October 27, 2008
A Day In The Science Laboratory
Sheridan student Mario Richard has created this wonderful animatic in Flash, let's hope he will complete the animated film someday, because it could be incredible!
October 26, 2008
FEAR(S) OF THE DARK
This is a trailer for a new French animated horror anthology that binds together 6 tales from world-reknowned comic and graphic artists. Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Richard McGuire each tell black-and-white tales of fear. Produced by Prima Linea and released by IFC.
Via LINEBOIL
October 25, 2008
A Time For Superheroes
Our world is hurtling into the abyss, propelled by wars, genocide, terrorism, environmental disaster, and the global financial meltdown . . .
. . . but never fear, the superhero is here!
Not since Captain America and Superman were socking it to the Nazis in the '40s has American culture been so inundated with tales of caped men and masked women with superhuman powers.
The comics explosion has even reached academe: The University of Pennsylvania has mounted a massive year-long celebration of comics, including exhibits of comic art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
But most of all, superheroes are a boon for Hollywood: No other genre so consistently produces megahits, including the new Batman series, Spider-Man 1-3, and The Incredible Hulk.
Director Jon Favreau's adaptation of Iron Man, by comic legend Stan Lee, is no exception. The film, recently released on DVD, stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a smarter-than-God weapons manufacturer who does his hero thing in a super-duper, electronic-age metal aqualung.
The movie grossed $318 million theatrically, making it the 21st highest grossing American film of all time.
It's not so hard to account for our yearning for superheroes, says British comics guru Alan Moore, the iconoclastic author of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell.
"There's a side of American culture that's very uncomfortable with confrontation unless it has . . . superior power" over its enemy, "say, help from a man who rocketed here from Krypton," says Moore, who is the subject of director DeZ Vylenz's magisterial documentary, The Mindscape of Alan Moore.
Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby agree. "The fight used to be so clear in World War II. . . . There were good guys and bad guys," says Fergus. "Look around now, and we don't know who is what."
What divides Moore from Lee, who has helped adapt a number of his comics for film, including the Spider-Man series, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Hulk, is that Lee embraces this nostalgia while Moore rejects it as a distraction from real problems.
Moore, who spoke on the phone from his native Northampton, northwest of London, says the industry is too quick to market palaver as serious art.
"I think a big misconception of the 1980s was that comics were growing up. . . . Instead, it was the culture [which] was being infantilized," he said.
Moore has repudiated every film adapted from his work, including From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine, and V for Vendetta. He is wary of 300 director Zack Snyder's adaptation of his most-celebrated piece, Watchmen, due in March. (Vylenz said Moore has refused to accept payment for Watchmen.)
Lee, by contrast, says he loves to see his work on the silver screen. "There will always be high-concept [superhero] films. People love that sort of thing," said Lee, who turns 86 in December.
Iron Man is set in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military's mission is compromised by international terrorists. Even though the film touches on hot-button issues such as the military-industrial complex and the war on terror, the filmmakers avoid politicking. It's a hallmark of the blockbuster, which must not upset a single person in the world, lest it lose money.
"John [Favreau] told us he didn't want a movie that would make a statement," says Ostby. " 'Everyone knows war is bad,' " he said.
For Moore, this is what's wrong with the entertainment industry.
"My feeling is that my audience probably needs waking up or reconnecting to a more authentic appreciation of the world," said Moore.
"We have experience fed to us now by the media in pretty much the same manner a mother bird will feed regurgitated worms to the babies. The babies just have to open their beaks and do nothing," Moore said.
He maintains that like traditional myths, most comics reaffirm the status quo. If that's the case, then Moore's comics subvert the accepted world-view and challenge us to think differently.
Moore's method uses the conventions of the superhero story to deconstruct the genre. His heroes are revolutionaries who have no superhuman abilities - and sometimes no virtues.
V, the hero of V, is a "Romantic anarchist adventurer" who fights the Orwellian government ruling over a fictional England in the name of individual freedom. Published between 1982 and 1988, V was prescient: The government controls the public by installing surveillance cameras on every street in the nation. And indeed, a massive system of such cameras has been installed in British cities since 1997.
"I thought the idea . . . was a chilling vision of fascism. Now I'm actually living in that world," said Moore.
Watchmen is a mind-blowing, layered story set in an America on the brink of nuclear war. It follows six superheroes as they investigate the death of one of their own. Moore says the comic is an investigation of the use and misuse of power, a theme evident from its title, which Moore took from the Roman satirist Juvenal: "But who watches the watchmen?"
The comic asks that we watch the watchmen we've allowed to rule us, whether they be government, police, or the educational system.
Moore said he still marvels at the prevalence of superheroes in American comics.
"It strikes me that it might be largely an expression of a culture of impunity . . . of being untouchable," theorizes Moore, who said the superhero helps us to avoid facing the effects of Sept. 11.
"Instead of repairing a battered self-image," Americans have become fixated "on the idea of superhuman invincibility . . . and I think it might be this concept that is leading to so many problems around the world."
By Tirdad DerakhshaniVia Philly.com
Quirks
What Does a Film Producer Do?
By Matty Simmons
By Matty Simmons
The producer of National Lampoon's 'Animal House' and the 'Vacation' movies. But what does a producer actually do? He attempts to explain...
The screenwriter, obviously, writes the screenplay.
The actors, of course, act in that screenplay.
And the director, without question, directs the whole thing.
But what does the producer do?
I will attempt to explain.
A film producer is the guy who, when a writer tells him about a good idea he's got for a screenplay, says, "That was done in 1938 by William Wyler. It costarred Fredric March and Loretta Young, with Claude Rains playing the black hat. But you know what? I think we could update it, if instead of making the leading lady a nun, we have her working in a casino in Nevada. We put George Clooney in the Fredric March role, and we make him an undercover agent for the CIA who has tracked a Russian agent to Las Vegas. Angelina Jolie would be great for the girl.
"They meet and fall in love, but he discovers that she's pregnant by the Russian agent. George has been licensed to kill this guy, who, incidentally, will be played by Jack Black, but Angelina begs George not to kill the father of her unborn child. In a tearstained scene at the Las Vegas airport, Angelina says goodbye to George and walks to the plane to join Jack Black for the trip back to Moscow. Our big ballad here. Maybe we get Elton John.
"George stops at the airport and pulls out a quarter-a quarter she gave him. He drops it in a slot machine. The place goes nuts-bells ringing and all that stuff. George has hit the $1 million jackpot! He collects his money in a single large suitcase. It's all in ones to make it more visual-this is a visual medium.
"He goes back to his hotel. He's still sick about losing Angelina. He takes the $1 million down to the hotel casino and puts the whole thing on No. 27, which was their number. We see the ball rolling around and around and around-endlessly, while the theme music, sung by Celine Dion, soars until every butt in every seat is up in the air. The ball drops into No. 29, then hiccups slightly and pops into 28, then, as Celine reaches a pitch so high that every dog within a mile of any movie house in America is howling with pain, the ball goes blip-and drops into 27."
By now, the writer, who is on the edge of his seat listening to the producer, is ecstatic. "And Angelina returns to him!" he screams.
"No," says the producer. "That's what would have happened in 1938. Instead we go for total realism. George meets two bimbos, played by Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, buys champagne for everybody in Las Vegas, and sends a telegram to Angelina, which she gets as she and Jack Black land in Moscow. It reads simply '#*%! you!' in Russian.
"As we go out on a big rock number by Bon Jovi, George is buying a training bra with diamond studs on it for Paris, and Lindsay gets the last big laugh of the movie by falling up a down escalator."
"I love it!" says the writer, leaping from his seat. He drives like a maniac back home and writes a first draft overnight, and the producer takes it to one of the studios.
There, a reader who occupies a small closet-like office in a building near the parking lot and drinks from a Star Wars mug reads it and condenses it to about a page and a half. Finally, because this is a prestigious producer, it wends its way through numerous assistants and production vice presidents, and, on the big day, the producer arrives to meet the head of the studio.
The head man, who hasn't read the screenplay or the condensed version but does know who has been suggested for the leading roles, because that's more important than the script, says, "George Clooney is in the dumper. Angelina's fine, and the kids like Jack Black. We want Brad Pitt for the guy and Ashton Kutcher for the girl's kid brother."
The producer doesn't remember that there is a kid brother, but he's on a roll, so why argue? He agrees to the casting.
"And," says the head of the studio, "we want Steven Spielberg to direct. We've already contacted him, and he says as long as you stay off the set, he'll do it."
The producer then negotiates his own deal, taking an exceedingly large piece of the pie, flies to Bimini, where his yacht has been moored for the winter, and for the next six months sails around the Greek islands with Britney Spears and her mother.
The picture is made and released, is a huge hit, and garners no Oscar nominations. The producer makes millions, leaves his yacht in Greece, flies back to America, and buys another one.
That's what a producer does.
At least, that's what I'm told.
October 24, 2008
October 23, 2008
October 22, 2008
October 21, 2008
The New Star Trek
All across internet, new production stills from Star Trek have turned up, such as the above shot from UGO. It's Chekov, Kirk, Scott, Bones, Sulu, and Uhura! Not pictured: Spock, Worf.
From JoBlo: Eric Bana, as the villainous tattooed Nero, plans an attack, possibly against Worf.
And from IMDB: Worf:
Via iwatchstuff
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