(no subject)

[imwalde]

This commercial will make you happy/squeeful/teary or YOU ARE A ROBOT.

LABYRINTH ICONS!! It was so hard to pick!

So, almost entirely due to franzeska's tireless cheerleading, I went to see Speedracer, and I quite liked it! The reviews and things made me expect the worst movie ever, but it is so far from that, I kind of feel bad for everyone involved, that they are now saddled with this failure that didn't deserve to fail on its merits. Austria doesn't market movies AT ALL, like, most of the time I only learn of a movie's existence when I see posters at bus stops for new arrivals at their box office, so I don't know how it was pitched, but there has to be a market for this movie! Was it just marketed wrong? It's shiny and pretty and deliberately ridiculous and over the top and just fun. It's eye candy, both of the hot guy and rainbow color variety. Granted, I saw it in German, so acting and scripts, I can't speak to, but surely people want to see it for the zoom zoom and the pretty, right? I don't love it quite like Franzi does, and some things were a bit annoying, like the youngest brother and the chimp, although the kids who were at the same showing cackled with laughter at everything they did, so maybe I just wasn't the target demo for those jokes. It really does not deserve to be on the list of biggest box office flops ever. Psssst, Franzi, I missed one thing -- when Speed asks Shaft (forget the character name) in the lockerroom about the race he was told was fixed, what was Shaft's answer? I just flat out didn't catch what he said.

Austria is hosting the European soccer championships. Which means every damn thing is suddenly about soccer and red and white (the Austrian flag) are EVERYWHERE and the "fan zone" is suuuuuuuuuper close to where I live. The fan zone has stopped the trams on the ring (!!) and apparently thousands of people (w/out tickets to the actual matches) are there to watch the games on huuuuuuuuuge screens they have set up. So today and yesterday I could hear cheering all day long as people watched the games. It's vaguely neat, but also sort of annoying, and everyone is worried about drunk soccer hooligans. Here's hoping it continues to go smoothly.

Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.



How many songs total: 3393
How many hours or days of music: 9 days 41 min
Most recently played: "Oh My" -- Mellowdrone
Most played: "Little Black Ache" -- Bishop Allen, 128 plays
Most recently added: "Let's Dance to Joy Division" -- The Wombats

Sort by song title
First Song: "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan" -- The Magnetic Fields
Last Song: "3000 Flowers" -- Destroyer

Sort by time
Shortest Song: 0:04 "(Four Seconds of Noise)" -- Hot Hot Heat
Longest Song: 25:47 "Tereza and Tomas" -- Bright Eyes

Sort by album
First album: Abbey Road by the Beatles
Last album: 1972 by Josh Rouse

First song that comes up on Shuffle: "Do the Evolution" -- Pearl Jam

Search the following and state how many songs come up:

Death - 41
Life - 64
Love - 210
Hate - 19
You - 425
Sex - 14

Comments

[franzeska]

"People always thought me and Stickleton hated each other. ... Funny."

i.e. Yes, it was fixed and no, he didn't have a real rivalry with the other guy in that race.



The movie was marketed (at least in the US) to Matrix fans and little kids. These aren't inherently bad demographics to target, but the ads were terrible, and the PG rating is far too low for the average Matrix fanboy. The ads are the incoherent mess you expect from the reviews of the movie. They contain basically nothing but effects shots--ones that don't play well out of context or on the small screen. They tell us nothing about the characters, the plot, or why we should care about what happens in the movie. They basically fail to show Rain or any of the other Asians. I don't think Susan Sarandon or John Goodman are all that apparent either. There's a bit of that parent teacher conference, but all that does is warn audiences that there's an irritating precocious child around. (Bad both because it scares off fanboys and because it's not that representative of the film. There is an annoying kid, but not that one.) Fox and Hirsche are relatively unknown and definitely hard to recognize given how different they look in the movie, so we're left with a couple of shots of Ricci and a lot of zooming sfx that are hard to follow. The only good part is that they do show the bit where Racer X punches that viking.

Personally, I would have included much more of the human eye candy, much less of the confusing cgi sfx, and at least one shot of Mr. Musha since geeks will always turn out to watch Sanada.

[franzeska]

Also, I forgot to say: "Whoo hoo! Success!"

[imwalde.livejournal.com]

Well, you were nothing if not consistent! :)

[imwalde.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was families with little kids who also went to see it here, so perhaps that part of the ads worked. I would have played up the brother stuff, because Rex was my favorite part, and what Speed was doing out of love/grief for his brother. I mean, the movie is plenty silly, but it's not *all* the movie is. Ads could show people that it's more than they expect.

[odycee.livejournal.com]

Love the icon!

everyone is worried about drunk soccer hooligans

Just be glad that England (or Scotland) didn't get through to play in the championship - at least you won't have to contend with our lovely brand of hooligans. I'm also glad that England didn't get through because it'll be a lot easier to ignore the football this year!

[imwalde.livejournal.com]

This is the other Labyrinth one, but it was so hard to pick! If I had enough icon spaces, I'd have one for every bitch face David Bowie makes.

Yeah, it's probably a good thing they are not playing! There is some talk/worry that maybe some hooligans will come anyway, just to cause trouble, but that sounds like an awful lot of effort to me, so here's hoping it's just talk!