The following clip is from a Bollywood movie called Alluda Majaka. Anyone who regularly watches YouTube videos should recognize the face of actor Chiranjeevi, as this guy emerges everytime you search for “Bollywood” “action scene” or similar stuff.

And boy does he deliver in this video!

In a way he’s the one who comes closest to our holy action god Chuck Norris. Of course there’s still a margin of the size of a galaxy between both since Chuck Norris can walk on air and once destroyed a black hole just by shouting at it.

Nevertheless, having a horse slide underneath a car and riding through glass panes where you’d normally place doors and riding between a bunch of strategically extremely well placed cars is epic, too.

Watch and marvel:

Imagine a movie that depicts a world in which dreams and reality are close together. Creatures as big as skyscrapers or as small as flies inhabit this world in which the sun never sets. Think of Big Fish by Tim Burton in full power and put to the extremes (hence the picture above from it). This world is only one blink away, you just have to look. It resides slightly besides our reality. But we lost the ability to see a long time ago.

Enter our hero who has a terrible accident in which his girlfriend dies. He is broken. But then there is something else. He suddenly can see this sideworld. He is frightened of it but he also doesn’t want to return to his life full of misery. He has lost its will to life. Nevertheless this sideworld notices he can notice it and they know he has a problem. So they do the only thing they can do: get on his nerves with questions and tasks he has to accomplish. It’s not that they really need help because this world doesn’t know problems or needs. They fake them. But neither he or the audience knows this until the end. So he unwillingly helps some of those fantastic creatures just to regain his peace. But he can’t as the tasks get bigger.

Before he knows it, he begins a journey to search for a piece of paper which goes around the world – while he never leaves New York. He sees things never seen before and more surreal than anything Dali ever imagined. And although many things get on his nerves on an epic level he starts to love this world, he starts to love those creatures and colorful characters – he starts to regain his will to life.

But then it happens: just as he finds this piece of paper they put him into custody. Although he sees this world so close to our reality, nobody else can. And so everyone saw him acting strange all the time and talking to himself. He didn’t realize that all the normal people could at least see him. But he doesn’t believe that this is all fake or imagination. And if it is, what is so bad about it?

But is he crazy? Of course, the media gets wind of it and when the hearing begins to decide whether or not he should be put into a mental hospital, all of New York watches. Is he right, or is he wrong when he describes this fantastic world full of stuff we dream about and hope to see ourselves? Things don’t look too good for him as the State Attorney proves that nothing was and is there, and that everything is only a result of the accident and his feeling of guilt.

Just as everything seems to be lost for our hero, the sideworld steps in to help him. Some of them enter the court and tell him that they weren’t stupid and knew that something like that would happen. Moreover the same thing already happened once and so they only didn’t interfere to see whether or not he believed what he saw. So after he proved himself they give him the important hint to save his ass: read the piece of paper he was sent out to find. He opens it and reads it out loud: “Just look”.

The incredible happens: the sideworld starts to become visible to everyone. The creatures, the fantastic world, everything. But only for one day. But that doesn’t matter for now. Without any dialogue we see people wondering, laughing and playing. We see media coverage of this incredible stuff and reporters awing at what they see. The reality we know stopped for one day. The world, our reality got colorful again. (Fade to black.)

And now, after you read this hypothetical script I came up with, listen to the following piece of music and imagine it playing over this last sequence I described above, when the world of our dreams enters our reality and everything stops for one day!

One minutes and thirty-three seconds. Only one minute and thirty-three seconds were enough to fire up my imagination and think of a whole movie just to find a conclusion that would fit to this fantastic and beautiful track.

Music really can be that powerful. Even if it’s only one minute and thirty-three seconds long.

(As a side note: I know there are some elements that sound cheesy at best. But with a good writer and director (Tim Burton!!!!!) this could become one of the most imaginative movies in a long time. And yes, I am that confident.)

Christmas is slowly but surely knocking on the door – which means you gain a lot of weight on some places (fat) while you loose an astonishing amount of weight elsewhere (money).

If you cannot wait until the presents arrive or you are being tortured with yet another version of “My heart will go on” on the Christmas market (seriously, are they nuts?), I will therefore present you with something to ease your pain.

Since this is a blog, my presents to you are of course digital: four links to great stuff you can watch, read and listen to.

