Sam Jackson Considers Lucas' "Red Tails"
During the "Lakeview Terrace " junket this week, Samuel L. Jackson spoke with IGN Movies about the possibility that he might re-team with "Star Wars" creator George Lucas for the latter's World War II production "Red Tails".
"I just read it like two weeks ago. It's a pretty good script. At one point (Lucas) was asking me if I'd ever want to direct anything. I said, 'I don't know, man. I'm trying to find things.' He said, 'Well, let me send you this thing. Maybe you might want to direct it.'" says Jackson.
Would he do it? "I don't know. I don't have a year and a half of my life where I wanna stop acting...if I was gonna direct something George would be a great guy to kind of mentor me through that, especially a big ass special effects flying picture. The script's good. I like it."
Weta Ltd. To Expand Into Run-down Former Defense Base?
(kristinthompson.net) Peter Jackson may be considering using a stretch of land on the northwest coast of the Miramar Peninsula to expand his filmmaking facilities. The Stuff description, however, doesn't explain some of the terms, and for someone who doesn't know certain aspects of the country's history, it's close to impossible to understand the current negotiations over this land. Here is my attempt to clarify the situation.
The Treaty of Waitangi grounds, in the Bay of Islands region of the North Island
The area is question is described as a "run-down former defense base at Shelly Bay and Wellington Prison." If you've got a copy of The Frodo Franchise, the area is question appears on the map on p. 292. Shelly Bay is the small inlet about half an inch to the right of the "500 meters" label on the scale. It's not far from Manuka Street, where Weta Ltd.'s main offices are located, so new facilities there would follow the tradition of Peter's trying to keep the various filmmaking companies within a short drive of each other.
The story explains that the land in question currently is owned by "the Defence Force, Corrections Department and Wellington City Council." But, it adds, "the lands trust for Te Atiawa, the Tenths Trust, is negotiating with the Government for the return of land as part of its Treaty of Waitangi claim."
Harryhausen Alien Is Silent But Deadly
(io9.com) This short, silent clip of Ray Harryhausen's stop-action Martian emerging from its crashed spaceship (a 1940s study for an unmade War of the Worlds) cries out for some Don Martin/Mad magazine-esque onomatopoeia - but all I've got is a SCHLOOMP and a couple of SPLATS. I know you can do better.
Take a look: http://io9.com/5038927/harryhausen-alien-is-silent-but-deadly
Writers Penning Poltergeist Remake
(The Hollywood Reporter) Boogeyman scribes Juliet Snowden and Stiles White will write the screenplay for MGM's planned remake of Poltergeist, the 1982 horror film that was directed by Tobe Hooper and produced/co-written by Steven Spielberg.
The MGM/UA release grossed $122 million worldwide and earned Oscar nominations for its ILM-designed visual effects, sound effects and score.
The story of a suburban home built over an Indian burial ground and thus inhabited by a nasty spook earned further cult status when two of the child actors in the movie died after the film's release. Two sequels were produced.
Snowden and White have also had a hand in the remake of The Birds and co-wrote the upcoming Knowing.
Wall-E Headed For Your Home Galaxy
(news.awn.com) WALL-E will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Walt Disney Studios Home Ent. on November 18, according to BLU-RAY.com.
Details are forthcoming, but the release will have BD-Live capability and will be a two-disc set. It will also contain a digital copy of the film via the "Disney File." FINDING NEMO was supposed to be released on Blu-ray with WALL-E, but it has been delayed until 2009. No word on what Pixar catalog title will replace it.
THE HOBBIT'S JOURNEY HAS BEGUN
(chud.com) A couple of months ago Nick and I had dinner with Guillermo del Toro. We had just seen the unfinished cut of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but I had to ask the big guy about The Hobbit. I had been very concerned about him getting involved with Peter Jackson as The Boss - in my head, if you're doing it based on talent, GdT is The Boss. Jackson's delightfully good behind the camera, but GdT has real vision, the kind of thing that you come across all too rarely in film.
Anyway, I was worried that this project that would be taking him off the directorial market for the next four to five years would be one that didn't reflect his passions. But listening to him talk about his plans for the films I began to understand that he was going to get his passions in here, especially in the second Hobbit movie, the so-called Bridge film.
Now that Hellboy II has been released pretty much everywhere, GdT is turning his attention to the world of Middle-Earth and beginning the long journey that will take him and his family to New Zealand and will bring a new - and very distinct voice - to one of the biggest franchises in movie history.
He called in to a Hellboy II Q&A in Australia to say that the scripting process has begun for the films (they've already broken the story for the second one, as far as I know), and he described it as 'beautiful.' Guillermo is working with Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens on the script; while this isn't Guillermo's first time collaborating on a screenplay, it probably will be his most unusual. When he gets back to Los Angeles I intend to fully grill him about the process of working with these three people who have become a well-oiled writing machine.
