Officially Cool

Be Kind Rewind: “Sweding” Takes Over the Web

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 13, 2008

For those not familiar with the term “sweding”, it is a completely fictional term made up in the upcoming Michel Gondry film Be Kind Rewind. When Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black) accidently erase all the tapes in their video store, they are forced to remake all of their customers’ favorite flicks, everything from Ghostbusters to Rush Hour 2 to Driving Miss Daisy. As I said in my review from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film is awesome!

Check out the trailer for more:

In support of the movie, a good friend of the site sent over a link to Filmmaking Frenzy, an Austin, TX based site that is currently running an awesome sweding contest. Users submit their films, which are then voted on by other users on the site. The winner of the contest (titled “Rewind Kindly”) will take home a wicked cool AMD Editing System with a 30″ Dell Monitor — which can all be used for more sweding, of course.

After spending a few hours on this addictive site, I have decided that we need to get everyone we know involved in this. Thus, I have decided to share a few of my favorites from the site. And every so often (let’s say every week, just to be safe) I will pick a few more to feature as our “Swede of the Week”! We will continue to do this until the theatrical run of Be Kind Rewind is over, or until we run out of cool stuff to post! So without further ado, here are three of my favorite sweded films from Filmmaking Frenzy:

This first one is a swede of Top Gun. I have to say that I would not normally be into the fact that even the female roles are being played by dudes, but these guys make it work. This one has some serious vision and spirit.

This swede of Michael Bay’s Armageddon is particularly awesome. They even through in the music. You’ve also gotta love the scenes on the asteroid. This is what sweding is all about.

And finally, the initial run of swedes would not be complete if someone didn’t remake the trailer for the film that inspired it all, Be Kind Rewind. Aside from the very creative graphics, check out the dude who plays Mos Def. He’s almost got that Mos Def lisp down.

Check out the full list of films over at Filmmaking Frenzy. See something you like? Email it to me at neil@filmschoolrejects.com and maybe I will feature it!