8 KILOMETRE

Stella Artois' Smoooooooth Originals. It's all about Old Hollywood, baby.

Look out! 100 movie spoilers in 5 minutes!

Save hundred's of dollars in rental and late fees, and use that time you save to do something more useful! Like... umm.... wait... hold on.....

{via CollegeHumor}

Criterion.

It's always been a secret dream of mine to design movie posters and their accompanying packaging. Now, I can continue to be jealous of those who do with this collection of fantastic DVD covers from (what else?) the Criterion Collection. These show just how beautiful covers can be, which again, prompts me to ask why Hollywood insists on dumbing down their own DVD releases with lame-azoid covers. Anyway, enough with being disappointed with one segment, instead, let's celebrate the good. Here's some Criterion. Below, some of my favourites:

TIFF brief

Day -1: On the eve of the TIFF opening, standing in the sweltering sun with makeshift program visor to pickup tickets to Detroit Metal City.

Day 1: TIFF begins! In true spirit I celebrate by going to an unrelated Vice party.

Day 2: Volunteering in English, Cantonese, and French. A bit past midnight (okay, they were behind schedule), enjoys first movie, DMC. Laughs, headbanging, and one Q&A later, home and watching Laguna Beach at 3:30 am.

Day 3: Waiting 2 hours for Lebron James and abandoning that ship for Faubourg 36. Noting how Nora Aboudezer should have ditched the jacket-part of her outfit that afternoon. Volunteering, gets to be a ballot girl on stage, watches Spike Lee introduce Youssou Ndour.

Day 4: Early morning Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. Different from book but not bad different. Bad cold. Tourists with TIFF questions for me tonight, bring a hanky.

It's almost Christmas again...

And by Christmas I really actually mean The Toronto International Film Festival, where we essentially do the same thing: lots of unnecessary lining up and dreading the end of it and oh my god i think i heard Brad Pitt on the rooftop can I leave him some cookies.
This year, I have the privilege of not only playing attendee, but also volunteer. So far, I have scored tickets to 'Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist' (good book, by the way), as well as 'Detroit Metal City' (movie poster, above). Some other ones I'm hoping to snag tickets for are:

• 7915 km
• Hunger
• Seraphine
• 24 City
• Birdsong
• Achilles and the Tortoise
• Afterwards
• Blind Loves
• Faubourg 36

See you film buffs there! In the buff!

I see Saul.

The Coen Brothers' new movie, "Burn After Reading" (set to premiere at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival before hitting theatres on the 12th), and their oh-so-Saul Bass inspired movie posters. However, it is near impossible to find out who was behind these creations. And, oh goodness, I pray that the DVD cover will honour this aesthetic instead of suffering from the "heads blended into the background with epic landscape along bottom instead of kickass movie poster image" formula. Aka, the 'V for Vendetta' effect.

Now, some Saul for the Soul:

Australia.

Having always been a fan of Baz Luhrmann and his no-fear approach to true, over-the-top entertainment and imagery, his upcoming film starring muse Nicole Kidman (as well as Hugh Jackman), looks to live up to his style, and with a dash of old world Hollywood.

Dyed tips are back.

The 'dos sported by Luke Goss (as Prince Nuada) and Anna Walton (Princess Nuala) in Guillermo's new Hellboy flick tell us that dyed tips actually have great potential to look ethereally fabulous. If I had my way, I'd throw this on the runways immediately. Seriously.

The Perfect Summer Blockbuster

An almost complete script for the greatest date movie to ever not be made.
{via McSweeney's}

I is for...

"Incontheevable!"

One of the most classic lines in teh history of film-making (I know, blasphemy, but it's true). Wallace Shawn, who plays the overly-intelligent wannabe criminal mastermind, was almost one of those actors who's in a bunch of stuff that you know but can't quite name, but his role in The Princess Bride saved him from such a fate! (Other actors who've dug themselves out of a similar woodwork: John C. Reilly, Thomas Haden Church).

And so, some internet nuggets of Inconceivable things, that, well, good grief, do exist.

Mister Lonely

"Only Harmony Korine (writer of KIDS, auteur of GUMMO, JULIEN DONKEY-BOY) could weave Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, her daughter Shirley Temple and flying nuns into a hypnotically funny and truly poignant tale of the instability behind fanaticism and the redemption we can hope to find in one another. The film follows a lonely Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) who is invited by a beautiful Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) to a commune full of other impersonators including the Queen of England, Madonna, Sammy Davis Junior and James Dean, in the Scottish Highlands. In a parallel story line, the incomparable Werner Herzog plays a Latin American priest who learns his missionary of nuns can literally fly."

Sigh. Wonderous.
{via Apple}

Blindness

Based on the novel by Nobel Laureate José Saramago. Amazing novel, so hopefully this movie won't suffer from the good-book-bad-movie syndrome (also praying that the Sex and the City movie doesn't suffer a similar fate). This one is also directed by Fernando Meirelles of 'City of God' and 'The Constant Gardener', and 'Blindness' is another story that exposes the fragility of humankind. I'll be looking out for this one this fall.

Hiatus

Going down to L.A. for a couple days for Coachella. Will be back on Tuesday with some F for this space.

In the meantime, enjoy the French:

{via my pear tree}

An oldie but a goodie. She's too perfect. Even with a ciggy.

{via the sartorialist}

D is for...

Darjeeling.
Of course, thanks to Wes Anderson's love/hate movie last year (I happened to love, also in part due to the fact that the 2 movie posters were some of the best I'd seen in 2007), the term Darjeeling is now familiar to most folks. Suspiciously, it appears as though a town in the state of West Bengal in India ripped this movie off and had the audacity to name their own town, Darjeeling, selling tea, and even building a famous railway.

"Darjeeling is internationally famous for its tea industry and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The tea plantations date back to the mid 19th century as part of a British development of the area. The tea growers of the area developed distinctive hybrids of black tea and fermenting techniques, with many blends considered among the world's finest.^[1] The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway connecting the town with the plains was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999 and is one of the few steam engines still in service in India."
{via Wikipedia}



Wait... did they say 1999? Impossible, considering the movie came out in 2007. Further proof that Wikipedia is not a reliable source.