‘Animated’ - Irish Animation at Kildare Village for St Patrick’s Weekend

Kildare Village in association with Cartoon Saloon is creating a free family cinema experience to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Guests will walk the green carpet into a cosy family screening area with rugs, cushions and complimentary popcorn before enjoying a feast of short animated films including the award winning animation, The Secret of Kells. To coincide with the screenings, Kildare Village will be hosting workshops for 9 to 12 year olds. During “An Introduction to Animation”, children will create their own animation character and storyboard and bring it to life in a cartoon flick-book. The ‘group’ animation will be available for viewing on YouTube following the workshop.

The Secret of Kells is Cartoon Saloon’s first feature film and was directed by Tomm Moore. Nominated for an Academy Award ® for “Best Animated Feature”, the film has screened and won awards in major festivals worldwide. This vibrant animation is a spirited retelling of the provenance of Ireland’s most cherished artefact, the Book of Kells. With the Viking hordes approaching, the monks of Kells are forced to turn their attention from transcribing manuscripts to building barricades. The future of the precious book is in jeopardy and it falls to Brendan, young nephew of the abbot Cellach, to save the day.

Festivities in Kildare Village begin on St. Patrick’s Day itself, Thursday 17th March with a host of short animated films from Cartoon saloon shown hourly between 11am and 4pm. The Secret of Kells, a bewitching animated fairytale, will have a green carpet screening daily at 2.30pm while workshops will take place from 11am until 1pm daily from Friday 18th until Sunday 20th March. Celebrations will continue all weekend with workshops and activities for the whole family to enjoy.

The Social Network

In my honest opinion.... I can't wait. I think the movie looks really good. The casting is brilliant and my original fears of a documentary style approach have been firmly quashed. Role on October...

Return Of The Wolfman

In 1941 Hollywood made what would become one of the all time quintessential monster movies, The Wolfman. Although this was Hollywood's second outing with a werewolf movie (the first having been 6 years earlier with Jack Pierce's Stuart Walker's Werewolf of London), it was by far the better movie and offered not only the writing talent of Curt Siodmak and direction of George Waggner, but it brought together a truly magnificent cast: Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, Béla Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya. Waggner's Wolfman really is brilliant cinema, even 68 years on.

The story follows Chaney as Larry Talbot, a man returning to his family home following a long absence. Talbot quickly becomes enamoured with a local girl, Gwen Conliffe, played by Ankers. In their first encounter, Talbot goes to Gwen's antique shop and ends up buying a silver-handled walking stick, decorated with a wolf's head and pentagram. Gwen explains that this is the sign of the werewolf, and recites a local poem:

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

That evening while visiting a gypsy fortune teller, Talbot becomes involved in a wolf attack in which Gwen's friend is killed. The wolf turns out to be one of the gypsies who is a werewolf. Although he kills the animal, Talbot is bitten and so starts the misadventure that ultimately leads to his own death.

Last night I had the pleasure of being invited to the Denzille Cinema by Universal Pictures for a private screening of The Wolfman. The evening was absolutely great, and if you haven't had the pleasure of visiting the Denzille Cinema I highly recommend it. Of course this wasn't just a random screening of a classic movie just for the fun of it. Universal Pictures are currently gearing up for the upcoming realease of their remake of The Wolfman.

The remake is directed by Joe Johnston and stars Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving. The movie largely sticks to the original plot but adds a number of extra dimensions to the tale through stunning visual effects and an extended overall storyline. As someone who isn't a die hard horror fan by any means, I will say that the remake looks brilliant. Not only is it a cast made up of some of my favourite Hollywood stars but it offers a production ensemble of equally exciting people such as Scott Stuber (production), Danny Elfman (music direction) and Shelly Johnson (cinematography). Filming was done between 3rd March and 23rd June 2008 at Pinewood Studios, to a budget of US$85 million.

'The Wolfman' A Look Inside Featurette

'The Wolfman' Trailer (HD)

Correction
I incorrectly attributed the direction of Werewolf of London to Jack Pierce, who was of course WoL's Makeup Artist (one of Hollywood's greatest infact, having created such legendary creatures as Dracula and Frankenstein). Cheers to Niall for pointing out my error :)

Panic Attack!

Panic Attack! is a shortfilm Animated, Directed and Produced by Fede Alvarez. Basically it's stunning and is a must see video...

Oh, did I mention he did this on a total budget of $300!

Unsurprisingly, the amazing shortfilm and catapulted Fede to the attention of Hollywood, and he has reportedly now signed a deal with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures to develop and direct a full lenght feature project. The deal with Ghost House has been speculated to be worth a six to seven figures.

