In this morning’s roundup of movie news ‘n’ notes from around the web, “Inception” gets coy, and Ashton Kutcher turns piracy into a marketing scam.
Wired magazine gets a mysterious package – “weathered, beaten and stamped ‘classified’” – that contains a manual titled “Dream-Share: Tactical Employment Procedures.” It’s full of sketches of operatives and specialists and equipment and a few glimpses of warfare, but virtually all the text has been heavily blacked out – redacted, you’re meant to think. The Wired website reproduces all the pages and asks readers what it means – and the readers quickly surmise that it’s more viral marketing for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “Inception.” That film now seems to be alternating between dropping teasing hints that don’t give away much, like this one, and putting out trailers that give away a lot. (Wired)
Ashton Kutcher’s plan to “pirate” the first 10 minutes of his new movie, “Killers,” by filming it from the audience at Tuesday night’s premiere and putting it on the Internet annoys Patrick Goldstein, who says it’s nothing more than a stunt to hype the movie, but one with serious implications. “If Lionsgate, even if it isn’t a MPAA signatory, is going to turn piracy into a marketing scam, it makes a mockery of the MPAA’s efforts to treat piracy as a serious offense,” he writes. “If Kutcher can boast about pirating his own movie with impunity, then why should college kids be treated like criminals when they actually do the deed themselves?” He’s got a point, though Goldstein hasn’t been this worked up since the last time he went after some Oscar bloggers. (The Big Picture)Now that “Hurt Locker” producer Nicolas Chartier and his production company have officially filed suit against individuals who’ve downloaded the Oscar-winning film, Christopher Campbell comes up with five more examples of “self-damaging lawsuits” that, he says, prove the notion that “lawsuits just aren’t worth the trouble when they’re more likely to make you look like a fool.” His hall of shame includes Fox suing Warner Bros. over “Watchmen,” Wham-O going after Paramount over David Spade’s incorrect use of a Slip ‘N Slide in “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star,” and Lucasfilm’s dismissed action against a porn parody called “Star Ballz.” (Cinematical)
Also in the “take a news item and use it to make a list” category, Kyle Buchanan takes notes of the Internet campaign to land Donald Glover the role of Spider-Man, and comes up with a list of other roles “that could benefit from color-blind casting.” He includes a different African-American Spider-Man, Brandon T. Jackson from “Tropic thunder,” and also includes “The Wire” star Idris Elba as James Bond, Edgar Ramirez as Batman and Zoe Saldana (does she have the muscle forit?) as Wonder Woman, among others. (Movieline)
The Edinburgh International Film Festival, the third best-known festival to take place in the Scottish city (after the Edinburgh International Festival and its offshoot, the Edinburgh Fringe), has announced its lineup for its 64th festival, which begins on June 16. Films include Werner Herzog’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?,” the foreign-language Oscar winner “The Secret in Their Eyes,” and Steven Soderbergh’s “And Everything Is Going Fine.” And “Toy Story 3,” too. Peter Knegt has the full lineup. (indieWIRE)
Severin Carrell, meanwhile, spotlights one aspect of the Edinburgh festival: its slate of “lost and forgotten” British films made between 1967 and 1979, which the festival artistic director, Hannah Gill, calls “a mysterious period” for British cinema. The lineup of little-seen films includes Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s “The Boy Who Turned Yellow”; Stephen Frear’s debut feature, “Gumshoe”; “The Hard Way,” a Michael Dryhurst thriller that stars Patrick McGoohan and includes a soundtrack by Brian Eno; and Ken Russell’s 1972 film “Savage Messiah,” starring a young Helen Mirren. (The Guardian)