He also talked to IGN Australia and reiterated what he's been saying all along: while Gollum will once again be CGI, he is going to rely on a mix of styles for bringing Middle-Earth to life. "You have to be very careful not to rely on a single tool – and this is another thing that I share a passion for with Peter Jackson. We both are huge fans of 'old-world' techniques like maquettes, models, miniatures, paintings – and in the case of The Hobbit, I do intend to continue this trend and bring much more animatronics into the mix.
"We need to keep that art form alive, because it brings a textural power to the movie that ultimately affects the content. The creatures somehow seem more tactile and more tangible than CG."
The next bit of Hobbit news to look out for: Viggo Mortenson will be participating in press for a couple of films at the Toronto Film Festival in a couple of weeks. I fully expect him to be asked about Aragorn returning - perhaps we'll even get an official announcement out of him.
(Hollywood Reporter) The sci-fi saturation of the film business shows little sign of letup. The latest project is a feature based on a Robert Heinlein novela and written and directed by Alex Proyas.
Phoenix Pictures principals Mike Medavoy, Arnie Messer and Brad Fischer will produce the adaptation of "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag," which they describe as a complex psychological thriller with plenty of action as well as some love interest. A title change is likely.
The deal with the "I, Robot" helmer closed several weeks ago, and the project will likely shoot after the Greek-born, Aussie-raised Proyas finishes the Nicolas Cage-starring thriller "Knowing" for Summit.
Originally published in 1942, the offbeat tale centers on a man who becomes increasingly disturbed when he realizes he cannot account for his activities during the day, or even explain what he does for a living. He divulges his problem to the husband-and-wife partners of a private detective agency, and their investigation leads to a series of revelations they could never have fathomed.
"I read this story as a kid, and it really stayed with me," Proyas said. "It's part of my creative DNA."
Phoenix co-president of production Fischer noted that Heinlein, who wrote about 30 novels and twice as many short stories, still is a pre-eminent icon of sci-fi literature 20 years after his death. His "Starship Troopers" was made into a 1997 movie that grossed $120 million worldwide and "Stranger in a Strange Land" became a counterculture classic tome in the '60s.
Animation House 'DIC Entertainment', Goes Down In Flames
(animationguildblog.blogspot.com) DIC Entertainment has always been energetically non-union.
The Animation Guild won an organizing election at the studio soon after Disney acquired the company as part of the ABC-Cap Cities acquisition. We spent years in litigation, another year in fruitless negotiations. A long-time DIC employee told me:
"You can wrestle with them until the end of time, Steve. Andy Heyward will never do a contract with the Animation Guild."
And Andy never did. He was willing to spend money on National Labor Relations Board appeals and court reviews, and when at last the legal options ran out, his attorneys never came close to agreeing to a contract.
Now it seems TAG will never get another bite at the apple:
TORONTO -- Canadian cartoon producer Cookie Jar Entertainment is poised to cut jobs at DIC Entertainment soon after it acquired the U.S. global brand management company for $87.6 million.
Cookie Jar CEO Michael Hirsh on Tuesday gave few details on the pending layoffs but did say an "integration plan" will be unveiled by Aug. 26 ...
Most of the job cuts are expected to come from DIC's corporate office in Burbank, where Cookie Jar already has relocated its Los Angeles-based subsidiary ....
In the 1980s, when a wide swath of the Los Angeles animation business was in the doldrums, DIC Entertainment provided a lot of animation artists with a lot of work. I once visited a friend working at the studio on Ventura Boulevard, and the place was a beehive of activity. There was lots of shows being produced, and people were working, even if it was at under-scale wages.
Last month, however, the party apparently came to an end, as Cookie Jar picked up the remnants of once-burgeoning DIC. Weep not, however, for Mr. Heyward. One of his former supervisors alleged to me: "Andy took a percentage off the top of everything, so he's done a little bit of okay." And we read that Andy still has an employment contract with Cookie Jar, so he's more than okay. Bully for Andy.
But it seems as if the final curtain has fallen on the decades-long story of DIC. As Cookie Jar's top honcho states: "...the company was not viable in its current state."
Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/dic-entertainment-last-chapter.html
(news.awn.com) Electronic Arts has withdrawn its $2 billion tender offer for Take-Two Interactive, publisher of GRAND THEFT AUTO, to enter into private negotiations, per VARIETY. This move comes six months after the public battle started.
EA received little interest in its bid of $25.74 per share, which due to the success of the latest GTA title, has been lower than Take-Two's trading price some days this summer. EA let the offer expire at 12 a.m. Monday.
In a letter to Take-Two exec chairman Strauss Zelnick on Monday, EA head John Riccitiello said their reason for withdrawing the offer had to do with incorporating GTA IV into EA's holiday game slate, which is no longer possible.
"We continue to have great respect for Take-Two's creative teams and products and are hopeful that we can work together to reach a mutually agreed transaction," wrote Riccitiello.
Zelnick responded in a statement that he and Take-Two's board believe EA's bid undervalued the company, but they welcome including EA in their process to determine strategic alternatives, including acquisitions. Take-Two is apparently talking to several would-be buyers or partners both in videogame publishing and traditional media companies.