Link 1: The 20th Birthday Portfolio

If you ever wanted to see your much beloved movie actors incorporating again their most famous roles, here’s your chance. The empire magazine managed to drag some very well known actors before their cameras and some of the results really look cool.  My favorites are Simon Pegg/Nick Frost and Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen. Especially the Bean/Mortsensen picture is great, because I felt they still are some of the best friends. Well done.

Link 2: The Morgan Freeman Chain of Command

I already knew that Morgan Freeman is one of the coolest actors out there. But the graphic on this German website proves not only this but even more: this guy essentially could found his own state – no, his own universe. Now, that is what I would call awesome/coolestest/whatever. The only problem in that universe could be the fact that he never played women in a movie. But who would want this.

Link 3: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review

This 70 minute YouTube-Video (that makes its rounds on the net) about the train wreck called Phantom Menace is a must see for any movie geek out there. It proves – if nothing else – that letting George Lucas take full creative control of the prequels was one of the most epic mistakes ever.  They just should have fired him.

Link 4: National Lampoon’s  Christmas Vacation – Intro

And since Christmas is knocking on the door it’s time to get you in the mood for Christmas with the opening of one of the best Christmas comedies ever.

Merry Christmas to all of you and a happy new year!

By the way: I will make some big changes and a bigger announcement to and regarding  this movie blog so stay tuned.

Spoiler Threat Level: Low

Your chair might be one of the most personal objects you possess with the exception of your bed. It’s one of the few if not only pieces of furniture you sit on, on a daily basis. Because of that your chair tells a lot about you.

And of course, the way you sit on yours.

The anime series Bokurano, or to be more precise it’s ending, does just that: it presents all of its characters sitting in their respective chairs. Just that. But at the same time it goes way that. Because the way each character sits in his personal chair tells so much about them. The beautiful music is the icing on the cake.

By the way, the series itself sounds interesting as well:

A group of middle-school students unwillingly assume the task of piloting a giant robot named Zearth in a series of battles against other robots where the survival of Earth is dependent on their continuing to win.

Call me hooked, especially considering the big catches of this game – which I removed from the text above to save your spoiler. If you don’t care for them or don’t intend to watch this series,  you can find some spoilerific reviews and thoughts about the series here and here.

I think we all know Roland Emmerich so I don’t need to write much about him or his background. He is the master of disaster. In more than one way.

Well, in some months he’ll invite us again into his world of much disaster and less story called 2012. And judging by the original trailer there’ll be many disasters waiting for us which at least look quite nice, albeit being a *little* bit physics defying here and there.

Unfortunately for Roland, his trailer is nothing compared to the unknown original trailer from the 70s for the still unreleased movie called 2012: It’s a disaster!…

After watching this spoof for the first time two thoughts crossed my mind: 1) this thing is done superbly and 2) the visual effects to convey this grindhouse feeling aren’t as “bad” as they should be (the nitpicker in me still lives….arghh). Although the soundtrack choice was perfect as well as the funny one-liners I think a very bad sound quality aided by some even worse video quality compared to the level seen here with much jitter, many scratches, washed out colors and the more would have been perfect.

But you know what? After watching this spoof trailer one thing became crystal clear: I’d so love to see 2012 as an intentionally bad and craptastic fun-fest of a disaster flick. Check your brain at the entrance and watch the heroine falling over any dust particle in her reach, breaking each of her ankles twenty times – at least.

Unfortunately the original trailer suggests that 2012 takes itself way too seriously.

Crap and Damn!

…

P.S.: What about you guys? Should we start our own movie production and have some fun?

Originally I planned to write a small rant about the current situation of Hollywood with its unlimited flow of movie remakes, reboots and sequels.

Then I stumbled across a piece of music that made me change my plans.

When I listened to the first seconds of this music video I thought I had a problem with my ears, to say the truth. Nothing seemed to fit, everything just seemed like a bunch of notes strung together in an incoherent way. You know, “melodies” you hear in something…avant-gardy.

But then something terrific happened: a melody full of energy scraped out from the chaos in barely any time at all. And I was in love because it’s been so much time since such a powerful thing nestled down in my ears. Moreover, it’s the first time after months I had the feeling that I listened to a piece of music for four minutes when it really were only two.

