As you may have read on my blog I’m a frequent listener of the Reel Insight podcast and I actually suggested on their Facebook page that they should do an episode on Amy Adams and I also asked what one would have to do to get on it? Apparently being a hardcore fan was enough because I got to go on the show and talk about Amy Adams and her filmography. 

Yam-mag has a cute round-up piece where they replace the Oscar nominee’s with other films. Check it out as I contributed with one of the picks.

Check out my piece on the nominated films in best Sound Editing!

2012 has been some what of a rushed year so far and it would be a total lie to say that it hasn’t affected this digital hangout of mine.

The short version for you guys in a hurry is that I’d really recommend you guys to start following me in here through my RSS reader rather than visiting the site physically for the time being. Here is a link to my preferred RSS feed, now onto the long version.

As many of you know my ambition is to make it as a producer and as of now I’ve been supporting myself  since graduation with working for others. My last employment was as a co-production manager on the Swedish Webisode Elsas Värld that is currently running on TV3 Play. After finishing that job I’ve been searching for other employment while also working with some of my own projects in development.

As a result of that we (me and the writer/director) have gotten in touch with a U.S producer located in Sweden who has hooked us up with a studio that he is currently working with. As a result of these meetings we have developed three feature length scripts in a short time that we have gotten some good feedback on and thanks to this we have actually come to the point where we have been asked to come up with a script based from a bunch of fixed settings/limitations. So as of now I’m actually writing on that script while my partner is finishing up the last of our previous scripts.

Since we as of now still are working on an unpaid basis its more than a full time job working with these projects while still looking and doing work to support myself. So from that point of view I have decided to spend less time in here or actually spending more quality time but writing a little less. So in the future I hope to give you more of an insight on my daily work with these scripts but also maybe some bts stuff from my hired work as well (unfortunately a lot of producers aren’t that keen on getting blog exposure in preproduction).

But thats not all there is to it… In December I got the question from Dylan over at Man I Love Films and the LAMB founder if I was interested in taking on the role as Shepherd of the LAMB. To you who aren’t familiar with the LAMB its the world’s biggest association of movie blogs. I became a member last year and its certainly a community thats very close to my blogging heart so I didn’t really have a choice. Hence I’ll be spending some time there doing the occasional post and hopefully keeping up the great work that Dylan and Rachel with crew has put in over the years making it the go to place for international movie bloggers.

So with that in mind I’ll definitively for now suggest that regular readers switch to following me on RSS rather than stopping by through your browser (if my stats are any where correct it seem that most people already do that which is good).

Thanks for reading!

Oskar Karlin the founder of Skidpepp (probably one of the sites I visit most frequently during the winter) is also a very enthusiastic long distance Ice Skater. Recently I found out about his YouTube channel where he posts magic skate videos.

I find these videos to be extremely relaxing to watch almost in a meditative way, the music helps but its still quite impressive considering its one guy filming with a Canon 5D mounted on a ice pick with a 14mm lens.

As you understand I have asked Oskar how he shoots these videos and they are actually shot on the fly since its impossible to look in the viewfinder while skating. Due to the width of the lens the frame starts shaking really easy so to avoid that Oskar never skates during the smoothest cuts instead he just works up a good pace and glides with it.

If you followed my podcast plug series you know I’m a huge fan of the Demented Tower on the Demented Podcast. Here’s a  strategy walkthrough based on my two attempts of climbing the tower.

I’ll be using the season three Battle Royal finale as my main reference. However, it might help your understanding of the game to listen to my qualifying round.

Over to the Battle Royale edition of the Tower, the biggest difference being that five players battle it out against each other.

Here were the standings going into the BR:

1) Joel – 191 Points (I got to take every chance I can to show off this score haha)

2) Dan – 164 Points

3) Dylan – 146 Points

4) Kai – 103 Points

5) Jason – 101 Points

I suggest you listen in and pause at the stops I’ll be writing about if you aren’t familiar with the game.

Introduction

The rules of the BR state that the leader board leader gets to choose difficulty level first. This time around I went with the same difficulty level that I had in the qualifying round. That option is to qo without any clues and instead get 40 stamina points added to the 100 you start off with.

My main reason for going with no clues is mainly that I have had very little help from the clues when listening to the show before being on it myself but there’s also a strategic aspect to the choice.

Having 40 points added make it almost impossible to miss out on the final question since the sub levels on the last level subtract stamina in each steps until being very revealing in the last stage. I’d had of course heard a couple of players not having enough stamina left on the last level so they couldn’t hear the obvious final stage so I decided to play it safe and what works once got to work again right?

