Arcade Fire And Spike Jonze Debut 'Scenes From The Suburbs' In Berlin

30-minute film premiered at Berlin Film Festival this week.
By Eric Ditzian


The Arcade Fire's Win Butler
Photo: Mark Metcalfe/ Getty Images

Arcade Fire has showed off snippets of their Spike Jonze-directed short film, "Scenes from the Suburbs," on oversize screens during their summer tour shows and in a five-minute music video in November. Finally, this week, the band got to display the full 30-minute film at the Berlin Film Festival, which frontman Win Butler hopes will become part of the group's "visual legacy," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"So that 30 years from now, when a computer virus crashed all the computers, and people have to look at DVDs to see what life was like in the early 2000s, there is some record of what we were thinking visually," he explained at the festival. "And we didn't want that to get completely lost just because of the times that we live in."

The short continues the band's exploration of their experiences growing up within the often staid confines of the suburbs, which, as their tour collaborator Terry Gilliam has told us, is a "place that if you're creative, you just need to get away from." The film, however, spins suburban life into an impressionistic portrait of a group of teens living in an alternate reality where different towns go to war against one another.

"You start from a feeling and it's not necessarily the plot points of a song," Butler said. "To me the film is very much about trying to talk about the relationships and the feelings of that age."

"We were trying to show the emotion and the emotional links without necessarily getting deep into the plot," he added, citing influences ranging from Gilliam's films to B movies. "It's inspired by watching the first half of films and not having to figure out how to resolve them."

The Berlin premiere capped off a pretty stellar week for Arcade Fire. On Sunday, the band pulled off a shocking Album of the Year upset at the Grammys, then quickly jetted to London for the Brit Awards, winning Best International Album and Best International Group. And yet, for all this musical success, Butler suggested that perhaps a visual medium is where the group's true artistic talents lie.

"I think we would have been a band of moviemakers if making movies wasn't 140 times more expensive than making records," he said.

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1658219/arcade-fire-scenes-from-the-suburbs-berlin.jhtml

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'Unknown' Leads Friday Box Office

Thriller bags $6.7 million while 'Justin Bieber: Never Say Never' tumbles to sixth place.
By Shawn Adler


Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson in "Unknown"
Photo: Warner Bros.

Asking what movie kicked off President's Day weekend by winning the Friday night box office is like the start of a bad Abbott and Costello routine: It's "Unknown."

Despite middling reviews, the Liam Neeson starrer about a man who awakens after a car accident to discover the life he thought he had has been taken away, topped all comers with $6.7 million on Friday from 3,043 screens.

Expected to end at somewhere over $25 million for the four-day weekend, "Unknown" continues Neeson's recent domination of the February box office. The secretly badass star wowed audiences two years ago in "Taken," which, after opening in February 2008, ended its run with $226 million worldwide.

"I Am Number Four," meanwhile, will have to settle for being number two. On Friday, the teen-targeted alien picture finished in second place with $6.2 million. The latest from director D.J. Caruso, and star Alex Pettyfer, "I Am Number Four" could still win the weekend with a strong Saturday bounce.

Last week's winner, the Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston starring "Just Go With It," came in third place with $5.2 million.

Rounding out the top five, new release "Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son" and holdover "Gnomeo and Juliet" earned $4.8 million and $4.3 million, respectively.

Which means America may have finally found a cure for Bieber Fever, as the doe-eyed one's 3-D concert pic, "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," toppled all the way from second to sixth place, earning just $3.8 million on Friday.

Among Oscar hopefuls, "The King's Speech" (seventh place) continued its impressive run. The presumptive favorite at the Academy Awards will pass $100 million domestically this weekend.

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1658376/unknown-leads-friday-box-office.jhtml

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Manny Ramirez: I'm Playing 2011 With 'a Chip on My Shoulder'

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It seems that being left hanging for most of the offseason before signing for a relatively paltry $2 million with the Rays has left the legendarily lethargic Manny Ramirez with a little extra gas in his tank.

Ramirez spoke to Roger Mooney of the Tampa Tribune at the Rays' spring training complex on Thursday and outlined the way he's feeling in advance of the 2011 season. He's lost weight in hopes of avoiding the injuries that limited him last season, he doesn't care where he hits in the order and, most of all, he's looking to prove to all his doubters that he can still play the game.

"I want to go and get that feel back that I still got it," Ramirez said. "I just got a chip on my shoulder that I want to be here, I want to get my stuff right and show people I can play."

 

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Source: http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2011/02/17/manny-ramirez-im-playing-2011-with-a-chip-on-my-shoulder/

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