Archive for May, 2010

The Cannes 2010 Diary # 5: Wrapping up!

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

The Zombies have just returned from the Cannes Film Festival, and for me – this year’s hubbub is now done, and I’m not missing it one bit. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun – hell yeah, we did – or that the festival was not successful – quite the contrary, but there’s nothing better than come back home, to the warm spring weather of Finland, and get back to work.

I’m assembling here a small scrapbook from the festival, just to give you an overall idea what happened there – welcome to the Cannes 2010 Memory Lane!

First few days of the festival were mainly about setting up our office in the Grand Hotel terrace. The location was just the best anyone could’ve asked, since most of the business in Cannes takes place in or very close to the Grand Hotel.

Setting up the apartment

Setting up a nice and visible banner to the balcony is a custom many production companies or distributors tend to do, so we wanted to have our part of the fun. Pekka did a great job designing and doing the dirty work with the banner.

But of course, our puny attempts to surpass the big Hollywood money which they pour in the advertisement in Cannes are feeble. Take a look at some of these ads. And although they might seem ludicrously expensive – which they are – this year things was much smaller than last year.

Narnia in Carlton

Paras A-ryhmä

The best thing about Last Airbender...

Somebody shat on the Croisette

Wall Street on Croisette

But this year, the most expensive spot in Cannes was taken by the French. The price for that is 70,000€, plus the banner, design etc. of course.

Black Thirst advertisement

This year’s logo of the festival did have some serious 80′s vibe to it, but I liked the cool colors, which definitively connected well with the cold weather…

The festival palace in Cannes

Finally, the teaser for Iron Sky arrived, and we were one happy campers, the whole bunch of us!

And of course, a big thanks went over to the main CGI wizard Samuli in Tampere!

But as said, the weather was mostly quite crappy this year. Although there was sun in the daytime, I was mostly freezing in the balcony of our office – it was actually much warmer in Tampere this year than in Cannes, which has always been the other way around.

Every now and then, being in Cannes, surrounded by all the glamorous people and parties, you might feel like living in a bubble. Well, at least this time we got to try that out for real.

And of course, when in Cannes, you can’t avoid popping by at La Petit Majestic, a small pub just around the corner behind Grand Hotel, where everybody gathers after the day is over (and nobody wants to spend 15€ to a G&T on Grand Terrance or Carlton anymore…)

One of the coolest people in Cannes we got to meet this year were the Norwegian Ninjas, as we call them. We of course mean the people from Tordenfilm and Euforia, and the freaks working on the hugely awesome Norwegian Ninja -film that’s coming out later this year. We got to see a sneak peek of the trailer, and although I’ve been waiting for the film – it kicked ass much more than I had expected! They will release the teaser on the Internet quite soon, and we’re definitively going to tell you about it. I mean what more can you ask, a good political ninja spy movie set in Norway?

We visited the Norwegian Ninja party on the last day, and enjoyed some Norwegian sausage.

At the Norwegian Ninja party

Norwegian Ninja cooking Norwegian Sausages

See you next year, Cannes! We’re off to make some movies!

The Cannes 2010 Diary # 4: Scanning The Marché du Film

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Every year in Cannes Film Festival we go and check out the market, Le Marché du Film. This is not because we want a sneak peak of all the upcoming films, but because we try to find the worst films out there. This is hard, not because there aren’t range of choice, but because 99% of the films at the market are awful to say the least. So there are just so many to choose from. I have said this before, but I will say it again; if you enjoy movies, stay out of Cannes Film Festival and especially from The Marché du Film.

Some of you might know how a film market works, but to those of you who don’t, here’s a short recap. The market is packed with hundreds of sales agents and distribution companies who are there to simply sell and buy films. Keep in mind that the movie industry is indeed an industry, a business. Most of the films being sold at the market are manufactured to be bankable. Like for example one of our “favorite” companies in the market has to be The Asylum. Their business model is only to do rip-off’s of big Hollywood movies. They produce these films in only three months and release them about two months prior to the actual movie that their film is more or less based on. The idea behind this is to feed of as much as possible of the original movies publicity. Some of their not so original titles include 100 Million B.C., 2012: Doomsday, The Day the Earth Stopped and Paranormal Entity. Sound familiar by any chance? Here’s one of their latest releases, MegaFault, starring the late Brittany Murphy.

