Each year some of the commercials from the biggest brands during the Super Bowl are directed by big name filmmakers (remember Ridley Scott‘s classic Apple “1984″ Super Bowl ad). The 2012 Super Bowl commercials feature spots directed by Todd Phillips, Bobby Farrelly, David Gordon Green, Miguel Arteta, Noam Murro, Craig Gillespie, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., Joe Pytka, Jake Scott, Fredick Bond, Peter Berg and others. After the jump I’ve collected 18 of the tv spots directed by big screen talent, breaking down who directed what.
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Movie fans probably don’t remember much about last year’s Super Bowl (the Packers beat the Steelers 31-25) but they’d be hard-pressed to forget last year’s Volkswagen commercial. It featured a young boy dressed as Darth Vader, using the Force to command a Volkswagen Passat. For about 15 minutes, the kid was a national celebrity and the 49 million YouTube views and counting solidify the Star Wars-themed spot as the most talked about of 2011.
This year, the German auto manufacturer is back and while the bulk of their 2012 spot centers on dog getting into shape to chase down a VW Beetle, the self-referential climax can only be described as “The Dog Strikes Back.” After the jump, check out the extended version of the commercial that’ll appear this Sunday during the Super Bowl. Read More »
Let’s take a break from the flood of Sundance news and all the Oscar talk to look at one of the weirder indie projects out there: the crowd-assembled Star Wars remake. Star Wars Uncut is a project that started over two years ago when Casey Pugh invited Star Wars fans to do their own recreations of specific scenes from the 1977 film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Fifteen seconds at a time, fans made their own version of the ’77 film, the most special of all editions.
You might have seen the first assembled release of Star Wars Uncut, but the entirety of the film has been re-edited into a more seamless whole, and it is the sort of weird, unpredictable ride that only the internet can provide. This movie is the internet, really, or at many of the internet’s most common obsessions, all filtered through Star Wars. (Itself an internet obsession, of course.)
Despite the fact that fragments of scenes were created one bit at a time, in a wide variety of styles and with technique that ranges from ‘inspired’ (Darth Vader’s breathing represented by a bottle of Johnny Walker Black that fills and drains) to the ‘cute but clueless,’ (quite a lot of it) there is a surprising uniformity here, and the assembled whole is more watchable than you’d expect. this one is a slightly more artfully assembled version that flows much better. Check it out below. Read More »
Posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 by Angie Han
If you ask me, Volkswagen’s “The Force” was hands-down the best commercial of Super Bowl 2011. And seeing as the ad topped YouTube’s list of the most-watched ads of 2011 as well as AdWeek’s list of the best commercials of the year, I suspect I’m not the only one who thought so. It’s no wonder, then, that Volkswagen is looking to return to familiar territory in this year’s Super Bowl slot — or that they’re going out of their way to make sure you know it.
The car company has just posted a teaser for its upcoming ad, which combines two of the Internet’s favorite things: Star Wars and adorable animals. If this isn’t tailor-made for going viral, I don’t know what is. We don’t normally post commercials for commercials on /Film (well, okay, sometimes we do), but I’m going to make an exception for this one just because it put a big smile on my face. Watch it after the jump.
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Posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 by Angie Han
Is it Halloween already? Today’s TV Bits is dark and spooky, as it deals with vampires, zombies, murderers, and other scary creatures. (Insert your own joke about some of Star Wars‘ CGI characters being their own brand of horrifying here.) After the jump:
- Rick McCallum talks about the Star Wars TV show (again)
- ABC releases a trailer for Oren Peli’s The River
- NBC picks up Dracula from Black List writer Cole Haddon
- Golden Globe winner Jessica Lange ponders a return to FX’s American Horror Story
- AMC announces the Season 2 premiere of The Killing and orders an extra dose of The Walking Dead
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Over the past few weeks, a few online videos made the rounds pitting Star Trek alum William Shatner in a nerdy battle of words with Star Wars alum Carrie Fisher over whose legendary sci-fi franchise is better. Well Trek star George Takei has now stepped in to be a “broker of star peace” and band fans of both franchises together against a common enemy: Twilight.
Check out the video after the jump. Read More »
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. Domain registration rules. While major corporations are keen to hide so many of their secrets from us, their adoring public, it’s more difficult to hide the public internet domains they register. They regularly give us an idea of upcoming projects or titles and just last week, I reported Lucasfilm registered domains for something called Star Wars: Identities. Going on name alone, I surmised it was some kind of new video game or interactive experience. I was half right.
Star Wars: Identities is a new museum exhibition that runs from April 19 to September 16, 2012 at the Montreal Science Centre. Read more about it, watch a video and more after the break. Read More »
As film fans, we sometimes put directors on such a pedestal it’s easy to forget they’re just like us. They’re huge lovers of film who devour all forms of cinema. The main difference is, when they aren’t watching movies, they’re being handed millions of dollar to make them. But if you went to the hypothetical coolest-bar-ever and saw someone like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg sitting there, you could buy them a beer and just chat about movies for hours.
Another man who loves to talk about movies (as long as they’re not his own) is Christopher Nolan. He waxed poetic in a love letter to cinema called These Amazing Shadows, a documentary about the National Film Registry. In a deleted scene from the doc, presented below, Nolan talks about his love of Star Wars. Watch it and read more about the movie after the jump. Read More »
