Mega Piranha!

I’ll go on record saying that there are far too few movies out there with titles that have “mega” in them. Luckily, as of 2010, there is…. (cue drum roll)

MEGA PIRANHA!

Watch the trailer in all it’s B-movie glory:

Yes, it’s not a spoof. Check IMDB. The effects look like something that came on a free training DVD for After Effects (although the CGI piranhas are not that bad if you put them in perspective…). Reminds me of another great piece of art called “Shark in Venice” which just features stock footage of sharks, lots of continuity mistakes and Stephen Baldwin’s man boobs. Wait a second… He actually was diagnosed with breast cancer according to Wikipedia? I guess that makes that joke a bit tasteless. Oh, and he’s also a hard-core right-wing guy who  “threatened to move to Canada if Barack Obama was elected” (source: also Wikipedia)? Life is stranger than fiction.

Anyway, I’m digressing. This is a good opportunity to post a video clip that I had lying around on my hard disk for quite a while. It’s from a SciFi TV movie called “Heatstroke” and it’s exceptional in its goofiness. I think that’s a nice example of misguided CGI. A guy in a rubber suit would at least have given the impression that somebody cared about the movie. I pity the guys who had to work on this beach scene:

Avatar

Oh my, what a cinematic milestone. The storyline is a bit of a nerd’s juvenile Mechwarrior dreams mixed with clichés from Pocahontas, but we’re not wearing those heavy unwieldy 3D glasses for the story, right? The level of realism they achieved when it came to motion capturing and CG environments was incredible. The camera moves felt very real, and the 3D really was as great as they claim it is.

It worked best for narrow spaces and closeup shots of the actors. The shots where they added defocused elements very close in the foreground mostly looked weird though, because these things get cut off in mid-air by the edges of the screen. The Chinese subtitles, floating in the air in front of the screen, were an unusual but funny addition.

Anyway, quite an experience and it I hope the technology becomes common knowledge sooner rather than later so that directors can afford to do interesting plots or arthouse stuff in 3D/CG instead of just blockbusters.  And some lighter glasses.

A Hundred Grand to Spare…

Today, I got the most unusual spam mail ever.

I am a filmproducer and actress from such films like “Gangs of New York” and “Soundman” etc.

It begins in the way those Nigerian scams begin, with some rich fellow from Africa asking you to deposit some money so he can give you vast riches in return. But this is something else, right? Surely no scam for money…

There is a filmproject called “On the Roof”. I am an executive producer on it, meaning I found the financing for the film. We filmed it in 2001 or 2002 in Los Angeles. The film is a mixture between “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Shall we dance”. I had the female leadingrole in it.

(…)

I am looking for 100’000 Dollars for post-production. Are you interested in being an Executive Producer on this project or do you know of someone who would be? Or are you interested in providing editingfacility and an editor?

No way! It is a scam for money. Or something like that. But the sender, a woman called Eliane Chappuis, is for real. In her e-mail to an undisclosed number of recipients, she goes on about her acting carreer, but it seems that apart from some being an extra on Gangs of New York and despite her pretty face, her carreer has been stagnating for quite a while. And after watching her reel, a psychedelic edit of C movies excerpts, it’s kind of clear why that is: http://www.elianechappuis.ch/demoreels/actingdemoreel2008.html

Or maybe this is all some kind of viral marketing campaign for a Mulholland Drive kind of movie about her life, you know, the pretty actress from Switzerland, stranded in Hollywood, failing to get big, doing modelling and singing instead, then trying to restart her movie carreer by resurrecting a capsized 2002 B-movie that has been gathering dust in a basement for years…

Or maybe the 100 000 dollars will end up in the pockets of some kind of “cult leader” she mentioned in her biography? I have no idea.

Anyway, opening up this e-mail made my day 🙂 Do I feel bad about making fun of her? After all, she’s the daughter of a Vietnamese aristocrat! Well, attached to all of this was a huge 10 megabyte image.  A scan of a TV magazin cover. Whoever does this in a mass e-mail deserves no better…

Ninja Assassin Teasers

Some new Ninja Assassin teasers are up on Youtube! In case you don’t know about the film, check out IMDB. In a nutshell, it’s bloody ninja action directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), written by J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and produced by the Wachowski Brothers (Matrix).

A bunch of German VFX houses were involved… RISE in Berlin, Trixter in Munich and Pixomondo in Ludwigsburg. I’ve freelanced for the latter one and a few of the shots I had worked on almost a year ago can finally be seen in those teaser clips. Enjoy!

(The clips can’t be embedded here, so just click twice to watch them on Youtube. They’re even in high quality.)

Dubai

So, der erste Reisebericht steht an! Kostenloses WiFi am Flughafen Dubai sei dank.
Nach 5 Stunden Flug ist die erste Etappe geschafft. Dubais neues Terminal 3 ist eine gigantische Luxus-Mall mit Flughafen dran. Ob’s an der Wirtschaft oder der nächtlichen Stunde liegt weiß ich nicht, aber es ist angenehm ruhig und Sitzplätze gibt’s genug. Und Handyladestationen.

In-Flight-Movie: Moon. Netter Sci-Fi-Film. Aber wie schon bei District9 frage ich mich, wieso alles was heute nur minimal neben dem Mainstreamkino liegt gleich als der Stein der Weisen und Best Movie Since Blablabla gelobt wird. Der Film ist gut, prima gespielt, aber keineswegs unvorhersehbar oder neuartig.

In 2h geht’s weiter nach Shanghai…