Immortals: visual effects spectacular epic
Immortals is a "2011 3D action-adventure fantasy film directed by Tarsem Singh and starring Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto, and Mickey Rourke. The film was previously named Dawn of War and War of the Gods before being officially named Immortals and is loosely based on the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and the Titanomachy."
(movieclipsTRAILERS, 17 August 2011, YouTube)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Presentation about Ray Harryhausen at UK Canterbury Anifest 2012
"Ray Harryhausen is known as the godfather of stop motion animation, having worked on classic films such as Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans and Sinbad. Ray Harryhausen stands as a beacon to today’s fantasy filmmakers as the creator who inspired directors such as George Lucas, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg.
As Ray can no longer attend events, this talk will be given by Tony Dalton, curator of the Ray Harryhausen collection and co-author of Ray’s books about his film work. Tony Dalton will be bringing a selection of Ray’s models to the talk."
(The Marlowe Theatre, UK)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Jean Cocteau: la Belle et la Bête
"La lumière brillante et surnaturelle qui avait dominé toute la scène du château (flamme des chandeliers, feu, reflets étincelants de l’argenterie) s’estompe pour laisser la place à la lumière naturelle du jour [plan 9] [9]. Ces rayons lumineux rappellent ceux des dernières gravures de la Belle au vois dormant. D’autant plus que cette lumière naturelle n’est pas légitimée par la présence d’une fenêtre, comme c’est le cas chez Doré. C’est une lumière naturelle, la lumière du jour, mais elle semble toujours éclairer le personnage de manière surnaturelle : comment la lumière extérieure peut-elle pénétrer à l’intérieur sans la présence d’aucune fenêtre ? Les flambeaux s’éteignent un à un, le personnage traverse un grand pan de lumière blanche, la porte se referme toute seule, l’escalier apparaît en plongée : la scène semble se rejouer à l’envers, ce qui souligne la structure circulaire et la clôture de la séquence, mais aussi l’influence de l’œuvre de Gustave Doré. Le dialogue des contes et des illustrations se poursuit jusqu’à la dernière image de la séquence puisqu’elle se termine sur les ronces qui envahissent l’escalier du château de la Bête, comme celles qui envahissent les gravures du château de la Belle au bois dormant."
(Estelle Plaisant Soler, 26 juin 2006)
Fig.1 Jean Cocteau (1946). "la Belle et la Bête"
2). PDF of 100 Cult Films (Screen Guides).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
What Dreams May Come: imagining a painted world through vfx
"Ward's 'What Dreams May Come,' starring Robin Williams was nominated for production design in addition to winning an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The film, tells an epic love story of soul mates separated by death. The story would inspire Ward to envision the afterlife as a painted world, incorporating state-of-the-art, adapted, and entirely new visual effects technologies in an original, fully articulated, filmic view of imagined realms that may await us after death."
(Saville Productions)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Joshua Nimoy: representing digital culture in film
"I take representing digital culture in film very seriously in lieu of having grown up in a world of very badly researched user interface greeble. I cringed during the part in Hackers (1995) when a screen saver with extruded 'equations' is used to signify that the hacker has reached some sort of neural flow or ambiguous destination. I cringed for Swordfish and Jurassic Park as well. I cheered when Trinity in The Matrix used nmap and ssh (and so did you). Then I cringed again when I saw that inevitably, Hollywood had decided that nmap was the thing to use for all its hacker scenes (see Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4, Girl with Dragon Tattoo, The Listening, 13: Game of Death, Battle Royale, Broken Saints, and on and on). In Tron, the hacker was not supposed to be snooping around on a network; he was supposed to kill a process. So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance -- splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie. I actually do use emacs irl, and although I do not subscribe to alt.religion.emacs, I think that's all incredibly relevant to the world of Tron."
(Joshua T. Nimoy)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
