Interesting Duracell Ad

This is an interesting television commercial featuring thousands of rendered bunnies. The animation was directed by French talent Pleix, who has established himself by directing videos for both Basement Jaxx and Groove Armada.

Augmented Sculpture

 Lichtfront

Tokyo Glow

This is an epic timelapse that I would hang myself for not reblogging.
tokyoglow-low from Nathan Johnston on Vimeo.

Anyone can be a Film Maker

Might this be the start of something new where film buffs pay good money to watch something created by the (real life) Gorillaz. I doubt it. One day, we could take advantage of them for financial gain.

Moon (2009)

Spoiler Alert!!

I just finished watching Duncan Jones' first movie: Moon.
The movie follows the story of an isolated engineer who works in the Helium mines on the far side of the moon. His work seems somewhat typical and our protagonist, Sam Bell, follows a very intense routine of taking a rover to mining vehicles and collecting the fruits of the operation's labor.

The film has a very unique set with tips of the hat to several other science fiction pieces. 

There are also quite a few themes; most notable of them include isolation, artificial intelligence and the ethics of practicing human cloning.


Although one may immediately think back to Kubrick's masterpiece 2001 as to how isolation in space and AI work. This film was a delightfully creative change from what has become a staple for almost 40 years.  The costarring Artificial Intelligence named Gerty (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) is as helpful as can be, and often repeats one of it's primary directives: "I'm only here to help you".  The helpful AI is actually a pretty functional plot device and helps the story progress.
The reversal occurs when we finally learn that Sam (Sam Rockwell) is a clone and that he's is part of a process which is ongoing. With this knowledge he begins to question the surrounding and actually learns from Gerty that he is a clone. He is also given a life expectancy of three years after witnessing recordings from previous missions.

At first it feels like the film will be a schizophrenic thriller a la Fight Club propagated by the theme of isolation, but it evolved to challenge concepts involved with human cloning. Essentially, Lunar - the company running the joint - wants a cheap employment base. They're also the furthest mine located from human civilization. With this trump card they've essentially farmed a population of employees all sharing the same back story, the same interests, the same projects (Sam has a model he works on, which was started before he got there), and even the same family which is long dead.

The clones are suspended in this state of ignorance by a conspiracy that the communications satellite is down.

However, things change once there are two clones on the base simultaneously.
Their teamwork is unique also as neither of them have ever communicated with another human being, only Gerty. When the Lunar company relizes the older Sam has crashed a rover, Gerty wakes up a new clone and a team from Earth is sent to repair the damaged equipment.
The new Sam disobeys Gerty's insistence on not leaving the base and finds the wreck with the old Sam still alive. He brings him back.

As the old Sam gets older and older his health diminishes and the pair decide to leave him in the wreck for the rescue crew to find. At the same time the new Sam convinces Gerty to wake a new clone up.
The new Sam leaves the clone, and reboots Gerty erasing the memory banks and leaves for Earth after he reprograms a mobilized piece of mining equipment to collide with one of the communications jamming towers.
The story ends with everything on the Lunar base being as it was at the onset of the film and radio transmissions over the image of the shuttle carrying the new Sam returning to Earth.

This is an amazing movie which evokes several concepts of the perils of our times, the foremost being energy management on Earth and how far we will go to maintain it. It is also dark in illuminating how we collectively view human life and how a company - a company evidently managing all the planets energy - can so easily make this sacrifice.

The imagery of the dark side of the moon and a lunar base usually containing all but one astronaut is accompanied by a chilling score by Clint Mansell. A truly remarkable first film.

If you live in Toronto and want to view it on BD, good luck because it has literally sold out EVERYWHERE. This just shows you what a meager budget of $5 million can achieve.

Lance's T-Shirt

I just noticed something in Pulp Fiction which has no-doubt been noticed by countless others.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that Tarantino included this shirt in the wardrobe of Lance, the drug dealer aptly played by Eric Stoltz. What's more neat is that Tarantino was quoted last fall showing interest in the racing genre as a full length picture. Which he sort of did with Death Proof in twenty odd-seven.

