beastie boys Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you've already seen Star Trek (and don't worry, this really isn't a spoiler), then you remember the part where young Kirk steals his stepdad's car, throws on the Beastie Boys' Sabotage and races down a few dirt roads before launching the car off a cliff. When the song came on, I immediately thought to myself: "Really? He's listening to Beastie Boys that far into the future?" But then I waved it off, thinking The Boys were probably their version of old time, classic rock and roll. And heck, it's an awesome song -- I'd hope folks will still be listening to it hundreds of years from now.

Anyway, according to a post over on Topless Robot, director J.J. Abrams may have used the song not out of complete randomness, but as a nod to the original Kirk, William Shatner. See, Shatner always had a problem pronouncing the word sabotage, and, while on set for Trek, would insist on saying it his way: "sabo-taj." Could this be why Abrams used the song? If so, I think that's pretty awesome. Check out the video below of Shatner trying to pronounce sabotage, and some dude actually attempting to correct him (as if The Shat doesn't know what he's saying) -- it's pretty hilarious. Good on you Abrams ... this little nod to the original Trek is wayyy random; I hope it's true.



[via Ryan Rotten's Twitter]

And now, the fifth installment of our weekly podcast, Coming Distractions. I'm your host, Cinematical.com Editor-in-Chief James Rocchi, and this week's edition of Coming Distractions features myself and Cinematical's Erik Davis. This week's edition of the Podcast finds Erik and I discussing Larry Clark's abdominal obsession, The Beastie Boys' foray into filmmaking, Dakota Fanning's accelerating career and much, much more. Download and enjoy -- and let us know what you think in the comments section! The Podcast can be found ... right here.

(Coming Distractions theme: 'Overdose,' Dumb.)

I know you'll find it hard to believe if you live in the Puget Sound area, but this weekend we're scheduled for yet more rain. Like a good Seattleite, I like my rain and dark cloud cover as much as the rest of you, but even I'm starting to get excited at the occasioal glimpses of blue sky and sunshine.  As always, though, you have lots of movie options to keep you happy, and chances are whatever theater you choose, there's a coffee shop nearby to get your obligatory caffeine fix to boot.

UW Film Club 

 

This week brings us the Seattle Arab and Iranian Film Festival  (March 31-April 6), and what a lineup! The festival has some promising films lined up, including Sundance winner Iraq in Fragments, Gate of the Sun, a 278-minute epic film about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as told through the 50 year history of an uprooted Palestinian family, and documentary The Color of Olives. Check out the full schedule here.

 

 

The promotion for the highly-anticipated Beastie Boys concert film Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! kicked into overdrive this weekend, with the emergence of a trailer, stills, and advance screenings all over North America. The trailer, however is only a minute long and doesn't really show anything, which is sort of a bummer. Instead, it's all about the anticipation, featuring quick images of backstage, pre-concert activity accompanied by a Very Important Movie-sounding voice over ("At a time of upheaval and change...") - it's clever, but disappointing if you were hoping to get a sense of the supposed energy and power of the film.

But you don't have to wait f or thatuntil the movie opens on March 31 - instead, you can buy tickets to one of the incredibly wide-spread advance screenings that are taking place this Thursday. Seriously - REALLY widespread. You know how it's really annoying to be a movie fan in, say, Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas, or Idaho Falls, because you never get any preview screenings of anything, and nothing you want to see ever plays at the multiplex? Well quit worrying - ThinkFilm and the Beasties have got your asses covered, along with those of people in roughly a billion other cities in the US and Canada.

[via Twitch]

Clearly inspired by the wildly successful (from a cinematic and musical perspective, that is, not a financial one) fan-shot Beastie Boys concert film, Awesome; I F*ckin' Shot That!, Brit band Coldplay plan to equip fans at their upcoming Toronto concert with digital video cameras. There are, however, some major different between the approaches taken by the two bands. For one thing, the Beasties handed out 50 cameras and consequently had a ton of footage and angles from which to choose when the film was edited. Coldplay, on the other hand, will be using only four fan-manned cameras, which said fans will have to win on the band's website (the lucky four get to keep the cameras, whereas the Beasties took all of them back). Additionally, the footage shot by Coldplay's fans will only be "eligible for inclusion on the...DVD," which makes it sound suspiciously like they're trying to drum up publicity for being cutting edge, all the while knowing that the final result will be your typical, professionally shot concert film, only with a five minute DVD extra titled "Footage shot by you! The FANS!"

A while back I reported on a contest sponsored by Gen Art and MySpace that called for folks to assemble their own original Beastie Boys video using one of two songs (Shake Your Rump or Sabotage) and the winner would be flown to Sundance to meet the Boys and party it up at the festival. Well, now that the contest and festival are over, the winning video has arrived online... and it's brilliant.

Coinciding with the Boys' first ever concert film, Awesome I F*ckin Shot That (which, according to James, felt so real he was surprised his clothes didn't reek of spilled beer and weed upon leaving the theater), the contest gave folks only two weeks to shoot and edit their video. The team that won (The Brothers Rye) took an interesting approach to the song Shake Your Rump where they told the story of a guy who wakes up one day, only to realize that two people are rapping the song off his, well, ass. Subsequently, this poor man must figure out a way to live with the nuisance.

You can watch the video here (scroll down and to the right of the screen) and read more about the winners over here. For those of you dying to see this f*ckin film already, ThinkFilm will release Awesome I F*ckin Shot That in March.

It wasn't all just snow and screenings at Sundance for the Cinematical; every chance we had, we were snapping pics as well. Here's a round-up of the best of our Sundance pics (more photos past the jump).

Someone has made a terrible mistake  – they've leaked a partial list of this year's Sundance parties to us nerds. Since most of us on the Cinematical/Blogging Sundance team like to check into our hyperbolic chambers by 11 at the latest, we thought we'd pass this highly classified information on to you. We'll update this list daily until the Festival ends or the Party Gods strike us down (whichever comes first). Feel free to post your own party deets and gossip in the comments.

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Variety 10 Directors to Watch
The Stein Erickson Lodge

9:00 PMDreamland Premiere Party
Hollywood Life House
528 Main Street

9:00 PM – 1:00 AM
Bender Spink/Tommy Lee Party
Premiere Lounge
573 Main St
live DJ performance by Tommy Lee

9:00 PM
Film Punks Party
Star Bar, The Night Club
268 Main Street

9:00 PM –1:00 AM
Gen Art and Myspace Party w/ Beastie Boys
Legacy Lodge
Park City Ski Area
Base of Park City Slopes

I guess the highest compliment you can pay Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! – a concert film made by distributing 50 cameras to fans at a Madison Square Gardens Beastie Boys show and aggregating the footage – is that when I walked out of the packed Sundance Film Festival press screening at the Holiday theaters, I was amazed my clothes didn't smell like weed and spilled beer.

And yeah, that is a compliment; as concert films become mass-produced for the DVD and cable channel markets, they grow more and more similar as they roll off the assembly line. With Awesome; … , The Beastie Boys are, at least, trying something new (even if I seem to recall a Bon Jovi video with the same methodology in my hazy MTV memories …). Directed by "Nathanial Hörnblowér" (also known as Beastie Adam Yauch), Awesome; … isn't just an experiment in collective creativity or a easy gimmick; Awesome; ... comes closer to recreating the concert experience than 99.9 percent of its peers in the field. That doesn't come from how well it captures the performance – a lot of the footage is grainy or distant or shaky, and a lot of the film is covered up by video effects – but rather in how well it captures the entire concert experience – beer runs, trips to the bathroom, arguing with security about whether or not you can, in fact, be allowed backstage. The film's mix of images starts as stunning and then goes over the top; every time you get used to the barrage, it kicks up another notch or drops another visual beat into the mix.

But the Beastie Boys have always loved collage – more, in fact, than their role as hip-hoppers and rappers would already suggest.  (If collage/deconstruction/sampling/re-mixing is the dominant artistic theme of modern pop culture – and some would suggest it is – then hip-hop is, then, the artform that embodies that idea.) The Beasties have always mixed and matched their obsessions, dropping references to action director John Woo, underground cartoonist Vaughan Bode, baseball icon Rod Carew and '70s action flick The Taking of Pelham One Two Three … all in one song, in fact. Awesome; … starts in similar fashion: The 'i's' in the ThinkFilm logo are dotted with xylophone hits from the single 'Girls," the Oscilloscope Laboratories production logo is styled like a '60s Cinemascope logo, and the film kicks off with the title crawl from an '80s trash-cinema masterpiece recreated verbatim. And then, you get to the good stuff. And it's all good stuff.

MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock have gone from being rap's enfants terrible to eminences grise (literally), and it's not just Gen-X nostalgia, or how they brought rap to the White suburbs (if that were the case, Vanilla Ice and Snow would still be recording – which, thank God, they aren't.) The songs are great; the longtime anchoring support of DJ Mixmaster Mike and keyboardist Mark "Money Mark" Ramos-Nishita elevates the troupe even higher as songsmiths and performers. And the fact of the matter is that if enthusiasm and joy are contagious – which they are – then The Beastie Boys are having a hell of a time and it shows; check out how when it's time for the full band set, a lit-up Gazebo emerges with the entire band in retro-tragic Prom wear, or how the band definitively tackles the question of how to inject life into the tired ritual of the encore.

And again, it's a fun show. Awesome; … captures the illusion central to concert going; that you're part of a huge crowd but having an individual experience with the people you're watching. (Really, a rock concert is just like a Vatican mass, but with deeper base.) And that's here: From the sing-along jocks in backwards baseball caps, to the boys and girls dancing on chairs to the concessionaire liberated from her polyester shirt, nametag and visor for a second as she air-guitars the kickin' riff to "Sabotage" in a moment of  transcendence as pure as it is simple – Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! is an pure piece of pop/punk/funk/hip-hop moviemaking that manages to capture something wonderful while bringing it back alive.

Others on Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!: Variety's Dennis Harvey, though he found the "visual gimmicky" nearly overwhelming by the end of the film, ultimately described it as "One of the more exciting feature records of a single-act [performance]."

If you happen to be a huge Beastie Boys fan and would love a free trip to the Sundance Film Festival, then there's a new contest that may be right up your alley. In conjunction with the group's first film, Awesome; I F**kin' Shot That!, MySpace has teamed up with Gen Art and Capitol Records to present you with a pretty unique opportunity: Create your own Beastie Boys video using one of two songs (Shake Your Rump or Sabotage) and enter for a chance to fly out to Sundance, catch some great films, attend cool parties and, as a bonus, you'll gain entry into an exclusive Beastie Boys concert...at Sundance!

The film, which will be released by ThinkFilm this March has a pretty interesting story attached to it. The entire thing was shot back in 2004 during a concert at Madison Square Garden. However, it was not shot my professionals. Instead, 50  hand-held cameras were handed out to fans attending the show and that footage alone was what was used to create the final product. Okay, so either the final result will fascinate us in that it's being told from such a unique perspective or we'll get two hours of the most intense shaky camera movements ever recorded.

The contest officially starts today and you have until January 6th (that's just two weeks!) to enter. In case you're interested, click here for further details. Oh, and good luck!