NSFW due to language.

This one looks interesting and different. Finally, a movie that is interesting and different.

Christina and I watched Pulling John on Netflix Friday night.  If you’ve been following my blog, or if you know me, you know I love documentaries.  This was a great documentary and from the trailer you wouldn’t think Christina would like it but she loved it too.  Check it out if you have some time, it is definitely a great documentary.

BROOKLYN CASTLE from Rescued Media on Vimeo.

I watched Art & Copy tonight on Netflix. If you get the chance, definitely check this one out.  It is an interesting look into the mind of advertisers.

According to their website the film:

“is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” “Think Different,” and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.”

The facts presented from the documentary:

• The global advertising business will exceed $544 billion by 2010
• 44% of all satellites launched are for commercial communications
• 75% of global satellite services revenue comes from television
• 70% of U.S. TV broadcasting revenue comes from ads
• In the 1970s, the average city dweller received about 1,000 advertising messages every day. Today it is closer to 5,000
• There are roughly, 450,000 billboards across the U.S
• $7 billion is spent on billboard advertising a year
• The average household watches 8 hours of TV a day
• There are 1353 HDTV satellite channels around the world today. This number will grow 350% by 2013
• 565 satellite delivered TV networks in the US
• 75% of U.S. homes have 3 or more TVs
• Food companies spent $32 billion on advertising last year
• Car companies spent more than $15 billion
• Political advertising spent more than 2.6 billion in 2008
• Last year Time Warner sold $8.8 billion worth of advertising
• A 30-second ad on American Idol costs $750,000
• Michael Jordan’s value to Nike has been estimated at $5.2 billion
• A 30 second ad during the Super Bowl costs $2.7 million
• Each year the average child sees 200,000 advertisements
• Americans see 61 minutes of ads each day on the Internet, TV, and mobile screens
• 65% of Americans believe they are “constantly bombarded with too much” advertising

DreamWorks first personal art publication, Moonshine, was conceived as an opportunity to highlight the breath of artistic development talent at Dreamworks.
This short documentary gives you a sneak peek into the personal works from the artists.

Directed by Alexis Wanneroy & Christophe Lautrette
Artists : Sam Michalp, Nicolas Weis, Griselda Sastrawinata, Christian Schellewald, Paul Duncan, Marcos Mateu, Nathan Fowkes
Special appearance from Jeffrey Katzenberg

Moonshine book :
Produced by Angela Lepito
Published by Design Studio Press
Edited by Christophe Lautrette & Pierre-Olivier Vincent

Music by Drew Barefoot – The forest in bloom

lautrette.blogspot.com/​

This documentary was done by individual parties.
The views and opinions expressed in this movie and comments are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions held by Dreamworks Animation or any affiliated companies.

I watched Objectified the other night and got a few good things to take away from it.

• Almost everything that fills our world has been designed in one form or another.
• “Every object tells a story if you know how to read it” – Henry Ford
• Don’t worry about the average customer. Look at the extremes. If you understand what the extremes are the middle will take care of itself.
• Dieter Rams former design director Braun Kronberg, Germany

• Good design
• Should be innovative
• Make a product useful
• Is Aesthetic design
• Make a product understandable
• Is honest
• Is unobstructive
• Is long lived
• Is consistent in every detail
• Environmentally friendly
• Is as little design as possible.

I watched The Human Experience tonight and I have to say it was a truly beautiful documentary.  If the footage of the children in Peru in particular doesn’t move you, chances are you aren’t alive inside.  Within the first 30 seconds of the documentary starting I could tell I was going to love it and I’ll go so far as to say it was life changing and powerful.  If you endure corporate politics all day after a while you may really start questioning humanity.  This film will help remind you what is incredibly important, the human experience.

From the homeless experience:

• “You can’t say everyone is bad, we all have something happen to us.  If you don’t have good family and friends to support you, then you’re in a lot of **** because it is family and friends and you know this is life.”
• And then there is this brilliant clip from the movie:

• “Experience can be a generous teacher or a cruel teacher.  But whatever experience we have, whether it is good or bad, we can always remember and learn something from it.”
• “We can talk about ideas forever.  But ideas are simply that, they are thoughts, abstractions.  Until these ideas are rooted in reality, in the reality of my own life, my own experience, they can’t be tested.  They can’t be proven true.”

I hope you can watch the movie, it is available on Netflix or for purchase on DVD here.