Zelnick, in a letter sent to Riccitiello on Sunday, said the process would start with a presentation to EA management that includes confidential information on Take-Two's three-year release plan and financial projections. "I believe our presentation will enable you to better understand the value of our company to EA," he wrote.
The agreement apparently came about during a phone call Friday, and could be a precursor to a new acquisition agreement for a higher price than EA has offered. The deal would first need approval from the Federal Trade Commission, which is currently reviewing the situation. It should finish its investigation by Thursday, including a look at the two publisher's similar sports videogame lines.
Fraternize With Clone Troopers At The Egyptian
(scifi.com)
From left, Matt Lanter (the voice of Anakin Skywalker), Tom Kane (Yoda) and James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) fraternize with Clone Troopers.
Take a look: http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=58790
CG Shakespeare Feature Gets 'Wanted' Star
(scifi.com) James McAvoy (Wanted) and Emily Blunt are in negotiations to voice the title roles in Gnomeo and Juliet, a computer-animated Shakespeare adaptation about garden gnomes in love, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The movie, from Miramax and Elton John's Rocket Pictures, will feature several John classic songs.
Kate Winslet was originally attached to voice Juliet two years ago and fell out because of scheduling conflicts.
McAvoy and Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) will play lovers from rival gardens.
Download The State Of Visual Effects
(postmagazine.com) From the advent of computer graphics in the late 1960s, VFX technology has triggered profound shifts in worldwide film production with ever-escalating speed. Rapidly evolving technologies along with economic demands have rendered the three distinct phases of the filmmaking process (pre-production, production and post production) almost obsolete. The world has gone digital and has forced everyone to re-think their business models, sometimes painfully so, as witnessed by the recent Writer's strike and the constant state of uncertainty in the entertainment labor union community.
PDF download: http://www.postmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=market&mod=Marketing+Manager&mid=75622DE9F4A244E0A0435AD601FF2FD3&tier=3&id=00B8DD33F7644323939587B656F9DBC3
Death Race 2? - If You Missed The Announcement You Probably Weren't Alive
(mtv.com) 'It's a movie that would definitely lend itself to seeing further adventures,' Paul W.S. Anderson says.
When the first trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson's "Death Race" hit in June, the director found himself besieged by a plethora of questions, which he dutifully answered in a chat with MTV News.
Now Anderson has a question for those very same fans: "How would you like your 'Death Race 2'?"
Although nothing official has been announced, and everything depends so very much on how "Death Race" does when it opens Friday, a sequel is already being sketched out, Anderson and stars Tyrese Gibson and Jason Statham revealed.
"It's a movie that would definitely lend itself to seeing further adventures," Anderson insisted.
"I'm the sequel master! I just did 'Transporter 3' and 'Crank 2,' " Statham laughed. "Let's do 'Death Race 2'! I had a terrific time working with this group of people. Paul's terrific. If they want to make another one, then I'm in."
In many ways, actually, the sequel for Anderson's "Death Race" has already been scripted, filmed and released, the director stressed. If you missed the announcement, though, don't worry you probably weren't alive.
"We did the movie that is the beginning of [Roger Corman's original 'Death Race 2000'], the genesis of the death race that is portrayed in that [1975] film," Anderson told MTV News in June. "If you watch this movie, you can imagine how that would develop into what Roger portrayed."
Anderson's referring to the fact that in the original, participants joined a cross-country road-rage-a-thon, gunning to make it to the finish line first. Anderson's "Death Race," by comparison, pits prisoners against each other for the benefit of a pay-per-view audience. It doesn't spill over into the general population.
Obviously CGI But No Less Realistic Car-Plant Robots
(digitalartsonline.co.uk) Midnight Madness is the latest music video from the Chemical Brothers, and like almost all of the DJ duo's promos, it's a corker. Pushing a digital download-only single in the run up to the release of the best-of album Brotherhood, the video for Midnight Madness matches previous work for the act by mixing a great idea and execution with subtle use of visual effects.
A QuickTime of the director's cut of the video can be downloaded from here.
The concept -- a impish Mortiis look-a-like in a spangly leotard dancing acrobatically around the back streets of Soho -- perfectly matches the ravey flavour of the song. But where the video really takes off is when the gremlin's dance moves flit across the boundary of what's possible, assisted by some invisible VFX work by Framestore. A digital double was used for the most over-the-top shots , but the work's so realistic it even made Kanye West ask "how did they do that?"
Adding seamless VFX to the streets round the back of its offices isn't new for the team at Framestore, they created more obviously CGI but no less realistic car-plant robots for the mental breakdown of Believe. This is Framestore's third video for the Chemical Brothers, with the cute, funny fish of The Salmon Dance picking up a gaggle of awards, including this year's Escape Award for CG in Music. Like many music videos for the dance act, Midnight Madness was directed by Dom and Nic.
While the Chemical Brothers' promos are well known for the creative use of VFX for dancing skeletons or to merge Michel Gondry's real-world optical illusions together, the best has no VFX at all. It's just a train journey. Or that's how it seems...
Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoaeEAdDv-c
I'm sure this one will come as a real shocker...
(thanks to rogue for this amusing waste of time)
Your result for The Personality Defect Test...
Emo Kid
life is a spike / upon which i have impaled mysefl / fuck you dad
So, your personality is defective because you are too gentle, rather underconfident in yourself, decidely lacking in any rational thought, and also a bit too inhibited. Plus, your poetry really upsets your father.
I probably made you cry, didn't I? Fucking Emo Kid.
To put it less negatively:
1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational. 2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted. 3. You are more GENTLE than brutal. 4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.
Compatibility:
Your exact opposite is the Smartass.Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hippie, the Televangelist, and the Starving Artist.
DreamWorks Animation To Add 500 Jobs
(Los Angeles Times) DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., creator of the hit "Shrek" films, is bulking up in a big way.
The company this week will begin an $85-million project to expand its 13-acre Glendale studio, adding 100,000 square feet of new production space and more than 500 jobs in the next two years.
DreamWorks is growing quickly at a time when many other Los Angeles-area film companies are cutting back in the face of a sputtering economy and a slowdown in film production, delays partly caused by difficult contract talks between studios and Hollywood's biggest actors union.
The new construction largely reflects the company's ambitious entry into 3-D filmmaking, as well as the enduring popularity of family-oriented computer-animated films.
"The business is flourishing and there is a good reason for [DreamWorks] to be hiring so many people," said Ron Diamond, co-founder of Animation World Network, an animation publishing group. "This is a very positive time for animators."
Although some independently produced animated movies have misfired, the leading studios continue to reap big rewards from such films and the merchandising revenue they bring in. Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar Animation Studios scored another hit this summer with "Wall-E," which has grossed more than $212 million domestically.
DreamWorks' "Kung Fu Panda" has become its second-most successful film behind "Shrek 2," grossing more than $560 million worldwide.
Full Press: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dreamworks18-2008aug18,0,5172797.story
MGM Seeks $600 Million to Make `Hobbit' Movies
(Bloomberg) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., the movie studio controlled by private-equity firms, is raising as much as $600 million to produce some of its biggest films including ``The Hobbit.''
The financing will be completed in about three weeks, Jeff Pryor, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based MGM, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss terms or investors.
MGM's would be the first movie fund completed since Deutsche Bank AG and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures scrapped plans last month to raise $450 million. The MGM fund includes ``The Hobbit,'' being produced by ``Lord of the Rings'' director Peter Jackson, and ``Pink Panther'' movies starring Steve Martin, Pryor said.
``In the past, movie studios haven't offered Wall Street the opportunity to participate in their biggest and best films,'' Pryor said. ``There is a lot of interest because of the quality of product we have.''
Paramount blamed market conditions for unfavorable terms in scrapping its fund on July 15, and Deutsche Bank subsequently closed its division dedicated to film financing as demand dwindled.
Full Press: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ar5SlpnBkxzM&refer=home
Cruise To Fuse With Alien Artifact
Written by Ed Brubaker from 2003-2005 for DC Comics, "Sleeper" centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact.
He is placed undercover in a villainous organization by an intelligence agency and falls for a member of the group, named Miss Misery.
Cruise is loosely attached to star in the adaptation which Raimi would produce and the project could be turned into a possible franchise.
Timing is in question as Cruise is attached to several projects right now including the comedy "Food Fight" and the thriller "The Tourist".
Demo Showing New Features of Mudbox
(forums.cgsociety.org) Hey guys - for those of you who missed out on last night's live streaming of the User Group show and wanna see the new features of Mudbox 2009, there is a demo and select images (courtesy of Craig Barr) up on the AREA.
Take a look: http://area.autodesk.com/mudbox_preview
Can "Super Max" Break the Monotony of Superhero Movies?
(justpressplay.net) Super Max, the jailbreak Green Arrow movie, won't be graced with the Joker's presence, due to the character's memorable stamp into the public consciousness this summer. Writer David S. Goyer (Batman Begins) told MTV News that because of Heath Ledger's untimely death and the iconic portrayal he brought to the screen in The Dark Knight, they're written out all of Joker's appearance, demoting his cameo to a mere nameplate on his cell door. No sense in stepping on that legacy's toes.
That might not even matter, however, since even without such an appearance, Super Max might be the one to propel the superhero movie into the next evolutionary step and save the genre from becoming stale.
The project, which changed its name to Green Arrow: Escape from Super Max last June, tells the story of a framed Green Arrow being sent to a maximum security prison designed to detain supervillains, and how he has to break out of there to stop the real perp. When first announced, it's said that the prison would be populated by B and C-level DC Comics villains\u2014characters obscure to non-comic fanatics\u2014but that might not be the case anymore. Though Joker won't be in it, co-writer Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li) confirmed that we'll get to meet Batman and Superman foes like The Riddler, Icicle, and\u2014this is the big one\u2014Lex Luthor.
