Last Week in Film

A life-sized Oscar statuette created by the street artist Plastic Jesus was placed on Hollywood Boulevard at the section which will be closed at the awards. This does not sound fascinating or newsworthy at first, but the statuette is on all fours snorting two lines of cocaine from the ground. According to the artist, it is an homage to the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman who passed away weeks earlier because of a heroin overdose and a commentary on Hollywood culture. It is supposed to draw attention to Hollywood’s buried problem of drug abuse which is ignored until someone newsworthy dies.

The Vietnamese producer and director Phi Phi Anh Nguyen created the world’s first vertical feature film Arbitrary Fairytales. With a length of 83 minutes, the absurdist film was designed to topple cinematic conventions by shooting entirely with a rotated camera. The plot revolves around a dying teenager who challenges death to help him solve a case of a serial killer. The existentialist murder film shows the progress of the case by using a chaptered recollection of memories. The film is not completed yet and looks for funding on Kickstarter. A link to the campaign and the trailer can be found here.

Game of Thrones does not only break records anymore, but apparently the TV series also boosts the economy in Northern Ireland. According to the film agency Northern Ireland Screen, the HBO fantasy drama had contributed £110 million to the local economy. It is filmed at the at the Titanic Studios in Belfast, and many other locations across Northern Ireland. Those locations have become tourist attractions; especially due to the Game of Thrones tour attracting visitors from all over the world. Due to the economic success of the show, Belfast City Council have approved a plan for a studio thought to be worth up to £14 million.

Jeremy Clarkson finally came to his senses and apologised to the former Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon whom he had infamously punched last March. Oisin Tymon is expected to obtain over £100,000 from the BBC and Jeremy Clarkson after settling his racial discrimination and personal injury claim. He was punched and called a “lazy, Irish c**t” by Clarkson after he told him that he could not order a steak after a long day of filming.