Contour Reality Capture Used in Benjamin Button
I’ve been wondering how David Fincher placed Brad Pitt’s face on different actors in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. A system called Contour Reality Capture was used to capture facial expressions, convert them into 3D and place them on the face of other actors. For more information have a look at How Contour Reality Capture Works.
Last summer’s The Incredible Hulk also used Contour Reality Capture on Ed Norton for character animation of the CGI Hulk used in the movie.
Stumble It!Posted in Movies at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
Benjamin Button and Final Cut Studio
Director David Fincher made The Curious Case of Benjamin Button using a tapeless HD workflow and Final Cut Studio. I love these articles about the filmmaking process.
Posted in Movies and OS X Software and Technology at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
AMC Theatres have terrible projection
Why do I have to visit a film festival or a home theatre to watch a movie projected properly? I’m sick of going to AMC Theatres and paying a premium for movies that are poorly projected.
AMC Kennedy Commons 20 is consistently bad when it comes to poor projection and they have the most expensive ticket prices in the city at $12.50 (CDN)! Last year I watched No Country For Old Men and their theatre and the experience was awful. The entire length of the film was slightly out of focus, projected on a five degree angle and had a bright flicker all the way through. One patron stood up and yelled that he was getting his money back.
I left the theatre to find a manager and complained about the projection as well. He gave me a couple of free passes and admitted that there was a problem with the projector. Instead of canceling the screenings until the projector could be fixed AMC just carried on like everything was fine and probably figured that the stupid public would never notice.
Yesterday I watched Valkyrie at AMC Whitby 24. The entire freaking movie was out of focus! What the hell is wrong with AMC? What’s wrong with the audience that they put up with this crap?
Disappearing Projectionists
Part of the problem is that most movie houses aren’t using projectionists anymore. According to Torontoist, AMC’s newest theatre at Yonge and Dundas has 24 screens with more people running the concession stand than the projectors:
Instead of projectionists, there are one or two non-union workers overseeing all 24 screens from a single console; their duties are essentially limited to pressing a “play” button and being aware of any error messages that might pop up.
To be fair to AMC, most movie theatres are guilty of poor projection and sound. I don’t know how many out of focus documentary films I’ve watched at the Bloor Theatre. They have a speaker on the east wall that has been crackling for the last 3 years as well. Maybe I should complain more but I don’t think the theatre owners care.
First Run Films
Why should I pay $12.50 to watch a film and another $10 for popcorn when I can watch a movie in Blu-Ray at home that has more clarity than anything I’ve seen in any movie theatre to date? First run films. I like to see movies when they are first released and unfortunately that means lousy projection at the cineplex. You might think that digital projection is the answer but read You Pay Thirteen Bucks, And What Do You Get?
I suppose I could download the screeners that are floating around on the BitTorrent sites but I prefer quality over crap. Most of the DivX movies that are “free” suffer from really poor quality, lack of surround sound and audio drift. I can’t watch a movie that sounds like a poorly dubbed marshall arts movie. And not to sound self-righteous but there is also the whole piracy thing. If people continue to steal movies the industry will continue to suffer but that’s another rant.
Posted in Home Theatre and Movies at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Directed by David Fincher.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an epic film that tells the story of a man that ages backwards. Benjamin is born into the body of an 80-yearl-old man that grows up to become a young man, a boy, then a baby before he dies. Along the way he makes friends, finds love and experiences “the joys of life and the sadness of death”.
Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) spent years trying to figure how to make this film work. The computer animation and the special effects industry have matured to the point that this incredibly ambitious tale can work as a film. Previously it was a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Love him or hate him, Brad Pitt does an exceptional job at playing the lead character of Benjamin Button. The makeup and CGI (computer generated images) that transform him into a little old man or a teenager are miraculous.
Cate Blanchett is always perfect but it was Tilda Swinton that surprised me in her role as a love interest to Pitt’s character. I thought she had one of the best performances in the film.
David Fincher does a first rate job of creating an incredibly rich and detailed experience that is pure movie magic. A DVD release with a director’s commentary is sure to be fascinating.
I wondered if the film really needed to be almost 3 hours (166 minutes). It does. It never drags and the long setup is worth the pay off in the second half.
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button needs time to soak in. You’ll find yourself reflecting on your own life, assessing the different stages you’ve experienced so far — the birth of your children, parenting, the loss of your mother or father, your relationships, friends and maybe more.