Not bad for a superhero many people might not have heard of before. Then again, that might be why they're taking this unusual "hero-in-prison" approach. It's also why Super Max might be the harbinger of the next generation of superhero movies.
Full Press: http://justpressplay.net/movies/movie-news/3885-can-qsuper-maxq-break-the-monotony-of-superhero-movies.html
If it's Animation or Special Effects, it's Linux
(blogs.computerworld.com) When I was a kid, I used to make crude little animated cartoons in my notebooks using the flipbook technique. Walt Disney had nothing to worry about. I was awful even by the 3rd grade standards of White Pine elementary. Today, I could be great, because almost all top animation and special effects artists are Linux users.
My colleague Eric Lai discovered recently that while top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it's on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, "In the film industry, Linux has won. It's running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects."
Rowe's not just being a Linux booster. It's the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar's RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.
Full Press: http://blogs.computerworld.com/if_its_animation_or_special_effects_its_linux
Disney's CG Animated "Bolt" Moves to November 21, 2008, after "Potter" Move
(news.toonzone.net) Warner Brothers has moved the release date of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film from November 21, 2008, to July 17, 2009, claiming that the Writers Guild of America strike earlier this year has impacted production and that the film is better suited for a summertime release. In response, Disney has moved the release of the CGI animated film Bolt up one week to take the November 21 weekend.
Gollum to be CG Once More.
(movies.ign.com) Any news on The Hobbit is news worth mentioning these days \u2013 and here's a juicy bite. Off the back of an interview with Hellboy and The Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro, the esteemed filmmaker dropped a few nuggets of information into IGN's lap - he was offered Watchmen and declined - and he's already starting to plan out how to handle The Hobbit's creature creation and presentation.
Like Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, del Toro has a soft-spot for the traditions of model-making and real-world workshop effects - something that he intends to carry through to The Hobbit.
He explained, "You have to be very careful not to rely on a single tool \u2013 and this is another thing that I share a passion for with Peter Jackson. We both are huge fans of 'old-world' techniques like maquettes, models, miniatures, paintings \u2013 and in the case of The Hobbit, I do intend to continue this trend and bring much more animatronics into the mix.
"We need to keep that art form alive, because it brings a textural power to the movie that ultimately affects the content. The creatures somehow seem more tactile and more tangible than CG."
It's clear that The Hobbit will continue the artistry of the model-making seen previously in del Toro's previous work \u2013 but he's not one to neglect the power of computer animation either. "I think that some creatures are better served by being completely CG and others are better served by being completely animatronic \u2013 and others are only possible if you mix the two."
We naturally enquired if he planned on continuing with a CG Gollum: "Absolutely. I think that it worked perfectly on the [Lord of the Rings] trilogy and if it ain't broke, why fix it?"
Selick: Coraline Near Wrap
(scifi.com) Henry Selick, director of the upcoming 3-D animated Coraline, told SCI FI Wire that he is currently finishing production on the stop-motion movie, which is adapted from Neil Gaiman's Hugo Award-winning graphic novel of the same name.
"We will complete animation on Coraline in about six weeks and plan a February release of 2009," Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) said in an interview.
Dakota Fanning voices the title character, who steps through a door to discover an alternate version of her life and a new set of parents. "It's a dark, perfect, modern fairy tale." Selick said. "[It] concerns itself with a primal thought every child considers: I wish I had other parents. That, and the button eyes."
Gaiman and Selick co-wrote the script for the film and have been working hand-in-hand to translate the novel faithfully to the screen. "The movie version of Coraline is very faithful to the tone and the spirit of the book," Selick said. "In the translation from book to film there are adjustments to story and character that have to be made. The main thing I always felt was I could not disappoint the readers of the book, and though some details have been changed as well as the order of the sequences, I feel we will be successful."
Early production images from Coraline have surfaced and drawn comparisons to Selick's beloved work on Nightmare. "There is no doubt that [there are] some similarities between the two projects," he admitted. "I also have many of the original Nightmare team members working on Coraline. We've all grown, and the visual aesthetic is ultimately a very different one. You'll see great animation like Nightmare, like a cousin of Nightmare. More like a second cousin. The last thing I'd want to do would be to try to rip off a classic film I directed."
One of the major advances in terms of the animation process is the new stereoscopic dual digital camera, Selick said. "[It] just gives you more of what is there, just a little more sense of the reality of this medium," he said. "It does not live in the computer, nor is it a series of drawings; it's an actual real set [of] puppets." Coraline is currently set for release in February 2009.
'Final Fantasy XIII' Demo Will Last More than Two Hours
(kotaku.com) PlayStation Universe reports that Famitsu magazine reports that the PS3-exclusive Final Fantasy XIII demo will clock in at more than two hours, which is longer than the CGI movie bundled with it, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete. The bundle releases March 2009.
The demo will be on a separate disc (ah ha! Blu-Ray has its limitations too ya know!!!!) The demo will be based on the opening to the game, naturally. Wouldn't be smart to spoilerize everything. Two other tidbits, I'll fess up and say I have no clue what these mean so I'll just quote verbatim: "One of the female characters, refered to as 'Pigtails Girl', has been through some tough times." And "Mr. 33CM's real name is based off of weather as well."
