Brick (film)

Brick is a 2005 American neo-noir thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson in his directorial debut, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Brick was distributed by Focus Features, and opened in New York and Los Angeles on April 7, 2006.

The film's narrative centers on a hardboiled detective story set in a Californian suburb. Most of the main characters are high school students. The film draws heavily in plot, characterization, and dialogue from hardboiled classics, especially those by Dashiell Hammett. The title refers to a block of heroin, compressed roughly to the size and shape of a brick.

The film won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and received positive reviews from critics. It has come to be regarded as a cult classic.

Synopsis

High school student Brendan Frye lives a lonely existence following his break up with ex-girlfriend Emily Kostich and the betrayal of his friend Jerr to the authorities. Brendan discovers a note leading him to a pay phone, where he receives a phone call from a terrified Emily begging him for help. She mentions a "brick", "poor Frisco", "Tug", and the "Pin", before abruptly hanging up. Her fear appears to have been caused by a passing black Ford Mustang, from which a distinctive-looking cigarette was thrown. Upon asking for information from his acquaintance named Brain, Brendan's search for Emily leads him to Kara, another ex-girlfriend - which further leads him to a Halloween party attended by a flirtatious Laura and her boyfriend, Brad Bramish.

Brick

A brick is building material used to make walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Traditionally, the term brick referred to unit composed of clay, but it is now used to denote any rectangular units laid in mortar. A brick can be composed of clay-bearing soil, sand and lime, or concrete materials. Bricks are produced in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region and time period, and are produced in bulk quantities. Two basic categories of bricks are fired and non-fired bricks.

Block is a similar term referring to a rectangular building unit composed of similar materials, but is usually larger than a brick. Lightweight bricks (also called "lightweight blocks") are made from expanded clay aggregate.

Fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials, sometimes referred to as artificial stone, and have been used since circa 5000 BC. Air-dried bricks, also known as mudbricks, have a history older than fired bricks, and have an additional ingredient of a mechanical binder such as straw.

Film

A film, also called a movie, motion picture or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques; by means of CGI and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these techniques and other visual effects. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to the industry of films and filmmaking or to the art of filmmaking itself. The contemporary definition of cinema is the art of simulating experiences to communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere by the means of recorded or programmed moving images along with other sensory stimulations.

The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry.

Lego

Lego (/ˈlɛɡoʊ/) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct objects such as vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects.

The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Since then a global Lego subculture has developed. Supporting movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's "world's most powerful brand".

History

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based in part on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample that they received from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that Lego purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.

Plastic Planet

Plastic Planet is an album by GZR (known at the time as g//z/r), a Heavy metal band featuring Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath. The album features Fear Factory vocalist Burton C. Bell.

Album information

Butler wrote the bulk of the album's lyrics, which he then gave to Bell who wrote melodies and music. An exception was "Cycle of Sixty", written by Howse.

The song "Giving Up the Ghost" was lyrically directed at Tony Iommi and his continuation of the Black Sabbath name at the time. "Detective 27" indirectly references Batman whose first appearance in 1939 was in DC Comics' Detective Comics #27.

The song "The Invisible" was featured on the soundtrack to the 1995 film Mortal Kombat, although the song did not appear in the film itself. The artist on the album was listed as "Geezer" instead of "g//z/r".

Samples from the British TV movie The Woman in Black can be heard on "Séance Fiction".

Although no commercial single was released, a CD promotional EP was issued by TVT Records in the USA (catalogue TVT 6014-2P), with full colour inserts. The track-list of this was 1) Cycle Of Sixty (radio mix) 2) X13 (radio mix) 3) Drive Boy Shooting (live) 4) Detective 27 (live) 5) House Of Clouds (live). The live tracks were recorded at Majestic Theater, Detroit, MI in February 1996.