It’s hard for me to believe that on this day, 8 years ago, my mother passed away. Time can pass by so quickly. In a weird sort of way this film is a timely reminder but also a distraction that makes me enjoy it even more.
½
Films are rated from 1 to 4 stars.
Posted in Movie Reviews at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
Software I Paid For But No Longer Use
I liked Alex Payne’s post titled Software I Paid For But No Longer Use that it got me thinking about some of the software I paid for and no longer use.
David Watanabe’s P2P client software is nicely designed but BitTorrents have replaced peer-to-peer downloads for me. I use Watanabe’s Xtorrent software which is also great.
I love Panic’s shockingly good software but the idea of one window web development software just doesn’t work for me. I prefer to use multiple windows with Transmit, BBEdit and Safari to code my sites.
ecto is a blog editor that seemed like a good idea at the time but then Movable Type improved their editing features with version 4. I haven’t used ecto in over a year.
Now owned by Adobe, my old copy of Fireworks MX (version 6) hasn’t been fired up in over two years. I don’t use it to create animated GIFs or slice up PSD files any more. I code everything by hand and Photoshop CS3 handles all of my GIF and JPEG optimization.
I stopped upgrading StuffIt’s file compression software at version 9. It is now up to version 12. With Terabyte hard drives and zip file compression built-in to OS X, Stuffit has become obsolete on my desktop.
Posted in OS X Software at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)
Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
Wow! The Wall Street Journal is running a piece on a Russian professor named Igor Panarin who is predicting the end of the U.S. Imagine a world where Michigan and North Dakota become a part of Canada. Panarin says, “there’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur.” Let’s hope he’s wrong.
Posted in News at 1:21 AM | Comments (0)
Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Directed by Danny Boyle.
Slumdog Millionaire was the winner of the audience award at TIFF, has four Golden Globe nominations and it’s on just about everyone’s top ten list for best film of the year. It’s being called a masterpiece by more than one critic and it just may be the most entertaining film of the year.
Jamal, an orphan from Mumbai’s slums ends up on India’s version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire and becomes a national hero when he answers every question on the show correctly, round after round. How can an educated kid, a slumdog, know all the answers? If you haven’t seen the film, I suggest you stop reading now.
The game show is a great narrative device for telling Jamal’s story. Through a series of flashbacks we find out why Jamal is able to answer each question. Each flashback builds upon the previous one in chronological order. Part of me thought that Jamal was going to be a Verbal Kint type of character (Usual Suspects) that cons his way into winning the top prize. I love that you never quite know how the film is going to turn until the last question.
Some films tend to drag but this one moves along at quite a clip. Great editing, beautiful cinematography and expert storytelling immerse you in the world of Slumdog Millionaire. I’ve never been to India but I feel that I’ve experienced on some level before the film ends. This is a great feel-good movie that ends up being the fastest 120 minutes I’ve ever watched.
Slumdog Millionaire is easily one of the best films of the year.
Films are rated from 1 to 4 stars.
Slumdog Millionaire - Official Site
Posted in Movie Reviews at 8:38 PM | Comments (0)
Worst movies of 2008
Here are my top 5 worst movies of the year:
The Love Guru (2008). I’ll be surprised if Mike Myers makes another comedy after watching this bomb.
Hell Ride (2008). No. Plot. Whatsoever.
Eagle Eye (2008). I had no intention of seeing this but a couple of other guys were going to the theatre so I tagged along. Big mistake. This movie is a bad rip off of Enemy of the State and Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Igor (2008). Great visuals but not Pixar. The story was boring and the dialogue was lifeless. This was easily the weakest family movie of the year for me.
Genova (2008). I saw this at TIFF and wrote a review a few months back. I found Michael Winterbottom’s film to be the biggest disappointment of the festival for me.
Some of these movies are out on DVD now. My advice is to avoid them if you can.
Posted in Movie Reviews at 8:43 PM | Comments (0)
Chinese Democracy
Album review by Drew Kerr.
With all of the original GNR members long since departed (and plenty of acrimony between the two camps still lingering) the group now is pretty much the Axl Rose Project. An apt equivalent is that Rose is to GNR what Trent Reznor is to Nine Inch Nails — all aspects of the sound and vision of the band begin and end with these individuals. This certainly suits Rose’s narcissistic personality. Interestingly, Rose has been a Reznor fans for years (there are definite NIN influences all over Chinese Democracy) and it’s almost as if the evolution of GNR into an autocratic dictatorship (and no longer, ahem, a democracy) became a self-fulfilling prophecy as soon as the “classic” GNR lineup began to fracture in the early 90’s.