Harryhausen-Produced Pendulum Comes to DVD
(ShockTillYouDrop.com) The Pit and the Pendulum, Edgar Allan Poe's classic short story of judgment, condemnation, hope and redemption is realized in this stop-motion animated adaptation - executive produced by animation and visual effects legend Ray Harryhausen and directed by animation veteran Marc Lougee (Celebrity Deathmatch, Dinosapien) - hitting DVD August 25th.
A tale of judgment and condemnation, the film portrays a solitary prisoner in the cold grip of the Spanish Inquisition. Condemned and alone, he's left to suffer a fate worse than death in the dreaded dungeons. Entombed in darkness, he struggles with hope and faith while his captors employ fiendish machinations in their efforts to unhinge him. The Pit and the Pendulum combines the classic aesthetic of stop-motion animation, cutting-edge digital visual effects and sound design.
The DVD features exclusive behind-the-scenes video depicting the production of the film, from conception to final post production. Interviews with members of the crew include director/creative producer Marc Lougee, writer Matt Taylor, composer Philip Stanger, stop-motion animator Mike Weiss, the 5.1 surround sound design team from Urban Post Productions, and the visual effects artists Gudren Heinz and David Alexander from Switch VFX in Toronto, ON.
Other features include:
-A tour of the Foley Studio at Urban Post Production
-A 5.1 surround mixing session and breakdown for the film
-Production stills
-Storyboards
-Conceptual art gallery
-Easter eggs
-Secret links to online materials
More details on The Pit and the Pendulum can be found at ThePitandthePendulumShortFilm.com.
"Goosebumps" To Follow In Harry Potter's Footsteps
(darkhorizons.com) Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander ("Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flynt") are in negotiations to pen the script for Sony Pictures live-action feature adaptation of children's horror series "Goosebumps" says The Hollywood Reporter.
The "Goosebumps" series comprises more than 50 books that often pay homage to classic sci-fi/horror movies.
Producer Neal Moritz has said he likely will cast youngsters for the leads and then include well-known actors in supporting roles, a la the "Harry Potter" films.
Lifelike Animation Heralds New Era for Computer Games
(technology.timesonline.co.uk) 'Emily' will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films, says her creator, Image Metrics
Jonathan Richards
Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology.
Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.
She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.
Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a 'control system'.
The team at Image Metrics - which produced the animation for the Grand Theft Auto computer game - then recreated the gestures, movement by movement, in a model. The aim was to overcome the traditional difficulties of animating a human face, for instance that the skin looks too shiny, or that the movements are too symmetrical.
"Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real," Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said.
"The subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren't that significant but they are what makes people look real."
Previous methods for animating faces have involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyses facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.
"There's always been control systems for different facial movements, but say in the past you had a dial for controlling whether an eye was open or closed, and in one frame you set the eye at 3/4 open, the next 1/2 open etc. This is like achieving that degree of control with much finer movements.
"For instance, you could be controlling the movement in the top 3-4mm of the right side of the smile," Mr Starkenburg said.
For many years now, animators have come up against a barrier known as "uncanny valley", which refers to how, as a computer-generated face approaches human likeness, it begins take on a corpse-like appearance similar to that in some horror films.
As a result, computer game animators have purposely simplified their creations so that the players realise immediately that the figures are not real.
"There came a point where animators were trying to create a face and there was a theory of diminishing returns," said Raja Koduri, chief technlology officer in graphics at AMD, the chip-maker.
AMD last week released a new chip with a billion transistors that will be able to show off creations such as Emily by allowing a much greater number of computations per second. "If you're trying to process the graphics in a photo-realistic animation, in real-time, there's a lot of computation involved," said Mr Koduri.
He said that AMD's new chip - the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - was able to process 2.4 teraflops of information per second, meaning it had a capability similar to a computer that - only 12 years ago - would have filled a room. AMD's chip fits inside a standard PC.
But he said that the line between what was real and what was rendered would not be blurred completely until 2020.
There have been several advances in computer-generated imagery (CGI) in recent years. One project at the University of Southern California involves placing an actor inside a giant metallic orb which fires more than 3,000 lights from a range of different angles - and with different degrees of intensity - at the actor while he or she is are being filmed performing an action.
The image captured by the camera can then be transported into another piece of film and the lighting effect (on the actor) chosen according to the ambient lighting in the scene.
Take a look: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece
No Chairs Allowed On Animated Coraline?
(ocssummerblogs.blogspot.com) Word on the street is that Henry Selick, the director of Coraline, can get really touchy. The rumor we heard, unsubstantiated by our visit, was that Henry got impatient with the editors because he didn't think they were responding quickly enough. Solution? He took away their chairs. Permanently.
