thedriveintheatre

Those of you who follow my blog would’ve read my previous post on my spoof of The Incredibles in my magazine company’s publication. Now I’m proud to present to you my take on John Carter, which I successfully pitched to my boss as a new theme for that district.

As the movie was directed by Andrew Stanton, I couldn’t resist to throw in a few Wall-E references, which you can see below.

Also, I made a flash animation on the site where Rainbow does her epic Sonic Rainboom. You can see it in the link I’ve given below.

Cover - http://i44.tinypic.com/htfaxy.jpg

Rainbow Dash Closeup - http://i42.tinypic.com/mj1w8g.jpg

Eve Closeup - http://i39.tinypic.com/vrzmm0.jpg

Wall-E Closeup - http://i40.tinypic.com/npl4ps.jpg

Centrespread - http://i40.tinypic.com/144h1e.jpg

Axiom Closeup - http://i44.tinypic.com/rhtzcw.jpg

Web animation - http://www.nmags.com/fn/index.php

Equestria Daily Nightly Roundup #271

Halfway there, guys! Also, do check out my review of the movie itself!

Equestria Daily: Nightly Roundup #182

Surprise!!! Today I made the headelines for the ‘Nightly Roundup’ on Equestria Daily. I’ll let my email to ED from Monday explain it all:

“Dear Equestria Daily,

I’m a recent university graduate from Down Under and a self-professed Brony. Two months ago, I started my first job as a graphic designer at a Sydney-based coupon magazine company. Its Unique Selling Point is that its issues are thematic parodies of movie and TV show titles. Last week, I assembled my first magazine (the theme is the recent movie ‘Arthur Christmas’, which I successfully pitched), and I was in charge of the cover and centrespread of the clients as well as the spoof synopsis on the content page.

I was creatng the centrespread when I realised that there was some negative space between two of the clients. I had already used a reindeer, so just for the heck of it, I decided to insert a live-action version of one of the Mane SIx. I chose Twilight (although my favourite is Fluttershy) and rewrote the synopsis to reflect her impromptu introduction. I haven’t watched Arthur Christmas yet, but to my knowledge, there’s no magical teleporting unicorn in the film. Coincidentally, one of the main characters was conveniently named Bryony, which just begged the removal of one letter for her spoof name.

To my surprise (and utter delight), Twilight’s cameo in the content page synopsis and centrespread somehow passed the two editorial checks and the issue went to print! So right now, there’s 50,000 copies of this advertising magazine being distributed in the Fairfield district in Sydney with T. Sparkle waiting to surprise any observant Aussie Bronies! I’ve included a few links to pictures I’ve taken of the printed copy; I think I can safely avoid copyright issues as I didn’t actually refer to her by name, and I’ve made my version of the stars on Twilight’s cutie mark have five spokes, while the canon version has six.

Oh, and the magazine is also available for download online, where I also created a brief animation of Twilight at the end of the banner clip which plays on the homepage. The print and online versions will be available till the end of January, in case any Fairfield Bronies ask.

Do send me a link if you post this on ED, so I can share it with my fellow Bronies here and overseas. Thanks for reading this, and bringing such a great community fan site to life every day.

Your faithful reader,
Andre”

ED replied:

“Haha nice! Sneaky Twi. To the roundup.”

So I eagerly came back from work the next day to see if my story made the roundup, but it wasn’t there. Two more days passed before I decided to send them a reminder on Friday.

“Greetings Equestria Daily,

It’s been three roundups, did I miss it somewhere or are you saving this for the weekend? ;)

Yours derpfully,
Andre”

And they responded:

“Looks like it just got.lost! Added again..”

So I checked in a few hours later and there was a heading there, but no images or description.

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/12/nightly-roundup-181.html

ED said that “for some odd reason none of these links work anymore”, but it was still working on my end. Eventually though, after a reupload to my Flickr account, it finally showed up in the Saturday edition as you see above. Unfortunately, they didn’t link to a spoof synopsis I wrote that referenced Twilight in the contents page, but you can read it on the online version of the mag in the ilnk they provided, Or you can check it out below.

(references in 3rd and 6th paragraph)

Cover - http://flic.kr/p/aSLX5n (no Twilight in here, just to show y’all the magazine title)

Contents page - http://flic.kr/p/aSLXz8

Spoof synopsis closeup - http://flic.kr/p/aSLYaa (references in 3rd and 6th paragraph)

Centrespread - http://flic.kr/p/aSLYDK

Page of centrespread - http://flic.kr/p/aSLZbr

Twilight closeup - http://flic.kr/p/aSM3EF

Twilight closeup 2 - http://flic.kr/p/aSLZzk

Online version with web animation - http://www.nmags.com/fn/index.php (watch the animated banner till the end, after the speech bubble fades away)

If you live in Fairfield, Sydney, you can find copies of the magazine right now in shopping malls, local businesses, and maybe even your mailbox! Just follow the web animation link above and there’s an ‘Out of Mags’ button you can click to check out distribution points. And thanks to ED for publishing my story! ;)

Ladies and gentlecars, may I proudly present, the new Cars 2 trailer! I swear, Pixar must be telepathic or something, because no sooner than I had finished my annoying assignment than I saw the site being updated! :D

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/disney/cars2/

It’s so new when I watched it a few minutes ago, they still haven’t got the resolution right! (There’s two black bars down the side) But expect it to be corrected within the next few hours or so once the video has finished rendering.