Would it not have been super if he challenged the story of Speed Racer instead? When that early trailer came out I was sure there would be some neat brain-Mach 5 interface included in the plot. But oh no. Had to stay PG...
Joel Silver learns from his mistakes though...

Negative Avatar Press

I feel, with many large releases that garner much attention from the Internet crowd - the fanboys, the trolls, the 12 year old boys - will always suffer reviews which are motivated by ego. Speed Racer was too colorful. Dark Knight was too dark. Bad press gets attention when a movie has this much publicity.

"I want to be different, not objective" feels like the mantra for many journalists reviewing this movie.


- Posted using my iPhone

M. Bay and Me

I respect this charismatic persona, but it's almost a giant reminder than it's not at all about the director sometimes. Sometimes it's what the people want and the well-educated snobs (I apologize for generalizing so much) will often be afraid of creating just that.

Bay doesn't seem concerned, what with his lucky streak, but I think of Spielberg and Close Encounters. Not a new idea. Poorly executed, though dramatic, very predictable. It was just a recycled story with recycled characters and concepts from stories 30 years old at the time. Aliens come. They leave. Duh. But the people wanted to see it with the intense production value.

Transformers is the same. Some cartoon a 20-something Bay enjoyed watching. Old characters, unoriginal story, but the people gobble it up.

I'm not defending the notion that originality is dead, but you must acknowledge that some films do better without it.

OK, so I just found out the tagline on IMDB for Kill Bill is "In the year 2003, Uma Thurman will kill Bill".

It's an interesting tag not only because of what recently happened in the news with the very talented David Carradine taking his life in Thailand, 6 years later.
But also because it goes between an actors name and a characters name.
Quentin associated Uma with the revenge motive, while Bill... Well Bill had to justify his actions or try to.
But it wasn't David doing the justifying. It was Bill. Uma was Beatrix, but David wasn't Bill?

This makes sense because of how Quentin consistently views Evil Forces in his work. As necessity, but still dehumanizing.

Oh, and I guess because they had to keep Uma's characters name secret until the last scene.

Why Whedon Wrules

Ok, just a very important point to make about Joss Whedon's success with the Firefly series and also with his more recent work with NPH.

Mal's crew and the entire universe took place in a time frame that is only extended from ours. There is no gamble on intelligence in space, there is only the inevitable point to work with that 'Humans will continue to change'

This, has always been, our best feature. We are evolving right in front of our eyes and compared to Star Wars or any other popular franchise it rules out things we have little chance of accomplishing and it really exaggerates what technology we have today.

River is a super hero. We have grown up in a society that would like to see the super hero, and would do many things for it.

Including taking away that super hero's rights and freedoms to accomplish it.

The show just asks these rhetorical questions of the audience. It questions the morallity of the human race by staying focused on just one species. No BORG here to write for. This is why it's good. And this is why the fans are so focused on it.

This point can be further extended to his later work with Dr. Horrible. No super powers. Nothing that we don't make ourselves. No free rides.

This really connects to the modern human experience. Without even really drawing the focus to that fact. It just points out the obvious to the newer generation.

In the background it also really illuminates the fact that the human decisions being made are still human. The technology involved changes the game a bit, but the human decisions are always flawed in some way, Dr. Horrible's inventions are his undoing.

A favorite movie scene

Ok, so I'm rewatching Pulp Fiction. This is probably in my Top 5 list of movies.
I want to talk about the scene with Mia and Vincent Vega. When they get to the restaurant. The swoop that follows Vincent as he makes his entrance.


Incidentally catches the entire elaborate set and hundreds of stand ins.
Anyway, the point Mia makes during that bit of dialogue is that human communication through silence is equally as good as language. Especially for the more subtle forms of communication. When we're trying to communicate interest or love - as she was with Vincent.

She also argues that making conversation for the sake of avoiding silence is redundant.
This are things that I believe in.
I'm happy a movie as popular as Pulp Fiction takes the time to point this out.

Coraline

This was a delayed preview to the movie Coraline.
I was hesitant to write this because I was lazy and I wanted to see how it did in the box office this weekend - I'm happy to announce that it did quite well.

the reception has been quite warm - the movie is sitting at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and Ebert gave it 3 stars.