The market is also full with movies for kids and family. These are usually the worst. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Growing up… everyone needs a friendly paw.

Then there are the weird movies. Sometimes these films might have something interesting about them, but they are just wrong in so many ways. Here’s American Cowslip. In the poster we have Columbo, a bloated Val Kilmer and a donkey. Do I really need to go on..? Perhaps the film mostly suffers from awful marketing, but you know what, that’s all I got to go on.

Last but definitely not least, here’s one more movie that falls in the weird category. Dancing Ninja. Not only does it star David Hasselhoff, there are also DANCING NINJAS!!! Check out the trailer after the break, but be warned that it might dramatize you for life.

All me and Jackie Chan can say about these films is:

These movies of course are just the tip of iceberg, but I think you get my point. I gotta say it’s not a good feeling walking trough the market here in Cannes. Of course there are good movies too, but that’s 10% at best. But I guess that’s the percentage of good movies all over the world. Cannes is where it all starts. Just imagine what would have happen to the film industry if the ash cloud would have kept the airports closed for the duration of the film festival… maybe not the worst thing in the world.

The Cannes 2010 Diary #3: Happy And Long Hours With Iron Sky

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Sorry I wasn’t able to write yesterday, but we had a big ass party at the Iron Sky lounge and I spend most of the day either working, organizing or partying. But before I get any deeper into that, here’s what happened the day before.

We had big plans to go to this beach party, but apparently the venue was totally full after only 150 guests, so most people couldn’t get in. Oh well, we were anyway totally consumed with the anticipation of the new Iron Sky teaser. The finalization of the teaser took a little while, but finally they got it online and it was well worth the wait. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the brand spanking new teaser for Iron Sky.

We also attended the first happy hour at the Scandinavian terrace. It’s a great place to meet people, talk to all the Nordic foundations and just learn about the new films coming from the north in general. Also, they served free drinks so of course we were there. Cannes by the way is the promised land of free alcohol and finger food. If you have enough party invitations, you could be completely set for food and drinks for the whole duration of the festival. On the other hand, if you are not this privileged you could end up spending a fortune in 15 euro beers and 500 dollar dinners. Of course this is just one side of Cannes, if you walk 100 meters north from the Croisette the prizes go way down. Here’s a photo from the Scandinavian happy hour.

And as said in the beginning of this post, we had a party at the Iron Sky lounge. The place was completely packed with people and the party went on all night long. The lounge isn’t very big, but what the place lacks in space, it compensates with the amazing location. It located right in the middle of the festival, the Grand Hotel. Here’s a photo from the event.

Director AJ Annila also joined us here in Cannes yesterday. AJ’s new project is just so mind blowingly awesome that I have to tell you about it. The movie is called Human and it’s a werewolf story in reverse. Yes in reverse. AJ showed me some casting ideas and concept art pictures and I gotta say I’m extremely impressed. We will be posting some cool stuff of the film at some point, so stay tuned for more. Until then, here’s an article from Twitch and an early poster of the film.

That’s it for now, more tomorrow.

NOW ONLINE: Iron Sky – First Footage

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

The Cannes 2010 Diary #2: More Scandinavians, Less Robin Hood

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Ok, here’s what happened yesterday. I know I promised to post some photos of the Robin Hood premiere that took place here in Cannes, but I’m not going to do that after all. The reason is that I just simply didn’t go to the damn thing. Why you might ask. Well, it’s really quite simple. I just wasn’t interested one bit. What you need to realize, is that the area in front of the festival palais is grouded with angry French fans who will happily knock you out rather than let you see anything. I did this last year when Inglourious Basterds premiered in Cannes. But the difference between Inglourious Basterds and Robin Hood is that I was actually interested in QT’s new flick.

