Somebody called Typevideos posted this beautiful little film of the citizens of Amsterdam enjoying the frozen canals on their skates on YouTube:
See also: Dutch Winter (video).
February 13, 2012
January 24, 2012
A tattoo gets you free films for a year
Some 18 film fans are going to get a permanent film ticket tattooed on their bodies just so they can get free entrance to films for a year. A movie theatre that operates in the towns of Almelo, Kampen and Zevenaar came up with this to accompany the latest blockbuster, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
I think one year of free movies isn’t enough for something as difficult to remove or permanent as a tattoo. And it’s probably not a super deluxe tattoo, it’s a film ticket. The tattoo artist who was hired to do the job is the one doing good business. If anyone has a pic of their work, let us know.
(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of Dragon tattoo by Deanna Wardin, some rights reserved)
Tags: tattoos
January 18, 2012
Beating up paramedics, the latest trend in senseless violence
This public service announcement is in English with Dutch subtitles, and when I saw it, I think I responded to it the way the makers intended. However, I did mentally note that the ‘scooter kiddies’ harassing the paramedics at the end were probably not Caucasian, fitting the standard profile of these petty criminals at least in the big cities.
We’ve talked about this kind of advert before and it’s not news, but it is a form of violence that seems to mystify people. The bits I’ve read tend to say that certain ethnic groups do not like being told what to do by paramedics and associate them with the police telling them what to do, but that sounds more like an excuse.
Two weeks ago, the film ‘Doodslag’ (‘Manslaughter’) premiered in Eindhoven, starring stand-up comedian Theo Maassen as a paramedic. He swats ones of these annoying kids blocking his ambulance with a dying baby in it, but then a bit too hard. The big question is: does this make him a criminal too?
The film’s opening shot highlights ‘rude behaviour’ using Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s epic sample of ‘You get real man! Boy oh boy!’ as he answered a typically street-level right-wing quip of ‘Get real, man!’ in Parliament. The Prime Minister’s remarks basically confirmed to the entire country that street language is now commonplace, which sparked much debate and is ironic considering that the big letters at the start of the film quote the PM as saying that ‘we need to take back the country from those ‘jerks’, implying that jerks are running the country. But Maassen says he is convinced that the film will change the way the Netherlands thinks. “It is an exciting, cool film with guns and sex,” he adds.
(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl)
Tags: paramedics, senseless violence, Theo Maassen
December 15, 2011
The ‘naive and clumsy’ Dutch film industry
According to a column in Webwereld, the Dutch film industry is asking the government to help them combat illegal downloading, but in fact doing nothing to solve their problem. Let’s have a look at their arguments.
The people who are currently petitioning the government to do something about downloading are movie theatre owners, represented by an ex Minister of Justice. Movie theatres have seen their profit increase by 30 percent in 2010. What’s all the fuss about then? It’s the video shops that are closing, not movie theatres. Record shops are closing left and right, but somehow that’s regarded as normal.
Another argument is that the government should ban downloading and make it illegal. How are they going to enforce it? There are enough measures already many experts will tell you. And they don’t really work.
There is no legal alternative to downloading movies in the Netherlands. If there is, please tell us. Seems like there’s a nice gap in the market, so why is nothing being done? Let me guess, the legislation is messed up and nobody wants to wait six months like a second-class citizen to watch the latest movies anymore.
Yes, people should be paid for their wares, yes downloading hurts many industries, but technology is just going to evolve further, so the time to get creative with solutions is now.
The report was labelled ‘strictly confidential’ and yet it winded up on the Internet for all to see. Either the document wasn’t ‘strictly confidential’ or the people working on this report are not the brightest of lightbulbs.
(Link: webwereld.nl, Photo of film cans by tallfoot, some rights reserved)
Tags: copyright, downloading
October 20, 2011
Director Sluizer to finish film with River Phoenix
Eighteen years after American actor River Phoenix died of an overdose related heart attack in Hollywood on Halloween night, Dutch film director George Sluizer, 79, has decided to finish shooting the movie ‘Dark Blood’ that had Phoenix in it at the time.
George Sluizer is known for his film ‘Spoorloos’ (1988) aka ‘The Vanishing’ (1992), starring Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland. He is Dutch even though he was born in Paris (the Dutch wikipedia page is wrong, saying he’s French) and had shelved the film so that it wouldn’t get lost. Sluizer has now re-edited the material and believes with a few adjustments, he will probably have the film released next year. One of these ‘adjustments’ includes having brother Joaquin Phoenix do some voice-over work, as he apparently sounds like River.
(Link: www.hollywoodreporter.com, Photo of film cans by tallfoot, some rights reserved)
Tags: George Sluizer
October 15, 2011
Uprising in the IKEA catalogue
This fun little comedy called Page 23 won the Best Movie award of the 2011 Utrecht edition of the 48 Hour Film project.
It was created by advertising creatives Jeroen Houben, Tim Arts and Stefan van den Boogaard. Contestants had to use a specific character (“Ingmar or Ingrid Talis, volunteer”), a prop (a pair of glasses) and a line of text (“amazingly beautiful, but hopelessly impractical”), and had only 48 hours to create the movie.
Page 23 follows the lives and loves of the models in an IKEA catalogue. The Atlantic published an interview with the makers:
You created a very polished, IKEA-look for the piece with very little time. How did you make it happen in only 48 hours?
We found our location only hours before we started shooting. Since we had no time or money, we looked for something that didn’t need a lot of adjustment. We called around for furnished apartments and hotel rooms, but no luck there. Finally, it turned out one of our crew members had a clean-looking, design-furnished apartment. Sometimes it’s just that easy. We bought some extra decoration like candles and a vase with flowers, and most of the other stuff you see in the shot was already in the house. The funny thing is most of the furniture in the shots aren’t IKEA products.
[…]
(Video: Vimeo / Jeroen Houben)
October 10, 2011
The New Kids: Turbo goes Nitro
Dutch white trash is hotter than ever these days, embodied by the New Kids. They are violent, rude, gross, racist, sexist and very ‘facepalmy’. They’ll make you want to drink the cheapest beer you can find and go primitive in many bad ways. The New Kids film Nitro was just announced, and is ready to roll on 8 December.
In Nitro, the province of Friesland is invaded by a plague of zombies, far away from Maaskantje, the New Kids’ village in the province of Noord-Brabant. The New Kids are busy fighting a war with their counterparts in the nearby town of Schijndel, illegal street races and major fights abound. The zombies eventually get someone from Brabant and the New Kids then have a bigger, badder evil to screw with.
It’s on, ‘kut’!
No need for subtitles:
homo = fag
kut, swear word like ‘shit’, but meaning ‘cunt’ and used constantly as a noun, adjective, adverb, etc.
The fun party music at the end of the trailer goes ‘hoeren neuken, nooit meer werken’, which is the New Kids motto: ‘screwing whores and not working anymore’. Lovely.
Here’s the trailer of the first film Turbo that came out on 9 December 2010.
Tags: Maaskantje, Noord-Brabant
August 6, 2011
Mac ‘n’ Cheese (animated cartoon)
Four students at the Utrecht School of Arts made the following cartoon:
From the artists’ Vimeo page:
This two minute animation took about five months to make, and about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches.
Synopsis: When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there’s only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert.
(Source video: Youtube / Tom Hankins, Gijs van Kooten, Guido Puijk, Roy Nieterau)
May 18, 2011
A day without immigrants would look empty
It’s funny and sad to think that some people in the Netherlands honestly believe that their country would be better off without any immigrants. As an immigrant myself, I’d miss my Turkish market and more than half of all my friends and aquaintainces. Oh, and my Dutch co-blogger would have to write all by himself.
Three films can be seen here. They are in Dutch although the images say a lot on their own.
The film projects are from Worldconnectors, a network of committed Dutch people who want to contribute in a positive way to the debate about social and cultural diversity and migration.
(Link: wereldjournalisten.nl)
Tags: immigrants, immigration
May 5, 2011
American film expert publishes book on Amsterdam cinemas
Originally from Kansas, Jeffrey Babcock has been living in Amsterdam for over 20 years and often reminisces about how Amsterdam, the city were you could once do anything artistic, has become quite regulated in his time. However, if there’s one person keeping the dream alive and well as far as unknown films are concerned, it’s him. I myself watched a film shot partially in my hometown of Montréal and partially in Amsterdam that I had never ever heard of and was blown away. Babcock gives the audience an explanation beforehand, like the cool teacher at school that probably has the same extra curricular activities as you do.
Together with Rietveld Academy art student Agata Winska, Babcock has published a book entitled ‘The Illicit Cinemas of Amsterdam’, with stories and an interview about the more ‘undergound’ cinemas where Babcock presents films to small yet packed audiences around the city. They purposely made 300 copies of the book, hand bound in Poland and kept the price as low as possible, something Babcock believes in strongly with his easily affordable movie screenings. “Even if I were to up the price by a euro, people would come, but it wouldn’t be the same people. Polish squatters now talk to people from Dutch television station VPRO, which wouldn’t happen if the price went up.” Safe to say, it’s never about the money, it’s always about film.
Tags: Amsterdam