The Dafts cruising through the California desert

OK, we thought the movie was boring as h…, never seen that many people leave a theater before, but we stayed until the end just in case something good would happen. My favorite part turned out to be…. hold on…. the one with the Ferrari 412 that the two robots chose as their mean of transportation. Good choice, it fits them well. Sporting a “HUMAN” California license plate, the Daft-Punk-mobile reflects their liking for the 1980’s.

Some scenes remind of 2001, A Space Odyssey both by their beauty and their lengthiness. But that was 1968 and audiences were fine with slow-paced movies, unlike today were they tend to be MTV A.D.D fast.

Watch the Ferrari 412 sequence after the jump!

Here’s the very first Iron Man review, from the guys at Reelz Channel and Variety. Apparently they like it a lot and we can see our friend the Audi R8 on set. CARS+MOVIES is going to see it tonight and will share its thoughts tomorrow! For those of you who are going tonight too, enjoy the show and easy on the popcorn.

Yesterday, we told you about the A-Team movie, scheduled for 2009. So when we found this lovely Smart car, we thought the producers had blown a fuse. Don’t worry too much though. Turned out it’s just the job of a dedicated (and talented) fan. Look at the details: the rims, the paint (with the right black-red-grey scheme), the roof spoiler…. It’s perfect! Just need a tiny version of Mr.T to drive it….
It will go very well next the “Smartinor” from Thalon Design we showed you a couple month ago.
So what will be the next A-Team ride? The web is buzzing with predictions. We’ll tell you about our best guess soon!

Source: Dethroner

Long before Fast and Furious, the Ghost Rider and other YouTube’s overabundant homemade videos of insane street driving, Oscar-winning director, Claude Lelouch, shot C’etait un rendez-vous (It Was an Appointment), a 9 min short.

The only point of view is from the front bumper of a car, crossing Paris at very high speed, taking one way streets in reverse and running red lights. Only at the end do we understand why the driver was in such a hurry: he didn’t want to miss his rendez-vous with his loved one.
When the movie was first shown, Claude Lelouch was arrested, but got away since the police didn’t have any evidence. At that time, he said that the driver was a professional Formula 1 pilot. Years later, he confessed that the mysterious driver was himself. He had installed a single gyro stabilized camera on his own Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9., which was “dubbed” with the sound of (apprently) his own Ferrari 275GTB. That’s why the car on the poster looks like one of the race cars from Modena… It was shot in only one take, early in a morning of August (when most parisians are out of the city) 1976.

After a long wait, thanks to its cult following, the movie got out on DVD, but you can also watch the entire video after the jump, along with a shorter version used as a music video by the UK band Snow Patrol.

Sources: Wired, Wikipedia

Watch the videos after the jump!

The movie:

Snow Patrol’s music video: Open your eyes

Lelouch setting the camera on his Mercedes.

Links:
The itineray on Google map.

NBC aired its two-hour movie “event” last night and of course we were in front of the TV.
While we were pleasantly surprised by the show -which was better than we expected- it could have been much better.

There’s been tons of reactions on the Internet, both by websites and their users, and they tend to be either very sour (like Autoblog and its “liveblog” (and most of the comments on it), or the Seattle Post Intelligencer), or very sweet (like the Knight Rider Online).
On NBC.com, the comments reflect the same trends: net-net wrote” We loved the way you combined the new knight rider with the original.It’s definitly a show we’ll continue to watch.” and Craig wrote “KNIGHT RIDER = 1 FAT FORD COMMERCIAL.”

So what was good, and what was awful? Here we go with our lists:

Pros

Cons

Anyway, NBC got good ratings out of it, since the Knight Rider Online revealed the show was second last night, just behind Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, earning a 6.9/10. So maybe we’ll get a full season next year or even in September…

In short, we almost liked it, we want to see it back, but please, NBC and gang, make some changes!

Be kind, rewind: if you’ve missed it, or want to see it again, the full movie is viewable/downloadable on NBC Video Rewind, for free.

Although there’s no “cars” in The Golden Compass, there is a good diversity of vehicles set in a particular parallel past/future such as the Sky Ferry, the Carriage, balloons, ships, etc.

The movie

Potter, Narnia, Stardust… The Golden Compass is the latest in that long list of fantasy/family blockbusters to have been rolled out by the studios. It’s clean, polished even. It has a good cast: Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christopher Lee, Sam Elliott, and the adorable Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, the main character. It’s based on a good, controversial book by Philip Pullman, that gave the movie plenty of free publicity when several lobbies raised their voice in the US. It was just too easily forgettable.

The vehicles + the toys + the trailer + our exclusive photo gallery after the jump!   

The vehicles

The design of the vehicles was done in England, where the movie was shot, under the direction of production designer Dennis Gassner.
The three-wheeled carriage was interesting and so was the airship with two-balloons. We liked the Sky-Ferry (the zeppellin-like airship), but found it a little dry. Maybe those were too clean. A little dust and scratches would have helped. The overall mix between nineteenth century and sci-fi aesthetics was a nice touch.

