Full speed ahead! No need for a story when the pictures are flashy!
In the weeks and months leading up to the release of The Golden Compass, it was hard to escape reading about how the Catholic League was calling for a boycott of the film. I guess it was to be expected. The fantasy novel's author, Philip Pullman, is an atheist and the series does take the Catholic Church and authority in general to task, more…
Movie Review: The Golden Compass
December 10th, 2007I Was a Layer Tennis Competitor.
December 10th, 2007
Last Friday I took part in the first Layer Tennis match done in After Effects. My opponent was Jason Koxvold, who I had previously collaborated with in the first edition of PSST! Jason provided the hilarious but destructive ending to Easy Action, so I knew he would be a tough competitor.
Layer Tennis itself is a collaborative / combatative design event created by Coudal Partners. It used to be called Photoshop Tennis and was started back in 2001. But then it lay dormant for a while and was just resurrected earlier this year. So far they’ve had some great matches: Harrington v. Anderson Hansen v. Cordiner Bantjes v. Vit The previous week’s match had been done in Flash and it was really interesting to see the concept evolve when you could apply motion and story-telling to what had previously only been static imagery.
The invitation came late on Tuesday and the match was for Friday afternoon. Not a lot of time to think about it or worry about what I was getting myself into, so I just said “Yes.” I won the coin flip on Thursday, so I had overnight to prepare my “serve.” This was a file that had my first animation and several other elements in it that I was planning on using somehow in the match. I had decided to make a happy little tennis ball, because I enjoy the blindingly obvious. I also wanted to keep my side of the match pretty damn simple and try to just re-use my exisiting elements for each volley. Of course I made a few other elements that I planned to introduce over the course of the match and set them aside… I set the tennis ball up so he was jointed and very easy to animate. Sounds like a plan, right?
I posted the first serve for Jason a few hours before the match went live and he got to work on his “return.” The match then started in the late afternoon and the clock was ticking! We were supposed to be returning each other’s serves every 15 minutes. Behind the scenes the Coudal folks and Jason and I were all online using Basecamp to talk to each other and exchange files. 15 minutes is really not a lot of time. It was nerve-racking trying to get your serve done and then also render and post it. As Jason was working on his serves, I would start to work on my next move and hope I could figure out a way to incoporate or respond to his last volley when I got it. Then once his was actually posted, I had to scramble to finish mine up and get it up on the Coudal servers. I’m pretty sure we went over our time limits each serve, but we did get the match done in the usual 3-4 hour slot. Not a mean feat considering we made about a minute and fifteen seconds worth of animation pretty much on-the-fly.
Hopefully it provided a few of you with an entertaining way to spend your render time on Friday afternoon. Jason did a great job returning his volleys and reacting to my shots and the whole thing was really fun to be a part of. Big thanks to Matt Haughey for his commentary Jim Coudal and Adobe for making it happen. I lost the match, but my dignity is intact.
Specimen finds Markus on MDC
December 10th, 2007
Movie Review: The Perfect Holiday
December 10th, 2007A film with a lot of holiday cheer.
Christmas movies are usually about Santa Claus and this film does not stray too far from that premise. This romantic holiday flick is narrated by a sweet, kind-hearted Santa's helper who spreads the holiday cheer. Played by Queen Latifah (who's also one of the film's producer), she does not allow anything to stop her, not even a…
The Coens take Manhattan
December 10th, 2007The New York Film Critics Circle went with the Coen Brothers in a big way, with "No Country for Old Men" winning best picture, the bros bagging best director(s) and screenplay, and Javier Bardem named best supporting actor. With yesterday's Boston critics awards and Washington, DC nods favoring the Coens too, momentum appears to be building. Interesting to note that the NY crix went with Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor in "There Will be Blood," a film for which the LA critics wholly rolled over (I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing) but that has otherwise gone relatively unfeted so far. Also interesting to note that Amy Ryan is looking more and more unstoppable (Cate who?), that Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard appear headed for a smackdown, and that "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" seems like everyone's second-favorite movie. (What's "The Lives of Others" doing on this list, by the way? It won a 2006 foreign language Oscar but was a 2007 U.S. release, something that was talked about in yesterday's Boston meeting but ultimately regarded as a 2006 movie. New York decided to go the other way.)
