With the feature film version of PIXELS arriving in theaters this week, I looked at a few other options for video game nostalgia, including the short on which it was based. But what has French director Patrick Jean been up to since the 2010 short went viral?
Well, for one thing, he directed this music video for German electronic musician Boys Noize, which was one of my favorite music videos of 2013, as a man without super powers moves into an area populated entirely by caped crusaders.
His inventive short film MOTORVILLE may not tap into the same nostalgia factor as PIXELS, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun, even if the metaphor ends up being a little messy.
PIXELS opens today, and if the reviews are to be believed, it's somewhere between "pointless" and "awful," and probably not worth spending eleven bucks on. Instead, why not sate your 8-bit nostalgia for free with ten perfectly good, and genuinely entertaining, short videos? Save a few bucks and get WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? on streaming instead, and then you can just stay in your home and not have to deal with the type of people that would willingly spend the cost of a meal on an Adam Sandler movie.
1. PES's impressive stop-motion animated short that reimagines a number of video game classics
2. Lily Tomlin talking about Pac-Man addiction from a 1982 episode of "Saturday Night Live"
3. The incredible video for Royksopp's "Happy Up Here" about video game-related intruders
4. A 1982 animated short about a video game invasion
5. Alex Varanese's nifty stop motion short tribute to R-Type
6. A promotional film for the laserdisc game "Cliff Hanger" (using footage from Miyazaki's CASTLE OF CAGLISTRO)
7. Pac-Man reimagined as first-person driving game
8. Eight minutes of commercials for food featuring video games
9. The vintage arcade game-inspired music video for The Montauk Project featuring a character called "Dookie-Poo"
10. Patrick Jean's original short film that inspired the feature you probably want to avoid
Film icons making their cinematic swan song as the voice in an animated film of questionable repute isn't unheard of -- who can forget Sean Connery's (most likely) final role in the choppy Scotish film SIR BILLI (released to the states as GUARDIAN OF THE HIGHLANDS) or Orson Welles belting out commands as the planet-eating Unicron in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE?
At least those movies were released. Marlon Brando's last foray into features hasn't been so lucky. BIG BUG MAN, an animated feature that uses Brando's voice recorded on June 10, 2004 (three weeks before his death) has yet to see the light of day.
BIG BUG MAN is the story of a candy factory worker (voiced by Brendan Fraser) who is bitten by bugs and becomes a superhero. You can check out the storyboards for the film here.
So who does Brando play? A mob boss? A kindly "Uncle Ben" type to Fraser's Spider-ish-man?
No, Brando plays Mrs. Sour, the elderly owner of the candy company in which our hero works. In fact, he was so committed to the role that, according to writer/director Bob Bendetson, he performed his voice acting in drag, with a blonde wig, a dress, full makeup and gloves.
"He was gorgeous," Bendetson said. "I guess it was part of his Method training or something, where you almost embarrass yourself as the character, so that way you're free to be the character. ... About halfway through he took off the wig because he was getting too hot."
So where is this amazing piece of cinema that you can hear a clip from in this 2004 news report?
Lost to cinematic limbo, unfortunately. The film has yet to find any sort of release, and a search for updated information has yielded no results. Bendetsen, who wrote the infamous final episode of "Newhart," hasn't had a screen credit since. How many SPIDER-MAN reboots do we have to go through in order to make this one see the light of day?
Throughout his decades in the show business industry, Clint Eastwood has become an cultural icon, playing a vast variety of tough guy characters, ranging from cowboys to cops to curmudgeons to chair yellers. Meanwhile, actor Joe Dimmick has become an icon in his own right, playing a vast variety of Clint Eastwoods.
Dimmick is the owner of "Dimmick's Doubles," a celebrity lookalike company he founded in 1979 and of which Dimmick himself is the biggest draw. Dimmick's Eastwood impressions, beginning in 1977 when he answered a "Variety" ad, have led him to a certain degree of squinty-eyed fame and fortune, as Dimmick has portrayed Clint characters in commercials, television and even films, playing Eastwood archetypes in Mel Brooks' ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS and the action comedy ACES GO PLACES 2. (In the latter, his character of "Filthy Harry" is hired by a Henry Kissinger impersonator.)
But his biggest role as "Clint Eastwood" is in the 1987 film FILTHY HARRY, a feature-length epic Dimmick wrote, produced, directed and starred in that serves as an excuse to both parody DIRTY HARRY and give brief showcases to many of "Dimmick's Doubles" themselves, as impersonators of Joan Collins, Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds (as "Slick") and more show up in minimal-to-supporting roles.
FILTHY HARRY is, as you can probably guess, not a "good" movie. The jokes are stale and terrible, the impersonations are only vaguely convincing (Stallone is laughable) and the performances are, to be kind, amateurish. But it also has a strange likeability about it -- there's nothing mean-spirited about the impersonations, and there's nothing in the film other than some comic violence that would give it anything more than a "G" rating if the MPAA ever touched this thing.
Mike Sullivan pretty much nailed it in his "Shock Cinema" review when he called it "an abject failure" as a comedy, but "any film where a Yamaha keyboard actually receives an on screen credit during the opening...has earned the right to be watched sober at least once." It's a ridiculous vanity project that's basically just an advertisement for a company that allows you to hire a mediocre Whoopi Goldberg impersonator, but it's about the most affable mindless monstrosity that you could imagine.
(This 2003 article even suggests there was a sequel, called MAGNUM FARCE, but this may have just been an offhanded comment Dimmick made. Anyone have any ideas if this exists?)
I know, I've been gone for a while. My apologies to the two or three people that actually noticed -- I hope you've been watching something good!
You probably have. There's a lot of neat stuff out there.
Anyway, when I started this vanity blog, my plan was to keep it updated constantly, several times a day, like a real-life website that multiple people were in charge of. That worked for a while, thanks to the ability to plan things on the weekends and have them slowly leak out during the week. Soon, however, it became more of a burden than something fun -- which was the whole point of starting this in the first place.
After a few false re-starts, I think I'm ready to commit again, though this time, I'll just be posting sporadically -- whenever I find something notable enough to write about.
Without further ado...
I miss the time when a movie's soundtrack provided a music video for just about every dang song on it. I have no idea if this tactic worked as a merchandising device, though evidence suggests it didn't, as with few exceptions, most music from '80s movies is remembered only in the context of the movie itself.
FLETCH, the 1985 cinematic adaptation of Gregory McDonald's series of detective novels starring Chevy Chase as the titular character, had not one, not two, but three music videos devoted to the songs on the soundtrack. I hadn't realized this until recently, having only been aware of the video for Harold Faltermeyer's Art of Noise-y instrumental theme music, which features Faltermeyer wandering around a beach and occasionally playing synthesizer. It's "integrated" into the movie in that, er, it's set on the beach, where part of the film is, and one point, he seems to be calling Fletch. Sort of.
The prolific Will Harris, he of the AV Club's excellent "Random Roles" feature, pointed out this second music video, which is significantly more nuts. Stephanie Mills sings the "actual" theme from FLETCH in a bizarre performance art space that's probably best described as "'80s futurism." Clips from the film show up via video screens and sound samples.
But look! Defenseless babies! No, I kid. Things do, however, get even weirder with our final FLETCH video, that actually seems to feature new footage with Chase shot for the video itself. At least, I don't remember a scene in FLETCH where the lead character ran into a tent and watched George Wendt appearing in a crystal ball operated by Dan Hartman. There is leather. And random glitter. And it feels like it was meant for a DEATHSTALKER sequel.
I could be wrong, though. It's been a while since I've seen the film.
