Friday Clips #10

We're long overdue for a Friday Clips post! Below: a supercut of Wes Anderson's POV-vehicle shots; an Honest Trailer of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is actually one of their more positive efforts but still points out, deservingly, lapses in the movie's narrative logic; a LEGO short film that spoofs Guardian of the Galaxy's mix tape; a video showing Pixar's beautiful colour script at work...

Lego Fever!

There seems to be some kind of weird LEGO craze going around at the moment... A couple weeks ago The LEGO Movie opened in the States to consistently positive reviews (Metacritic: 82; Rotten Tomatoes: 96%), and The Hollywood Reporter's just reported that the film, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 Jump Street, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), has sailed past the $200 million mark in global box office receipts.

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The Simpsons are jumping on board the bandwagon too, with an episode that will be completely animated in LEGO...

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And here's a freelance designer who's gone and redesigned the posters for this year's Oscars Best Picture nominees in LEGO...

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And if you ever wanted to see the trailer for Liam Neeson's forthcoming thriller Non-Stop redone in LEGO, now you can too:

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Not enough LEGO for you? We do have a bunch of LEGO toons available to rent...

LEGO - Friends: Dolphin Cruise
LEGO - Friends: Stephanie's Surprise Party
LEGO - Ninjago: Masters Of Spinjitsu
LEGO - Legends of Chima: Vol 1
LEGO - Legends of Chima: Vol 2
LEGO - Legends of Chima: Vol 3
LEGO - Hero Factory: Savage Planet
LEGO - Friends: New Girl in Town
LEGO - Star Wars: The Padawan Menace
LEGO - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out
LEGO - Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles
LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers
LEGO Batman - The Movie: DC Super Heroes Unite
LEGO - Ninjago: Masters Of Spinjitsu - Series 2: Vol 1
LEGO - Ninjago: Masters Of Spinjitsu - Series 2: Vol 2
LEGO - Ninjago: Masters Of Spinjitsu - Series 2: Vol 3
LEGO - Ninjago: Masters Of Spinjitsu - Series 2: Vol 4

OK I think that should be enough LEGO talk for now.

Trailer: The LEGO Movie

Okay I'm so DONE. The LEGO Movie trailer is here. The Hollywood machine that's obsessed with turning every established toy/board game into a movie will delight us next year with this feature-length version of the popular brand, which believe or not was first manufactured way back in 1949 (thanks Wikipedia). However before we prematurely declare "RIP Hollywood", the dudes tasked with directing this project offer a little hope that it'll be a wee bit more than a blatant toy commercial: Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who did Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street, two movies which definitely did not suck and were surprisingly good and funny.
For those who need to jump on the LEGO bandwagon now, we do have a selection of DVDs that might answer the niggling question of how you can actually transform interlocking plastic bricks into something narratively watchable.

Friday Clips #5

Time for some quick clips to perk up this grey Friday arvo!

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Awesome recreation of the opening scene of Casino Royale in LEGO: I did a blog on car movies over at Flicks and a commenter shared this wicked supercut of car chase sequences: This needs no explanation: A short and sweet message from Gareth Edwards, director of the upcoming remake of Godzilla:

Random Stuff #6

Trailer: Machete + Lego Version

I see the future of movies - and it's all fake trailers being turned into real movies. Here's another one of them in the pipeline: Machete, Rob Rodriguez's Mexploitation actioner which originally appeared on his and Tarantino's ill-fated Grindhouse project. 

A few things of interest to note: 

• it's the first lead role for Danny Trejo, the Mexican-American character who's appeared in hundreds of films in heavy/tough guy/henchmen-type parts (he's 66!) 
• Jeff Fahey (for Lost fans like myself who can't get enough of Lapidus)! 
• Steven Seagal, back on the big screen - now how did Rodriguez rope Seagal in for this? The guy turned down The Expendables!
• Michelle Rodriguez - same role she's played in every movie she's ever been in...
• Jessica Alba/Linsday Lohan - weak
• Don Johnson - love the tufts of grey hair showing under the hat

Everything in the trailer looks a bit too self-consciously tongue-in-cheek, but it'll be a treat to see those old-timers getting some theatrical action.



And now the LEGO VERSION by some dedicated fanboy:

Lego Matrix

It's hard to believe it but The Matrix turns TEN this year. Does anyone remember when this first came out? It was like nothing you'd seen before. It was like seeing Star Wars for the first time. Or Jaws. Or Blade Runner. Or Jurassic Park. Thinking about it now, I don't remember the last time I've been in a full theatre going UTTERLY BALLISTIC at a mainstream blockbuster film like the screening of The Matrix I attended ten years ago. The film's CGI felt fresh at the time; all that slow-mo bullet time stuff was still in its infancy. Ten years later, we've been inundated by so much CGI it's lost its power to surprise (here's hoping Avatar delivers the same kind of first-time magic). And for The Matrix, it's gone from being New Cool Thing to Who Cares? in the space of two poorly received sequels which tried to expand its mythology but ended up alienating everyone who loved the first film.

This all is just a long-winded way of prefacing this very cool clip of one of Matrix's key scenes re-done in LEGO form to commemorate its 10th Anniversary!! There's no CGI in this, everything was done, rather impressively, "in camera". It took 440 hours and $500 to create. Quite genius:



Now check out the side-by-side comparison of the original scene and Lego version. Talk about attention to detail:



To learn more about the making of, visit Lego Matrix.