Initial attempts at getting the album proved frustrating, although in an amusing way. A couple of weeks before the official release date the “final retail” version started showing up on file sharing sites. I did plan on buying the CD but my curiosity couldn’t wait any longer and the first few attempts at downloading the album resulted in mp3s where the first track played fine and followed with the rest of the songs “Rickrolling” me about 20 seconds in. Wonderful.
After getting hold of a listenable version it quickly became clear as to some of the reasons for the album’s delay. There are so many nuances and layers to each song that one can envision Axl the perfectionist agonizing over the most minute of details. There is a lot going on here sonically - some might (and have) call it over-production. To fully grasp the complete scope one needs to strap on a good pair of headphones, where the jigsaw arrangements of multi-layered guitars and orchestral flourishes work on most levels. Nearly everything has an epic feel to it. Yes, it’s excessive (would we expect anything less from Rose?)…but it’s brilliant.
The album is bookended by the two strongest songs. The first track (“Chinese Democracy”) is probably the most straightforward rock tune, anchored by a buzzsaw guitar riff and Axl’s unique vocal style (including double layered vocals sung at different octaves). The closing song (“Prostitute”) kicks along on a hip-hop drumbeat and follows a quiet-loud dynamic that eventually dissolves into the last 90 seconds of the track, a beautiful instrumental section that brings the album to a fitting conclusion. It may be the best thing Rose has ever recorded. Other standout tracks include “Better”, “Madagascar” and “Catcher In The Rye”. “Scraped”, “Shackler’s Revenge” and “Riad N’ The Bedouins” showcase Guns at their most aggressive and possibly best illustrates the difference between the old and the new GNR. Techno and industrial elements share space with heavily processed guitar sounds that Slash would never have gone anywhere near. “Street Of Dreams” and “This I Love” follow in the tradition of piano-driven GNR ballads like “November Rain”, with Axl’s Elton John and Freddie Mercury influences on full display. Overall there isn’t one truly bad song in the bunch, which isn’t too much to ask considering how long it took to release this. A curious oddity: Rose gives possibly the oddest vocal delivery of a line I’ve ever heard at :37 of the song “Sorry”, where he affects a foreign accent for some reason.
Chinese Democracy was not worth waiting almost 15 years for (no album is) but it’s probably the next best thing. So much has changed on the music landscape over that time and this album might have been immediately rendered irrelevant or obsolete due to the slow, painful birthing process. But just as the polished Use Your Illusion albums were a forward step from the gritty Appetite For Destruction, so too does this feel like the next logical step in the band’s evolution. The music sounds fresh, exciting and anything but dated.
Posted in Music at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
Christmas Shopping
Don’t you love it when your spouse
- goes shopping for herself just two days before Christmas
- purchases the item you picked up for her the day before
- complains that all she wants for Christmas is a replacement battery for her cellphone.
What do you think would happen if I gave my wife a cellphone battery for Christmas? You can’t win. Merry Christmas.
Posted in Observations at 12:15 PM | Comments (3)
Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes
You can watch Jon Ronson’s documentary film Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes on Google Video. Sounds like an interesting film to check out.
More4 on the film:
Stanley Kubrick’s films were landmark events - majestic, memorable and richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What on earth was he doing?
Posted in Movies at 6:46 PM | Comments (1)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Directed by Werner Herzog.
When I learned that the Hollywood film Rescue Dawn (2006) was based on the documentary film Little Dieter Needs to Fly, I had to see it.
Dieter Dengler is a true survivor. During World War II he survived the Allied bombings and postwar poverty in Germany. He was beaten regularly as he apprenticed to be a blacksmith but he really wanted to be a pilot.
He emigrated to the US and peeled potatoes in the US Air Force until he got the chance to fly for the Navy. In 1966 during the Viet Nam war he was shot down over Laos and became a prisoner of war. Down to 85 pounds, he managed to escape the POW camp, endure monsoons, leeches, and angry villagers with machetes until he was rescued.
Dengler took an early retirement from the Armed Forces and became a civilian test pilot. He survived another 4 crashes. Death didn’t want him is how Herzog explains it with his unique voiceover narration and a quote from Reveleation to set the tone for the film.
Through a series of interviews, archival footage and reenactments, Dieter tells the story of his fascinating life. Along the way we begin to understand how Dieter is haunted by his past.
Herzong captures the story of Dieter Dengler’s life brilliantly in this documentary and I think you’ll find that it is a better film than Rescue Dawn.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