The New York full list:
Best Picture - No Country For Old Men
Best Director - Joel & Ethan Coen / No Country For Old Men
Best Actor - Daniel Day Lewis / There Will Be Blood
Best Actress - Julie Christie / Away From Her
Best Supporting Actor - Javier Bardem / No Country For Old Men
Best Supporting Actress - Amy Ryan / Gone Baby Gone
Best Cinematography - Robert Elswit / There Will Be Blood
Best Screenplay - Joel & Ethan Coen / No Country For Old Men
Best Animated Film ? Persepolis
Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary) - No End in Sight
Best Foreign-Language Film ? The Lives of Others
Best First Film ? Away From Her
Lifetime Achievement Award ? Sidney Lumet
Special Critics Award - "Killer of Sheep" by Charles Burnett
‘Bio-Dome 2?’ Seriously?
December 10th, 2007Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Casting, Celebrities and Controversy, Home Entertainment
A few months ago, I went to dinner with a friend near the beach. A huge burst of noise interrupted our meal, and we walked outside to see what all the fuss was about. Was it a burglary? A riot of some kind? Nope. Turns out it was Stephen Baldwin. Stephen has become a born-again Christian, and he had pulled up to a bar in a van and was preaching the good word to a bunch of drunken college students. It was absolutely insane. The New York Daily News is reporting that Mr. Baldwin spoke with WAWZ (99.1 FM) this morning to discuss the spirituality that brought him to...a van outside a bar... as well as some upcoming acting gigs. I'll tell you about the acting gigs in the next paragraph, but I need to make absolutely certain that you're sitting down. Alright, here we go. There's no other way to put this, so I'm just going to come out and say it -- Stephen Baldwin is making Bio-Dome 2. Take a deep breath, we'll get through this together. No word on whether this will be a theatrical release (I doubt it), whether Pauly Shore will return (I think it's a safe bet he's available) or why they're making a sequel to a movie that most people can not look directly at. Baldwin also discussed his new Christmas DVD, Midnight Clear, and his own newly launched ministry, called As Salt. (Did no one tell Mr. Baldwin the name of his ministry contains the word "Ass?") He will also appear on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice, which is notable for featuring "celebrities" so off the "A," "B," or even "C" - list, you almost have to add more letters to the alphabet. He can currently be seen in the only clever scene of Fred Claus -- where he appears alongside Hollywood heavyweights Roger Clinton and Frank Stallone.
Bio-Dome 2, friends. The apocalypse is near.
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Kalev Chocolate: Kommid
December 10th, 2007
Chocolate chocolate chocolate! A dancing Santa with a candy bar makes all the Estonian children happy.
Runtime: 54 sec
Blue Q: Babe
December 10th, 2007
Decked out in full '80s workout regalia a hot babe flexes and poses with wacky products.
Runtime: 48 sec
Katherine Heigl Backtracks, Says She Loved (Filming) ‘Knocked Up’
December 10th, 2007Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Newsstand
What happens when you make a few lame comments about the film that skyrocketed your per flick payday from $300,000 to $6 million? Well, you call up People Magazine and "clarify" your statements. Yes, we're talking about Knocked Up's Katherine Heigl, who, while speaking to Vanity Fair magazine recently, called one of this year's funniest films "a little sexist." She then added, "It paints women as shrews, as humorless and uptight and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It was hard for me to love the movie." Now when her comments first hit the net, I wrote a somewhat scathing post bashing Heigl for, well, bashing the film that "made her." I also said that, if anything, it was the men in the film who came off as idiots; as guys who either couldn't commit to their wives or had absolutely zero motivation in life. The two prominent women (Heigl and Leslie Mann ) were strong female role models, in my opinion. One was a successful mother, while the other was a motivated career gal.
After I wrote the post, I had plenty of people who went the whole "her comments were taken out of context" route. And that may be the case. In a new interview with People, she does allude to the fact that her statements were (kind of, sort of) taken out of context. She says, "I was responding to previous reviews about the movie the interviewer brought to my attention. My motive was to encourage other women like myself to not take that element of the movie too seriously and to remember that it's a broad comedy." Wait, where in those comments does she "encourage other women like myself to not take that element of the movie too seriously and to remember that it's a broad comedy." I missed that part.
But anyway, Heigl later goes on to say, "Although I stand behind my opinion, I'm disheartened that it has become the focus of my experience with the movie. The truth is, it was the best filming experience of my career. Every person that was a part of making Knocked Up helped to encourage, support and inspire me. I never intended for anyone to think otherwise." Fair enough. She still thinks the film is sexist, but she had a great time making it. Should we let her off the hook?
Katherine Heigl in Pictures:
Did Katherine Heigl make Cinematical's Hot List for 2007? Find out!
