The Lego Movie

Before making The Lego Movie, directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller made 21 Jump Street, an adaptation of a police procedural about two cops who go undercover as high school students to stop teenage crime.  To follow that up with an animated family film sounds like quite a jump, but the two movies have something in common: both take what sound like cheap attempts to cash in on pieces of pop culture detritus and turn them into warm, funny, genuinely involving comedies.  The Lego Movie exists to sell Lego sets, and it succeeds.  The temptation for many filmmakers would be to stop there, but Lord and Miller have gone further to make an hour-and-a-half long toy commercial that's actually worth watching.

The appeal of The Lego Movie begins with its visuals.  The film uses computer-generated animation to bring the blocky, jointless denizens of its world to life, but there's a charming jerkiness to the way they move that more closely recalls stop-motion animation of the kind found in The Nightmare Before Christmas than, say, the smoothness of Disney's Frozen.  There isn't one part of the movie that's dull to look at, and several that reinvent the look of cinematic cliches.  At one point, a large object crashes into an ocean, something most people have seen in one form or another in action movies beyond count.  But when the object hits the water in this movie, the be-dotted surface of the sea, made entirely out of blue sheets of Lego, bursts outward in a choppy, angular wave that's playful and surprising.  Even if the rest of the movie were a bore, the visual creativity alone would make it worth seeing.

Luckily, the meat of The Lego Movie is engaging and funny.  Our hero is Emmet (Chris Pratt), a cheerful construction worker having trouble establishing his own identity.  One day after work he has a chance encounter with alternative outsider Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and soon finds himself in the center of a movement to stop the nefarious President Business (Will Ferrell) from destroying the world.  The plot moves very, very quickly, blasting from one standby Lego setting (the wild west, medieval fantasy world, outer space) to another with the breathless intensity of a six-year-old boy raised on Hollywood action movies making the story up as he goes.  The movie throws jokes and pratfalls at the audience almost faster than it can react to them.  Pratt, who plays the irrepressibly happy Andy on Parks and Recreation, is a great fit for the lead role.  He never seems less than delighted to be saying his lines and makes sure the energy level doesn't dip below its manic, frenzied high.

The Lego Movie also takes great advantage of the many licensing agreements The LEGO Group has made over the years.  Batman (Will Arnett) has a role as Wyldstyle's grouchy boyfriend.  Gandalf and Dumbledore compete for the title of most learned wizard in the room, and The Simpsons' Milhouse shows up as a member of the resistance high command.  Sure, they're all in Lego form, but it's rare to have so many pop cultural figures gathered in one place.  The giddy inclusivity brings to mind South Park's "Imaginationland" episodes, but The Lego Movie doesn't depend on this novelty to support itself.  It's always rushing to the next joke, the next visual, the next twist in the story.

The final twist in the story is particularly loopy, and adds a meta-textual layer too inspired to spoil here.  All this movie needed to do was sell toys.  It will do that- kids who see it are going to be asking their parents for Lego sets for Christmases uncounted to come- but Miller and Lord have worked hard to make it entertaining for the rest of us, too.

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Now Scrubs is getting turned into a Broadway musical

Getting turned into a musical isn't just for movies anymore. Scrubs, which ran for a combined nine seasons across NBC and ABC, is set to follow in the footsteps of Back to the Future and American Psycho and be turned into a Broadway show. Creator Bill Lawrence announced plans to turn the the medical comedy into a musical via Twitter back in 2012, but he revealed more details last week in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

The as-yet-unnamed musical is still very early in development. It will follow the plot of the television show's pilot episode combined with that of the first season episode My Old Lady, which finds the young doctors at the center of the story unable to keep their patients from dying. An outline of the Broadway show has been sent to composers, who are writing songs that may or may not be used in the finished product.

Zach Braff, the star of the original show, will shortly make his Broadway debut in a musical version of Woody Allen's 1994 comedy Bullets Over Broadway. As far as the Scrubs musical goes, Lawrence said that he expects Braff to be "involved creatively" but intends to cast the show with seasoned Broadway performers. It remains to be seen whether the Scrubs musical will successfully make the transition from screen to stage, like the stage versions of The Producers or Hairspray, or become an embarrassingly flop all agree is best forgotten, like pretty much every other time producers try something like this.

And here's Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams stabbing a wedding cake with a sword

 

Of all the actors on HBO's Game of Thrones, Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark, seem to go viral the most often. Last year, after her TV family was brutally killed at history's least enjoyable wedding, Williams posted her gobsmacked reaction on Vine to the delight to fans the internet over. If this picture of her about to run a wedding cake through with a sword is any indication, she still hasn't gotten over it.

The cake itself was made by UK bakery Choccywoccydoodah, which specializes in elaborate wedding cakes. Founder Christine Taylor explained how she and her team went about creating a confectionery tribute to one of television's most upsetting moments:

"We decided to create a slaughtered cake, rather than a red cake. The daggers, swords and arrows were all created from chocolate. We also included a cracked shield of the two families in the episode; House of Stark and House of Frey to symbolize the fact they are now at war."