To me, this is definitely a fine example of music everyone should have listened to at least once.

Just close your eyes and enjoy…

(use of ‘HQ’ most vehemently recommended)

By the way: if you would have told me this group is french I wouldn’t have believed you. It’s a shame they already seem to have disbanded.

I just found this stunning advertising done by a German agency for a big car company. Whoever thought that ads have to be all about noise and visual clutter need to see this. It is simple, basic and beautiful at the same time. You could say it is a gem in the mud called advertising.

In a way it is a shame for the other ad companies out there because regardless of the massive amounts of mud, many advertisers simply cannot or don’t want to change anything about it and do something stunning. How many times did you actually watch an ad that was so overloaded with cheap graphics and bad animation that you wanted to throw out your expensive TV set? Okay, this reaction might be a little over the top, but very often I simply had to switch channels just to escape the Wrath of Cheap.

You know, you always can do better and this spot from a small agency shows that you don’t need much stuff to communicate a message. Less really is better and I sincerely hope that other companies try to go the same way by ditching the cheap stuff.

I cannot wait to see this one in a movie theater.

Watch the Clip “Audi: Filter” (and don’t miss the making of)

The newly released (beta / test) software from Microsoft called SONGSMITH is such an example of unexpectedness. The original purpose of this app is to “generate musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice”. In other words: it’s Karaoke inverted.

Microsoft released this app some weeks ago and what is the result so far? Instead of singing yourself, the community threw this purpose into the bin, takes popular songs, extracts the voice track and let Songsmith do the rest. That’s Karaoke inverse engineered.

Here’s my personal favorite, before and after:

Some might call this silly. I call it creativity unleashed because to me it’s amazing what everyone out there can think of. They use so many things so out of context. They mix, they change, they create. Constantly. And then they share it with everyone.

This is what I so love about the Internet.

Logic is something you normally cannot expect in a horror movie. Or in a moment that is filled with horror. Take our poor friends called Zombies as an example. Each time someone in a movie sees our friendly rotten meat crawling, he runs away. Some might say this is logical.

Up to now I would have said the same.

But not anymore. And so will you after you watch the most hilarious 38 seconds ever produced regarding Zombies – from a direction many would never expect.

Seriously, I watched so many horror movies, funny and serious. But none of them ever had this logic and immensely hilarious idea: when a Zombie crawls out from a grave, don’t run – simply stick it back into it.

This idea is so simple, yet seemingly no one in Hollywood ever had it written down and filmed. Even less for a cartoon, perhaps out of fear of creativity or harsh reactions. Both facts are sad. Nevertheless we got it, offered from an animated series done in Japan.

By the way: the scene belongs to a series called ONE PIECE which based on a manga of the same name. And you know what? This scene is so well timed that I am intruiged to look further into this series. If this thing wouldn’t be that long…

Do you remember moments in the past when you were searching for some information but couldn’t find anything coming close? And do you wonder why I am writing about this? Well, before I give you the answer, let’s start with the search for information.

When I search for information and don’t find anything I very often remember at least three statements from authors, and journalists alike, telling me that the internet is the perfect example of information overkill: the more is available and the more you can search the less you actually find. While this certainly is true it’s also very vague because, in many ways, there always was overkill. Think of the legendary library of Alexandria. I am sure they had the same problems.

Information Needs

A much more precise representation of this problem is a model used in knowledge management. This model distinguishes between three overlapping information areas.

The first area is your information need – or better: your subjective information need. This is what you think you need.

The second area is the objective information need. This is what you really need, or better: what is needed objectively. This is especially important when you are searching information for someone else.

And the last area is the one of available information (think of the internet as a living example):

As you can see, the tiny little red spot in the middle, in which all three circles overlap, is the final result you get. The way you search or other factors decide about the ratio of overlapping. Sometimes you can get the close to complete overlapping; sometimes they are even less overlapped than above.

In any way, a fracture of everything is the best you can get.

Information meets Science Fiction

Okay, so why do I write about all that stuff in this movie blog?

The reason is simple: although I am always on the lookout for moving crap/bad movies (subjective information need), it doesn’t mean it is always called, named, described or tagged as such by others (objective information need)…

Sometimes it is simply called “Turkish Star Wars”.

And when you know that (available information), a whole new world opens up before your eyes.