MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Inarritu's Most Popular Film?

At virtually the same time Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu was debut his long-awaited Biutiful at Cannes, Nike was launching his epic “Write The Future” ad for the World Cup. And this may be his true masterpiece.
Coming in at 3 minutes and to be chopped up into many smaller spots, the film has the eclecticism Inarritu is known for with the hopefulness he’s not.
Ironically, I am writing this on an iPad, but posting Vimeo, which cannot be seen on this piece of hardware. YouTube, actually partnered with Nike on this, offers no embed code to mobile viewers. Odd.

Write The Future from Nalden on Vimeo.

Be Sociable, Share!

24 Responses to “Inarritu's Most Popular Film?”

  1. christian says:

    Ugh.

  2. Krazy Eyes says:

    Very awesome. I think you’re right in saying this is probably the best thing he’s done and I’ve been a fan of all his films. Stylistically I think he owes a big debt to Tom Tykwer on this one.

  3. SJRubinstein says:

    That was hilarious.

  4. Dr Wally says:

    Where are most of the world’s actual best players (Messi, Torres, Gerrard) in that? The last thing i expect when i come here is to be confronted with Wayne Rooney’s awful mug. What next – hotbloggers discussing whether or not the Germans can do anything in the tournament without Michael Ballck? Whether or not Fabio Capello was right to bring Jamie Carragher out of retirement? If you’re clueless on such matters, the answers are no and yes respectively, by the way.

  5. Incredible commercial/movie! Too bad soccer BLOWS.

  6. Hunter Tremayne says:

    It always amuses me when Americans, whose major sports, baseball, (American) football and basketball are so mind-numbingly boring that no other country wants to watch them, let alone play them, attack soccer, the most popular sport on the planet. I suspect the reason is that you are crap at it.
    Oh, and that’s a wonderful piece of filmmaking.

  7. LexG says:

    The greatest trick Hunter Tremayne ever played was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
    Some clavichord music, a notably Victorian plume of smoke, and…. CURTAINS. The royal audience GASPS, applauds politely with opera clap.
    Also: SOCCER SUCKS. A couple years ago during WORLD CUP, I was randomly working at an office that had a foreign department and a ton of native Europeans, and every day these dudes would come in wearing their CITY OF GOD/AMORES PERROS-style SOCCER T-SHIRTS or whatever, and crank the volume to 100000 on the TV and huddle around watching this shit with the intensity of a new dad cheering on his wife’s delivery.
    Like, hey, Gael Garcia Bernal, I’m just trying to microwave my fucking leftover pizza, can you pipe down?
    Just shattering the earth’s allotted decibel level and shaking rattle cans and getting in fights over this dumb, boring NON-SPORT… Even watching the Super Bowl in football-insane Ohio couldn’t compare to the FEVERED INSANITY… over a bunch of Robbie Williams-looking pasty From Russia With Love henchmen kicking some fruity ball around in a sport NOOOOO ONE in the GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH cares about.

  8. Hunter Tremayne says:

    “Football (soccer) isn’t a matter of life or death, it’s much more important than that.” – Bill Shankley

  9. SJRubinstein says:

    You know why soccer hasn’t taken off here in the States? Because you can’t stop the action for beer ads every few minutes like with football, baseball and basketball. Yeah, you’ve got those little corner ads by the score/clock and the ones in the stadium, but the biggest game in American sports has become far more reknown for the multi-million dollar Hollywood-level commercials that are between plays.
    Our sports exist to sell us shit. As a game, soccer’s just not set up for that. You just don’t see the level of investiture on the commercial side. Even in NASCAR, you cut to commercial and that’s even with the cars caked in adverts.

  10. torpid bunny says:

    Yeah, pretty ad, but let’s face it: soccer is gay.

  11. torpid bunny says:

    I’m ten thousand times more interested in a Celtics-Lakers final.

  12. Although I really am not a fan of soccer, I just like saying it sucks because it riles soccer fans up so much. Next to hockey fans (look, soccer on ICE!) and biking fans, there’s no fiercer loyalty to a boring sport than futbol fans. Get on with your bad selves though, to each their own.

  13. Dr Wally says:

    bunny, have you ever stood in Anfield’s kop during a Champion’s League semi-final? I can assure you, Sir, that FOOTBALL (enough with the Soccer stuff) in it’s drama and atmosphere is as hardcore as sports can get. As the rest of the world effectively shuts down between June 11 and July 9 this year, Americans who say they don’t care start to look like the only sober person at a drunken revelry.

  14. torpid bunny says:

    “bunny, have you ever stood in Anfield’s kop during a Champion’s League semi-final?”
    No, but I’ve smoked it.

  15. christian says:

    I dare say any group who would actually kill people over their sport are hardly namby-mamby — they are however stupid and psychotic. Whenever my foreign friends get too uppity about American violence I remind them of their cro-mag soccer fans.

  16. Kambei says:

    Well, the good ol’ USofA has a decent squad this year and for them not to make the Round of 16 would be a disappointment. After that, it is anyone’s game. So Hunter, you can enjoy some unbridled USA vs England action on June 12th. Also, those MLS players give some rough tackles. It’s a good think Owen isn’t playing or he’d be broken in two by Chad Marshall. Unfortunately us lousy Canadian’s have made it in years (1986??), but maybe in four year’s time…we truly suck…

  17. SJRubinstein says:

    I was in Johannesburg in January of 2007 and the place was already World Cup crazy as the new stadiums were being built, folks with lines in on get-rich-quick schemes were plentiful (t-shirts, concessions, etc.) and they’d just hired the expensive new coach to try and lead SA’s team (since they got the first-round bye due to hosting duties) to World Cup glory.
    I can only imagine what it’s like to be there now!

  18. dietcock says:

    As soon as I saw the tell-tale blue-green faux-grainy overly-highlit-whites D.I. murk in the thumbnail, I didn’t even bother clicking on the video. WHY DOES THIS UGLY PLAYED-OUT LOOK STILL PASS FOR “STYLE?” UGH!

  19. Kelby says:

    Of all the balls in this town, soccer is a must to get up the ladder.

  20. Gil says:

    Vimeo just went HTML5… The clip should play nice with your iPad:
    http://vimeo.com/11896489

  21. Krillian says:

    Where’s Gael Garcia Bernal?

  22. Krazy Eyes says:

    Where’s Gael Garcia Bernal?
    Did you watch it?

  23. Blackcloud says:

    Ronaldinho didn’t make the Brazil squad. Fail. Diego Milito, who scored both goals for Inter in the Champions League final, isn’t in it, either. He’ll be in it next time. And seriously, where’s Messi?
    “It always amuses me when Americans, whose major sports, baseball, (American) football and basketball are so mind-numbingly boring that no other country wants to watch them, let alone play them, attack soccer, the most popular sport on the planet. I suspect the reason is that you are crap at it.”
    Only someone whose mind is numb would make such a puerile argument devoid of even the most tenuous grasp of reality. I suspect that Hunter Tremayne is crap at logic, reasoning, and analysis.
    As for why soccer isn’t bigger in the US, in an alternate reality (perhaps the one Hunter Tremayne inhabits) that was the subject of Elena Kagan’s undergraduate thesis.

  24. Blackcloud says:

    “You know why soccer hasn’t taken off here in the States? Because you can’t stop the action for beer ads every few minutes like with football, baseball and basketball.”
    Yeah, because none of those was popular before television.

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon