Ticket for Danny Boyle's Sunshine up for grabs!

Remember when I said that the IFF’s showing of Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine” got cancelled? Well, what I forgot to mention was that, to make up for the last-minute cancellation of the film we’d paid to see, the organisers gave us free tickets to a special preview showing, a week before the film is released here.

Well, as luck would have it, I’m not going to be able to attend and rather than let my ticket go to waste, I’m offering it up for the first person to comment here. It’s a ticket for ONE person only, but that’s not going to stop you seeing such a kick-ass movie, is it?

Sunshine (imdb details)

Thursday, 29th March @ 7pm

Cineworld, Parnell Street.

Movie Idea

So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking huge, nature-vs-man kind of thing. Kind of like Dante’s Peak or Them!, but dealing with a more topical issue: Global Warming. After all, global warming won Al Gore an Oscar. And his film was shit. No special effects or nothing (unless you consider PowerPoint a special effect). Here’s the pitch:

Quiet, sleepy town in middle America. Far from the problems of the big city. None of the worries of modern life. But the long fingers of global warming are creeping towards them and they suddenly find themselves overrun by a swarm of killer bees.

Except global warming has dealt them a double-whammy, and they realise they’re dealing with the next evolution of killer bees.

Killer bees ON FIRE.

This needs to be made. Someone get me E. W. Swackhamer on the phone.

Something for the Weekend

Here’s some things to make your St. Patrick’s weekend even better.

Listen: Huey Lewis and the News - Fore!

Fuck all these know-nothing assholes who say that “Sport” is better, Fore! is Huey Lewis and the News’ best album. It’s olde-time rock n’ roll, done by a bunch of guys who knew what rock n’ roll was. The perfect antidote to all these insipid girly-men whining about how they’re missing their girlfriends and it’s breaking their hearts, or whining about how they’re sooooo misunderstood and it’s breaking their hearts (hey, fuck you, Chester Bennington). Huey Lewis, on the other hand, wrote about missing his girlfriend and how he was gonna ride the shit out of her when he got home.

_Everybody else is holding hands I'm here lonely, playing around with my microphone stand But i'm coming home one more week The first three days we won't get any sleep_

To get you in the mood, here’s the video for “Stuck with you”, which is definitely going to be the first song at my wedding.

Useless Trivia: Huey Lewis played harmonica on Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous.

Watch: Kickboxer

Kickboxer is a great movie at the best of times, but it’s a masterpiece after a couple of beers (and this being Patrick’s weekend, this is almost a given). After his jackass brother gets his back broken by evil mongoloid Tong Po in a kickboxing match, Jean Claude Van Damme decides to become a master kickboxer himself and get revenge. My favourite thing about this movie is the fact that the people in Thailand keep giving Jean Claude Van Damme shit for being American when he clearly isn’t.

It also features the stupidest, most out-of-place dancing ever put to film. Observe.

I really want to remake this movie. I think it would still work as a low-budget youtube kind of thing, shot around the streets of Dublin.

Useless Trivia: After Kickboxer, Dennis Chan, who played Van Damme’s trainer Xian Chow, went on to star in “Xiang Gang qi an zhi qiang jian”, aka ‘Legal Rape’, aka ‘Naked Killer 2’, aka ‘Raped by an Angel’, aka ‘Super Rape’. (And that sentence is going to fuck my google traffic for months now.)

Brown Bag Films - Copying again?

Via YouThoughtWeWouldntNotice:

A few months ago, someone spotted that Brown Bag Film’s “Bears” Lotto campaign looked suspiciously like Matt Everitt’s Ricky Gervais Bears. The thread on CreativeIreland.com has some interesting discussion, including a couple of posts by Matt Everitt himself, saying

I was told about this and after watching the ad (and falling off my chair) and emailed Brown Bag who of course denied that they would ever do such a thing and said that they could’nt see any similarities.

What can I do?
Not a lot.

Brown Bag Films defended their position by suggesting that Bears3 are “obscure” and hadn’t been broadcast.

How similar are they? You can make up your own mind

Matt Everitt’s Bears3

Brown Bag’s Lotto Ad

Now we have a similar situation. The new Argus Car Hire advert from Brown Bag Films looks suspiciously like the terrific opening title sequence from Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can”. Hardly something they can claim as “obscure”.

Can you see any similarities?

Argus Car Hire advert

Opening credits of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can