POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Started by MacGuffin, April 11, 2011, 05:29:42 PM

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MacGuffin




Trailer here.

Release Date: April 22nd, 2011 (limited)

Starring: Morgan Spurlock
 
Directed by: Morgan Spurlock 

Premise: From the billboards in Times Square to the barren streets of São Paulo, documentarian Morgan Spurlock shines a light on the world of product placement, marketing and advertising through his new film, fully financed by the very product placement the movie explores on screen.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Pedro

This is an interesting idea.  The obvious question raised by this trailer is just how much he's going to transcend the advertising he's doing.  Also, how many product placement jokes can we see before they're not funny anymore? 

I will see this.

RegularKarate

People at South By Southwest wouldn't shut up about how bad this is.  I didn't even try to get in line for it.
I've heard bad things.

Sleepless

I really appreciated everything Spurlock did with 30 Days although WITWIOB wasn't anything special at all. I will see this for sure, but I think TV might be his best medium.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

Sleepless

I finally saw this. It's not bad. As I was watching it I really enjoyed it. Certainly a far better film than Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?

Since last night, however, the negatives have become more pronounced in my mind. It leans far more towards comedy than documentary, and is not as "transparent" as Spurlock would like to think it is (and keeps telling us that it is). For example: early in the film he meets with his lawyer to complain about Pom wanting final cut over his movie and his lawyer telling him that's what he agreed to in the contract. Yet at the end, there's a title card that says no company involved got to approve the final film.

It's definitely an interesting film, but I can't shake the feeling that it's more just an self-oriented experiment of "can this be done" with the larger issues he wants to explore not really dealt with in any depth. There's quite a scatter shot approach to his choices of what/who to focus on outside of the "challenge" aspect of the film, which is the same problem he ran into with WITWIOBL.

I will be writing a blog about this film, but I need to let the film percolate in my mind a while longer yet...
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

Sleepless

My blog is here. I started off liking it, but the more I thought about it the less I liked it.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.


Jeremy Blackman

I really like the concept, but Morgan Spurlock is definitely an issue.

Josie and the Pussycats did this pretty well, actually.











Also Wayne's World, but that was very on-the-nose.

john

Quote from: Sleepless on September 16, 2011, 01:28:15 PM
I started off liking it, but the more I thought about it the less I liked it.

"Well, yeah... no one likes my movies once they actually start thinking about them."

-Morgan Spurlock
Maybe every day is Saturday morning.

pete

just look at him; there's no part of his identity that is divorced from a douchebag.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Reel

yeah, dude. Lose the handlebar mustache, you look like Ronald Mcdonald's redeneck nephew.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

The only movie I ever saw by Spurlock was "Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?".  If you haven't seen it (which I presume since I only saw it on a slow night when I was usher and no one else was in the theater, not to mention I don't even know if I ever saw a thread for it on this board) it's absolutely mind numbing.  There is essentially no climax (spoiler alert: he does not find Osama bin Laden).  Without a shred of dignity, Morgan Spurlock seems to tackle issues with infotainment softballs, going after McDonalds without facts just that you can't literally eat it everyday for every meal.

In theory, Greatest Movie ever sold sounds good, but I just can't bring myself to see Spurlock fumble this meta-commercial.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

Sleepless

Yeah, Osama was awful just because there was nothing to hold it together, it was basically just a collection of detached interviews and bits talking about Islamic fundamentalists, 9/11, Israel, without really connecting the dots between anything that was a mess. The Greatest Movie was half the same, half the showman stunt of eating just McDonald's for a month.

I'll be honest, I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt after 30 Days, but it's clear to me now that he is a documentarian for the reality TV age.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

Orgin

I love the idea behind this film but I didn't think it was well put together and it's bad too because I really enjoy his film doc, Super size me.