 |
Thursday, 7 February 2002 |
Moulin Rouge Finally Got.
There is a very adroit article at Salon.com on the Baz Luhrmann film Moulin Rouge—Glimpse of the Future.
Author Julie Talen gets it, whereas far too many film critics certainly do not. Or certain of my friends.
Also worth reading is Moulin Rouge by Stephanie Zacharek.
11:14:07 PM 
|
|
The Man In Black.
I’m often ragged on for my propensity to wear mostly black.
There are several reasons why I do. It’s a generational thing. I grew up in a semi-authoritarian state during the punk era, when to wear black marked you as mad, bad and dangerous to know. Adding black leather and a pair of Doc Martens boots to the mix branded you as a criminal before the fact. Clothing became a mark of defiance to leadership gone wrong. It also meant you’d be picked up on the street by the cops.
Second is that black jeans and t-shirt make a terrific base for a fine quality jacket if you have to go out during a day of heavy work without a clothes change, which I’ve often had to do. I used to have a lot of bright-coloured blazers for the purpose. Great for going to the Groucho Club or going to see the Queen.
The last and probably best reason I was unfortunately reminded of today. The quality of the water supply in Western Australia, especially in the country, can be variable at best. Today, while I had a machine full of fine white 360-threads-per-inch sateen cotton bed linen washing, the water supply evidently decided to go bad. $400 of purest white becomes $0 of mottled shit brown. That’s how it felt to me as soon as I saw it.
I’m soaking it all overnight in Sard but I’m told it is highly unlikely that it’ll be anything other than slightly lighter mottled shit brown. In some rural areas the water will often go blood red. Right now the stuff coming out of the taps looks like it has been rerouted out of the sewers.
So long as the water does not contain too much iron oxide, I may be able to eventually get most of the brown stain out.
8:47:49 PM
|
|
The Art Of Telling Stories About Stories.
I am a regular visitor to Apple’s QuickTime movie trailers website. Although I am using just a 56K dial-up connection, I have my QuickTime settings on Intranet/T1 so that I can download the biggest version of each trailer overnight, and I’ve got a sizable collection on disk now.
I believe there is something to be learned by advertising people from movie trailers, and I will go into why in a mini-essay coming to this site shortly. But I was pondering the issue of why movie producers generally waste the chance to improve their film’s marketing by building mostly unsatisfying websites for them.
There are some recent rare exceptions:
Note that 4 of the 5 are made by the filmmakers themselves and not on their behalf by film studios. Charlotte Gray is located on the Warner Brothers website, and is being built by Jeffrey Zeldman, but I don’t know who commissioned it.
The Blair Witch Project first alerted everyone to how good websites could be so effective at marketing a movie. But while most movie websites provide trailers, brief bios of the cast and crew, and a plot synopsis, the stories behind the making of the film, and the stories behind the story, especially if the film is based on real people or events, tend to be ignored or glossed over.
Even fictional feature films have elements that great stories could be told about on a website—location, culture, customs, history, the book’s author, the process of how the movie finally got made, you name it. Human beings love stories. That’s why we talk with each other, watch TV and films, read newspapers and magazines and it is one reason why we listen to music, if the lyrics are audible.
We are sucked in by stories, and the web is a superb way of telling complex and interactive stories with words, sounds, moving and still images. Flash, despite the way it has been overused for building the bells-and-whistles instead of deep content, is a terrific medium for deep storytelling.
Film is the storytelling medium of our times, other than the web, and films must be marketed. Their marketing budgets are generally pretty big, sometimes approaching that of the cost of production. People love to learn about upcoming movies—look at the enormous popularity of Apple’s trailer pages.
Every movie release should be accompanied by a compelling website, replete with stories.
2:21:23 PM
|
|
Still Ill, But Recovering.
Still not feeling well, plenty to do anyway, and am having problems with Michael Winterbottom, the director of 24 Hour Party People, picking up the phone at the time appointed for my interview with him. Two attempts so far.
I hope the interview and the subsequent story comes off, as I believe it is a terrific one. And I can do a very interesting and unconventional article about the movie and the issues involved. It is a story of our times. Here is hoping.
12:09:51 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
|
|
|
