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Hot Rod is a film from the Lonely Island comedy troupe, who made their name by posting their rejected Fox pilot Awesome Town online. They released it under a Creative Commons licence and it got quite popular, getting them hired on Saturday Night Live.

Awesome Town

The main players are Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg and the curiously named Jorma Taccone. For you foreigner readers, the curious part is that “Jorma” is a rather traditional Finnish name pretty much equal to the english “Dick”.

Check out the Awsome Town intro above with it’s undying lyrics like “My name’s Jorma motherfuckers”. Check out the whole episode on their site. I recommed watching the “dude’s cut” first, it’s less traditional, but a lot funnier than the Fox version.

Hot Rod

Hot Rod is their first feature, shot between seasons of Saturday Night Live. It was released last month and thus far has made some $14 million worldwide. I think that can be classified as step up from YouTube fame.

It tells the story of Rod Kimble, a self-proclaimed stuntman who decides to sget the money needed for his step-dad’s operation in order to get to kick his ass in a fair fight. The plot, as usual, is pretty meaningless. Many of the funniest parts of the film look like they come straight out of the fictional tv show “Ow My Balls” in the non-fictional film Idiocracy, with Rod getting hit, punched, set on fire and crashing in to large objects. But the plot does it’s job without getting in the way of the funny stuff. And yes, the film is funny. Not constatly, nor does it come anywhere near to suffocating you with laughter, but it’s funny. The humor ranges from slapstick to weird and post modern - quite like what Awesome Town had, even pulling some of the jokes straight from the pilot.

The main thing for the film is that it has the feeling of being honest and natural, that’s enough to make it stand out from the sea of *movie and *trip franchises. I wouldn’t be suprised if the Lonely Island dudes would be the next comedy superstars to come out of SNL. Indeed, internet video stars have done good. It’s a shame there isn’t a SNL in Finland to hire people like the Huba guys. We’re still waiting to see a TV series from them. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Trailer

(This entry discusses the Finnish film Christmas Story and their new competition. We’ll be writing about the film in english later on.)

Jo Cannes-jutussa mainittu Joulutarina jatkaa asioiden tekemistä oikein. Tuotantoyhtiö on yhdessä Plazan kanssa julistanut trailerikilpailun. Tarjolla on viitisen minuuttia kuvaa elokuvasta, kolme biisiä ja neljä erilaista kertojaääntä. Näistä parhaan trailerin leikannut voittaa matkan New Yorkiin.

Maailmallahan näitä trailerikilpailuita on nähty jo aiemmin, mutta tämä taitaa olla ensimmäinen kerta kun sellainen järjestetään Suomessa. Se, että kyseinen elokuva on nimenomaan Joulutarina ei ole suurikaan yllätys, löytyyhän siltä jopa muodikas MySpace-profiilikin. Niin ja tietysti itse elokuva näyttää todella hyvältä. Tuossa viiden minuutin pätkässä on niin komeaa kuvaa, ettei moista ole pahemmin tässä maassa nähty.

Ja virallinen traileri näyttää tältä:

Elokuvasäätiö uutisoi, että Miehen Työ palkittiin jälleen kerran. Tässähän ei ole mitään uutta, mutta uutisen tekstiin oli hautautunut huomattavasti mullistavampi tieto siitä, että Rutger Hauer piti Miehen Työstä.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. “

If I hadn’t been watching Stardust in a movie theater, I could have been mistaken to think that is was made for HBO or Scifi channel. Now, I know that sounds like an insult, but I assure you I mean it in the nicest ways possible.

Stardust is based on a novel by Neil Gaiman. All in all I have a quite weird relationship with his writing. Somehow I keep imagining that I’ve read a lot more of his work than I actually have. From his novels I’ve only read American Gods and from Sandman I’ve only the earliest stories. I haven’t read Stardust the book, but those better educated tell me it’s quite different from the movie.

