Movie Minesweeper - The Wedding Daze Is A Crime Against Cinema Edition

A really, realy short round up this time. Just four seperate pieces. Savour every one.

- The latest video for Faithless is not only a commercial for the band and the song, but also for Coca Cola. The visuals are much better than the audio. Feed have the clip, as well as some behind-the-scenes business.

- Neil Gaiman himself has commented on the Death story I got re-rolling last weekend.

- Criss Angel is designing the magic tricks for the Mandrake movie.

- Goldfinger is to be rereleased across the UK this summer - entirely in digital screens. Hopefully they'll have done a good job with the mastering because this will pull in a lot of customers yet to see a digitally projected film.

Jesus Is Bad News For Fizzy Drink Folk, Again

After a black Jesus did for Madonna, Mary Lambert and Pepsi's advertising campaign in the mid-80s, the messiah has taken it easy on the tooth-rotting sweetness-suppliers for a couple of decades. Now though, he's caused a whole heap of distribution trouble for a new Itallian film.

According to Variety, Seven Kilometres from Jerusalem features a scene where a Milanese advertising exec "gives Jesus a ride on his Jeep, hands him a Coke, and, while Jesus is quenching his thirst, says: "My God, what a testimonial!""

Obviously the film takes place in the present day - Jesus is clearly alive now, while there were no advertising executives knocking around the middle east two thousand years ago.

Coca Cola sent a stern letter to the film's producers. In a statement they said "We are not interested in this kind of product placement", creating a ratio of about 999,999:1.

The film was due to be released tomorrow, funnily enough, but has now been pulled to prevent litigation from Coke. The film was well received by the Vatican, however. Maybe this could all be solved by getting the Pope and Coke-Spokesman Santa to duke it out in the ring?

Of course not. I shouldn't even had said such a thing. Chastise me in the comments section below. Use the Coca Cola label to read all about their last litigious misadventure in moving picture land.

Coke Cash

I can't see many details online but Joel Veitch and his band Seven Seconds of Love have won in their battle against Coca Cola. The tooth rotting bewitchers (and I mean that in the best possible way - though I do prefer Pepsi) have settled out of court with an undisclosed yet hopefully very healthy payment. Cardboard cutout cats everywhere must be jumping for joy.

Joel Veitch Versus Coke: Update

B3ta have a teasing snippet on the whole Joel Veitch vs. Coca Cola front. They say:

JOEL / COKE COPYRIGHT THING - There's been some pretty f***-off major developments behind the scenes on this. We're sworn to secrecy until the lawyers sort it all out, but we hope to bring you some good news soon.

Rather Bad Rather Good News

Rather Good mastermind Joel Veitch appears poised to tussle with Coca Cola - because they are running an ad in Argentina that blatantly plagiarises his music and video. And I mean BLATANTLY - not just the lower case-blatant plagiarism Veitch suffers on a daily basis. The original work was his video for Ninja, a track by his own band, Seven Seconds of Love.

I know somebody who went to art school with Veitch, but I don't think they're still in touch - so no inside scoops there.

According to the BBC, the musician-animator isn't sure if he can afford to sue Coca Cola, or the agency responsible for the ad. According to Veithc, any court case runs the risk of some cruel tactics, who also noted, "Spending many thousands of pounds on a lawyer on the other side of the world to fight a case in a different language, while we're all trying to hold down our day jobs and pay a mortgage, sounds a bit difficult really. But if we could do it on a no-win, no-fee basis in England, we'd be laughing."

Thankfully, I couldn't find the ad in question on Coke's Argentinian site, just some other spots that could just about pass of their bursts of plagiarism "homages". To see the criminal clip, the excerpts on Rob Manuel's report are your best option.