
Shot in stunning and stark black and white, the film does an amazing job of capturing the manic energy of the boys while they wander through their days. Miyake allows enough room for the actors to wander in and out of frame and focus, resulting in a fantastic job of mimicking the inability of youth to sit still. It is every bit the “film without a frame” the first time director was attempting to make. Rather than try to force the movement within a tight frame, the camera is pulled back in such a way as to give room for the characters to live and breathe, to move and interact.
So much of interactions between the characters, not just the boys, have a marked realism that seems so natural and yet is so difficult to either write or direct. While a character study of the boys, we do get other characters who appear at least partially developed. The reliance on heavy dialogue to explain actions and motivations is pleasantly absent from this film, as it has little to no need of it. There is a flow and ebb to the film’s unmethodical storyline, yet this drama seems to want to get where it goes in its own time. Much like the boys, it’s not really in any hurry to get there, though underneath it all they know they must.
We leave the boys much as we found them, still straddling the small gap between youth and adulthood. The unconventional way this tale is told could only have this as an outcome. They may be, slightly, older, but somewhat wiser, if not ready to act on it yet. It’s not a film about a destination, or the outcome of the boys, but rather the joy of spending that time and space with them.
Good for Nothing marks the first film of Sho Miyake, and it looks like this is a talent with more good things to come.