Source: http://ocssummerblogs.blogspot.com/2008/08/coraline-industry-gossip-and-hot.html
RSI Irony: Maya To Help Heal Your Hand
(blogs.zdnet.com) Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, have developed new computer animated models of the hand which show how the muscles and tendons function while moving. This new software uses 'anatomical data from medical images to model the 17 bones and 54 tendons and muscles of the hand and forearm.' With the help of this graphics software, surgeons will soon be able to reconstruct damaged hands more effectively. This work has been presented at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference in Los Angeles on August 15, 2008. But read more
You can see above a screenshot of the UBC hand simulator. "Fixed constraints are shown in cyan, sliding constraints in green, and surface constraints in maroon. Surface constraints allow the strands to move axially as well as laterally. The input animation target is shown in wireframe." (Credit:UBC)
This research work has been done at UBC's Sensorimotor Systems Laboratory. The team was composed of Shinjiro Sueda and Andrew Kaufman, under the supervision of Professor Dinesh K. Pai.
For the graphical interface, the research team has chosen to implement a plug-in for Maya (developed by Autodesk, Inc., San Rafael, CA). You can see above this Maya interface with their custom shelf. "Strands are shown in blue, and constraints are shown in green."
More: http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1014
Legal Battle Over Watchmen Movie
(news.bbc.co.uk) Film studio Twentieth Century Fox has applied to a Los Angeles court to block the release of Watchmen, based on the comic books written by Alan Moore.
Fox, which says it bought film rights to the series in the 1980s, has been given the go-ahead to launch an injunction against rival Warner Bros.
"We respectfully disagree with Fox's position and do not believe they have any rights," a Warners spokesman said.
Fox said it "will be asking the court to enforce our copyright interests".
'Copyright interests'
The movie, about flawed superheroes, has already been filmed and was due for release 6 March.
It stars Patrick Wilson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan and is directed by Zack Snyder, who made hit movie 300.
Last week US District Court Judge Gary Feess said Fox could hold some of the rights to the material, even if it did not hold all rights.
Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant said it planned to stop the release of the movie and "any related Watchmen media that violate our copyright interests in that property".
His Warner Bros counterpart, Scott Rowe, said: "The judge did not opine at all on the merits, other than to conclude that Fox satisfied the pending requirements."
"Voltron" Dumped & Picked Up
(darkhorizons.com) New Regency has put the feature film adaptation of classic 80's Japanese anime "Voltron: Defender of the Universe" into turnaround and Relativity Media is already in negotiations to pick up the property reports the trades.
Justin Marks, the young scribe behind the upcoming Green Arrow film "Super Max" and the new film version of "He-Man", penned the script described as "a post-apocalyptic tale set in New York City and Mexico, where five survivors of an alien attack band together and end up piloting the five lion-shaped robots that combine and form the massive sword-wielding Voltron that helps battle Earth's invaders."
The script scored rave reviews from several major online sites. Yet Regency was never able to fully complete negotiations with the original rights holders - stalling development on the film.
The new version at Relativity plans to shoot the film on a more moderate budget using cost-effective "300"-style filming techniques. A director is expected to be assigned to the property within the next week.
Lucas Has "Magical" Night
SIGHTINGS: Legendary director George Lucas, who opened "Clone Wars" in theaters this weekend, at Penn & Teller's show ( at the Rio, Las Vegas) on Friday.
Source: http://www.lvrj.com/news/27067494.html(ew.com) Tropic Thunder caused enough of a rumble this weekend to topple The Dark Knight from its perch atop the weekend box office. Its estimated $26 million was enough to finally knock the Christopher Nolan-directed Warner Bros. movie from the top spot after four weeks at No. 1. Still, Dark Knight's weekend take of $16.7 million brought its total earnings to $471.5 million, enough to surpass 1977's Star Wars' total of $460 million to become the second-highest grossing movie of all time.
Warner Bros'. other wide release, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, grossed an estimated $15.5 million for the third spot in the weekend rankings. Weak reviews and audience reactions giving it a B-, according to pollster Cinemascore, didn't help the animated spinoff at the box office. It probably proved a fair enough launch, though, to the television series that is scheduled to debut on the Cartoon Network in the fall.
(moviehole.net) Writers Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green have gotten the character of the The Green Lanturn right (and how could they not? One of the guys is named 'Green' for shit's sake!?).
''Unlike other recent superhero movies, this Green Lantern story has science fiction elements such as visiting other planets and major space battles'', writes Robert, adding that the film has the potential to be "bigger" than both "The Dark Knight" and "Iron Man".
Oh, and who is going to direct the flick? The site says they've heard that George Miller - who may or may not have recently been fired from the troubled "Justice League" project - may be in talks.
Writers Strike (Not Voldemort) Pushes Potter Back
(blog.wired.com) Now almost 8 months removed from the picketing and bickering, the debris from the writers strike is still settling for Hollywood's big franchise genre movies.
Warner Bros. pushed Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince from Nov. 21 to July 17 -- making the holiday family treat into a big summer blockbuster -- and leaving fans with only DVDs and YouTube videos (right) to keep them in wizards until then. The main reason for the switch is a lack of big projects in the various studios' pipelines because of the writers strike and its impact on development.