The fourth season of Game of Thrones premieres on April 4.

PBS documentarian Ken Burns is now available in app form

Since debuting his film The Civil War for PBS in 1990, the Ken Burns style of documentary filmmaking has become familiar to many viewers, even if they don't know that's what it's called. Burns has been panning over archival photographs, enlisting celebrities to recite famous quotes of the day, and playing tinkly piano music under historical narration for over 25 films and counting. His work is dense and absorbing, but traditional to almost a fault. Not many people would describe his many mini-series as cutting edge.

Burns is working to change that. Yesterday he launched his very own iPad app. Simply called "Ken Burns," the app breaks down his 136 hours worth of documentary footage into short clips, groups them chronologically, and lets viewers sift through the entirety of American history year by year in a way that allows them to see how different parts of Burns' films "speak to" each other. Click on the year 1933, for example, and you can select a clip about FDR's fireside chats from Burns' film Empire of the Air, check out a bit about the effect of the Depression on professional baseball from his film Baseball, and so on.

Burns is currently working on new documentaries about the Vietnam War, the Gettysburg Address, and the Roosevelt family. Clips from his new films will be added to the app as they get made. If Burns keeps producing films at the rate he's going, the app should achieve total dominion over American history in short order. The app can be downloaded for free here, although it costs $9.00 to unlock all of the content. Watch a trailer for the app below.

Glee may be kicked off the air in the UK because of a trademark lawsuit

The United Kingdom may soon have fewer earnest teenage vocalists crowding its airwaves. A United Kingdom high court has ruled that Fox's Glee, now in its fifth season, is in violation of a trademark held by British company Comic Enterprises in The Glee Club, a stand-up comedy club with four locations in the UK. Comic Enterprises is owned by Mark Tughan, who brought the lawsuit in 2011 after one too many people walked into his club, realized that Lea Michele was not going to perform, and left without even buying a drink. Judge Roger Wyand wrote the opinion:

"I have found that there is a likelihood of confusion and Twentieth Century Fox's use causes dilution and tarnishing [of Comic Enterprises' trademark] ...the damage suffered by Comic Enterprises is caused by its venues being confused with the TV show and its potential customers being put off."

Glee's future on UK television is now uncertain. The court could issue an injunction ordering Fox to pull the show from the airwaves. Comic Enterprises could demand reparations for all the income Fox may have made from customers who tuned in to Glee thinking the show had something to do with The Glee Club. Or Fox could re-brand the show in a way that doesn't interfere with any trademarks, perhaps by renaming it The Good Time Singing Hour or Glee (in no way associated with The Glee Club).

Here's what Jesse Eisenberg might be like as Lex Luthor in the Superman vs. Batman movie

Last week, Warner Brothers announced that Jesse Eisenberg will play Lex Luthor in the forthcoming Superman vs. Batman movie. The internet was promptly set ablaze, with many wondering how the actor's experience playing a real-life megalomaniacal business mogul would translate into playing a fictional one. The good people over at Screen Junkies have created a trailer for the movie that splices footage from Man of Steel together with scenes from Eisenberg flicks like Zombieland, Now You See Me, and The Social Network to give viewers an idea of how that might play out, putting the issue to rest until the film arrives in 2016.

The part of the trailer that features Eisenberg staring down Superman and declaring his intellectual superiority in a menacing monotone suggests that he may have the presence and authority needed to play the popular villain. The part where Ben Affleck suggests that he, Eisenberg, and Superman engage in a threesome seems more far-fetched, but it's hard to put anything past a movie that cast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor.

A filmmaker has raised over $11,000 to adapt a a piece of Sherlock fan-fiction

The BBC's Sherlock wrapped up its third season a couple of weeks ago and won't return until an unspecified time in the future. One fan is determined to fill that gap: film producer Naomi Javor is currently hard at work adapting a piece of Sherlock fan-fiction into a web series, with actors and props and sets and everything. The fan-fic in question, A Finger Slip, explores how the show would be different if Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had not, as in the television program, become flat-mates who solve mysteries together, but rather met in their late teens, bonded over a long series of text messages, and fell begrudgingly in love. It is available to read here, crooking its bony finger at you like a hooded figure beckoning from the other side of a haunted lake.

Javor, who is directing the series with a cast and crew of volunteers, has set up a Kickstarter page that has already surpassed its $10,000 goal. Whether you want it or not, she hopes to release the first episode in October.

Check out these gorgeous pre-production pics of David Lynch's Dune

 

Artist and author Ron Miller worked on David Lynch's Dune (1984) as a concept artist. Last week, he wrote about his time on the film in honor of its 30th anniversary, slipping in a defense of the often derided final product for good measure. He also revealed a few pre-production pictures that proved so popular he came back a few days later to post a whole slew of them, from sketches to production paintings to models to costumes. Dune divided critics when it was first released and continues to be debated among fans today, but few doubt its visual ambition. Much of that ambition can be traced to Miller's work. Sample some of his concept art below and check out the complete gallery here.