Round 1 – Topics

Another perk for being the top scorer in the qualifying round is the Gift. The gift can either help yourself or hurt someone else. Unfortunately I did my first huge mistake here. The Gift can be traded in for a direct pass to the 2nd stage of the tower. For some reason I did go with that option which is really stupid since I’d get to pick category first. However, I guess I was to afraid/had to much respect for the 1st level that has slayed many victims.

As soon as I heard the categories I knew which one I’d gone for ”almost a solo act” of course thats the only one I’d make all the way through which is the safest way to advance to the next level.

The other categories were: Its good to be the king (I’d been out on the 4th one), Spellcheck (I’d been out on the first one *ouch*), Lady Liberty (I’d been out on the 2nd one). So I’d been eliminated on all other categories but its safe to say that going first I’d never had chosen any other category than the solo act one and then I’d still have had the gift…

Round Two – 20 Questions

Time for my favorite level, 20 questions. I always go with director (expert) because I’m somewhat of director name nerd after my studies in film history. My directors blind spot is definitively more recent ones and if I’m on the Tower again I might have to rethink this strategy.

I’ll break down this one question for question:

Q1 Is this director alive?  YES <— Might be a more suiting question if Steve is the one picking the name.

Q2 Is it an American director? YES <— This is more of a dividing question to get a general sense of who it is. Could be misleading if its someone that has worked forever mostly in Hollywood but is Canadian (James Cameron, Michael Moore) just to mention one example.

Q3 Has he had a film out this year (2011)? YES <— This question I picked up from someone else and have stuck with since. However, there are enough non prolific guys out there to make it a dud question.

Q4 Did this director make his directorial debut in the 70′s?  YES <— This is probably a question that could be bumped up a couple of notches since its a huge help for me to know when they started out. And to be honest it feels like 80% percent of the established directors started out in the 70′s or the 80′s so it should be to some help.

Q5 Has this director won an academy award for directing? NO <— Another question that probably could be bumped or altered by adding other Oscar categories. However, I do feel its smart to try to limit it to directing and writing since a lot of directors are executive producers not only on their own directorial features but others as well.

Q6 Is it Terrence Mallick? NO <— I really though it was him mainly for being a 70′s director that hadn’t won an academy award for directing but also since he is alive, he is American and Tree of Life was released this year.

Q7 Is this director an actor from the beginning turned director? NO <— Another question that probably can be a lot earlier since there are a lot of actors that now also direct George Clooney, Clint Eastwood, Sean Penn etc. one of few distractions on this question is Woody Allen who I had in my qualifying round.

Q8 Is this director famous for a certain genre of films? YES <— This is an important one but it can be really distracting in the way that yo might get too stuck on the genres wasting questions to pick it out.

Q9 Has this director been nominated for an academy award? NO <— This is another narrowing it down type of question. I guess its a coin toss asking this one before or after Q5.

Q10 Is this Directors preferred Genre Sci Fi? NO <— Such a crappy question. I wonder if I was thinking about George Lucas?

Q11 Did this director have a film released last year (2010)? YES <— In theory a good question depending on what you have already asked but this time it was a wasted one.

Q12 Is his preferred genre Comedy? NO <— Another f*cked up question. I must really have been struggling because I don’t know that much comedy directors.

Q13 Was his directorial debut between 1974-77? NO <— I don’t recall the exact thought behind this one but I think it was to eliminate a couple of directors I knew debuted in these years like Ridley Scott and George Lucas (I was wrong on Lucas by the way American Grafitti premiered in 1973).

Q14 Is his preferred genre Drama? NO <— Another really stupid question, I’d still be guessing on this one if the answer had been yes.

Q15 Is his preferred genre Horror? YES <— Finally, to be honest I probably should have gotten this genre already when hearing that the director didn’t have any academy award nominations.

Q16 Did this director direct Scream 4? YES <— Don’t really want to go into this one but my reasoning behind it at the time was that I wanted to ELIMINATE John Carpenter because I was less certain it was him. However, this still wasn’t more stupid than passing the Gift to Jason.

Q17 Is it Wes Craven? YES

On the other categories I would have done worse I think. The only ones I’d have a reasonable chance at was the character John McClane (I believe Kai wasted two questions!!!) and the film which was Black Swan that eliminated Dylan. When it comes to the actor Glenn Close the clue was brilliant ”Not Far” but since I don’t use clues I’d probably wouldn’t have gotten her.

Round Three – Patterns

Time for patterns which I also have a hard time with. Yet again picking first I went with the easy category unfortunately I haven’t seen Rango, Hard Rain or Flood and it was ages since I saw O Brother where are thou. So I was really saved by how the last question was formulated. When it comes to the other two difficulties in this round I would have been equally lost. So it was to bad I didn’t keep that Gift to hurt the others.