'Rage' Premier

Thursday will definitely be remembered as Arthur's Day but there was another pretty special event taking place across Europe on the 24th. Last Thursday saw the world's first multi-venue interactive premier take place for Sally Potter’s new movie ‘Rage’. The film was broadcast from London's BFI Southbank, live via satellite, to a host of cinemas across Europe, including Dundrum here in Ireland. The film screening was then followed by a live questions and answers session with the film’s writer and director, Sally Potter, and the film's cast. Simon Abkarian, who plays Merlin, and Riz Ahmed, who plays Vijay, were both present with Sally Potter, while other cast members including Eddie Izzard, Lily Cole and Jude Law, all of whom were in New York, participated live via Skype.

Although the film was first shown at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, and was nominated for the coveted Golden Berlin Bear award, it also saw another interesting digital first as an episode of ‘Rage’ was then given a general release exclusively on mobile phones. As well as being premièred in the various cinema venues, people were also invited to watch the movie on their computers or mobile phones on the 24th. These audience members were then able to ask Sally Potter and the cast members questions via text message, twitter or live on Skype.

Sally Potter explained "[that she] instigated this method of having an interactive premiere because I wanted to make going to the cinema a more exciting place, I was inspired by my experience of 'the intimacy of blogging'".

The movie follows the story of a schoolboy who uses his mobile phone to shoot interviews with people working at a New York fashion house. He then secretly posts the videos to the internet. However when an accident on the catwalk leads to a murder investigation the videos and the boy are put under the spot light. Interestingly, none of the cast actually met while the film was being shot due to the one-on-one nature of the interviews. The film was produced by Andrew Fierberg and Christopher Sheppard, with Steven Fierberg as director of photography. The film was edited by Daniel Goddard.

The Hunt for Gollum Movie

A close friend emailed this over to me yesterday, and to say I was impressed would be a serious understatement. Pretty much everyone loves the Lord of the Rings movies, and they have been the inspiration for many fan-based projects. Unfortunately most of these are usually extremely low budget, low production value endeavours.

This, however, is very, very different. “The Hunt for Gollum”, a movie made by the fans, is a $3000 project that looks as professionally made as many million dollar Hollywood blockbusters. Everything from the lighting to the special effects are extremely good. The script for the movie comes from the appendices of the Lord of the Rings books themselves, pieced together into a coherent movie by writer and director Chris Bouchard. Chris was also responsible for putting together the cast and crew. All filming and post production was done in the UK.

The story follows the Heir of Isildur; the "greatest huntsman and traveller in Middle Earth" as he sets out to find the creature Gollum. The creature must be found to discover the truth about the Ring, and to protect the future Ring-bearer.

The movie is 40 minutes long and available to watch online for free. I seriously recommend giving it a go.

Lemonade: The Movie

In the US more than 70,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs so far in the "current economic climate". Lemonade tells the story of what those people, who were once creative in advertising, get creative with their own lives. Lemonade has been put together by Please Feed The Animals, an online community for advertising professionals who have been made unemployed.



Writer: Erik Proulx
Director: Marc Colucci
Directors of Photography: Peter Nelson, Will van Hazel, Todd Heater, Neal Morrell, Mark Harmel
Production Company: Picture Park
Executive Producers: Jennifer McKenzie, Erik Proulx
Producers: Carrie Jacobson, Scott Burtnett
Post Production: Finish/Boston
Editor: Pete Warren
Sound Post Production: Soundtrack/Boston
Mixer: Brian Heidebrecht
Music: Caspian

Coraline: Stuck in Banner

As part of the online promotion for the DVD release of Henry Selick's movie, Coraline, there were a number of rich media ads run on international sites. I tried to get a copy of my favourite to pop up on Digitology but I can't find it anywhere for some reason, so you have to settle for a video of it. I like the way it takes the piss out of bad online advertising, and yet clearly takes advantage of all those, less then creative, engagement techniques.



Worth a look at the trailer if you never saw the movie, here.

Bloggers Report Robot Sightings

A digital campaign has launched to promote 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen', which is based around two 'blogs' carrying stories of sightings of giant robots around the globe. The two blogs, The Real Effing Deal and Giant Effing Robots, are both conspiracy style sites, informing the public of the hidden truth about these strange giant robots. The sites feature regular blog posts, imagery and video footage of "transforming" robot sightings across the world.

The videos are really well done and show a host of locations such as Tokyo, Berlin, Barcelona and the UK. There is also one brilliant video of a robot sighting at the Champion's League final in Rome.

