Owsler’s Neighborhood

                Since Charles Dickens' first public reading of 'A Christmas Carol' in 1853, his novella about the redemption of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge has been dramatized on stage, records, radio, television, film and even opera. In movies, where a silent version first hit the screen in 1901, it has been told in nearly every format, from live-action to Muppetry to computer-animation, and its lamentable hero has been played by everyone from Lionel Barrymore to Bill Murray and Yosemite Sam.

The question, as 'Disney's A Christmas Carol' flies into theaters, is not whether you want to see it again; history tells us you do. But how badly do you want to see it in motion capture animation, the process that director Robert Zemeckis' used on his last two films, 'Beowulf' and 'The Polar Express?'

The answer here is badly, very badly indeed.

I wasn't blown away by the stories told in the first two films, but the imagery was breath-taking. Motion capture is one of the most exciting innovations in modern movies, especially when shown in 3D in IMAX theaters where I saw 'Beowulf' and 'The Polar Express' and where I will see 'A Christmas Carol.' (The movie will also be shown in both 3D and flat versions around the country.)

From the stunning trailers for 'Carol,' it seems clear that Zemeckis has worked the kinks out of his motion capture process, by which actors' movements are digitally caught and projected onto 3D computer models. 'The Polar Express' had an almost experimental clumsiness about it, especially in the neither-realistic-nor-cartoonish faces of the characters, and the violence in 'Beowulf' was off-putting in its excess.


With 'A Christmas Carol,' the process and story seem meant for each other, and former Grinch Jim Carrey is meant for both of them. Carrey, the most gifted physical actor of his generation, plays not only Scrooge but the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future and three other roles. You may not recognize him in each or any of those parts, but the performances are his, as are those of Gary Oldman (Bob Cratchit, Jacob Marley and Tiny Tim) and Bob Hoskins (Mr. Fezziwig).

The advantage of motion-capture over Pixar-styled computer animation is the weight and dimension of the characters. They appear as cartoon figures but because the computer images are laid over live performances, the movements have a photo realism that CGI doesn't. And the added appeal of 3D is not having objects thrown in your face but of being drawn directly into the scenes with the characters.

Tiny Tim, see you this weekend.





Hugh Jackman Vs. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots    
               
(latinoreview.com)               Hugh Jackman Vs. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Hugh Jackman is set to star in a movie called Real Steel where he plays a boxer who wants one last chance at redemption in a world now occupied by robot fighters.

SciFi has more:

In a world where robot boxing has replaced the human version, Jackman would play a Rocky-esque character looking for one last shot. "Hugh Jackman plays a former boxer who can therefore no longer do the only thing he was ever good at and has to make his way in this new world," Levy said in an exclusive interview Tuesday in Los Angeles, where he was promoting the DVD/Blu-ray release of his Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. "It's faithful to the story in that that story was very much about a down-on-his-luck, slightly desperate journeyman who works in this robot boxing sport and who is desperately needing redemption and one last shot. The movie is more Rocky than Transformers."

Levy has not cast the main character's son yet but has a good idea about the robots. "They are most definitely not Transformers, not Terminators, definitely not WALL-Es, either," Levy said. "Unlike a lot of these others, these are human-built, human-scale fighting machines. They are built for human spectacle. People in this movie have gotten bored with human carnage and human violence. So in the quest for more, more, more, this sport has evolved to this."




Systems 'GO' for Stop-Motion Animation: Renaissance Made Possible by Digital Tools

(variety.com)                While the animation industry carefully watches the fate of Disney's hand-drawn "The Princess and the Frog" to see if traditional toon techniques can compete in a CG-dominated industry, another old-school style -- stop-motion animation -- has been making a comeback.

"Just a few years back, this would have been impossible because the only support in feature animation was for CG," says "Coraline" director Henry Selick, the American director most closely associated with the format thanks to "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach."

The international stop-motion community is so small that many of the artists involved in competing 2009 releases have actually worked with one another before. Selick and Anderson intended to collaborate on "Fantastic Mr. Fox" years ago, but as Anderson recalls, "When 'Mr. Fox' wasn't going to happen right away because the script wasn't ready, that's when I asked Henry to do the animation for 'The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.'" When it came time to make "Mr. Fox," Anderson tapped producer Allison Abbate (who'd worked with Tim Burton on "Corpse Bride") and animation director Mark Gustafson (a veteran of Will Vinton Studios, the shop behind the California Raisins).