Excerpt from the movie official website:

Oscar-winning production designer Dennis Gassner worked with Weitz to conceptualize everything from Oxford colleges to the vast snowy wastes of the far north, home of the armored bears; from the sophistication of Mrs. Coulter’s London to the bustle of the Northern port of Trollesund, and on to the ice palace of the King of the Bears, Ragnar Sturlusson, and Bolvangar, where Lyra finds the kidnapped children. The project would require hundreds of people to create a world with depth and scope from scratch, and bring the characters and their daemons to perfectly syncopated life utilizing a combination of practical and digital effects, as well as a working alethiometer – the golden compass of the title – and zeppelins, carriages, sky ferries, armored bears, spy flies, boats, barges and inconceivable machinery and artistry of a parallel age.

Master Replicas (newly merged with British toy manufacturer Corgi) has developped a toy line and you can easily find it in store such as Toys”R”US (at least that’s where we saw them). Their pictures are in the gallery.

Photo gallery

We took some screenshots from the trailer, and added the toys and some concept art found on the official website.
Click on Full Screen to see them big!
[album: http://carsplusmovies.com/CM/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/GoldenCompass/]

Golden Compass trailer

Links

The Fansite bridgetothestars.net as some good pictures of the toys.

Official website: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

To read more about the design process, go on the special section of the official website.

On December 27th 2007, the Library of Congress National Film Registry announced the 25 movies to be added to its collection for the year. Once again, this website didn’t exist at that time, so it’s no prime news, but it’s important enough to tell you all about it. 

Get the press release and watch the trailers after the jump.

Here’s an extract from the press release (source: The Library of Congress):

“LIBRARY OF CONGRESS NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY SELECTIONS FOR 2007
Back to the Future (1985)
Before “Beowulf” or “The Polar Express,” writer/director Robert Zemeckis explored the possibilities of special effects with the 1985 box-office smash “Back to the Future.” With his writing partner Bob Gale, Zemeckis tells the tale of accidental time-tourist Marty McFly.  Stranded in the year 1955, Marty (Michael J. Fox)—with the help of Dr. Emmett Brown (played masterfully over-the-top by Christopher Lloyd)—must not only find a way home, but also teach his father how to become a man, repair the space/time continuum and save his family from being erased from existence. All this, while fighting off the advances of his then-teenaged mother. It’s “The Twilight Zone” meets Preston Sturges.

Bullitt (1968)

“renowned for its exhilarating 11-minute car chase, arguably the finest in cinema history”

For his first American film, British director Peter Yates made an inspired decision: shoot a crime drama on location in San Francisco, rather than on the usual streets of L.A. or New York City.  The pitched streets and stunning vistas of San Francisco, backed by a superb Lalo Schifrin score, play a central role in this film renowned for its exhilarating 11-minute car chase, arguably the finest in cinema history.  Steve McQueen as the cop in the title role romances Jacqueline Bisset and solves a murder case while fighting off the mob and a sleazy district attorney, played by Robert Vaughn. ”

These movies being two of our all-time favorites, we’re thrilled by the news, and their selection shows how great their importance is in the History of cinema. And because they’re also in the first films which come to mind when talking about ”car movies”, a lot of auto aficionados, gearheads and car geeks are going to be pleased too.

Trailers

Since we were talking about vans, I thought I shoud tell you about another one of these so-bad-it’s-good movies: The Van. And not the british movie from the 90’s. This one is from 1977, directed by Sam Grossman and Dany Devito has a small part in it.

It’s a road/teen movie, about Bobby, a high-schooler who works at Dany’s carwash to buy his dream machine: a mean yellow van. This would solve all his biggest problem: getting girls (‘Cause of course that’s what girls want, right?) .

But to get the girl of his dreams is going to have to fight bullies and win races.
The movie is pretty slow, especially for today’s taste, but sympathetic, with the song “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns playing ad libitum.
It’s also an honest view of the 70’s: the van craze (a lot of crazy ones in the movie), the muscle cars, and like many flicks from that time showing pot smoking and gratuitous nudity.

THE Van, a.k.a Straight Arrow, was designed and built by George Barris, King of Kustomizers. It’s based on a Dodge van, (and not a Chevy van like the song suggests…), sports a male symbol on it’s sides, plenty of fur, a toaster, a waterbed (!)… and many more. I want the same.

I was telling you about my passion for bad taste “because sometimes it’s so bad that it’s good“. Well, one of my favorite movies is a terrible one, directed by Roger Corman and of course, involves cars. We could say that Death Race 2000 is a Sci-Fi movie, since it was made in 1975 but takes place in the famous year 2000. Their perception of the future was a litlle off, but very fun. In their world, the “national sport is hit-and-run” : a few drivers participate in the Transcontinental Road Race from New York to Los Angeles. On their way, they collect points …. by running people over. An adult male is worth 20 points, a male teenager 40, a male infant/toddler 70, all females are worth 10 more points than males and old people an amazing 100 points.

The cars are plainly….fantastic and cheap, the teams are inspired (the gladiator, the nazi, the mafia guy and…Frankenstein) and you get to see David Carradine (Kung-Fu, Kill Bill) and Sylvester Stallone in their prime. Another great car is visible at the end: a Nova Sterling, a kit car with an opening green house. Death Race 2000 was the inspiration for the video-game Carmageddon. A remake is in the work for 2008, with Jason Statham and Tyrese Gibson in the cast. Let’s see where that gets us.

 The imdb file for Death Race 2000 (1975)