You can see how the dominoes fall clearly in the Warner Bros. case. The original plan was to have George Romero's Justice League movie ready for a big debut next summer. But the strike has that movie in limbo, leaving a hole in Warner's Bros.' schedule right where the studio needs a big summer release. Enter Potter. It doesn't help that development on a sequel to the disappointing Superman Returns sank into Kryptonite as that was supposed to be ready for 2009.
J.J. Abrams's Star Trek redux was pushed to next summer -- partly because of VFX development and partly because principle photography coincided with the writers strike and slowed down production. Expect to see a continued pattern of films moving on Hollywood's calendar until the studios recover from the writers strike lull -- and until they're certain the actors aren't going to walk out eventually, too.
Our Damn VFX People Didn't Make The 'Montauk Monster'!
(gawker.com) The director of the carnival comedy Splinterheads, whose people had been cynically piggybacking the most important story of the summer by claiming that Monty the Montauk Monster of Montauk was nothing but a prop for the little flick—and that the origin of the story was the producer's sister—is finally admitting that they lied, lied, LIED! "I'd like to go on record and say our movie 'Splinterheads' has had nothing to do with this Montauk Monster thing. We're shooting a comedy out here in Patchogue—not a horror film. My producer Darren does not have a sister Rachel, but a Rachael Taylor is starring in the film." But even this admission is a little fishy, as it's all put on the shoulders of some anonymous teenager.
"WOW!!! Montauk Monster?! CNN? Fox News? Gawker? Gothamist? It's amazing what a quick thinking 16 year old entrepreneur can do. Here's what happened—Newsday does an article about our film (which is shooting near Montauk). Montauk Monster story breaks, kid steals some of our graphics, sets up a fake official Splinterheads website, makes up some names and voila - a national story." [SersenPark]
I'd be pissed as all hell, but Lea Thompson is in the movie. And I'm powerless in the face of her dreaminess.
The monster: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00784/monstersmall_784342c.jpg
Game Adapted "Street Fighter" Date Set
(ComingSoon.net) 20th Century Fox has set a February 27, 2009 release date for video game adaptation Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. The action film stars Kristin Kreuk, Michael Clarke Duncan, Neal McDonough, Taboo, Chris Klein, Moon Bloodgood, Edmund Chen, Cheng Pei Pei, Josie Ho and Robin Shou.
"Punisher" VFX-Gore Cut For PG-13 Rating
(darkhorizons.com) She may have been (allegedly) kicked off the project but considering what they're doing to her baby, one doubts director Lexi Alexander would want back on.
Not content with being situated as the sole wide release on the worst filmgoing weekend of the year (the post-Thanksgiving weekend), Latino Review reports that Lionsgate has decided to edit their upcoming "Punisher: War Zone" film down from a hardcore R-rating to a PG-13.
Why is it happening? The likely answer is "The Dark Knight" which managed a PG-13 despite its super dark and intense scenes. But whereas Batman has all sorts of psychological angles and a superb script backing it up, "Punisher" has no such quality filmmaking pedigree and thus is very reliant on the hardcore bloody stylings of the violence, as demonstrated in a super-violent clip screened in San Diego last month.
VFX Wiz Douglas Trumbell's "Showscan" Remembered
(blogs.suntimes.com) I have witnessed a believable 3-D illusion. It was at a ShoWest demonstration of Douglas Trumbell's doomed Showscan. He projected 70mm film at 60fps. It created the illusion of depth not by leaving the screen but by seeming to recede within it. It was like looking through a window and seeing the perspective of reality. You may have seen it being used in thrill rides at Disneyland. It was too expensive for theatrical films. A more affordable process, MaxiVision, creates its illusion with 35mm at 48fps. But Hollywood is profoundly conservative and shy of technical innovation; it embraced HD video because it provides an approximation of what they're used to. Once on a panel at Sundance, I asked an obvious question: Why does HD approximate the film standard of 24 fps, or the TV standard of 30fps, when it could just as easily approximate 60 fps? None of the experts had an answer.
Full Press: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/dminus_for_3d.html
Secret Photo-Realistic Virtual World Rendered In The Cloud
(forums.cgsociety.org - techcrunch.com) "LivePlace.com has posted a video displaying a very impressive render of a 3D virtual world called City Space. At this point very little is known about LivePlace, other than that the WHOIS lists the domain's owner as Brad Greenspan, one of the co-founders of MySpace. Note: It appears that in the 20 minutes since I spoke to Greenspan about this post, someone was told to take LivePlace down (apparently nobody was supposed to find it)."
The video shows a massive virtual city filled with towering skyscrapers, parks, user-customized apartments and houses, public meeting places, subways, and everything else you might expect in a metropolitan area, all beautifully rendered by the OTOY engine. The game also features impressive real time lighting, reflection, and weather effects that rival those seen in detailed 3D games (and even some movies).
At this point it appears that gameplay will be focused on human avatars, who can own their own living spaces and offices,