Day: July 9, 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 7/9

Aaron Eckhart, from "Battle: Los Angeles."

By Jason Apuzzo. The Social Network has a new teaser trailer. It’s pretty good, actually – although it’s still feeling like it’s all about lawsuits and female groupies.  Is this about Facebook, or is this the Phil Spector story?  The film will also be opening The New York Film Festival.

• Someone has posted an early review of Battle: Los Angeles, another big-scale ‘invasion of America’ flick (this time aliens).  The review is a little tepid on this film, which seems to be a kind of Cloverfield take on Independence Day.  Battle: LA apparently features Michelle Rodriguez as … a crusty-yet-benign Latina soldier!  When have we seen that before?  Maybe they should call this Battle: Pandora.

• … which reminds me that Michelle Rodriguez is also featured – wearing an eyepatch – in the new Machete trailer.  It’s a terrible, straight-to-video-quality trailer, and Robert Rodriguez better re-cut it fast if he still wants his tax credits.

• The title of the next Jack Ryan movie will be Moscow. I guess that’s because Kiev wasn’t available.

• Ian McKellen says he’s just “marking time” until production on The Hobbit begins. If that’s the case, then I’d like to invite Sir Ian to review Salt for Libertas because I don’t feel like sitting through that film right now.

• James Cameron apparently made $350 million off Avatar, but don’t worry – he’ll gamble it all on whatever he’s shooting next.

• On the Christopher Nolan front, word comes today that Batman 3 may start shooting in April, Warner Brothers is having trouble marketing Inception, Nolan’s Inception cast members are bad-mouthing Palin and Dick Cheney, Nolan would love to do a Bond film, and Nolan also took a great deal of trouble (including filming certain scenes in 65mm) to properly convert Inception into the IMAX format.  Nolan’s also thinking of joining the Miami Heat on a sign-and-trade deal, once he clears waivers.

• The Mel Gibson situation is growing so out of control (see here and here) that it almost defies belief.  Porn stars, racist rants, death threats, Russian mistresses, child custody lawsuits, secret recordings … why can’t Mel’s films be this entertaining?  Edge of Darkness is looking like such a bore right now.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on July 9th, 2010 at 6:46pm.

Space Nazis Invade in Iron Sky + Crowd Funding of Films

By Jason Apuzzo. Recently here at LFM we’ve been showing you some examples (see here and here) of up-from-the-bootstraps indie film productions that are taking advantage of low-cost VFX software to tell large-scale stories.  We’ve also noted how several of these films seem to be picking up on the ‘invasion of America’ theme, a theme that will no doubt be kick-charged in a big way when MGM’s Red Dawn remake is eventually released.

Today we wanted to mention another such production, a science fiction comedy that’s been getting hyped lately (see articles in Wired and in the Hollywood Reporter’s HeatVision blog), called Iron Sky.  Iron Sky is an example not only of what low-budget filmmakers can accomplish using high-end visual FX packages, however, but is also the latest example of how to finance a film through “crowd funding.”

First, the premise.  Let me quote from the film’s website:

Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.  From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.  Now it’s 2018, the Nazi invasion is on its way and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom.

So there you have it – goose-stepping Nazis from outer space.  Iron Sky is being co-produced by companies in Finland, Germany and Australia.  Currently they’re in pre-production, with shooting set to begin in October in Germany and Australia, and this will apparently be followed by a year in post-production.  And here’s the kicker: the budget of the film is actually $8.5 million, with at least some of the money being raised from the public.

Nazi invaders from outer space.

So how did the filmmakers pull this off?  Basically, in 2008 they released the slick, cheeky teaser trailer below (at the very bottom of this post) – which by now has had almost 2 million views on YouTube.  They simultaneously began soliciting on-line donations from fans, using the “crowd funding” strategy that is becoming increasingly popular as a way to boostrap indie film productions outside the studio pipeline.  Then, twelve indie financiers got involved to close the funding gap. Continue reading Space Nazis Invade in Iron Sky + Crowd Funding of Films

NASA and Our Endangered Tradition of Heroic Aspiration

From 1950's "Destination Moon."

By David Ross. President Obama’s hostility to NASA has now become a subject of wide comment, and for good reason. It reveals, perhaps more than anything else, his resentment of everything that implies heroic possibility (the military, capitalism, Israel, etc.). The heroic quest to expand knowledge – to enrich consciousness – has nothing to do with his mindset or task, which remains that of the leftwing community organizer. Harold Bloom uses the phrase ‘school of resentment’ to describe the academic enemies of Shakespeare. In my opinion, the same psychopathology explains the enemies of NASA. This ‘resentment’ is directed against anything that suggests human beings transcend their social, economic, and biological context, and that they are irreducible to a formula of animal needs. Robert Zubrin, who has for decades lobbied for a mission to Mars as head of the Mars Society, makes precisely my own point in the June issue of Commentary (subscriber only):

The values championed by the Obama administration are comfort, security, protection, and dependence. But the frontier sings to our souls with different ideals, telling stirring tales of courage, risk, initiative, inventiveness, independence, and self-reliance. Considered as a make-work bureaucracy, NASA may be perfectly acceptable to those currently in power. But for mentalities that would criminalize the failure to buy health insurance, the notion of a government agency that celebrates the pioneer ethos by risking its crews on daring voyages of exploration across vast distances to terra incognita can only be repellent.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, NASA administrator Charles Bolden illustrates the extent of the Obama administration’s departure from the “right stuff.” Bolden told Al Jazeera: Continue reading NASA and Our Endangered Tradition of Heroic Aspiration