How did this get past me? It’s two episodes in now BTW.
Image from Salon
Salon’s Tom Shone asks
Prometheus: Why are academics so obsessed with Ridley Scott’s Alien and its sequels?
I cram The Alien quadrilogy into my Animation Studies class for a number of reasons.
1) Ridley Scott got double the budget because his storyboards were so good.
2) “It’s in the cut” – Ridley Scott achieved unachievable effects through smart planning and editing.
3) Aliens is mostly a masterpiece of combining effects: miniatures, rear projection, reverse photography, gigantic marionettes. Mostly.
4) Alien 3: from production clusterfuck to the dawning of David Fincher. Unfairly panned, brilliant if you look at representations of religion, gender, and sex. Bald Ripley.
5) Alien Resurrection: Joss Whedon doing the dead girl thing with Ripley, proto-Firefly if you pay attention to the smugglers, and pre-Amelie Jeunet with a robo waif. In my mind an apt parody, in everyone else’s a steaming pile with a cool grenade sequence. And yes, the “baby” could have been better designed.
As a group there’s just so many ideas: class, gender, the alien other, body horror / invasion, family, genre studies, film technology, design, corporatism, performance, and way, way more.
I’ve been doing a pee dance since they announced Prometheus and I can’t wait to see what Ridley will do now with 3D and CGI. Seriously, pee dance.
I ran into this article from the Atlantic while pretending that I was going to get out of bed.
On Thursday, Tunisian courts will hand down a verdict in the public prosecution of Nabil Karoui, chief of popular Tunisian broadcaster Nessma TV, for airing Satrapi’s film. The verdict will say a lot about the future of freedom of expression in the very country whose citizens kicked off the Arab Spring a year and a half ago.
It’s interesting that a movie that had already played in theatres is now considered to be “dangerous” and it points to how our climate has changed. I may rewatch Persepolis tonight…
I’ve been hooked on Pogo’s remixes of Disney films on his YouTube channel. I saw Wishery first but have gotten to like Bloom a lot more since it jumps between so many films. The inside of my head looks like this sometimes. Especially his T2 edit.
I had no idea Benjamin Franklin was a ladies man.
I was really taken by the short above by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the Gregory Brothers, and the ACLU. It does such a great job of using animation to demonstrate an individual’s rights to photograph the police in public spaces through a catchy song and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. This has been such a huge topic recently and I’m glad to hear that recently the Department of Justice has decided to explicitly say that the public has a right to record the police.
This has really increased my interest in Benjamin Franklin and has made me wonder how we could do something similar to illustrate Canadian laws and circumstances. The increasingly insane rhetoric from the Conservative party about Child pornography, Hitler, and format shifting makes me fear for the future of my country if these people are not opposed.
Now, I love Joss Whedon and will honestly read/watch/listen to anything he makes. ANYTHING. But I have a problem with how obsessed he is with the specific actors that he chose to play his characters. The recent fan-driven discussion around bringing back Firefly indicates how specific the actors are to the characters:
Step 2: Cancel Castle. Step 3: Cancel Homeland. Step 4: Generally destroy everybody’s careers. Step 5: Avoid Step 2.
Now, I love Joss’ loyalty to the actors that bring life to the characters that he creates but tying the character to a single actor kind of goes against the nature of acting and performance. One of the things that makes Shakespeare great is that it provides a litmus test for any aspiring actor because it forces them to own the performance rather than doing an impersonation of Lawrence Olivier.
But film and television are different because one actor often establishes an indexical relationship to the character to the point they become inextricable from the character. The Shatner/Kirk relationship is probably the best example of this and I’m sure that JJ Abrams was probably freaking out about finding. the. right. actor. Interestingly, the character of James Bond is the inverse of this, where many actors have stepped into the role that Sean Connery defined. It’s probably no surprise that I like Roger Moore and Daniel Craig because each brought a completely different and refreshing approach to the character.
So what gives Joss? While I love Nathan Fillion and the crew of Serenity, I’d hate to see the characters become frozen because they “belong” to someone. Isn’t there something interesting to be gained in having different actors step into Mal’s shoes?
On April 26th I eagerly attended a Vancouver SIGGRAPH presentation by Ken McGaugh on Double Negative’s creature work in Disney’s John Carter. It was great to hear about how Double Negative worked with director Andrew Stanton to figure out how the Thark performances were going to be done. Stanton chose Double Negative, who isn’t known for creature work, because it was he was also learning how to make a live action film and that they could collaborate by finding out what questions they needed to answer first.
One significant hurdle is figuring out what your framing is going to be when dealing with the height differential of the nine foot tall Tharks and the six foot tall John. McGaugh indicated that eyelines were particularly troublesome and that they tried to have the actors present as much as possible. Also, the team had to figure out how to handle the gestures and mannerisms of the four-armed Tharks. It was really impressive to see the reference footage they filmed of themselves with different people playing the arms. The production team dubbed these “Thark pornos” and they’re actually quite spectacular and it’s a great reminder that all animation starts with researching the physical world.
I hate to admit that I’d never heard of Peter Stephan Jungk’s book Perfect American before I read the about Philip Glass doing a stage production of the book.
Michael Barrier has some real issues with the book, but it seems like it’d be an interesting read to get an idea of the popular myths surrounding Walt.
Image via Movieline
Wow, so much cool Avengers stuff in the last week. I’m glad that it’s been revealed that Kevin Feige is behind the Avengers Initiative storyline. Interviews with him:
Wired
Movieline
SuperHeroHype
Cinema Blend
Joss Whedon Interviews:
Wired
Salon
Movies Online
Wired loves the Hulk and has video on how it was done.
I’m glad to know who is the overall Marvel universe builder now. That was bugging me for a while. DC, are you paying attention?
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