Web-Financed Space Nazi Comedy Iron Sky Will Open in 2012

by Jen Yamato
from: http://www.movieline.com/

As the saying goes, it takes a village… and when the long-gestating Nazi comedy Iron Sky finally hits theaters next year, we’ll have many folks to thank. (Including crowdfunding backers and financiers from the U.K., Australia, Germany, and Finland.) Iron Sky explains that the Nazis didn’t just disappear when World War II ended — they relocated to the moon to regroup and hatch a space invasion of Earth (or, “meteorblitzkrieg”) in 2018. After the jump, the latest grindhouse-y teaser!

Added bonus, of course: Iron Sky stars the incomparable Udo Kier, Mauser from The Matrix films (Christopher Kirby), and a giant space zeppelin. So, you know. Totally there come April 2012.

Full synopsis from the Iron Sky website:

Towards the end of World War II the Nazi scientists made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity. From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.

Now it’s 2018, and it’s the time for the first American Moon landing since the 70′s. Meanwhile the Nazi invasion, that has been over 70 years in the making, is on its way, and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom. The three main characters of the story are Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), and James Washington (Christopher Kirby).

And an explanation of the unique community “cloud financing” that made Iron Sky possible:

What makes Iron Sky special is the wide ranging collaboration with fans and community: the movie project fans join in creating ideas and content for the movie in a collaborative movie making platform called Wreckamovie, give the film publicity by sharing information online, even fund the movie by designing and buying merchandise and other means. One million euros of the budget comes from fan funding.

According to the teaser, Iron Sky will arrive April 4, 2012 although specifics on North American distribution have yet to be announced.

[THR, Iron Sky Official Site]

Space Nazi Trailers Draw Crowd Funding for Iron Sky

• By Hugh Hart
• From http://www.wired.com/

Thanks to a pair of knockout fake trailers, a team of Finnish filmmakers will soon start shooting an outlandish sci-fi Nazi movie financed in part by fans who flipped over the clips.

The first teaser for Iron Sky, embedded below, has pulled more than 1.3 million YouTube views since its release two years ago. The follow-up clip (above), released last month, continued the momentum as the project’s website harvested micro-investments from 52 fans enticed by the spooky-sleek visuals.

The trailers also generated buzz on the strength of the bizarrely original Iron Sky premise: During the closing days of World War II, Nazis in flying saucers escaped to the moon. In 2018, they plan a victorious return to Earth.

With 90 percent of the feature-length project’s $8.5 million budget now funded, casting for Iron Sky is nearly complete, with filming set to begin in Australia and Germany this fall.

CGI maestro Samuli Torssonen supervised Iron Sky’s visual effects after spending seven years working on zero-budget feature Star Wreck. For the Iron Sky trailers, “everything was either shot by ourselves or created by our VFX team at Energia Productions,” Torssonen told Wired.com in an e-mail. “I think for indie productions it is very important to have in-house creative which can archive visually impressive shots with a decent budget.”

Torssonen relied on Maya 3-D software to craft the trailers’ visual effects. “Every shot was filmed against blue/green screen in a local studio,” he said. “Every shot, of course, also had quite a lot of CGI.”

Fan investments in Iron Sky were augmented by money from 12 traditional financiers, according to producer Tero Kaukomaa of Blind Spot Pictures. “If we are able to make money,” Kaukomaa said, “then the crowd who invested will make money, and if that happens, it will speed up the possibility to fund films totally with crowds.”

But VFX man Torssonen cautions that “fan/community funding is not an easy way out. We didn’t come out of nowhere. We’ve been building our internet community and visibility since 1999, with Star Wreck. You have to invest a lot of time and energy to win the trust of the internet audience. The only way to do that is to deliver good quality. Mediocre stuff just won’t cut it.”

As a hybrid model blending conventional business cash with microdonations from sci-fi zealots, Iron Sky is emerging as the most expensive fan-curated movie to date. As such, it points the way toward a future in which audience and investor become one and the same.

“I think it’s great that the audience can, in some terms, ‘order’ a film that they find cool by investing, participating in the production or donating money,” Torssonen said. “They can give ideas and feedback, become part of the whole process, and finally see a film in theaters that has been tailored for their needs.”

Schindler's List goes on sale for £1.5million

By Mail Foreign Service
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

The famous Schindler's List of Jews saved from the Nazi Holocaust during the World War Two is being offered up for private sale for £1.5 million.

