Mac Sightings - Austin Powers, Full Frontal, & The Usual Suspects DVD

by , 11:00 AM EDT, August 29th, 2002

Mac Sightings returns with a few Titanium PowerBook cameos in two summer movies, as well as a Mac appearance in a DVD featurette. The svelte PowerBook seems to be the hip choice of the well-known Austin Powers, and of the humble playwright, Arty (in Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal). Watching the extras on the The Usual Suspects: Special Edition DVD reveals that editor/composer John Ottman uses Macs.

In the latest installment of the shagadelic spy spoof, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Austin uses a Titanium PowerBook to demonstrate the power of the internet to his 70s era friend, Foxxy Cleopatra. Somehow, an old clip from America's Funniest Home Videos and the AOL product placement shown by Austin are "cutting edge." Austin is using a less-than-sexy mock AOL interface, but we can forgive him because he's got a Mac.

Steven Soderbergh used Macs and Final Cut Pro to assemble his latest film, Full Frontal, which stars (among others) Julia Roberts, David Duchovny, David Hyde Pierce, Enrico Colantoni, and Catherine Keener. It's the theater director, Arty, played by Enrico Colantoni, who also uses a PowerBook in the film itself to distract himself from the yammering of Nicky Katt (playing Hitler in the show-within-a-show, "The Sound and the Fuhrer.")

Finally, though this might be a belated sighting, a bank of Macs running OS 9 (with a nice space theme) can be seen in the DVD extras portion of The Ususal Suspects: Special Edition DVD. When interviewed for the Extras section, Editor/composer for the film, John Ottman, sits in front of editing equipment and about five screens that seem to be CRT iMacs. He never talks about using Macs in his editing process (he edited this particular film by hand, using the time-honored low-tech method), but they are a conspicuous observer of his interviews.

If you have a Mac sighting, and you'd like to share it with us and the rest of the TMO community, drop a note to macsightings@macobserver.com. Whether it's a television commercial or an iPod attached to a celebrity, we want to hear about it.