I'd like to briefly go over the production of this movie and some of the details of this process that stick out to me.
We all know that Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman are the forces at work here, but how did they make 'Coraline'?.
The production technique employed in this movie was stop motion animation. Think Nightmare Before Christmas or Wallace and Grommet.

I need to point out it has been about a solid decade since a real feature presentation done using this medium. Digital innovations in cinema led Disney to jump on the Elfman/Selick/Burton wagon of Nightmare. The camera moves and the animation really couldn't have been imagined before the tech exististed.

Now, let's see where 15 years of technological leaps and bounds in the most profitable industry have led us.
First of all, number one box office movie this weekend was a chick flick with an all star cast that cost 30 million to film - Just Not That Into You. Coraline cost about 70 million.

The extra money went into the right places, the filming was perfect. The DP lit everything perfect. Some scenes really take your breath away.

Direction from Selick and having Gaiman on set really made sure that this was as true to the story as could be imaged.

But the most impressive part of this production was Laika Animation Studio's devotion to making the entire presentation in 3D. Sadly the movie could only be shown in about 1200 theaters that support RealD 3D across the continent. Despite these minor set backs the movie has earned about 16 million so far.

To produce this movie, the stage was divided by curtain into about 50 or so sections. Each section was filming a different part of the set.

the Other World garden scene is perhaps the second most jaw-dropping.
This set involved the creation of few thousand prop flowers. All of which lit up. This is no digital animation trick, these are props and lighting, together in a most organic and beautiful marriage.


Here is a prop artist working on the set of the Other World garden scene.

Words cannot really express how deeply moving the imagry is in this film, it has a tremendous deal of variation.
I look forward to seeing this movie again and providing a more illuminating review.
The only thing that I feel that I can comment on is that RealD 3D involves the glasses. The glasses filter alot of light and so the screen does look incredibly dark. This is good for Coraline. It makes it one of the best productions in this medium ever, but I doubt very much that this summer's release from Pixar Studio's titled 'UP' will be able to deliver on such an intangible factor. In either case, I hope I can be confident in parting with these words: People want 3D - they will get what they want, just like they always do. Technology will provide for us. The movie Coraline is a shinning example of how far things can come over time.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth was Quiet and All the Cars Stopped Working.

This is the working title for this movie, but it was later renamed to be closer to a 1951 cult classic.

I can say I was itching for the movie to get better at about the halfway point. Then the guy next to me looked at the time on his phone. The guys behind me started dissing Smith during his big solo and I could hear other people approving that this was a bit much for a 6 story tall IMAX screen.

The parts with Gort are really great, here is a part of the story that's completely CG and has very few human elements.
Gort's big numbers are:

1) The first encounter he goes ballistic after they shoot the Keannu Placenta - gross, eh?

2) They then try to get some drone aircraft and sidewinder-ify into Gort.
Gort blows all their shit up.

3) The put the giant fucking Gort in a giant fucking box.
Problem solved right? He's gonna have to get through the box to start fucking shit up so maybe they'll get enough warning...I dunno what these guys are thinking, but something logical should follow, right?

4) They move Gort to a undisclosed place and try and drill into his head.
The bit breaks and the angry general character in charge angrily orders a new one put on.

5) Gort turns into nanomachines, like tonnes and starts increasing his PPM in the atmosphere by consuming metallic items in the way, like that truck in the trailer. Or the stadium.

Gort has been my all time favorite robot for a while. Like...I'll have to make a list of my top 10 robots. Gort from the 1951 classic has always been a fucking tribute. The "special effect" of that day and age were tall boots and a 7'7" actor.
The new guy seemed to be what I had pretty much imagined from the get go, so I'd have to say I'm not that upset with it.

Then you have the Connelly factor. The only person who's acting pretty well to the phenomenon of life visiting Earth. The Cleese character is shitting himself with excitement. The Secretary of Defence/The World is about the last thing you would expect... she's acting like a bird with a busted wing that's all worried. Only it's not busted that badly, the bird is just a dumb bird. So, not a fan of the characters from Earth other than Connelly.