The list of 801 Jewish men, women and children, which belongs to the family of Oskar Schindler's right-hand man, Itzhak Stern, is one of only five known to exist.

Being sold through the website Momentsintime.com, the old and tattered manuscript dated from the 18/04/1945, is being handled on a first come first served basis.

Buying history: One of the original Schindler's List amongst other photographs in a Berlin newspaper office (file photo). One of the original versions of the list is being put on sale for £1.5million

Hero: Oskar Schindler and his wife Emilie at their farm in Argentina after the war. He died in 1974

The Stern family, whose patriarch, Itzhak was played by Ben Kingsley in the Oscar winning Spielberg epic 'Schindler's List', have been in negotiation with Momentsintime.com for over two years.

'There are five known examples of Schindler's List preserved in the world today,' said a spokesperson for Momentsintime.com.

'This is one out of a reputed list of seven made by in total Oskar Schindler.

'Two are in the hands of Israeli Holocaust Museum's, one is in Koblenz in Germany and the other is in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

'The other two are unaccounted for.'

Hollywood touch: Liam Neeson, left, as Oskar Schindler in the Oscar-winning 1993 film 'Schindler's List'

History: A close-up of part of the original list

The plain, typed names and birthdates conceal the vast historical importance and personal danger which Oskar Schindler himself went through to rescue the condemned Jews.

Schindler owned a factory in Krakow, Poland, during World War Two and relied on Jewish labour to run the plant.

He became distressed at the German treatment of Jews after witnessing a 1942 raid on a Jewish ghetto and used his position in the Nazi party to persuade officials that his workers were vital to the war effort and saved them from gas chambers.

He is credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the war.

His tale was immortalised in the seven-time Oscar winning film, 'Schindler's List,' starring Liam Neeson.

'This has been a two-year negotiation for the rights to represent this list,' said Momentsintime.com.

'We are happy to offer one of the most unique documents of World War Two that currently exists in private hands.

'We know from the Stern family that this is the penultimate list that Schindler wrote and is an incredible piece of memorabilia.

'We hope that a patron will purchase this and offer it to an important museum.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1259835/Schindlers-List-goes-sale-1-5million.html#ixzz0j188W1Vb

Top 10 Movie Nazis: Our Nazi Basterd picks, plus advice on how to kill them.

by Tom Hawker, IGN UK

UK, August 18, 2009 - IGN is with Aldo Raine on this one: the only good Nazi's a dead one. And with Inglourious Basterds about to hit screens worldwide, we'd thought now would be a good time to unveil our own hit list of top cinematic Fuhrer-fanciers - the great, the not-so-great and the downright diabolical - and plot their grisly demises. Unfortunately, neither Lt. Gruber, nor his little tank, qualified.

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10. The Illinois Nazis
(Henry Gibson in The Blues Brothers)

No, they're not Nazis, but members of the swastika-flashing American National Socialist White Peoples' Party, who just happen to also hate Jews and blacks - although they've just added white-boy soul musicians who disrupt their hate speeches to the list. Writer Dan Aykroyd took the "what are you going to do about it, whitey?" rant nearly verbatim from the morons in the US Nazi documentary The California Reich.

How To Kill This Basterd?

A mile-high plummet in a Ford Pinto, leaving a crater in the road. It's notable that, of all the car smashes in the movie, the Nazis are the only people to actually cark it. "I hate Illinois Nazis" indeed.

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9. Commandant Ilsa
(Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS)

Welcome to Camp 9, where the inmates are slave labour during the day and sexual labour at night, with those who fail to satisfy the leathery nympho-Nazi - allegedly based on 'Beast of Buchenwald' Ilse Koch - losing their lives or their balls. And if you thought this blitzkrieg of Nazisploitation, torture-porn and porny torture couldn't be any more tasteless and insensitive, the movie is dedicated to the survivors of the Holocaust. No, really, someone actually made this.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Gunshot. The uber-granny gets a bullet to the head delivered by her sneering superior, so he can smirk of her misdeeds: "The Allies will never know."

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8. Neville Sinclair
(Timothy Dalton in The Rocketeer)

Arch-movie star and even archer-fascist secret agent, Sinclair's like an Errol Flynn who swapped his membership of the debauched Flynn's Flying F*ckers for a Nazi Party card. Yes, the debonair Deutsch-dabbling douchebag is looking to half-inch Howard Hughes' rocket-pack plans and turn the master race into flying aces. But given that it was just Bond in a slick 'tache (Dalton is always 100% improved by lip fuzz) no one in the audience was the least bit surprised when he turned out to be the villain.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Aero incineration. The old boy gets flambéed along with his mutant-Jimmy Hill-alike henchman, Lothar, when his zeppelin Hindenberg's itself into the 'Hollywoodland' sign.

