See it in action Videos and images The LEGO® Movie Videogame Download from PS StoreShrek 2 and Puss in Boots animator Bob Persichetti will make his directorial debut on the latest toy-based project to graduate to the cinema Testament to success ... Playmobil’s bestselling Martin Luther figure, complete with German-language bible. An $80m animated film based on the German toy line Playmobil is set to follow The Lego Movie into production, reports Deadline. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s zany tale of a lowly toy construction worker charged with bringing down the evil Lord Business and restoring freedom to the Lego world was one of the biggest critical and box office hits of 2014, earning $468m worldwide and a Golden Globe nomination for best animated feature. A number of sequels are planned, and rival toy firms are now queuing up to offer their own efforts. Bridesmaids’ Paul Feig was reported to be taking on a Play-Doh movie in April after he completes work on the upcoming much-hyped, female-fronted remake of Ghostbusters.
Now French film company Wild Bunch plans to hire Shrek 2 and Puss in Boots animator Bob Persichetti to make his directorial debut on a Playmobil film. While less popular in the US and the UK than Lego, and lacking the commercial tie-ins that allowed the Danish company to populate its big-screen effort with versions of Batman, Star Wars’ Han Solo and Lord of the Rings’ Gandalf, Playmobil toys are hugely popular in continental Europe. The company’s toys, which unlike Lego do not take the form of constructible brick-based sets, often display an offbeat and occasionally dark sense of humour that distinguishes them from those sold by its rival. In the past they have included a hooded axe-man executioner, a knife-throwing circus act and a construction workers’ kit which comes complete with several crates of beer for the thirsty figures to drink after a hard days’ work operating heavy machinery. The company’s highest-selling item of all time, a figure based on the protestant cleric Martin Luther, was reported to have sold 34,000 units in just 72 hours in February, with Playmobil executives apparently baffled by the toy’s popularity.
Wild Bunch will introduce the Playmobil movie at this week’s Toronto film festival, and is said to be in advanced negotiations with a US studio to guarantee a release at the world’s largest box office. The film itself is expected to debut in 2017. The arch villain of The Lego Movie is Lord Business, a controlling tyrant played by Will Ferrell who loathes creativity and imagination. Lord Business demands that a certain structure be upheld in the Lego world and uses his considerable powers to ensure that his vision is not disturbed. Original thought and a free flow of ideas are two casualties of his influence. Is Jeff Bezos the real Lord Business? It seems possible, now that The Lego Movie and other Warner Bros. productions have become the latest target of Amazon's highly visible standoffs with suppliers. The Lego Movie, which is set to be released on DVD on June 17, is no longer available for advance order on Amazon. Neither are the Warner Bros. features 300: Rise of an Empire, Transcendence, or Winter's Tale.
Customers can instead sign up to be notified when the item becomes available. While Amazon has not commented on any dispute with Warner Home Video, the disappearance of pre-orders on some of its biggest film titles suggests that Amazon is trying to leverage its retailing power over yet another of its suppliers. Amazon is using similar tactics against Hachette, the major book publisher, and the German division of the Bonnier Media Group. Hachette-published titles by J.K. Rowling and Malcolm Gladwell have been either rendered unavailable entirely or hit by lengthy shipping delays. Amazon's willingness to sacrifice customer satisfaction and its own reputation over these negotiations is notable, particularly for a company that has built its name on putting users first. But as David Steitfeld points out in the New York Times, perhaps more notable is the increasing willingness by suppliers to hold firm against Amazon's demands. "If other suppliers adopt the same attitude, that might have significant implications for Amazon's pell-mell growth," he writes.
Another point to remember is one made well in the Atlantic a few weeks ago: The Amazon-Hachette conflict is not only about the future of publishing, but of ideas. Amazon controls the lion's share of book sales in the U.S., not to mention a huge percentage of e-book sales. And keep in mind that another Hachette title to briefly vanish from Amazon's virtual shelves was The Everything Store, a book that Bezos' wife gave a scathing one-star review. When Amazon gains too much power over the publishing industry, it also gets a dangerous level of control over which books—and the ideas they contain—are distributed to the public. It could promote books that are the most profitable to Amazon, or it could bury ones that subvert its own agenda. The Lego Movie (spoiler alert!) reaches a happy resolution: Lord Business has a change of heart and abandons his restrictive policies. But the end of Amazon's supplier tale has yet to be written.In The Birth of Tragedy, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche discusses two artistic impulses: the Apollonian (named for Apollo, the god of the sun) and the Dionysian (named for Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry).
