The film ick Flashback: Part One

The year is half over, so I thought run a retrospective feature. A number of posts, each one reminding you of some of the bigger, better of more amusing film ick stories of the last six months - in chronogical order. Like Movie Minesweeper with short term memory problems.

This takes us up to January 17th:

- Terry Gilliam mentioned a new Brazil special edition DVD. I'm still waiting for another mention of this one anywhere.

- Some details turned up of Alejandro Jodorowsky's next, King Shot.

- Marc Forster was linked to a US remake of 36 Quai des Orfevres, then expected to star George Clooney and Robert De Niro.

- The Saw IV scribes were named, and rumours circulated about the director of the film. Incorrect rumours, as it happens.

- We found out about De Palma's Redacted.

- Michel Gondry was outed as the director developing the Debbie Harry biopic.

- Ken Russell spent some time in the Big Brother house. Crackers.

- The first No Country For Old Men still turned up here.

- I interviewed David Hewlett about A Dog's Breakfast. That film sounds brilliant and I can't wait to see it.

- Shyamalan signed to make a series of Avatar: The Last Airbender films.

- The MySpace page for Tracy unveiled the film's trailer, and very funny it was too.

- Dr. House played with his Nintendo DS.

- Paul McGuigan's Equalizer film was still moving forward.

- Drive Away Dykes popped up on the radar.

- I snuck a few plugs for this site into a Radio 2 show.

- A series of Spider-Man 3 spoilers were run. Most of them turned out to be true.

- I tipped Son of Rambow as the film to watch at Sundance this year. It went on to be the biggest sale of the festival which made me very happy.

- Jenna Jameson tried to hype a film of her 'life' by suggesting Scarlett Johansson would take the lead role.

- I reviewed the script for Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness.

- The Golden Globes happened.

- John Carter of Mars ended up in the hands of Pixar.

Next Stop, The Imagination Train Station

The MySpace page for Tracy is up now. The film is a documentary about Tracy Knapp, icon of 1970s children's TV, star of Imagination Train Station. Of course, the somewhat predictable catch is that, once again, this isn't a real documentary, it's all faked and played for laughs - but in the Spinal Tap sense, not the Borat one.

So, another low-budget mockumentary, another film with little or no pre-installed marketing or distribution reach, another film you may well never get to see - but I just couldn't help but alert you to this one because the clips, viewable on the film's MySpace page, are actually genuinely funny. That doesn't happen every day.

Of course, looking through the MySpace profile closely - including the friends who have already been added - it doesn't take too many trips to imdb and Google before the film's Pixar pedigree starts to come clear...

As a matter of fact, the film's director doesn't even have Tracy listed on his imdb page, though Cars is there, and it's spin-off short, Mater and the Ghost Light. I'll let you do the detective work yourself as he may not want the connection made explicit, and his Pixar portfolio to become an albatross.

So, the long and the short of it is that even though Tracy appears to be very funny indeed and has a proven cast and crew with wonderful resumes, it may not be that widely seen at all. Maybe you can lend them a hand and 'friend' them at MySpace? I'd love to see Tracy get somewhere.