The campaign has been produced by Rubber Republic for Paramount Pictures and is being promoted worldwide. The blogs are supposedly run by characters from the film. Rubber Republic say that "the overall objective of the campaign is to allow fans to get more involved in the film's back story and find out what has happened since the first instalment".

Heath Tyldesley, marketing director for Paramount Pictures International, said: "Extending the narrative of the film into the real world prior to a film's release is a great way of building buzz and awareness among fans and viewers, rewarding them for their engagement with the first film. Directors are really embracing broadening the platforms of the films narrative to include the web and Michael Bay is no exception."

Matt Golding, creative director at Rubber Republic, said: "These clips not only take the world of the film into new spaces where fans can engage online, but also provide additional content around the film driving awareness of the release."

Twitter: The Movie

Filmmaker Frank Kelly has announced his plans to create a feature-length documentary inspired by Twitter users' experience. The film, 140, will consist of 140 different filmmakers, each shooting 140 seconds of film that represent what connects the filmmaker to their home. Overall the film's theme is connection.

Frank described the project, saying "I'm asking the filmmaker what it is that connects them to their home. It can be anything they want, a landscape, cityscape, a sunrise, a wife, husband, child... doesn't matter. But it has to be captured in 140 seconds and at the same time as everyone else." Adding, "The idea came from being able to communicate with a lot of people at once, and the fact that you could actually synchronize something: You put a message up, and everyone who's following you gets it instantly."

The project is currently recruiting it's 140 filmmakers through various Social Networks and Twitter, obviously.

"There are a couple of students, one in Utah who is 18 years old," Kelly says. "It goes from him all the way up to commercially successful, award-winning short filmmakers and documentary filmmakers. I wasn't going to tell anyone no, because the main thing is to get across the filmmaker's point of view. Just because they weren't established didn't change the fact that they had a personal connection with something."

Read the full story here, or tweet Frank yourself.

Unexpected Star Trek World Premiere

A cinema full of Star Trek fans were in for quite a surprise when 10 minutes into the showing of "The Wrath of Khan" the film mysteriously "broke". Suddenly out walked Leonard Nimoy and suggested that the cinema show the new Star Trek film. As it turned out, the hard core fans were the there for an unexpected world premier. Pretty cool.

2012 - This is the end

How would the governments of our planet prepare six billion people for the end of the world?

Roland Emmerich's new movie "2012" will be hitting cinemas this November. The plot is based on the Mayan prophecy that the world will end on December 21st 2012. Marketing for the movie started last November (2008) with the following teaser trailer but since January a number of other channels have come online. The movie microsite has gone live and provides links to two other sites that form the core of a really smart digital marketing campaign. It doesn't stop there though, the character played by Woody Harrelson has both a Facebook profile and Twitter account. Unfortunately the Facebook page is private and there is little Twitter activity but I'm hoping this will change as the launch date approaches.

20 years of The Princess Bride

I don't think anyone could say they dislike The Princess Bride, certainly for me it's a classic movie from my childhood. I can remember going to see it in the cinema, and I can remember loving it. Well, as it turns out there's a new 20th Anniversary DVD boxset available, which features a really cool rotational inversion, or ambigram, on it. I'll be buying it. Thought it was cool/interesting/fun enough to share.

A Night At The Movies

A huge thank you to The Chancer, Rick O'Shea and Una Rocks for putting on an invitational screening of Role Models at Cineworld last night. Not only was the event well staged and completely trouble free (we all know how lesser Irish mortals have a tendency to screw up event organisation), but it was a hilarious movie - really, really funny.

I didn't know what to expect but according to IMDB it's a 7.9 movie, and that's an extremely high rating from the movie snobbery of IMDB, so I figured there would at least be a chuckle or two. Or one hundred! I generally don't recommend movies to people (different tastes and all that) but I think the world should see this film. Absolutely brilliant!

Saturday Distraction

Sure the movie looks like it'll be total trash but the microsite isn't that bad, and the game is pretty addictive. Check out Death Race for an easy way to kill some time on another rainy weekend!

Boydy's Bits

Check out Stephen's blog - a commentary of mainstream media and a host of other must see titbits!

Hancock whale toss game

I'm not sure if it's one of those things you keep to yourself, but I'll admit I'm a bit of a Will Smith fan. Fresh Prince - excellent. iRobot - really enjoyed it. Legend of Bagger Vance - well that I should probably be embaressed to admit I liked. Seriously though, he's had some great movies, and I think Hancock looks like it could be fairly watchable.

I digress, what I wanted to say was, check out this is a pretty cool example of an in-banner game: