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Under discussion:

Beowulf  (2007)

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I’m actually very excited about Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture drool-fest, Beowulf, coming out tomorrow. I should probably know better. When dialog scenes are replaced with slick CG versions it’s a pretty safe indication that the movie will be little more than eye candy. Nevertheless, I’m dying to see an impossibly ripped Beowulf kick some Grendel ass.

My excitement about the movie has made me feel like a eleven year-old again, which has me thinking about two other passions from my younger years: stop-motion animation and Legos. I haven’t done much to nurture either of those loves in the last decade and a half, so I was unaware that there are a handful of hilarious videos on YouTube featuring stop-motion animated Lego mini-figs playing out scenes from movies. The best one I found was a the well-crafted short above, depicting the opening act of Beowulf, apparently “made for a school project.”

While Zemeckis pours millions into pushing CG animation to the next level, I’m glad there are still kids out there making movie magic in their basements, one frame at a time.

Under discussion:

Kissing on the Mouth  (2005)

It’s no secret Karina and I have been advocates of Joe Swanberg’s films since his debut, Kissing on the Mouth, hit festivals two years ago. In light of the recent debate about conflict of interest in the film blog community, I think it’s a good time to clarify our relationship as critics/fans versus the sponsorship/distributor ventures we’ve been getting into, most recently with Butterknife.

For Spout, some may say it’s a conflict of interest for a company employing ardent supporters writing about Swanberg to then distribute his work online, as if our support has been engineered for two years to help Butterknife. So, before the record is even bent, I’ll set it straight.

We have felt since seeing Kissing on the Mouth that Joe is a filmmaker to watch. Trying to spread the word about his movies is what we do. There was no talk of distributing his work until recently. That said, after Spout’s promotion of Four Eyed Monsters in June, Joe contacted me and said he had an idea for a web series he would be shopping around later in the year. In September, he shot the first four episodes of Butterknife and showed me a rough cut. It was unanimous here, everybody wanted to show it and we bought the Internet distribution rights.

So, we officially switch hats here. We will be promoting Butterknife on SpoutBlog in the coming months. I think we’d be covering it anyway as we have all of Joe’s work, but it is true we now have more than an altruistic reason to promote it.

And now… a shameless promotion: Sign up to get notified when Butterknife is released at butterknife.spout.com.

Welcome to the Butterknife blog! This will be a combination production journal/random thought catcher. We are shooting the second half of the season in December, and I will post plenty of pictures and thoughts from the set of the show, but for now I’m excited to present the trailer, featuring scenes from the episodes we’ve already completed.

Butterknife is my idea of a “genre” project. Obviously we’re doing something really different with our private-eye, but we’re still tapping into some of the conventions and hopefully adding a memorable new character to the long list of great on-screen investigators.

We’re very grateful to spout.com for sponsoring the show and making it available for free to everyone. The first episode will premiere in January, so make sure you sign up for email alerts. You won’t want to miss it.

-Joe Swanberg