Wired Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Although I'm in no way an expert on all things Uwe Boll, I can't help but get a kick out of this guy and the way he goes after the media. Remember how, last year, he challenged a bunch of journalists to a boxing match in order to prove that ... his films don't suck? I have no idea -- either the guy is completely insane, or he's a marketing genius. I mean, in the last year you'll find more Uwe Boll-related posts on Cinematical than stuff about A-listers like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise. Our own Scott Weinberg could talk Boll all day long. Me? I'll just get straight to the facts.

Apparently, Wired Magazine attended the premiere for Boll's latest flick Postal and, like any magazine would do, they wrote a piece on the premiere and the film, but did so in a very entertaining way. Here's an excerpt, in which author Chris Kohler describes the film's story as being about "a guy shooting a bunch of people in order to stop Al Qaeda and a religious cult led by Dave Foley from unleashing on the world a batch of avian bird flu hidden in a shipment of penis-shaped children's toys voiced by Verne Troyer (pull the string and it says 'only my father and my priest can touch me there!')" Um, wow. I don't even know how to respond to that. Luckily, I don't have to -- because Boll (in all his maniacal glory) went after Wired with a string of poorly-written emails, attacking the mag and Kohler for writing what they did.

Since I provided you with an excerpt from Kohler's piece, it's only right I do the same for Boll's first email. Here's a sample: "your review shows me only that you dont understand anything about movies and that you are a untalented wanna bee filmmaker with no balls and no understanding what POSTAL is. you dont see courage because you are nothing. and no go to your mum and fu*k her ...because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it." Yup. That's Boll for ya. And if you think he's lost it, my spell-check just looked at me as if I was completely out of my fu*king mind. Feel free to head on over to Wired to read the rest of this exchange, which has apparently ended with Boll agreeing to do an interview with them. They've promised the interview for later in the week, so stay tuned ...

Who wants to spend a beautiful summer evening inside an overly-air conditioned concert hall listening to a washed up politico, some gadget nerds, a NASA guy and a couple of Hollywood producers talk about the environment? Apparently, everybody. WIRED Magazine threw just such an event in New York City last night, occasioned by this week's release of Al Gore's global warming doc, An Inconvenient Truth, and judging by the clamoring crowds that spilled out of Town Hall onto 43rd street as far down as 6th Ave fifteen minutes before showtime, it was the hottest ticket in town. Boldfaced names in attendance reportedly included director Darren Aronofsky and his Oscar-winning baby mama Rachel Weisz, and Chelsea Clinton, who Gore took pains to point to from the stage as "a friend of the family".

But if we're talking about "hot" -- and, considering the bounty of temperature-related puns the topic at hand brings to the table, we most definitely are -- could anyone hotter have been in attendance than the guest of honor himself? Though it's way too early for it to mean anything (or, at least, for it to mean anything good), the liberal media is currently under the spell of a debilitating case of Gore Fever, They've got it bad, got it bad, got it bad - they're hot for an aging also-ran who won't even admit to thinking about running for President in 2008. Or maybe they're just, understandably, hot for the idea that liberal passion could actually mean something again. Or maybe -- and this is the one I'd like to believe -- we're talking about social movement that ostensibly thrives on dissent; Gore not only stands for the opposite of everything the current administration has come to represent, he's also the Anti-Hillary. You don't have to know much about global warming to warm to the appeal of the presumptive Democratic nominee's polar opposite.

The evening certainly wasn't billed as Al Gore's Coming Out Party -- in his opening remarks, WIRED editor Chris Anderson labeled the event as a celebration of  "a new kind of environmentalist" he called the Neo-Green, a gadget-savvy do-over of the spacey hippie drip of olde, one "that realizes that technology doesn't only create problems - it solves them." But from the standing ovation that met the Vice President's entrance, to the thunderous applause with which the audience punctuated his every minor point, it was clear that the mass assembled were there to hear a statement of intent.

They didn't quite get that, but most in attendance seemed happy enough with what they did get. At the very least, the event showcased an Al Gore to which jokes involving the words "bore" or "snore" did not apply. At most, it was a chance to contemplate a rabblerouser in the body of an elder statesman, and that in itself was a spectacle rare enough to rouse my interest.

It's hard to believe, I know, but it's been a whole year since Cinematical was officially born. Actually, our birthday was last Saturday, March 10, but we were so busy with our heads buried in movies we let it slip right by. A lot has changed around here in the past year - we've gone from being a little film blog with former editor Karina Longworth blogging all by her lonesome, to a site with a full-fledged staff, covering festivals, reviewing lots of movies, and bringing you up-to-the-minute movie news. Now Karina has moved on to another project (although we're very glad she's still around writing her excellent new column, Laws and Sausages, and doing some other cool stuff for us), and spandy-new Editor-in-Chief James Rocchi is at the helm, with Martha Fischer and me rounding out the editorial team, working hard to continue to bring you what you've been coming here for, while adding a few refinements here and there. It's been a great year at Cinematical, and we're looking forward to the next one. In the meantime, here's a look back at the past year in Cinematical:

 

As evidenced by its constantly-moving release date (from September 2005, to March 31, 2006, to the current target of July 7, 2006), there have been a lot of problems with the practical side of Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly. Because the internet exists and leaks occur, there have been copious rumors about what exactly happened behind the scenes but now, thanks to an article in this month's Wired, we don't have to guess any more.

Robert La Franco's fascinating piece, written with the participation of Linklater, is a chronological examination of the excruciating process of finishing the film. Though the shoot took only six weeks in May and June of 2004, the animation phase has been endless and fraught with conflict. With crises ranging from animators who took months to learn to use the rotoscoping program to others with no experience whatsoever and, ultimately, an usurped lead animator and changed studio locks, the experience comes across as an absolute nightmare. And, though Linklater idealistically hopes that Scanner "will be the first of a new wave of animated feature films made specifically for adults," he simultaneously calls making an animated film "torture," and vows never to do it again. Gee, with recommendations like these, how can American, adult animation fail to take off like a rocket?

[via Greg.org]