In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. I Met The Walrus is an animation created on top of this interview, which was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short. (Hi-res version here).

A nice short movie by Miranda July starring John C Reilly.

Swedish DICE has something different up their sleeves. A game called ‘Mirror’s Edge’ where the plot is taking place in the near future where a William Gibson-esque city, heavily controlled, depend on ‘runners’ or ‘couriers’ to carry underground or rebel information, because this has become safer than any electronic transaction. You play a female protagonist whose name is Faith, who is such a ‘runner’ where the first-person view is taken to another level, immersing the player in hefty parkour-like stunts. Best of all – the protagonist is not a typical archetypal game female character, even though the Asian / tattoo look could be a bit on the cliché side.

The game should be heavily story-driven, although the teaser does not reveal much. Anyhow, it looks promising. HD versions of the trailer above can be seen here.

Oh well – I’m off waiting for my copy of GTA IV (yum!), and oh, while I’m at it – ‘More‘ has been selected for the Pangea Day! Yay!

‘Spectre’. Photo by Derek Frey

Derek Frey took a trip back to the abandoned set of the small town ‘Spectre’ from the movie ‘Big Fish‘ (he worked as Tim Burton’s assistant on the movie). Usually such sets are taken down after shooting, but according to John August it stayed there by request from the owner of the island where it was built. Fascinating. Even with a ‘regular’ camera lens it looks good. You can see the images here [via].

The Danish movie-company Zentropa has announced that they have created a fund for financial support of experimental films, called “The Four-eyes Fund” (Brilleabe Fonden). The purpose of this fund is to

…ensure the survival of the elitist cinema, in a world of an increasing number of result-oriented and audience-craving tv-stations and film institutes.

A small handful of money will generously be strewn upon experimental films each year and it will solely be up to Lars Von Trier to determine which projects that are to be supported.

I am not so sure whether this actually will produce better cinema, but this initiative is more than welcome, since the Danish Film landscape throughout the years haven’t been able to produce thought-provoking and innovative stories. Ever since the success of Dogme 95 Danish productions haven’t really been able to stand out both nationally and internationally. A lot of good stories have been told, but generally there has been a lack of a fresh perspective.

The first project to receive the funds will be a story by Anders Rønnow Klarlund called “Memories”. A movie that tells the story about a woman who wakes up at the hospital and the memories she has from what has happened before. It consists only of still images. An unusual approach indeed, even though it has been tried before – amongst others in the movie “La Jetée”, the story that inspired the making of “Twelve Monkeys”.

Funnily enough, this initiative was introduced shortly after Nordisk Film acquired half of Zentropa earlier this year. A company, that usually do not support the development of non-commercial titles. Can you spot some irony in this? I can. :-)

I am indeed looking forward to see what comes out of this.

This is so not like the European Union at all – but (ha ha ha – *cough*) this is brillant! (Thanks David)

Saul Bass rules. From The Man with the Golden Arm. Beautiful!

Teasing, teasing, teasing, teasing
Teasing day and teasing night
Teasing, teasing, teasing, teasing
Teasing everything in sight
- Lars Von Trier

(Translated from Danish: Drille, drille, drille, drille / Drille dag og drille nat / Drille, drille, drille, drille / Drille hund og drille kat)

It is exemplary to read in the newspaper Information that French media is thrilled by the latest film by Lars Von Trier, dubbed “Direktøren for det hele” or “The boss of it all”. The Danish staff of movie critics have generally been very negative in their reviews. Example:

… [it] does not seem to be made for pleasing the audience, but rather for satisfying the director’s own cravings for joyful play.
-Politiken (Kim Skotte) [source]

Other reviews called it ‘laboured’ and labelled Trier as being a director in an artistic crisis. I thought it was a rather harsh sentence for the movie and Trier. Having not seen it myself (it was removed from the theatres rather quickly here in Denmark), but having had the pleasure of taking a sneak-peak at the manuscript, I thought the movie had potential. Especially because my feelings was that Trier was out to satirise the affectation and a ‘spoiled-child’ mindset that sometimes is inherit in a workplace and also in some aspects of the Danish mental attitude. We are one of the safest and richest countries in the World after all and it sometimes shows. More about this later.

Now, according to Information, the French loves it, calling it “a Voltaire-ish Vaudeville”, le Monde praising it as being a “sharp and absurd comedy that primarily is perceived as a critique of the power structure of modern companies”. And in Italy it seems like the movie is having an even bigger success. And I can see why the Danes do not take it (as) lightly (as they should). I see (i.e. read) the movie as a portrait of the interpersonal relations we Danes have. This portrait of a philosophy of ‘being your own boss’ here in Denmark, stems primarily from good living and an anti-authoritarian attitude that has seeped through our culture from years back. This is a broad issue, but forces like certain pedagogic practises and a strong sense of security coupled with the Jante Law are predominant behind this way of thinking and is a minor, but not all unimportant part of the darker, self-indulgent side of Danish culture. This movie to me gives a non-ironic portrait of the Danish individualism, where people do not want to take responsibility because they are too spoiled by not only the factors I listed before but also the huge public sector’s inherit way of handling things for them. Even the so-called ‘Automavision’ project in this movie, where Trier is letting a computer be in charge of camera angles and scene cuts is

the form’s conformity with the content where the instructor is taking a step away from the decisions, exactly like the CEO [in the movie] is running away from his responsibilities
- Aurelien Ferenczi from the TV Magazine ‘Telerama’

Irony is predominant in Danish humour, and when Trier then gives a naked portrait of this culture, mocking it without any well-known and for Danes very omnipresent ironic distance, it looks to me like the critics are reacting to the movie as a result of not being met with expectations. Expectations toward the previous works of Trier (even though they must know by now that he constantly tries to reinvent himself) and expectations toward the handling of such issues, i.e. Trier is tackling them in a direct way instead of an indirect one. They simply do not get the whole picture because the theme perhaps gets too personal thereof. They thereby focus primarily on form, not function or philosophy, and in that way miss the point.