Tron
Saw TRON Legacy yesterday. Really nice production design and CGI. But I almost fell asleep anyways. Too much father-son talk for an action movie.
What are the programs that populate ‘The Grid’ doing anyways? Even a cyberspace where everybody’s just crunching prime numbers should look more amazing, colorful and faceted than the world of TRON which looks like a city that’s 2 blocks wide and is populated by about 10 people. And why the hell are airplanes emitting smoke in a virtual world that has pixelized fireworks?
In a nutshell: a visual feast, the thin script that’s basically expected from these kinds of blockbusters and the feeling that the whole thing could have been better.
To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!
The 100 greatest movie insults of all time:
(or watch it with a list of movies included)
Wait, there’s more!
(again, here’s the movie reference)
And a bonus clip that’s somewhat older: Scarface The Short Version
Enjoy!
Moby Dick
Last year, I worked on some VFX shots for an adaptation of Moby Dick, a TV mini series starring Ethan Hawke and Gillian Anderson (not as Captain Ahab and the whale though). No release date has been set yet, but a trailer is up on YouTube already (the action doesn’t start until 1:30):
What made me chuckle is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgPrm5LWRqo
The company that is responsible for hilariously bad films like “Mega Piranha” have jumped on the bandwagon again and have made their own adaptation. Judging by the trailer, however, this spoof looks like a waste of time, while Mega Piranha was at least entertainment of the “so-bad-it’s-good” variety.
Wir Sind Die Nacht
Seit Donnerstag läuft Wir Sind Die Nacht in den Kinos. Ein deutscher Vampirfilm, der – wie soll es heutzutage auch anders sein – in Berlin spielt, und trotz aktuellem Vampirboom glücklicherweise nicht versucht, Twilight zu kopieren. Den Kritikern gefällt’s.
Ich hatte die Ehre, zu den Visual Effects beizutragen.
Inception
In other news, I had this weird dream in which Mick Jagger broke into my house to reclaim a painting that I had previously stolen from him. Upon catching him in the act he asked me to do some VFX shots for the movie version of his heist which would have required a CGI replacement of his head except for his lower jaw which was to be shot in front of greenscreen.
I have difficulties piecing together the images that were mashed up by my subconciousness, but this awesome dialogue reminiscent of Clients From Hell probably played some part in it:
And if one day Mick Jagger is in a movie like this remember: you’ve read about the plot here first 🙂
Tron
The new TRON trailer is out, which brought back memories of a TV show from the 80s. AUTOMAN! Check out the opener. Pretty neat VFX for a TV show back then.
Will neon glow become the next best design element, superseding the Apple-style gloss effect? We’ll find out soon enough.
Here’s a music video that already does a good job at resurrecting a 30 year-old image of cyberspace: Mark Ronson – Bang Bang Bang
edit: great, youtube disabled embedding of the video. Go this way instead.
If you can’t make it good…
Found on FXRant. Tracing back the source of the image through countless blogs leads to a t-shirt at threadless though.
When movies first came out with audio, did the directors abuse the new technology in the way 3D is employed now? Did they crank up the volume all the way all the time just to prove to the audience that they can make use of “this new thing”? Or are 3D-sceptics like people who decried talkies as “just a fad”? Well, at least there was never a need to wear hearing aids just to enjoy the new technology.
Except for Avatar all current 3D movies use the technology like HTML was (ab)used in the early days of the internet. Make it blink! Make it scroll! Except you didn’t need any special glasses to look at web pages. It’ll take some time until both producers and directors accept 3D as “just another tool” to tell an appealing story. For Alice it was unnecessary in my opinion and turned a good-looking movie with an ok story into an amusement park ride for children.
Right now, given the mass of movies converted to 3D it really seems like studios are treating 3D as a fad and are trying to make some quick bucks by winning back viewers from 2D home cinema and pirated downloads before the hype is fading.
Sure, an audience that flocks Transformers 2 will always flock Transformers 3D (and Titans was a box office hit as well despite the bad ratings and bad 3D). But regular movies in 3D? Where the camera doesn’t move all the time and nothing gets thrown into your face? Letting your eyes wander in a static shot with defocused parts in it destroys the illusion of 3D. Cameron knew how to reduce the depth of those wide panoramic shots in Avatar. But will lesser known directors be able to convince their producers to spend extra millions on 3D just to deliver almost 2D-like shots that suit the cinematography of a slower movie? And will the audience pay for expensive tickets and put on those annoying glasses for that?
