Tag Archives: Movies

Films and the cinema provide a lot of great inspiration for LEGO builders all over the world. You’ll find LEGO models inspired by everything from Mad Max to Toy Story here.

E.T. phone home

Love him or hate him, you gotta admit Steven Spielberg has had his moments, and the classic movie E.T. the Extraterrestrial was definitely one of them. Despite how crazy the alien in this movie looked, there pretty much wasn’t a dry eye in the house when [32 YEAR LATE SPOILER ALERT] he died. I still remember the little girl in the seat next to me balling her head off, and teenage me trying very hard to keep it together! And a killer soundtrack by John Williams? Oh, too much… This build by Jimmy Fortel brings that super slice of Eighties-ness flooding right back:

Just remember, don’t get him wet, and don’t feed him after midnight ;-)

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Cloud Cuckoopocalypse

Being the only builder gutsy enough ever to attempt a minifig scaled version of Howl’s moving castle, it’s comes as no surprise to discover that Imagine Rigney was behind this mind-bending recreation of the fall of Cloud Cuckoo Land from The LEGO Movie…

But the diorama just wouldn’t be complete without our heros escaping in the Bat Submarine. So he build that too, naturally. Awesome!

This makes me really wish LEGO would put out more official sets based on that particular region of the LEGO Movie universe. However, if anyone suggests the above creations be submitted as projects to the Lego Ideas site, be warned: I will reach through the screen and slap you!

I HEART URANUS

After enjoying Evan B’s recent miniland scale Firefly lifter, I’m overjoyed to see yet another iconic spacecraft get the same treatment! This time it’s Eagle 5 from Mel brooks’ classic Star Wars spoof Spaceballs, courtesy of Chris Rozek.

And in a matter of days you’ll be able to see this creation – and a million others – at Brickworld Chicago. Let’s just hope Chris can hang onto this build longer than the giant one he traded away in Simon’s Red Brick Game!

Wings of justice... KAKAAAAW!!

Russian builder Fedin has taken a break from building collosal castles to try his hand at character building, with splendid results! Here’s his interpretation of Master Crane from the ever popular TV/movie franchise Kung Fu Panda…

Mr. Stay Puft’s okay! He’s a sailor, he’s in New York...

As excited as we all are to see the very cool Ghostbusters CUUSOO set finally hit the shelves, wouldn’t it be even cooler if it came with a street to drive down, or some ghosts to fight? Korean building team OliveSeon realized this, and they went and did something about it…

Over the Moon

Polish builder Michał Kaźmierczak is no stranger to massive LEGO dioramas, and we are no stranger to him either – you can read about his lava-bound space base and Indiana Jones temple adventure right here. So what could be more suitable to a large-scale LEGO treatment from Michał than the epic landscape of the moon Pandora from the 2009 movie Avatar?

I particularly like Michał’s use of the waterfalls to solve the problem of the Pandora’s airborne mountains (which can float due to high concentrations of superconducting Unobtainium ore interacting with the moon’s magnetic fields something something something science reasons). And for scale, the diorama even includes a microscale version of the Dragon assault ship:

Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary [Review]

Last night I was able to attend a screening of Beyond the Brick at the Seattle International Film Festival. I have to say that I did not have high hopes or expectations. I have found that, at the best of times, they tend to have a skewed view of the fan community, so I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing how a documentary with LEGO’s official stamp of approval would deal with us adult fans. I am glad to say that my misgivings were unjustified. It was good, even (dare I say it?) better than The LEGO Movie itself. Go ahead, stone me in the comments, but everything WAS awesome.

So what exactly is Beyond the Brick?

In a Q&A session after the screening, one of the directors said that their goal was to create a film that not only told the story of LEGO but showed the vast community that has grown up around it. The idea was to delve into what it is about the LEGO brick that touches us and inspires us, how the system of play drives creativity and who are the people who have been changed and/or affected by LEGO. Did they succeed? I think think they did. I have been a fan of LEGO’s products for 35 years and I learned quite a few things about the global LEGO community that I never knew and was reminded of things that I had forgotten. The filmmakers were able to touch on many different aspects of LEGO and the effects it has had over the years and around the globe. Some of these included changes in the art world, new therapies with special needs children, the adult fan phenomenon, crowd-sourcing before it was a buzzword and sending minifigs into Space.