7. Kurt Dussander (aka Arthur Denker)
(Sir Ian McKellen in Apt Pupil)

'The Blood Fiend of Patin' was only following orders, of course, but it helped that he loved doing it too. Now his relationship as fairy godfather to fascinated all-American boy Todd Bowden threatens to reignite those dark fires in his eyes. The pair share a mutually corrupting bond, their twisted power games underscoring two monsters' recognition - or is that attraction? - of themselves.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Exposure. When the old man's horrific past is revealed and extradition to Israel looms, he gives himself an air embolism. He dies scared but, sadly, not ashamed.

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6. Adenoid Hynkel
(Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator)

Chaplin had never been fond of The Third Reich (one Nazi propaganda book called him "a disgusting Jewish acrobat") and so pushed forward with his then career-endangering determination to make Hitler as laughable as possible. The result is Tomanian dictator Hynkel, a duplicitous, garbage-spouting, hate-filled, petty little monster who's almost as puffed up as the inflatable globe he dances with. A pretty spot on impression then.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Fate unknown. He's mistaken for his Jewish-lookalike Shultz (also Chaplin) and arrested, while Shultz gets to impersonate Hynkel and reverse his fascist hate-policies. Score 1:0 to the disgusting Jewish acrobat.

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5: Standartenführer Hans Landa
(Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Bastards)

Cheerful, charming, cunning and completely camp, Landa's like a Nazi Rob Brydon, but less annoying and more genocidal. His uncanny ability to track down and exterminate Europe's Jews is aided by a coal-souled empathy, devoid of sympathy and compassion. 'The Jew Hunter' steals the whole movie, by virtue of being the best-written and most-complex character in it and, accordingly, was so hard to cast that Tarantino almost called off the whole bloody affair when he couldn't find the right man.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Does QT give Landa the "Injun Haircut" he deserves or a lingering fate perhaps worse than death? Now that would be telling...

4. Dr. Christian Szell
(Sir Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man)

"A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive." The White Angel is pure compounded evil - he's not just a Nazi but a dentist to (jack)boot. He sharpened his skills in Auschwitz by removing the diamonds from the teeth of Jews in exchange for their safe passage, then mercilessly betrayed them to the gas chambers anyway. Poor Babe Levy, his next patient, might just feel a little twinge. "Is it safe?"

How to kill this Basterd?

Greed is a killer, and so it proves when Szell accidentally stabs himself with his own hidden blade while diving after his precious, extremely unsafe diamonds.

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3. Franz Liebkind
(Kenneth Mars in The Producers)

He wasn't stupid, he was a smartie, so he joined the Nazi Party. The writer of 'Springtime For Hitler' has an ear that's as tin as his hat and a soft spot for horrible vermin - the only thing he fancies more than his pigeons is the Fuhrer. "Hitler, there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!"

How To Kill This Basterd?

Unlikely, as he's nigh on indestructible, surviving a suicide attempt and a close encounter with a bomb. He's still standing at the end of the movie, even though he is covered head-to-toe in a plaster cast.

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2. Dr Strangelove
(Peter Sellers in Dr Stangelove)

Well you'd have to be a Nazi to appreciate the majestic awfulness of a Doomsday Device, and this Teuton's solution to the imminent end of civilization - taking a small select group of males deep underground idea with a gaggle of nubile mates - merely takes the idea of the master race to the next level. Sellers was so brilliant at improvising on set that even the clinically methodical Stanley Kubrick gave his star room to improvise.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Mutually assured self-destruction. It's the end of the world as he knows it, but at least he's magically regained the use of his legs.

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1. Major Arnold Ernst Toht
(Ronald Lacey in Raiders Of The Last Ark)

Like the best movie Nazi's, Toht doesn't believe in the power of the Ark, he just believes in power. Just in case you didn't get the idea, Toht or Tod is German for death. His charming way with a coat hanger, less charming way with a red-hot poker, sinister giggle and sweaty, waxy complexion would make even hardened Nazi's think twice about letting him babysit their kids.

How To Kill This Basterd?

The Wrath Of God. It melts his face like a Jimmy Page solo while he screams like a girl. Bet the creepy bugger believes now. Gut tod, ya?