There is a lot of good in the film, but let’s start with the bad. Most of the film the main characters wander around locations in rural England without any clear direction. Then, in many scenic locations they stumble on something fantastic or dangerous and there is a scene of action and/or special effects. Then, without actually doing anything themselves they get out of that situation and onto the next. There is a plot running in the background, connecting all these seemingly random encounters, but that’s not helping. The main plot offers no suprises. It’s very clear where everyhing is going and how the film’s many characters will come together in the end. It all feels both too random and too convenient at the same time.

This isn’t the first time I say this of things Neil Gaiman has been involved in, but I think the script would have worked a lot better as a miniseries. There really isn’t that kind of a tight narrative that would keep the film together for two hours. However spreading it our over several episodes would let the good things shine. Either that, or then a lot of the random wandering should have been left out and more meat given to the remaining parts of the story for it to work better as a movie.

If the script feels more like a miniseries, then the effects make Stardust look more like a movie of the week. They’re not exactly bad, but they don’t look like they belong to a $65 million film. I wouldn’t mind the obious bluescreen work or airships that look like CGI, but I do object to effects sequences being boring. Most of the effects in Stardust are either green or purple glowing things zipping around the green. This becomes boring very fast and there’s a lot of that in the film.

Among the smaller annoyances there is certain Ricky Gervais, who - for some un-godly reason - has been cast as a merchant. The Office is completely unwatchable and the most overrated comedy since Seinfeld, but I don’t really hate the actor, I even like his new sitcom Extras - but Gervais can only play one character and as a lightning dealer in a fantasy world that character sticks out like a sledgehammer banging on a sore thumb. He just doesn’t fit in.

The good things in Stardust are numerous as well. First of all, it has Airships in it. They’re pretty much the coolest thing ever not really invented. And it has lightning pirates. In the cool ladder they’re just step below steam-powered dinosaurs and alien ninjas. And I have to admit that the idea of falling in love with a fallen star is a romantic one.

There are some great scenes and characters. Claire Danes is always beautiful and lovely and most of the actors do a good job. And the goatman Billy is excellent. If there was an Oscar for the best potrayal of a goat I’d bet my money on this guy.

In the end we have a film that has great parts, some parts that are less than great. It’s a fun movie to watch and very likable, but it’s not as good as it should be.

Trailer

(This entry is in Finnish, and talks about a Finnish free internet-film to be released soon.)

Tämäkin pitkään tuotannossa ollut leffa, erikoisella nimellä koristettu ‘Biisonimafia 2‘ on lähtenyt ilmaisen nettijulkaisun linjalle. Hail! Elokuvaan on haettu rahoitusta kiitettävän näyttävällä markkinointikamppiksella erilaisilta tahoilta, ja ilmeisimmin - trailerin lopussa kun lukee ‘elokuvan tarjoaa Pepsi’ - sitä myös on saatu. Itse elokuvasta en tiedä vielä mitään, sillä julkaisupäivä on 15.10, mutta ohjaaja Walfrid Rinkinen tietää kertoa seuraavaa:

B2-elokuva kuvaa nuorisokulttuuria omaperäisen osuvalla tavalla. Resepti ainutlaatuisen pysäyttävään elokuvaan on yksinkertaisesti se, että se on nuorten ammattilaisten tekemä elokuva samankaltaisille nuorille. Elokuva sisältää vauhdikkaita stuntteja, kuvan kauniita mallityttöjä, tuning-autoja, drifting-ajoa, bileitä, festareita, rock’n rollia ja Suomen kesän omalaatuisen rennon tunnelman. B2 kaivaa esiin näkyvimmät ja suosituimmat nuorten maailmaan liittyvät ilmiöt aina musiikista nuorison suosimiin extreme-temppuihin.

Tässä vielä trailer:

Ps. leffan pääsee näkemään ennakkoon Jyväskylän Paviljongissa 7.10., kuten seuraava julistekin tietää kertoa.