Just finished watching Exit Through the Gift Shop and loved it.  Very interesting what happens when underground art is turned upside down.  You learn toward the end of the film why it is titled what it is. The film features the famous street artists of the world:

• Banksy
• Thierry Guetta AKA Mr. Brain Wash
• Space Invader
• Monsieur Andre
• Shepard Fairey
• Ron English
• Steve Lazarides

The description of the film on the official site is: “This is the inside story of Street Art – a brutal and revealing account of what happens when fame, money and vandalism collide. Exit Through the Gift Shop follows an eccentric shop-keeper turned amateur film-maker as he attempts to capture many of the world’s most infamous vandals on camera, only to have a British stencil artist named Banksy turn the camcorder back on its owner with wildly unexpected results.  One of the most provocative films about art ever made, Exit Through the Gift Shop is a fascinating study of low-level criminality, comradeship and incompetence. By turns shocking, hilarious and absurd, this is an enthralling modern-day fairytale… with bolt cutters.”

If you are into modern art it is definitely worth checking out.  I found Mr. Brain Wash especially fascinating and am not quite sure what to make of him but I don’t seem to be alone.  If you watch it let me know what you think in the comments section.

I just watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead on Netflix Instant tonight.  That in itself is pretty incredible for a number of reasons.  I’m crazy cheap but decided I was sick and tired of hearing all about how amazing Netflix is and not being able to experience it for myself.  That and they came out with a new pricing model today so I decided to give it a try.  All I have to say is I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it.  Now I have to cut my cable bill or another cost because that is how I roll.  Watching the documentary was also incredible for me because I’ve never been one to watch many movies.  I want to do so many things in life, movies haven’t ever been much of a priority for me.  Heck I’ve never seen Braveheart and lots of other great movies people tell me about which I’m sure I’d love, but I personally like to spend my time doing other things.  If I do watch movies my absolute favorites are ones I’ll learn something from, so I absolutely love documentaries.  Yes I also love my superhero and Sci-fi movies too so I know what you are thinking.  OK so enough about Neflix and why I don’t watch movies and onto the movie review part of this post!

Fat, Stick and Nearly Dead was very educational, very inspiring, very low budget, and very enjoyable.  I embedded the trailer above which doesn’t do it justice.  It was so inspirational I paused the movie twice to juice some strawberries after the first 30 minutes and then a small bag of carrots about 20 minutes after that.  I used to be into organic foods, juicing, exercise, and mental health but life just consumed me.  This documentary was a great reminder to keep what is important in perspective.  Christina didn’t drink much juice before she met me but I love juice (Odwalla in particular).  Bob and Christina, kept thinking about you all throughout the movie (Bob because of his shakes).  The movie was very life changing and what is most interesting is every ailment they were suffering from went away after only 60 days after drinking 100% juice for those days.  They had skin rashes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, migraines, and they all went away.  Now of course you can’t and probably shouldn’t only drink juice but as a supplement and cleanser it seems to work very well.  Hope you get a chance to watch it and Bob and Christina (and of course Barbara) I want to have you over for dinner and a movie to show it to you some night.  Very motivational!

This documentary looks great and they have Seth Godin in it so you know it will be great (Seth is brilliant).

About the documentary: “The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.”

Visit http://www.presspauseplay.com for more info, screening dates, and sneak peeks.

For some reason I’m fascinated with people’s “happiness” so when I saw the trailer for this documentary I had to order it to hear more.  After I watch it I’ll of course blog about what I learned.  The following are details on the documentary from the YouTube site:  ”Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less time for friends and family and we face mounting pressures at work.

The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm — an economics of localization.

We hear from a chorus of voices from six continents including Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Michael Shuman, Juliet Schor, Zac Goldsmith and Samdhong Rinpoche – the Prime Minister of Tibet’s government in exile. They tell us that climate change and peak oil give us little choice: we need to localize, to bring the economy home. The good news is that as we move in this direction we will begin not only to heal the earth but also to restore our own sense of well-being. The Economics of Happiness restores our faith in humanity and challenges us to believe that it is possible to build a better world.”  >> www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

Over the Christmas break I was able to see The Fighter which I was dying to see.  Full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of boxing movies.  I can watch the Rocky training clip over and over and do about 10 push-ups and say “oh yeah eye of the tiger, oh yeah” about a hundred (OK one or two) times a day.  So when I saw the trailer for The Fighter I was really excited to see it.  I won’t give anything away in this review and all I can say is if you like boxing or motivational movies, you’ll like The Fighter.  Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale do an amazing job playing Micky and Dicky Ward (the now even more famous boxing brothers from Boston).  I give the movie a solid 8 out of 10.

“In a country where 58% of African American 4th graders are functionally illiterate, The Lottery uncovers the failures of the traditional public school system and reveals that hundreds of thousands of parents attempt to flee the system every year. The Lottery follows four of these families from Harlem and the Bronx who have entered their children in a charter school lottery. Out of thousands of hopefuls, only a small minority will win the chance of a better future.

Directed by Madeleine Sackler and shot by award-winning cinematographer Wolfgang Held, The Lottery uncovers a ferocious debate surrounding the education reform movement. Interviews with politicians and educators explain not only the crisis in public education, but also why it is fixable. A call to action to avert a catastrophe in the education of American children, The Lottery makes the case that any child can succeed.”  Source: http://thelotteryfilm.com/about

One of my favorite documentaries is Who Killed the Electric Car.  I love following what Elon Musk is doing and it looks like this documentary is going to look at things from a modern day perspective.  It should be great…

I’m late in writing this review but Christina and I went to see The Social Network and I would give it a 7 out of 10.  Since I’m a geek the subject matter of the movie pertained to my interests and even then I think if you are a geek you may be offended by how geeks are portrayed in the movie.  If you don’t consider yourself a geek, you don’t like social networking, or if you are a woman, there is an even better chance you will not like the movie. All geeks aren’t out to screw everyone over as the movie depicts and I’ll leave it up to you to say how you feel woman were portrayed.  I may spoil it for you if you haven’t already seen the movie so you may want to avoid reading any further until you get a chance to watch it.  I’m obsessed with researching things I learn to make sure they are as accurate as possible so after watching the movie I wanted to do some Googling to find out more on how accurate the movie is to what really happened and who the main characters are from the movie.

Erica Albright

The movie but it starts out showing Mark Zuckerberg creating a website rating the attractiveness of female Harvard students after his girlfriend Erica Albright breaks up with him.  It wasn’t tough to find Erica who posted the picture above on her website to show her viewers what she really looks like.  She writes that she had her friend “Dave” help her create the site below.

As far as Erica’s response as to how accurate the movie is from her perspective she says:
“10/2/10 – I went and saw the movie last night. Kind of crazy that someone is actually playing me in a movie! The movie definitely brought back some great memories….it made me miss my college years that’s for sure! (I feel soooo old) lol (: — I guess you could say the movie is “based on a true story” but there are many scenarios that were soooo made up by Hollywood! As far as the two scenes I’m in, the first one is fairly accurate, we did “break-up” over dinner, I do remember him ripping on my school (that wasn’t the first time)…but the second scene of me at dinner with my friends blowing Mark off never happened. (also he NEVER friended me on Facebook) lol! (: ”

Sean Parker

Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson

Not that he is the best role model in the world but Sean Parker is someone I have read about for years with my favorite article being the October 2010 Vanity fair article titled “With a Little Help From His Friends“.  In the article Parker is described as a “Web oracle; more than a few acquaintances and colleagues use the word “genius” to describe him. He understands not only computers and Web networks but also how people want to incorporate them into their lives. As a result, he’s been stunningly successful. That said, he has a libertine side. Parker has a knack for missing deadlines and appointments, for disappearing for weeks on end, for avoiding the press. (His decision to cooperate with a Vanity Fair profile is unprecedented and rather out of character.) He was pushed out of Facebook after an arrest for cocaine possession in 2005. (No charges were filed.) Even among his many supporters, he has a reputation for being an erratic party animal.”

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

Cameron and Tyler are identical twins of Harvard’s rowing team who meet Mark and want his help creating the Harvard Connection.  Soon after Mark starts to finish his “TheFacebook.com” site which after released the Winklevoss’s sue over claiming Mark stole the idea after hearing about what they were working on.  I can’t say I fully understand how the Winklevoss’s have a case because unless the idea was patented isn’t Mark able to create whatever he wants?  Below is an interview from The Today Show with Matt Lauer (I can’t stand them):

Eduardo Saverin

Of all the “real world” characters of the movie, Eduwardo was the most difficult to find much on when researching them online.  Savern also gets the award for the worst way to be portrayed in a movie award because he comes across looking like a nice guy who finishes last but ironically he seems to be the only one with some ethics in the movie so to me he should be the one we all appreciate.  He once had 30% ownership in “thefacebook” which was reduced to .03% once Peter Theil (PayPal co-founder) and Sean Parker took control of the start-ups finances.

Mark Zuckerberg

It seems the reason Mark creates thefacebook.com is to meet woman after his breakup.  Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend, Priscilla Chan (shown above) “was one of his pals at Harvard, where he studied back in 2004. Moreover, Chan is amongst the initial supporters who were with Mark when he came up with the concept of Facebook.  Chan even packed up and moved to Silicon Valley with Zuckerberg after the launch of Facebook. Priscilla Chan is a third year medical student at the University of California San Francisco with dreams of becoming a pediatrician. The New Yorker profile mentions their eventual plan to marry, though nothing concrete is revealed in the article.”  As for Mark’s thoughts on how accurate the movie is, he was recently asked in the interview below:

Interesting facts about the movie:

• Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind which is why Facebook is blue. OK, that isn’t about the movie but it is interesting.
• Natalie Portman, a Harvard student during the time of Facebook’s creation, gave writer Aaron Sorkin some insider information about how things really happened on campus. Sorkin thanked her by referencing her in a scene.
• The first scene, in which Zuckerberg’s girlfriend (played by Rooney Mara) breaks up with him, took 99 takes to finish.