In the scene avec Cleese, nearly a third of the screen time is occupied by the introduction sequence involving Klaatu solving a math equation or some crap.
Ok, so their advance sure I guess that makes sense with the slightly predictable futuristic idea of a nanomachine gort.

But here's a real beef. There is an origin story that takes the audience by storm in the very beginning.
"Let's flex the sound system with a blizzard effect" said the producer after filming, "test audience is not happy"

Keanu was a 1928 arctic explorer before he transformed into Klaatu.
What? What the fuck, if one man can be... absorbed by the awesome-race why can't all humans?

Kind of a hole-ridden flick, but all and all it was a good time. Keanu was pretty awesome - he is really meant to be the one human that does not quite fit. He's always the "one" in every project he does, and I love him for it. Good work on his part I think. Good work is not the same as saying, "Killer performance" or "Oscar worthy" but for a career actor who takes it very seriously I think the end product speaks for itself. And that's why I went and saw it.

Merry Christmas, Christmas, Christmas and Another

A review of a non-memorable movie.

I have checked out the new Vince Vaughn picture. You see internet dwellers, I was afraid he had dried up and was no longer in the business we call show, but alas he's breathing and was walking just 2 weeks ago down the red carpet to the premier of his new film Four Christmases.

Wait John, Vince isn't the only guy in this picture. But he's on screen most of the time.
He's having a go with his wife, she's pushing for a committed marriage, but he's returning with "Kids suck balls, I don't want any! And marriage? Fahgettabotit"
That's Vince Vaughn's character and attitude for most of the movie.

Till Jon Voight shows up and smacks some sense into him and gets the Christmas spirit working properly.

Halfway through this movie you realize the jokes have stopped.
This is a terrible realization because it makes going home like a very appealing idea, but I already paid at the box office and have my 5 dollar soda. I'll stay.
All star cast - they must be taking a paycut all being in front of the camera.
Ebert gave it two stars but complained that both Tim McGraw (Vince's brother)and Dwight Yoakam (Pastor Phil) aren't singing. I didn't know Yoakam was an accomplished singer. I only know him as "I'm Raoul" from Panic Room where a terrified Jodi Foster barricaded herself and her daughter in a steel box and as Doc Miles from Crank.
I liked both flicks, thought he was a good actor and I've been excited to see where this spunky, grey-haired Pollack was going to go next.
He had maybe 6 lines.
OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration but I was sad to not see him as more.
1 star, two thumbs down and Tim McGraw, bro sorry to say, but this is the most appropriate time to end your acting career. Stop giving Hollywood these bad ideas about cage fighting family Christmases. It's scary and it should be in a depressing country song rather than a million dollar picture.

Currently Four Christmases is number 1 in the box office and has grossed $69.4 million.

Synaptic Brain Scan

So, I have watched The Island (Dir. M. Bay) and I can say it is a good movie that I haven't been bored with.
I enjoy the visuals and I can relate to Michael Bay in that the visual element of the film seems to be the best tool used to communicate the story.
Dialogue is ok, and it seems that Bay isn't concerned on nailing any performances that will make you gasp.


The point really quickly is that Bay uses the camera as an evolved tool to help tell the story. Instead of capturing 100 takes of Scarlett Johansson screaming 'Run', Bay is concerned with things like...what colors do I want to make this picture consume.
In The Island we see plenty of yellows and greens, we notice a super big change in the imagery as soon as Merrick's plot is revealed.

Do you remember the Matrix? Do you remember the difference between scenes in the 'real world' and scenes in the Matrix? Matrix filming was all done with the addition of a Green filter.
These are things that were tried in like... Metropolis that we're just catching up with. Bay is a picture oriented director, that's the point I guess I'm making.


I just wanted to talk about a particular scene from The Island where crazy Merrick is using those 'nano-bots' to scan Lincoln's brain. I want to remark on the really wide shot that was used to zoom in from behind Merrick's back right onto Lincoln's face.
This is such a fucking awesome shot. Do they rail the camera closer? I think not. This is all done with a single optic - an incredible zoom lens.

Everytime though I am astounded by the level of focus.
Bay relentlessly reminds us on his commentary track included on the DVD that it is not a CGI manipulation.
Anyway, I love it and this is Hollywood Evolution.