I’ve been following this pretty damn interesting film production that’s been going on a while, and now I just got mail from the producer that they are about to release the film. They are planning to release the film for free, inspired by Star Wreck’s success, and I’ll do my best to encourage them to do that. Right now, there’s one damn cool website of them, and a trailer - which you can see here. Check it out, this is definitively not another Trek/Wars fan film, this is a film about hippies, punks and choppers. I love it!

Back when we were making the Legacy DVD we excluded Star Wreck 4½: Weak Performance in a sudden moment of self-criticism. Since then it has been missed by many people, far more than we would have ever guessed! So, now it’s time for Star Wreck 4½ to come to a DVD player near you, and make your Legacy collection complete.

We’ve set up a BitTorrent download for an .iso file that you can burn to a DVD and enjoy the film. For instructions on burning a .iso file check out this site. If you don’t have a BitTorrent client installed, we recommend µTorrent.

Go and Download the .torrent!

You can also watch the film online, without downloading anything!

Hi, it’s Timo here reporting about Some Cool Things I Bumped Into in Eurocon 2007! The first one of them was a techno-thriller Exitz, starring some extremely beautiful, not-known actresses and the wonderful Malcom McDowell. The story is about an Indian illegal immigrant in UK, who gets hired to a massive game company, producing a reality game about real people’s lives – a game, where you can be whoever you want in the world and do whatever you want to. The story starts to unfold as a witty, complex technological thriller when the borders of game and reality begin blurring, and eventually nobody knows what is game, what is reality and who is the bad guy – or is there one.

I met the director of the film, Laurens Postma, in Eurocon, and we had a lehgty chat about UK film industry, film festivals and how he did his film. He’s a pretty well-established director, although his name didn’t ring bells in the beginning, but that’s propably because he’s been working a lot in India. I also promised to send him our film and talked a bit about Iron Sky, and he was pretty impressed about the Iron Sky poster on one wall. That’s nice.

His story with Exitz is that it’s now sitting on a shelf, and he’s unable to release it because the production company who owns the rights screwed the government with VATs, and it (not surprisingly) backfired on them, and now everybody is fighting on who own the rights… So, for him it’s technically illegal to show the film, but he likes to go around and do it anyway, to festivals and that sort of stuff. He also said that this is pretty normal in GB – they make about 40-45 films a year there, and 20-25 never get shown anywhere because of various reasons. So, every year around 50 million euros get just thrown to the well of the Kankkula farm (no, didn’t translate…). Exitz is a 2-million euro production, although the production value would suggest it’s at least 10m€ in Hollywood.

The second super-cool thing was a band called Press Play On Tape. The Eurocon had them playing there, and what they do is they play rock-covers of game music and that kind of stuff. I came in there just by accident, when I head that somebody was playing ‘(The Ultimate Showdown of) The Ultimate Destiny’ by Lemon Demon. Next they rolled in a great cover of Monkey Island’s theme, and as an encore, played Monty On The Run’s theme. What’s even cooler is that for every song they have a video of the game the music is from, in gameplay. That was a big nostalgy trip that rocked the shit out of the audience at the same time. We need to book them for the next Star Wreck Con!

And of course, it was great to visit the Russian Vodka Party and enjoy some sophisticated alcoholocaust with the Finnish scifi-people, who always are a good company. We ended up to my room with bunch of people and continued where the Vodka Party had left us…

Oh, and as a bonus, at the official dinner, Anne McCaffrey complimented my hair. I was walking in clouds for few minutes – an 81-years old scifi/fantasy legend likes my hair! Woo-hoo! Super-Win!

Here’s a video by Press Play On Tape I found on YouTube:

Solar Films has published the first pictures from the Lordi movie Dark Floors. Go check them out at their website. In Cannes they said they’re going to have a 12 minute clip ready at AFM that begins 31st of October, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more of the film soon.

(Via Twitch.)

P.S. For you Finns, there’s some more information about the new Remes book.