The Apollonian impulse is one toward rational order, stasis, and restraint. The Dionysian impulse, conversely, is one toward instinctual drive, movement, and the dissolution of boundaries. For Nietzsche, the impulses have their origins in natural states: dreams for the Apollonian, and intoxication for the Dionysian. Nietzsche’s purpose in applying the impulses to artistic creation is to demonstrate how they came together (despite their natural tendency to oppose each other) to create what he considered the greatest art form: the Attic tragedy of Ancient Greece, represented by the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In these plays, the abstract Dionysian music of the chorus is balanced by the structured Apollonian dialogue of the dramatis personæ.Though Nietzsche would later abandon this dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian in his own writings, it persists in discussions regarding philosophies of art. Interestingly enough, The Lego Movie (written and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller) is a clever and entertaining illustration of these dueling artistic impulses in practice.
Through the film’s primary conflict, we can see not only what happens when the two impulses work in opposition to each other, but we can also see what happens when they work together.In The Lego Movie, the Apollonian art impulse is embodied in Lord Business (Will Ferrell). His vision for the Lego world is one of strict order and formed boundaries. Indeed, he wants no intermingling between the disparate realms. For example, the pirate Legos should never intermingle with the space Legos, and so on. Furthermore, Lord Business demands that all Lego people follow strict instructions on how to live and build. He even demands that anything “weird” be reported or destroyed.According to Nietzsche, the Apollonian art impulse is that of a sculptor, and to be sure, Lord Business’s nefarious plot is to freeze all of the Lego pieces in place using the “Kragle” (which is actually a tube of Krazy Glue). Thus, Business’s plan for the Lego universe is for it to exist in stasis, just as the instructions demand.
When we first meet the film’s protagonist, Emmett (Chris Pratt), he is all too happy to follow Business’s model for life in Bricksburg (an Apollonian Utopia of order and symmetry). He even has instructions for his morning routine (which include instructions on breathing). He certainly has no desire to think outside the box, to go beyond the strict Apollonian boundaries set by Lord Business.This changes when he meets Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a young woman seeking the “piece of resistance” to stop the Kragle. All of a sudden, Emmett is introduced to a new mode of creation, one not based on reason and instructions but on instinct and imagination. Wyldstyle, in the way she can assemble random pieces into useful tools or vehicles on the fly, introduces Emmett to the Dionysian artistic impulse. (Her very name is even Dionysian.) Completely forgoing the Apollonian emphasis on boundaries, Wyldstyle takes Emmett beyond Bricksburg to other Lego realms, including one based on the Wild West and one that is the apotheosis of the Dionysian spirit: Cloud Cuckoo Land.
This, to borrow a phrase from another film, is a land of “pure imagination.” Emmett is told that there are no rules and restrictions in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Indeed, this is where he meets Princess Unikitty (Alison Brie), an unlikely cat-unicorn hybrid.In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Emmett also meets the Master Builders, who have formed a resistance against Lord Business. However, Emmett sees that they are too disorganized to accomplish much of anything. They are reluctant to follow Emmett’s example (they see him as completely uncreative, one who is too reliant on order and instructions), but he eventually teaches them that some instruction can be useful. He helps them organize a plan to infiltrate Lord Business’s tower. He balances their Dionysian spirit with some Apollonian reason and forethought. Similarly, during an earlier escape, Emmett is urged to create something to keep his group’s vehicle from imminent disaster. He struggles at first, not having instructions handy, but the wise Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) tells him to trust his instincts.
He does so, quickly attaching a wheel to his head and saving his team. In this example, Emmett’s overwhelmingly Apollonian spirit is enlivened with a breath of the Dionysian.The Dionysian spirit, according to Nietzsche, is best understood through music, movement, and change. This is why the Master Builders, Dionysian spirits all, have come together to stop the Kragle, which will freeze them in place. However, it is toward the end of the film that we truly understand how the Dionysian spirit relates to Legos (plastic toys that at first glance are an Apollonian sculptor’s tools). When Emmett falls into a strange abyss, we are taken out of the animated world of the film. We see that the entire story has been happening within the mind of a child who is actively playing with the Legos. Then, we meet his father, played by Will Ferrell (the voice of Lord Business), and we see the struggle between the Apollonian the Dionysian even more clearly. The father chastises his son for playing with the Legos.