Alternative energy: the movie
It’s not often I get to reference “Donnie Darko,” pig poop and Michael J. Fox in a single story:
The Lego-movie industry
Young Cineastes Find Lego a Congenial Medium for the Age of YouTube
In the three-minute film “Cognizance,” a hit man on his way to his next target wordlessly reflects on his life. He walks past shoppers browsing in stores, children on a merry-go-round, a young couple embracing. Finally, he spots his intended victim across a busy street, and, as the soundtrack music by Coldplay swells, he reconsiders and drops his gun in an alley.
As the killer turns and begins to walk home, he finds himself facing the barrel of another man’s gun. A subtle smile crosses his placid, yellow face as the screen fades to black.
One reviewer said he was “overwhelmed with emotion” by the film. Another called it “a gleaming gem,” adding that it was “required viewing for anyone interested in our little plastic world.”
“Cognizance” is one of hundreds of movies known as “brickfilms” that are getting attention on YouTube and other video-sharing sites. Amateur filmmakers use Lego pieces to create characters and scenes, sometimes spending months painstakingly arranging and rearranging the blocks before the camera. Re-creations of famous moments in “Star Wars” and “Titanic,” faithfully rendered in the primary colors of Lego pieces and stitched together from thousands of stop-motion frames, have drawn hundreds of thousands of viewings. Many of the productions are original films with elaborate plotlines, soundtracks and voice-overs.
The growing genre is driven by a lively online community of would-be Spielbergs who swap tips on message boards about tackling the unique challenges of the medium.
Read In This Film Industry It Really Helps To Be a Blockhead
Hollywood’s Take on the Internet Often Favors Fun Over Facts
In the 1996 blockbuster “Mission: Impossible,” the secret agent played by Tom Cruise uses email to set a trap for one of his adversaries – a shadowy, Bible-quoting figure he knows only as “Max.”
Mr. Cruise’s character uses a laptop to compose an email message addressed to “Max@Job 3:14.” Once he clicks the “send” button, the email is carried away in an oversized on-screen envelope, complete with postage stamp. In the real world, such a message would set the stage for a bounce-back error message, not an action/adventure thriller.
Ten years after “Mission: Impossible,” Hollywood still has a spotty track record when it comes to portraying computers and the Internet. Some portrayals are so absurd as to leave viewers wondering if the film’s producers use the same Internet they do.
“The thing that always gets me is watching people send emails,” said Harry Knowles, a self-described tech geek and online film critic who runs Ain’t It Cool News, a popular movie-industry site. “You click ’send’ and the entire document begins to fold into an envelope and disappear into the screen. I tend to send around 300 to 400 emails a day, and that would drive me insane.”