I really wasn't looking forward to it: sitting in a movie theater looking at Sean Penn, whom i really like as an actor, impersonating Robert Smith, the archetype gothic fixture, had to be above what i can take. The snippets I've seen (Penn talking all so slowly and seemingly having problems thinking straight, Penn walking, or rather moving extremely slowly, with his wheeled luggage) didn't fired me up at all. On the contrary.

And i was wrong ! I was wrong ! From what seems to be a totally impossible scenario (a washed-up has-been rockstar in his fifties tries to find the nazi prison guard of his departed father he hadn't seen in 30 years) comes up a very beautiful and tender movie in one of the most difficult genre there is: the tragicomedy. Beautifully filmed, patiently edited too as it never feels out of rythm, "This Must Be The Place", by italian director Paolo Sorrentino, is a complex and intruiging 2 hours charm that shows how great an actor Sean Penn is, how music can be a strong catalyst, how a road-movie always work when done with heart, how the most incredible scenario or basic idea can be transformed in something great when creativity meets cleverness and...

Another great exemple of crowdfunding: the investors of "Iron Sky", a sci-fi movie where nazis would have flown to the dark side of the moon in 1944 only to come back and invade us now, were 1 million Euros short.

Instead of doing more rounds for "normal" finances, they decide to let it happen with money send by the movie/sci fi internet community and got their budget wrapped up easily. It has to be said that they were already known within the science-fiction crowd as they had done "Star Wreck" a few years ago and they were coming with a great idea that was fun to play around: imagine, as The Quietus puts it, " Starship Troopers meets Mars Attacks but with an extra twist of trashy John Waters humour". That says it all and is in our book a sure hit at good taste in bad taste land. Music wise, the obvious band to participate was Laibach, a serbo-croatian band who has played with IIIrd reich imagery and rhymes for decades and who can put pedal to the metal when needed.

What becale cult the very same minute the idea came out to the scenarist while having a sauna, did i forgot to tell you guys it's a finnish movie ?, will be in all good movie theaters in the...

Crowdfunding is one of newest ways found to finance Art (music and movies primarely), and some numbers are starting to come in and show that, yes, it works for some...

A few months ago, we wrote about Vynilmania, a documentary on the love of albums and 12" and vynil (http://blog.kollector.com/?q=blog/crowdfunding-way-go), and how crowdfunding generated 37.000 dollars where the people behind the project had plead for 33.000 dollars, and more and more projects are funded using this method: whether they are start-ups, building roofs for families in Nigeria, providing solar cells for schools in the UK, comic webseries, etc...crowdfunding does attract people in giving some money for not much in return, just a name on a plate or on a record cover or on the credits of a movie...

It's interesting to note, while we're speaking about crowdfunding and movies, that 10% of the movies presented at the Sundance Film Festival were funded that way ! One of them was "Me@At The Zoo", a documentary on Chris Crocker, the teenager who was seen on Youtube crying, crying and crying and praying...

Ok, enough with the rumour saying Megaupload was in fact really shut down cos it was about to unleash MegaMusic and hurt really badly the music industry and Itunes in the process (something we talked about on Dec 20th http://blog.kollector.com/?q=blog/megaupload-music)...What's next ? The Illuminati have hidden a nasty secret worm in every Mission Impossible movie illegally downloaded ? When whispering Megaupload in reverse 3 times, there's an image of a luxurious Mercedes SUV appearing in your coffee mug ? Enough nonsense !

We think it's a good time to look at some points that can be made out of the very internet intense two weeks that just happened

x The Feds didn't take any gloves when doing this international mission: they wanted MU out, they got MU out. It's scary, cos such power could be used in other circumstances. We can see more and more countries and states, not all rogues or tyrannies, pulling the plug off internet when interior troubles appear, or when they want to shut down informations sources. We should think about it: who owns Internet ? Isn't there a real urgency in making it...

We spoke briefly about Network Awesome a few weeks ago as they had a great Martin Rev's interview (http://blog.kollector.com/?q=blog/suicide-synths) and we can only thank them to do such a great job at exploring the archives of movies and videos related to Pop Culture and coming up with gems, things that have been forgotten but are important parts of what Popular Culture is.

Incidentally they are using curators which is far better method of recommandations than using algorithms at spotting up what you may like: specialists looking out for things that you may enjoy and be interested with are better than suites of ones and zeros telling you that if you loved "this", you surely will love "that".

Curators at "Network Awesome" put together videos spotted on Youtube, or else, and provide us with very valuables informations and documentaires, interviews and reportages on a large variety of subjects from Art to Music, Movies and Trailers and back again. These guys are doing society a service by curating what's been done and which shouldn't be diluted under tons of wannabee music videos that will soon be...

Ever wondered where you saw that movie poster before ? Sometimes, differences between two movie posters from two different movies are very few and far between indeed. This said, it's obvious the message has to be clear and directly touch the targeted audience: there's not much room for doubts and wandering toughts. But sometimes the lack of difference is...uncanny at best !

Let us take you to http://www.ufunk.net/insolite/les-affiches-de-films-se-ressemblent-toutes/ when Christophe Courtois has assembled together movies posters that look so much like each other one wonder why they just didn't use the original poster and just changed the title....

Let's stay in the movie industry for a while as there are interesting parallels that can be build between movies and musics. And what happened to music since 1999 (the ever going down spiral of sales) has started to hit the movie industry as well. And if you think it cost a label (and the band, and the publishers, managers, producers, etc...) a lot when a 50.000 € album is being pirated, leaked, stolen, shared, etc...(use the word you want, result is the same: people buy now less music than ever), wait till this happens to a 500.000 € movie (and that's a cheap C serie movie): ROI is dead...We're now entering an era where budgets have to be cut by double digits numbers and the only ones to come out alive will be the one dealing cleverly and accordingly with the situation...

So, it's interesting to see how the new situation inspires people to do MORE with LESS. Take this clever little movie ( by Dan Trachtenberg) based around Portal, that amazing videogame (and the amazing brilliant song on Portal 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI). It immediately has an mood, a feel, a look, a sound, a plot that starts...

Hilarious rant from the top movie critic at Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/at-the-movies/damn-you-hollywood-pete...
Peter Travers is upset at how Hollywood keeps on releasing crap movies and then they are all astouned when the public response is bad.

Same thing can be said about the music industry. Ok, let's forget about all the Justin Bieber and alike, bands and musicians have to concentrate to make albums that aren't made with a couple of singles and fillers, videos have to expand from the usual boy-meets-girl cliches, songs have to expand from the boring verse-verse-chorus formula, we ought to make our art BETTER if we want to extract from the crowd that rewarding experience of the I SO LOVE THAT and re-initiate a buying mode that has now to be shared with movies (the movie experience is still often great), mobile phones and computers...

(sorry about the advert before the videoclip...)