Some companies though you know better than to fuck with. No matter how friendly their new branding is:

Spacesick simply calls this Evil Movie Megacorporation Rebranding. I call it t shirt fodder:

Actually a couple of these on stickers would be perfect for any movie geek’s laptop…  There’s a couple more up on the Spacesick blog.

The above is taken from the Executive Order signed by Nixon in 1970 that ensured an American victory in Vietnam. It’s the latest piece of history to be found in the New Frontiersman dossier. I figured you’d get a kick out of the military patch that troops wore in that operation:

It’s actually a real patch given out to members of the crew on Watchmen. I stumbled across it while doing research on another project last year and filed it away. Once Station X is up and running we’ll be going down the embroidered patch route too. T shirts and badges are so 2008…

And if you’re in London, have a blog and are interested in answering the question ‘Who watches the Watchmen?’ then the answer could be you.

Hell is only a word

I can’t remember the last Tom Cruise movie I enjoyed - Collateral perhaps. Given the right director I think the diminutive Scientologist can shine, but he makes an awful lot of crap so I wasn’t expecting much from Valkyrie. Bryan Singer hasn’t for a second lived up to the promise of The Usual Suspects, probably due to a misguided left step into superhero movies. X Men was a lot of fun, but simple while Superman Returns was just fucking awful.

Thankfully he’s now reunited with writer Christopher McQuarrie and straight away we’re back on track. Cruise is also helped by a great supporting cast - pretty much the cream of the crop of British acting talent. There a few problems, but overall the story of how close Germany came to ridding itself of Hitler is riveting. You get over the lack of actual German language or accents very early on so don’t worry too much about that.

I figured the main problem would be the foreknowledge that obviously the plot to assassinate Hitler failed. However, Singer manages to crank up the tension in just about every scene and once things begin to unravel the movie shifts gear again. You continue to root for the conspirators right until the end, hoping that at least a few of them will get away. It borrows a little from the heist genre - you have all the components of a caper movie - and I think this is where the film wins. It’s very much not a war movie, but rather a drama that unfolds during the war. As such it provides a lot for the cast to get their teeth into.

Cruise is fine and it’s an interesting choice of role, but it’s the smaller characters that light up the screen. Branagh steals the movie (although isn’t in it for as long as I’d like) and even Terrence Stamp is restrained for once. Leading actor aside, we’re treated to a formidable ensemble cast. Tom Wilkinson is superb as ever and Tom Hollander makes you want to punch him in the throat - which is kinda the point. Surprised Hugh Laurie didn’t get thrown into the mix given Singer’s relationship with House.

One weak spot (and purely from a British perspective) is Eddie Izzard. His big scene with Cruise is too similar to his stage show in which he mimics Hollywood actors and seems horribly out of place. There’s also a couple of fast-forwards that show how the plan should come off, but probably because of the presence of Bill Nighy I kept thinking of the similar scenes in Shaun of the Dead:

Take Plane. Go to Wolf’s Lair. Kill Adolph - “Sorry.” - grab Eva, go to Berlin, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?”

There’s also very little for the few actresses to do except look awfully worried. Oddly it’s when we see Hitler’s inner circle that things begin to slip - I’m probably still too much in awe of Downfall, but David Bamber’s Hitler was a very weak impression of Bruno Ganz.

The real surprise for me was just how close the conspirators got to pulling this off. It all came down to a hot day. Of course it’s then difficult not to start thinking of what would have changed in those final months of the war with Hitler dead and Claus von Stauffenberg as Germany’s saviour. There’s very little postscript to the movie, but here’s what happened in reality*.

Valkyrie opens in the UK tomorrow.

*Hat tip to George for the link.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the New Frontiersman Twitter feed you’ll already have seen new updates on Flickr - including this rather splendid shot of a Dr Manhattan aided moon landing:

But the first of the video archives just went online with this rather interesting bit of retro TV:

I think this just surpassed The Dark Knight campaign.

As good as that movie was it was a mongrel - Watchmen, however, is shaping up to be a little more purebred. The extra material doesn’t detract from or contradict the original graphic novel, but rather adds a further appendix to the book itself. The movie will stand or fall on its own merits, but stuff like the Flickr stream, the use of Twitter and now this filmed supplemental material have really upped the game.

Gonna be a fun ride through to March.

Disclaimer: Despite my namesake, Jim, up there I’m not working on this campaign - but I am keeping a very close eye on it

It’s the real deal, Roc. Evil men / dead men.

The New Frontiersman seal has been broken…

That should send the Interweb into a tizzy.

You can follow the New Frontiersman on Twitter and Flickr or just subscribe to their friendfeed. Nice to see them embrace the social side of the web - now let’s get some conversation going.

You can see the background to one of the photos on the latest Watchmen video journal here.

Attention to detail much? Roll on March…

Note: As I was writing this the Flickr stream continues to be populated. Just noticed Mothman being sectioned…

The Thaw

Mystery solved: