Spike Jonze has finally released his 28-minute short film Scenes From the Suburbs online on Mubu. The short is a collaboration with members of the recent Grammy winners Arcade Fire — Bandleader Win Butler wrote the film with his brother William Butler, and the Amblin-esque story follows a group of suburban kids during a dystopian summer where “military control of their town makes the lazy days more aimless than ever.” Read More »
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Posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 by Angie Han
It’s a good week for Arcade Fire: Not only did they win the Grammy for Album of the Year last night, their Spike Jonze collaboration Scenes From the Suburbs will be premiering at the Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday. We reported last year that Scenes would be a “science-fiction B-movie” about “friends growing apart.” We’ve now learned additional details about the project. Hit the jump for more information, including the official synopsis.
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Music isn’t enough for the indie rock baned Arcade Fire. Not only are they collaborating with Spike Jonze on b-movie science fiction short film, but they just completed an interactive short film/music experience titled “The Wilderness Downtown”. Directed by Chris Milk a popular music video and commercial director (you’ve probably seen the videos he directed for Kanye West, U2, Green Day, Courtney Love, Audioslave, Modest Mouse, Gnarls Barkley and yes, Arcade Fire). Wilderness is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
The experience is a collaboration with Google which begins with the viewer entering in their childhood address. I strongly suggest closing or minimizing all your other program windows, as the first time I tried this some of the popup windows became hidden behind browser windows I had open. The experience also involves drawing a picture and writing a letter, all which becomes incorporated into the musical/visual experience. You can even share the short film you created with friends. Experience it for yourself at TheWildernessDowntown.com.
Last night Terry Gilliam directed the live webcast of the band Arcade Fire‘s performance at Madison Square Garden. Prior to the event, Gilliam said he’d mostly just be following along and trying to keep up. But you know he couldn’t simply do that.
The webcast opened with a fun little skit in which Gilliam is revealed to be more of a controlling director than he’d previously let on. And it comes complete with a guest appearance from Andrew Garfield, your future Peter Parker, whom Gilliam directed in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Read More »
Just when we thought it was safe to have hope for Terry Gilliam‘s resumed efforts to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the project is stalled again. The famous first stall was a decade ago, and has been documented so many times that I won’t go into it again. Now Gilliam seems to have Ewan McGregor and Robert Duvall lined up to star in roles once taken by Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort.
But both new actors have recently sounded hesitant about the project, and now Gilliam admits that a financial ‘hiccup’ has temporarily stalled the film. Read More »
In April, we broke the news that Spike Jonze (Where The Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) was casting a secret film project in Austin Texas. At the time, we didn’t know much about the project other than it was supposedly a short film that tells a story which involves “friends growing apart” and that it was a collaboration with the band Arcade Fire. You might recall that Spike used Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,” from their 2004 album Funeral, in the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are.
Now we have finally learned new information about this upcoming short film production — it is a b-movie science fiction story. Yeah, you read that right…
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Today I learned that Spike Jonze (Where The Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) was casting a secret film project in Austin Texas. Apparently Spike has been casting mostly late teen actors for the project, which is supposedly a story which involves “friends growing apart.”
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A full 3-minute trailer for Spike Jonze‘s big screen adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are will screen in front of DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens, which hits theaters on March 27th 2009. Scored to the song Wake Up by Arcade Fire, a scooper over on CHUD describes the trailer as “beyond the most grandiose superlatives: ‘beautiful’ and ‘gorgeous’ and ‘breathtaking’”, calling the environments “a work of incredible vision” and the finalized monsters “some kind of incredible technical achievement”, “nothing short of real and feel very alive and very, very huggable.” I’ve been waiting for this movie since I was a little kid, and I can’t explain how excited I am just reading a vague description of a trailer.