Round Four – Show and Tell

In round four I again went with easy just to try to limit the gap between me and Dan hoping that he wouldn’t get his scene. Since there is unlimited guesses I fired away guesses based on the scene description and in the end when it was obvious what film it was I wasn’t able to come up with the title due to a brain freeze. Also I probably wouldn’t have gotten Dan’s scene since its ages since I saw Run Lola Run.

Round Five

Time for the final trivia question where Dan got the option to answer it himself for sole championship or let me answer it for maximum shared championship between us. He choose to go himself, the question was that Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader was played by five actors true or false? For the record I’d gone with true on it.

However, this wasn’t the end of the mine and Dan’s eternal fight on the Tower. It all culminated on the first episode of the new season.

As you heard we got to play the last trivia question again and this time Dan choose to let me answer for sharing the championship. Unfortunately I’m not that versed with Potter and should have gone with my gut feeling in stead of changing my mind in the last second. On this last one its always a 50/50 chance you get it but its always fact based somehow which is good but if you make that far I can’t really help you. I do hope I’ve helped pointing out some good strategy moves on the earlier levels though.

Thanks for listening/reading such a lengthy and dry piece. =)

Time for the infamous top five. I got to say I’m a little bit surprised not seeing more controversy among the comments on part 1. Check it out here, it also contains info on which films I haven’t seen and my main criterias on which films I have chosen from.

In the last post I didn’t go into that much detail on my ranking of the films I thought I’d go through it swiftly here because its quite simple. After deciding on the bunch of films that is the core group f this list I simply ranked them against each other until I came up with the order of the list in these two posts. Also my main feeling that I went with was how entertained I was by the film since thats my main reason for going to the cinema.

5. Drive

Being a huge fan of both Gosling (thanks to Blue Valentine) and  the director Nicolas Winding Refn (mainly for the Pusher films) this was of course a must see for me. It certainly lived up to most of the hype having a ton of great acting performances but also really memorable scenes. The only thing that ruined it a little for me was the ending I did wish he had been a little more conventional with it. For people that liked Drive I recommend that you check out the Stuntman. Its obvious that Drive was inspired by it and its a solid film that is a forgotten gem in many ways.

4. Play

Ruben Östlund is one of Swedens most critically acclaimed younger directors. Play is his third feature and it might be his best so far. The plot is simple its about a gang of teenage boys robbing other teenage boys of their wallets and cell phones. However, they do it by approaching them friendly and luring them into a trap where the victims more or less hand over their valuables willingly in the end. Ruben has his own cinematic style that is based on really long uninterrupted takes but it never gets boring or uninteresting and his amateur actors always excel in amazing naturalistic performances. I can’t find who is in charge of international sales but I’m quite sure it will get some international distribution after being screened in Toronto and Venice.

3. Fast Five

If I had anticipated 2011 films beforehand this would have been one of my biggest surprises. I’ve always been a fan of the first film but for some reason I hadn’t seen any of the sequels until this one and wow was I blown away. It probably has some of the most over the top action scenes since 70′s James Bond films. Hell the final car chase was alone worth the admission fee. Just see it if you haven’t yet!!!

2. Real Steel

This was another film I wasn’t really expecting to be this good. At first I wasn’t that interested in seeing it but after reading a review that hinted that it might be a Joel Burman film and hell yeah it was! Sure its completely done through the Rocky under dog formula but I got to say its one of the best in that sub genre. The main thing I really liked was how it brought me back to my childhood of seeing all the cheesy 80′s classics. I had huge problem with the alibi sub-plot of Hugh Jackmans girlfriend. Other than that this is pretty much as good as it gets entertainment wise.

1. Gränsen aka Beyond the Border

So time for the big one, the one I’d really recommend that you see because I’m fairly sure you haven’t if you don’t live in Sweden (unfortunately not that many Swedes have seen it either).

Gränsen is about a group of Swedish soldiers who are guarding the Swedish side of the Norwegian border during World War II. One night a couple of the soldiers are involved in a gunfight with the Nazis and they flee into Norway. From that point on its a nonstop-action/chase film a la First Blood. Script wise its a great evidence of how good it can be when simplifying rather than overdoing which unfortunately is something that we are good at in Sweden. More or less all elements are really good but I’d especially like to highlight the acting, the action sequences and the set design and whats even more incredible is that it was financed outside the tax funded Swedish financing system which more or less deducts 1,5 million dollars from the budget to begin with. NonStop Sales is handling world sales and I know that for instance UK has bought the DVD rights for it.

Beyond The Border – Trailer from NonStop Sales on Vimeo.

Thats it for my take on the cinematic season of 2011. Please let me know in the comments what you think and if you for some reason are interested in an audio version of my list feel free to check out this filmyarn podcast where I talk about it.

I’m not a list guy, hey I don’t even grade the films in the posts in here that can be mistaken for reviews. Still I decided to scramble together my own top ten of the year mostly because I’m a fierce advocate of blockbusters and commercial films and I’d thought it would be a good diversion from all the other lists containing the same 25-30 films.

I have gone by the imdb release date for a film which for instance makes Senna illegible. I’m also including Swedish films on the list. The format of ranking eleven films come mainly from the fact that I started this post before seeing a film that would later land on it. I also find it appropriate to have eleven films on a Best of 2011 list.

Here are the ones I haven’t had the chance to see yet so if you come here to rant about the Artist or Beginners save your keyboards for other blogs and yes I know its a bunch of them and a list loses credibility when not having seen such and such film etc, bla bla…

Beginners, The Artist, Young Adult (want to see it real bad),  Midnight in Paris,  Attack  the Block, The Muppets, The Skin I live In,  Take Shelter, Incendies, 50/50, Melancholia, Super 8,  Shame, We need to talk about Kevin

Honorable Mention – Tree of Life

I got to say that I feel caught in the middle of the Tree of Life ranters and ravers. Sure it looks good, but it also drags a whole lot but I’ve seen a lot worse than this at the cinema 2011. However, had I not been fore warned by seeing Thin Red Line at the cinema (the closest I’ve ever been of a leaving a film mid through) I’d probably had been a lot more disappointed. Just wanted to throw it out there.

11. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The original Planet of the Apes franchise (5 features between 1968-1973) is probably my favorite franchise but after the total Tim Burton fiasco remake I didn’t expect very much from this one. I got to say it was a positive surprise holding up better than I could wish for. My favorite part was not the big action finale but the tense build-up that was the first half of it where some scenes even dipped its toes in the darkness of the Conquest of the Planet of the Apes which its a re-hash of.

10. Captain America

Time for another surprise, I was a huge Spidey and X-men fan boy growing up but never really got into the whole Avengers thing (beside following them in Secret Wars). As with the Apes rehash I was pleasantly surprised by it. I really liked the aspect when they turned the Captain into a rallying propaganda machine instead of having him fight in the battles.

9. Gone aka Försvunnen

This was a film I didn’t know of until a week before its theatrical release and its also the first Swedish film on the list. Försvunnen is clearly inspired by Steven Spielberg’s the Duel and in this case thats a great compliment not all comparisons between modern films and classic 70′s are. The story is very simplistic, its about a women relocating to the north of Sweden who is being followed when she is on the road. Its being sold internationally by sales agent Yellow Affair.

8. Soul Surfer 

OK, here we go, if more people had actually seen this film I’d be afraid of a sh*t storm of comments. However, knowing the blogging crowd I’m certain people will let me know what they think about it without having seen it. To me its one of the most underrated films of last year.

7. Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids is the reason this list consists of eleven entries. To me the highlights of the film was the comedic acts (the airplane sequence!!!!!!) rather than the notion that this is supposed to be a ground breaking film for women. I don’t agree on that since most of the main cast in the Bridesmaid group still play very stereotypical characters but very funny ones. Definitively check it out possibly the funniest film of 2011.

6. Whats your number

I know 95% of you guys think I’m joking about this one but I got to say I was really entertained by it. Sure it was a tad predictable but so what????? Not all stereotypical rom-coms suck (I’d bet you hate this one Castor)!!!! One last thing I’d like to bring up is that I really like how the Anna Faris character feels genderless in the fact that she gets to behave like most slutty (sloppy) guys do in rom-coms and she isn’t really judged by it in the end. To be honest I felt this one probably was more revolutionary than Bridesmaids. Hows that for a final conclusion!

I’ve decided to split this list into two parts because the length it took me to even come this far! Let me know what you think so far if you are calm enough to be able to scribble some thoughts down. Also if you have guesses on the top five that I’ll hopefully publish tomorrow let me know!

2012 has so far been been a time of reflection and some new opportunities that hopefully will reveal themselves as the year unfold.

With that in mind  and the fact that I’m struggling with a longer post I thought I’d share this fascinating clip that I found in my twitter feed with the following caption…

Varning: Följande film kan utlösa existentiell kris. http://t.co/XJcXHJZM! (Animerad infographic över universum)

10 January, 2012 09:22 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Flowervalley

Anna Blomdahl

I imagine that the caption translates for non Swedes so I won’t bother translating it especially since I think Flowervalley is being overly dramatic about it being a possible source for existential crisis.

I must say that its quite captivating and it sure set some things in perspective in all its Tree of Lifeness/larger than life aspects.

I’ll do a more proper 2012 new years resolution post later that will be more about my expectations of the new year.