Robin Hood just isn’t interesting to me. I’m sure it will sell a shit load of movie tickets and people are going to like it, kind of. But for me that just doesn’t cut it anymore. I don’t know about you, but I’m so fed up with all these remakes or reboots or what ever the hell you call them. It’s time for that phenomenon to die already, so I’m taking a stand. So if you are now disappointed in us and if seeing a climps of Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchet was the only reason you are even reading this God forsaken blog, to you I say, it’s just not that kind of a blog! The Zombies do what ever the hell we like. If you don’t like it, go read some other blog then.

To be truly honest, I also forgot the whole thing ;)

Also I think Russell Crowe said it best in his own his Twitter:
“so far, Cannes as glamorous as a sausage sandwich”@russellcrowe

In stead of the premiere we attended a little get-together at the Scandinavian terrace and had some drinks and a bite to eat. The food was excellent by the way. Here’s a photo of the stand in the terrace. Today was also the first of many happy hours at the terrace and I can put out some photos of the event tomorrow.

Sorry for being a bit brief today, but I have to run off to a beach party now. Check back tomorrow.

Ps. We will be revealing something awesome new material from Iron Sky so stay tuned for that in just a bit.

The Cannes 2010 Diary #1: First Day Buzz and Robin Hood Fuzz

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Bonjour dear readers! The Zombie’s have arrived at Cannes Film Festival and we are here to bring you all the best news and scoops that the French Riviera has to offer. And especially we will be reporting on what the hell we are doing here. The 63rd edition takes place from 12 May to 23 May 2010. The weather seems very nice right now, but just a couple of weeks ago the town was covered in snow and huge waves were crashing the beaches of Boulevard de la Croisette. Luckily everything seems to be in order now, the sun is shining and the rosé wine is flowing.

First I want to explain our brand new logo for this year’s Cannes, although the reason should be quite obvious. Tim Burton is the president of the prestige Cannes Jury this year and I wanted a very Burtonesk feel to the logo. So this is what I came up with. The general look of the festival and of course the official poster is electric blue mixed with cool lights. Check out the official poster for 2010 Cannes Film Festival below.

Today is the opening day of the festival and the film opening the show this year is Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. I don’t think there’s much point in repeating the plot, since there probably isn’t a single person who hasn’t heard, read or seen stories of the famous outlaw that steels form the rich and gives to the poor. Even though the tagline says it’s the untold story of the legend. I wonder… My problem with the film is that it just feels a bit bland. And to be completely honest, I’m not interested in the movie at all. I’m starting to get really fed up with all these remakes, reboots and just plain repeats of old movies and stories. I mean has the world run out of original ideas? I’ll try to scan some actually interesting films from the festival and will let you know if I do.

In any case I’m going to check out the big premiere tonight (not the movie though) and post some photos tomorrow. Robin Hood is actually premiering world wide this week, so it doesn’t feel too special of an event anyway. But who knows, maybe I’m wrong and the movie is great. I have decided to watch it only if the Cannes response is positive, otherwise forget it Scott! The VIP guests will be strutting their stuff across the red steps of the Cannes Palais des Festivals and hudreds of fans are there to see them. Today’s big stars are of course Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett who will be to attending the premiere. Unfortunately director Ridley Scott couldn’t make it because of some injury he suffered.

Here’s just one example of how Robin Hood is being marketed here in Cannes.

But Robin Hood aside, Timo and the rest of the Iron Sky team have set up their offices at The Grand Hotel, one of the most central and important locations you can possibly have in Cannes. Here’s a photo of the awesome banner that’s in their balcony proudly taking place among the so called big films and companies. We will be writing about all the Iron Sky news here in Zombie Room, but here’s a link for something extra.

Check back tomorrow for more pictures and a report from the big premiere of Robin Hood. Also remember to follow us on Twitter for some TwitPics and comments on the festival: Essi’s Twitter, Timo’s Twitter and Zombie Room’s Twitter.

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