Michel Gondry’s new paean to VHS and famous films of the past “Be Kind Rewind,” was originally scheduled for the fall, then got bumped to March 2008 and then apparently has been switched once more to a limited release in December of this year.
Does that mean it’s coming out for Oscar season contention? Likely not, it’s rumored to be his most “studio film,” but it sounds way to absurd for the Academy. But it’s nice to see Gondry working at a brisk pace considering his last film, the under-appreciated, “The Science of Sleep” was released just a year ago.
As you’ve likely already read, the film is about video store that gets magnetized and losses almost all their catalogue. In hopes of not enraging their senile boss (Mia Farrow), video store clerks Jack Black and Mos Def set out to film and re-create film classics so she won’t notice the VHS tapes in the store have been wiped out. It’s a pretty absurd and silly premise, but it is Michel Gondry, so what do you expect.
To recap, lead actor Jack Black told MTV what films, “Rewind” would be “remaking” back in the fall of 2006:
“There [were] tons of movies that we did,” Black said of the upcoming Michel Gondry-directed film. “We did ‘When We Were Kings,’ the documentary about Muhammad Ali — I play Muhammad Ali, strangely. We did ‘Superman.’ I probably shouldn’t say that … we had to change the name of it to something else — ‘Incredible Flying Man,’ I think. We did ‘Ghostbusters,’ we did ‘Robocop,’ we did ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ [pictured above, ed.] just to name a few…We were under strict orders not to watch any of the movies again, and if we had not seen it, [not to] see it,” he explained. “[Gondry] wanted it to look that way, [like it] was based on the commercials that you had seen of the movie. Because there was no time in the movie for us to do any research, he wanted to keep that consistent with us as actors — to not have time to research the movies we were remaking.”
It’s been reported that they were denied the rights to “Back To The Future,” another film they wanted to spoof. “The Lion King” was also a film title that was tossed around at one point.
Now’s as good as a time as any to post some songs from “The Science of Sleep” soundtrack. One of the most interesting and amusing parts of it is the adaptation of the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” song (from their 3rd self-titled record) that is changed with the same melody and new lyrics into “If You Rescue Me”: the song that is featured in a dream sequence when Gael Garcia Bernal and his co-workers are in a band playing dressed as cats. Gondry first worked with the music composer Jean-Michel Bernard on his first feature, “Human Nature.”
And lastly, the rumor that Gondry was going to direct “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not,” have been proven false. Meanwhile, after a decade apart, Gondry is supposed to direct Bjork’s “Declare Independence” video sometime in August.
Download: Jean-Michel Bernard & Kimiko Ono – “Thème Générique Fin “Golden The Pony Boy”
Download: Velvet Underground – “After Hours”
Download: Gael García Bernal, Sacha Bourdo, Alain Chabat & Aurélia Petit – “If You Rescue Me (Chanson De Chats)”
Download: Jean-Michel Bernard – “Générique Stéphane”
Download: The Willowz – “Ulcer Soul”