Much, much better than the first few trailers, although there is too much focus on Mater and not enough Finn or Holley. Bernoulli fans will be pleased to hear the Italian bragster for the first time.

Also, the editing keeps going back and forth and the music leaves much to be desired. I really wished they had gone with a dramatic and tense ‘killer ending’ instead of the feel-good jolly-good-show-what-a-pleasant-adventure vibe.

Still feels like a spy spoof to me, but hopefully I’ll be proven wrong when I finally see it. Fingers crossed that Professor Z is a formidable baddie who means business and not a ‘straw villain’.

Still, I like the hint of the climax just before the title card. I hope it will be just as exciting an MILD SPOILER aerial-rescue sequence MILD SPOILER END as Rio! :)

P.S. You might be surprised to know the bidet joke doesn’t appear in this one! Thank goodness.

The new trailer will be unleashed in less than 24 hours! I’ll be crossing my fingers and holding my breath.

I really hope Pixar gives us a more dramatic and exciting James Bond/Mission Impossible-style trailer than the Austin-Powers fluff pieces so far. I want to hear actual music from Giachinno, not a film theme pinched from someone else. I want to see some emotional pathos, like the ‘whooshes’, some tight editing, I want to feel that this is a true spy movie instead of a spoof.

If everyone’s wondering why I have such high expectations for it, it is because John Lasseter promised us that it will be a bona-fide spy movie and not a spoof. So far all the trailers I’ve seen have portrayed it as a parody, the most oft-repeated clip being Mater unceremoniously sprayed by a Japanese bidet. And one of the henchmen falling into a septic tank. That is not a thriller. That is a comedy. Had ‘Hawaiian-Shirt-Man’ not made that claim, then maybe I would’ve been more lenient.

The trailer should give the viewer a taste of the promise it will deliver. Surprise me.

P.S. On a side note, I find it ridiculous how many ‘trailers’ have already been uploaded on their Apple site (23 so far). Pixar can proudly lay claim to having the most number of trailers for one movie ever on Apple Trailers.

Absolutely ridonkulous.

Critics are raving…

Over the last two weeks, I went to the movies for a grand total of five times, and watched five diverse movies, one of them twice and another for the second and last time.

I rewatched Rio with a bud for the second time on Wednesday, and it looked just as awesome in 2D on a smaller screen. I’ll post a detailed review if I have the time, but this is simply my favourite film of the year, mainly because it appealed to my ‘inner child’ and every character is utterly lovable. Rango is just as good, only it is more daring and less sentimental. As I’ve mentioned on Twitter, if Rango is a technical masterpiece in the likes of Legend of the Guardians, then Rio is a storytelling charmer in the vein of How to Train Your Dragon.

I also had a similar sensation comparing Source Code with Fast Five. Source Code is very intellectual, and you have to pay attention or you won’t understand the ending. Fast Five is just a ‘put your brain on cruise control and just let it rip’ kind of movie, and it is a very well-done genre picture (by genre, I mean action racing movies). But both movies have very emphatic characters that you will care about; Source Code being a ‘love story across time’ like Deja Vu (one of my favourite movies) and Fast Five being a tale about family, trust, and friendship, much like Rio (except with plenty more explosions). Both also have equally exciting action setpieces; Source Code literally being Speed on a train-meets-Groundhog Day, and Fast Five boasting the most spectacular vehicular destruction I have ever seen in my entire life (it’s even better than The Bourne Supremacy and Bad Boys 2 in gutwrenching carnage).

Hoodwinked is a passable spy spoof, but we already have another one by a more well-known studio coming out in June, so why bother with this one? For starters, it’s a decent sequel, if a little underwhelming in comparison to its superior predecessor, which had a clever ‘Rashomon’ narrative of multiple perspectives and subjective truth. Here, the espionage genre is sent up mercilessly, as well as various movies that you won’t know about unless you were born before the 90s or you’re a film buff. I chuckled many more times than my less pop-culturally aware friends, but I didn’t experience as much pathos or emotional connection as I had for the other movies I’ve seen lately. Pixar fans, though, would be delighted to know that there is a Ratatouille cameo in there. Yes, I’m not kidding, pay attention during an antagonists’ flashback sequence and you might just spot one of the characters in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment.

I watched Thor for the first time with my bro the Saturday before last, and a second time with two of my mates when we snuck into another theatre after Source Code on Sunday (shh… it’s illegal, you know). Thor’s also a pretty good alternative, but it tries to be grand and kitsch at the same time, instead of going for all-out cuteness like Rio or all-out drama like Rango. And that kinda threw me off a bit. You see Thor throwing ice giants around and smashing them with his hammer, and then in the second act, he’s eating cornflakes and walking around topless. It makes for nice contrast between his world and ours, but I just felt they could’ve grounded his realm in more believability instead of making it a spotless, right-angled, not-a-single-trash-piece in sight Utopia. It’s like they sent a platoon of M-Os to clean up Asgard.

Needless to say, I spent my two-week school holiday fruitfully in terms of cinematic outings. In fact, I think this might have been the most number of movies I’ve seen in theatres in a fortnight.

Rio (rewatch) - 9/10
Source Code - 8/10
Fast Five - 8/10
Hoodwinked Too! - 4/10
Thor - 6/10