May 16, 2001

8:29 PM

Besides being great directors, what do Wong Kar Wai, John Frankenheimer, Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee, and Alejandro González Iñárritu all have in common? BMW is cool. ...and Ang Lee is too, the Incredible Hulk, nice touch.
posted by tomplus2 (10 comments total)

Oh yeah, and FINCHER too - producer. ...and Ben Younger - Director of Sub-Stories. The first two so far are great. The "player" is a nice touch. The multi-track audio quicktime is nice too - director commentary.

Ang Lee's "Hulk plaster/bandaide" was a great touch.

disclaimer, I did a search on MeFi for it, but only found it in some comments posted.
posted by tomplus2 at 8:34 PM on May 16, 2001

Is there a password for that?
posted by tomplus2 at 9:01 PM on May 16, 2001

Yeah I was the bloke who posted the comments, but the BMW For Hire project is a good series of short subject films so far. Though not a wholly creative concept, it takes daring on the part of BMW to pull this off for the Internet. It deserves it's own thread.

I liked Lee's use of baroque music intermingled with the eastern influences - germany meets the far east. Very nice touch. Playing the music along with the action does give the feeling that the stunt work with the cars was like a ballet. However, AMBUSH was better than CHOSEN in that it better showed off what the car can do, which is the whole point of doing all these things in the first place, isn't it? I mean when you boil it all down this is just a glorified bunch of commercials, after all. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of them, even if this is a curious marriage of entertainment and advertising.

Usually I avoid any program format designed solely for the purpose of merchandising, which I believe should be an afterthought to art and not the driving force. I still haven't quite made up my mind about whether or not I think the bmw film project is actually... I mean geez what if they did an actual theatrical release motion picture like this? BMW FOR HIRE: The Motion Picture! Isn't there something... unethical about that? Or am I just old fashioned? Granted if the quality of a full length BMW motion picture matched the Net stuff I've seen so far, I wouldn't pay full price to see it in the theater but I'd seriously consider renting it on video.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:06 PM on May 16, 2001

"IN VIEW OF INSTRUCTIONS IN REBUTEL, NO FURTHER INQUIRY BEING MADE BY HOUSTON DIVISION."

I found the password to be unnecessary. Although it's possible to know it would give one access to more. Who's Kate?
posted by ZachsMind at 9:13 PM on May 16, 2001

Damn. I love Metafilter.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:36 PM on May 16, 2001

Semi off-topic but does anyone else agree that Guy Ritchie is a sham? His first movie was mildly interesting, but seemed to get more mileage out of funny accents (blown up to monumental proportions by the shooting style and its own self-importance) than dialogue, and his visual touches are hackneyed by Music Video standards. The second film I won't even get into.

I'm kind of preparing for a lot of friction over those statements, but bring it on! The guy's a hack!!
posted by FPN at 2:13 AM on May 17, 2001

FPN, I'm with you all the way. Ritchie may have a signature style, but there's not a lot going on below the surface.
posted by liam at 7:51 AM on May 17, 2001

Yeah, Ritchie's an mtv hack.
Most interesting is Wong Kar-Wai, the guy's a genius, a great director, and there's more than an ice cream truck, in Happy Together, a lot of the fight starts because of a cheap car. There are some really good shots of them driving.
posted by tiaka at 7:52 AM on May 17, 2001

the only thing more boring than a good car chase is a bad car chase that's really just a commerical. actually, movies nowadays are so riddled with product placements, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
posted by gwint at 10:54 AM on May 17, 2001