Was everything really awesome about the film?

No film is ever perfect. I felt there were some key members of the fan community who were overlooked and who could have offered insight into the concepts that the filmmakers were wanting to explore. But, in their defense, they couldn’t talk to everyone and they definitely couldn’t fit every detail into 90 minutes. There were only a few omissions that really bothered me, such as leaving out the collaborators of several projects and making it appear that the projects were built by a single person. One example of those was a minor collaboration I took part in at BrickCon. I was in the film, talking about the build but there were actually two of us there. My partner-in-crime was cut out. There were other, more important examples, involving large convention collaborations, that didn’t give full credit to those involved. But really that is my only serious critique of the film. Overall, it is a very well-crafted film that does an excellent job of showing off the LEGO community to the world. You should go see it or get a hold of the DVD when it comes out.

Check out this clip from the film, via The Wall Street Journal (Many thanks to my coworker, Brett, for sending me the link):

Massive digital model of the Avengers Helicarrier with over 22,000 bricks

Yo-Sub Joo takes his digital masterpieces to the sky with this giant virtual creation of the Avengers Helicarrier. Unlike real models, you can know the exact parts count in a digital build, and this one uses 22,694 bricks and would measure 85.4 x 45.3 inches in real life. You can see more pictures and detail shots on MOCpages.

Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary comes to the Seattle International Film Festival [News]

As if The LEGO Movie wasn’t already enough cinematic excitement for LEGO fans in one year, watch out, because here comes Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary, a feature-length documentary about LEGO from award winning directors Daniel Junge and Kief Davidson. The documentary covers a lot of ground, from the history of the LEGO company, to the current LEGO fan phenomenon – with a bunch of fan builders and conventions getting the spotlight.

The documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York this April, and today it was announced that there will also be screenings at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) in May. Times and locations as follows:

Friday May 16 4:00 PM – Lincoln Square Cinema, Bellevue
Saturday May 17 3:30 PM – SIFF Cinema Uptown Theater, Seattle
Sunday May 18 2:30 PM – SIFF Cinema Uptown Theater, Seattle

Each screening will also be accompanied by a Q&A on stage with the film’s makers and some of the people featured in it. So if you’re a Seattle area LEGO fan, get your tickets now and come see it!

Cheeky Rafiki

Vlad Lisin ([Rhymes_Shelter]) once again wows us with an incredibly realistic Bionicle creation, this time depicting the characterful Rafiki from Lion King.

I feel the need...the need for speed

“How’s it feel to be on the front page of every newspaper in the English-speaking world, even though the other side denies the incident?” Top Gun is so cheesy, it’s like mature cheddar wrapped in a slice of Emmental with some Parmesan sprinkled on top. Yet, when I first saw the movie as a teenager, I loved it. Not for the actors and certainly not for the scenes of sweaty fighter pilots playing volleyball, mind you, but because of the true star of the movie: the wonderful Grumman F-14 Tomcat. I have been a Tomcat fan ever since and have had at least one LEGO model of a Tomcat for at least 20 years.

I have been thinking about building a larger scale aircraft for about two years now. Seeing the excellent 1/18 F-16 by Everblack a few weeks ago, in combination with my ongoing movie vehicle project prompted me to finally have a go. If I was going to bite the bullet, it would have to be a Tomcat and it would have to be the one from Top Gun, cheesy or not.

The process was relatively painless. Building an aircraft at a different scale was interesting. Some of the solutions that I’m used to didn’t really work, so I had to be a bit more inventive. However, the larger scale does have advantages. I had a lot more room to work with, which meant I could incorporate a lot of techniques that I normally don’t have room for. It is 108 studs long, excluding the nose probe, and with the wings in their most forward position has a wingspan of 110 studs. This isn’t small by any means, but it’s also not quite so large that I had to worry too much about structural issues.

I know that there are some readers out there who are of the opinion that I do blog rather many of my own models and, admittedly, I have blogged a fair few. I build a lot more than the ones I blog though and, be honest, do you think the other guys wouldn’t have blogged this if I weren’t one of the contributors?

Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law

I wish that Hollywood would stop making watered-down renditions of Eighties classics, no matter how slick they are, and would instead focus on something new.
However, Marin Stipkovic‘s rendition of Robocop looks like a classic to me.