Both digital cameras and CG cleanup were vital to low-budget "Panic," which stars molded plastic figures and looks more "Robot Chicken" than "Chicken Run." "Our little models of a Cowboy, Indian and Horse don't move their lips, so funny dialogue could be recorded after shooting," says post supervisor Adriana Piasek-Wanski.





Chuck Roven Developing The Looking Glass Wars?

(Good Morning America)               With Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland just a few months away, there's a lot of renewed interest in Lewis Carroll's classic fairy tale. One author who has long been fascinated with it is Frank Beddor, who crafted the series of novels collectively known as The Looking Glass Wars, a very different take on Alice's story that takes the concept of Carroll being inspired by the true stories of Alyss Heart, the heir to the Wonderland throne he encounters when she escapes during a coup by the evil Redd. The popular novels have spawned spin-off games and graphic novels.

While appearing on ABC's Good Morning America to promote the final book in the series "ArchEnemy," Beddor was asked whether we might see the series brought to the big screen any time soon to which he replied: "I am working with the producer of 'The Dark Knight' Chuck Roven, so we're putting it together, and it's pretty exciting to think about it as a movie. It's a really visual world so we'll see," and then added facetiously, "I'm just trying to get my neighbor Angelina Jolie to play her." (He was cut off by the host so we're not sure if he meant he wanted her to play Alyss or her arch-enemy Redd.

Beddor is already becoming very involved in Hollywood, as some might remember just a few days ago the L.A. Times reported on Beddor's pitch that sold Ridley Scott on making a movie based on Monopoly. (You can read that pitch here.)

If you've read the books and are a fan, let us know what you might like to see in a movie based on them.





Vancouver Island Company Makes 2012 Mass Destruction for Disaster Movie

(vancouversun.com)               When director Roland Emmerich was searching for weapons of mass destruction, he didn't have to look any further than a company now based in the Vancouver Island Technology Park.

It's the new corporate base for Edwin Braun, a guy who knows so much about creating mass destruction he was contracted to give Emmerich the power to take out Los Angeles and Las Vegas in 2012, his disaster epic that opens today.

"We had the tools they needed to destroy a lot of objects," said Braun, CEO of Cebas Visual Technology Inc., a boutique software company that creates tools for computer-generated movie and game effects.

Indeed, there's no shortage of destruction in Emmerich's

$200-million doomsday thriller inspired by an ancient Mayan myth forecasting a global catastrophe. In his new orgy of destruction, the German-born filmmaker who demolished the White House in Independence Day and froze the Statue of Liberty in The Day After Tomorrow doesn't just reduce L.A. and Las Vegas to rubble.

In a flick pulsating with tornadoes, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other disasters, Emmerich targets Yellowstone Park, topples the Eiffel Tower and trashes the Vatican.

Even the B.C. legislature isn't spared, if it makes the cut. A crew slipped into town last fall to capture a "plate shot" of exteriors that were to be matched with green screen footage of a rally featuring hundreds of extras.

"This was the biggest project for us," said Braun, whose software has been used in Starship Troopers, Lost in Space, Black Hawk Down, Spider-Man 3, Star Trek: Nemesis and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Its special effects tools have also been used in computer games such as StarCraft and Need for Speed: Pro Street Racing.

Aside from the eradication of Las Vegas and L.A., his company's tools created a plane crash in the Antarctic. "We also did other things, but we're not allowed to talk about them," he noted playfully.

Although Braun shares the same nationality as Emmerich, that wasn't what landed them the gig. "It had no advantage at all. It was our good quality," laughed Braun, whose 20-year-old company was founded in Heidelberg, Germany.

"So many objects were going to be destroyed it was impossible for them to do them by hand. Usually you model objects as a whole, so they are complete. The classic approach is artists have to cut them manually with tools to break them apart. We have a one-button solution to destroy or 'pre-break' objects."

Braun, 43, was referring to VolumeBreaker, a time-saving tool developed specifically to meet Emmerich's needs on 2012.

"They used that on nearly every object," said Braun, who worked in collaboration with Uncharted Territory, the production company headed by Emmy Award-winning visual effects producer Marc Weigert.

"It was huge. There were hundreds of cars, houses, trees, hydrants, picket fences, airplane crashes, roads, buildings -- everything."

The film's computer graphics effects supervisor, Ari Sachter-Zeltzer, said Cebas's involvement in the "image pipeline" allowed artists to handle complex effects that would otherwise have required a larger team.

Emmerich also used ThinkingParticles, Cebas's sophisticated system that gives directors more freedom to change animation.

The firm's other software includes finalFlares, an optical effects engine that gave the planet Romulus its haunting glow in Star Trek Nemesis, and finalToon, which created the illusion of footsteps on Harry Potter's magical Maurauder's Map. FinalRender, its graphics rendering engine, allowed for efficient rendering of finished images of special effects shots.

Braun, who moved to Victoria four months ago, is the first of a nine-person Cebas team settling here.

While it might have been logical to relocate to the U.S., he said he had his reasons for choosing Victoria -- and not just because he'll be closer to film and interactive gaming industry clients in Vancouver, L.A. and San Francisco.

"I prefer Canada. It's a pretty strange concept the U.S.A. has -- their social system and how they treat people in general."

And there was another enticement, said Braun, whose software will next be featured in John Woo's epic Red Cliff.

"On top of everything, B.C. made a good offer. They have good tax breaks."

On the web: To see samples of the company's work and clips from 2012, visit timescolonist.com/entertainment

Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid Movie Updates

(ShockTillYouDrop.com)                    ComingSoon.net's ShockTillYouDrop.com is on the Toronto set of Resident Evil: Afterlife where producer Jeremy Bolt told them this morning that Paul W.S. Anderson is still circling video game adaptation Castlevania at Rogue Pictures and that they are waiting on a script. This summer, James Wan was attached to direct the movie based on the Konami game, but his involvement is unknown now.

Bolt added that he and Anderson would like to adapt Konami's Metal Gear Solid for the big screen at Columbia Pictures.





Disney Reshuffles at Top, Posts 18% Profit Gain

(latimes.com)                Disney reported net income of $895 million, or 47 cents a share, a gain of 18% compared with $760 million, or 40 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to nearly $9.9 billion, up 4% from $9.4 billion a year earlier.

The film group reported a $13-million loss for the fourth quarter, compared with operating income of $98 million a year earlier.

This represents the second consecutive loss for the studio, reflecting higher write-downs on newly released films and a drop in music sales.

"As our numbers indicate, our studio had an extremely disappointing year in 2009," Iger said, blaming the studio's live-action movies and broad changes in the industry. "Our choice of Rich Ross as head of the studio is designed to redirect and improve creative endeavors as well as to immediately and properly address the secular changes we're seeing."

Iger told Wall Street he was less than "elated" with the $31-million opening weekend domestic box office for the studio's latest release, "A Christmas Carol," a 3-D retelling of the Charles Dickens classic. However, he said he is encouraged by the Veterans Day ticket sales and remains hopeful that it will follow the trend of other holiday-themed films released in early November, which tend to remain in theaters longer and gather momentum over time.





James Cameron Reveals His Quest to Build More Perfect CGI Boobs

(gawker.com)                 In a decade since the launch of Titanic, the eyes of humanity have focused on the James Cameron laboratory wondering what leap forward would emerge, what gifts he would bestow on our species?

Having built and sunk and ocean liner, were there any mountains left or had humanity been already given all the tools it needed to ensure its eternal contentment?

As we stand on the cusp of revelation, media speculation has focused on the innovations in filmmaking Avatar will bring our suffering world; new digital tools that revolutionize 3D photography, like a "Fusion Camera System" that will perhaps make 3D the multiplex standard for decades to come.

But in an interview with Playboy, Cameron revealed that all this Fusion Systeming and "Facial Performance Replacement" has really been just the nuts and bolts and that the real mission of the Avatar team has always been creating the perfect computer-generated screen boobs for the character Neytiri, a motion-captured rendition of actress Zoe Saldana; a problem so complex and difficult that it apparently took a team of hundreds a decade to solve it to Cameron's exacting standards.

Discussing the film, the interview focused on the mytho-historical place of cartoon women in our society before turning to the matter of Avatar's technological breakthrough:

    PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.
    CAMERON: Most of men's problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don't look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we're forced to deal with real women, and there's a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let's face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.

    PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine's hotness?
    CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, "She's got to have tits," even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

    PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?
    CAMERON: I came up with this free-floating, lion's-mane-like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they're right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we're going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We'll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector's item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.

    PLAYBOY: So you're okay with arousing PG-13 chubbies?
    CAMERON: If such a thing should ­happen and I'm not saying it will, that would be fine.

As ever in society, the real innovators will go unheralded. Generations of schoolchildren will gaze upon Neytiri's bosom without ever knowing the names of the heroic scientists who gave ten years of their lives to make the dream of those breasts a reality.

Source:     http://gawker.com/5403302/james-cameron-reveals-his-quest-to-build-more-perfect-cgi-boobs