Getting More Immersed with Indiewire


  The Penske Media purchase of Indiewire has resulted in an expansion of my role as crafts and awards season contributor.  Beginning this week, I begin Emmy coverage of below-the-line contenders along with my usual Oscar season crafts reporting, working closely

Immersed in Blu-ray: Hitchcock and Bogart


The WB Archive Collection gets Hitch and Bogie on Blu-ray and they've never looked better for home viewing. In Kent Jones' indispensable doc, Hitchcock/Truffaut, he reminds us that Truffaut was on a mission to correct misconceptions about Hitch as a lightweight

Immersed in Books: Farber on Film


For the first time, the complete writings of film critic Manny Farber is available from Library of America, edited by Robert Polito (Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson). Manny Farber (1917-2008) was the first modernist film critic to write like a modernist.

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VFX

Trailering New In Time

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Below the Line, Movies, Trailers, VFX | Leave a comment

Fox has released a new In Time trailer (Oct. 28) from Andrew Niccol, which contains more of the framing of Justin Timberlake’s character for murder along with the class divisions and sexual overtones. In a futuristic sci-fi twist on Hitchcock’s pursued pursuer, time is currency and the wealthy live forever while the poor struggle for every minute of their 25-year limit. Timberlake has more time than allowed and takes Amanda Seyfried hostage to crack open the corrupt society that has set him up. Matt Bomer and Cillian Murphy (as the time keeper) also shine. Roger Deakins’ gritty cinematography is up to its usual high standards, as is Alex McDowell’s alluring production design, evoking a Fight Club-like underworld. VFX by Luma, Wildfire, Soho, Rez-Illusion.

Weta to Show Off R&D at SIGGRAPH 2011

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Animation, Education, Events, Tech, VFX | Leave a comment

For the first time, SIGGRAPH is expanding beyond the U.S. and will be in Vancouver next week. And when I was recently in Wellington, I asked Weta’s senior visual effects supervisor, Joe Letteri (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Adventures of Tintin), about their presentations at SIGGRAPH.

Weta will present two new R&D advancements at SIGGRAPH: an art directable water simulation and a new subsurface lighting technique (both demonstrated in Tintin). “They need to be where you want them and when you want them,” he said about the water simulation.” And the subsurface “allows us to better resolve finer details near the top surface of the skin in a way that’s computationally cost-effective.”

Here are the presentations at SIGGRAPH 2011:

A Quantized-Diffusion Model for Rendering Translucent Materials

With these new techniques for rendering translucent materials such as human skin, modified diffusion theory and a new quantized-diffusion method derive efficient and accurate scattering functions for both offline and real-time rendering.

Eugene d’Eon
Weta Digital Ltd

Geoffrey Irving
Weta Digital Ltd

Tuesday, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm | East Building, Exhibit Hall A
Session Chair: Jaakko Lehtinen, NVIDIA Corp.

Guide Shapes for High-Resolution Naturalistic Liquid Simulation

To efficiently obtain natural-looking liquid simulations subject to art direction, this method processes approved low-resolution geometry into a “guide shape” just below the liquid surface. The final high-resolution simulation runs just a surface layer constrained by the guide, with benefits for both speed and control.

Michael Nielsen
Weta Digital Ltd

Robert Bridson
University of British Columbia and Weta Digital Ltd

Wednesday, 3:45 pm – 5:35 pm | East Building, Exhibit Hall A
Session Chair: Nils Thuerey, Scanline VFX

New Monkey Business

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Animation, Movies, performance capture, Tech, Trailers, VFX | Leave a comment

“It’s a question of simian survival.”

It’s as true in Rise of the Planet of the Apes as it was in the 1968 original Planet of the Apes. Only now we have a new origin story for the 21st century propelled by genetic engineering and CG DNA for the apes, courtesy of Weta Digital.

Yes, Andy Serkis’ remarkably nuanced portrayal of Caesar finally puts to rest any notion that performance capture can’t evoke pathos and is unworthy of recognition. His primate pantomime is utterly believable because of his character arc and Weta’s latest advancements in photoreal animation. The new facial model adds all the dynamics, ballistics, and secondary motion, while keeping the volume of the face. The fur is is now directly manipulated for greater detail. And the muscles in and around the eyes fire more accurately coupled with requisite moisture and refractive lighting. Speaking of which, lighting is more realistic overall, thanks to the new active LED system of motion tracking and the ability to shoot on location and on set with the other actors.

Such interaction is key, according to Serkis as well as Terry Notary, the talented movement coach, ape stunt coordinator, and choreographer. He played Alpha, father of Caesar, Bright Eyes, his mother, and Rocket, the ferocious Alpha-male, along with 20 or so other background apes during the rampage.

“It’s not the big stuff that makes the difference when I’m choreographing movement but the little nuances,” Notary suggests. “And it was so much about getting into how to be still in the character and how to just live by doing nothing. Actually the quadrupedding, the leaping, that looked great. I developed arm extensions and that are about a foot long and have these cuffs go in your arms and it worked out great because we could make it look and feel as though [we] had the same anatomy as an ape.”

Perhaps now the cognitive gap between performance and recorded image that exists in the industry can be broken down. And if Rise becomes a box office success and spawns more sequels, eventually intersecting with the original story, which is already hinted at, imagine the possibilities for more evolved performances. And yet despite the cumbersome makeup, one still marvels at John Chambers’ Oscar-winning achievement and how expressive and entertaining Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, and Maurice Evans were in the original, which had the right mixture of drama and satire. Rise definitely has room for growth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YyMqmDeoxI

Giving Rise to Apes at IndieWIRE

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Animation, Movies, performance capture, Tech, VFX, Virtual Production | Leave a comment

Everyone seems to be going Ape today, so I take the opportunity at IndieWIRE to dig into Weta’s great performance capture advancements on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and how Andy Serkis is the beneficiary with his remarkable performance as Caesar. It looks like Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and The Tree of Life have some Oscar VFX competition as we head into the second-half of the year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YyMqmDeoxI

First Looks at Superman and Catwoman

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Animation, Movies, Tech, Trailers, VFX, Virtual Production | Leave a comment

So what are we to make of our first glimpses of Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman? Cavill, who was deemed too young for Bond, strikes a familiar if grittier pose in keeping with the presumably more grounded reboot being directed by Zack Snyder and shepherded by Chris Nolan. “I’ve never gone after an actual character in making movies from graphic novels or comic books,” Snyder told me a while back. “I’ve gone after literary or thematic concepts. Where I feel like with Superman, you’re going after a mythology in general. Very different… It’s funny because the thing about Superman that’s stylistically interesting to me is that he’s relevant if he’s real. That’s what Chris Nolan and I talked about early on. The only way I could do this is if Superman were living in the real world with us. And I think that helps him to be credible. It’s just funny because, for me, I haven’t made a real film.”

Amy Adams plays Lois Lane; Laurence Fishburne is the new Perry White; Kevin Costner and Diane Lane portray Clark Kent’s adoptive human parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent; Russell Crowe commands Superman’s Kryptonian father Jor-El; and Michael Shannon recreates villainous General Zod.

As for Hathaway’s Selena Kyle, there’s barely a hint of a feline disguise, though she’s certainly high-tech like Batman with her goggles and cycle. Nowhere near as sexy as Emma Peel but could be a good foil to the grieving Bruce Wayne, who must also battle the menacing Bane (Tom Hardy). With Marion Cotillard as the new ally, Miranda Tate. Nolan vows this will end the trilogy with a sense of realistic and satisfying closure.

The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20, 2012 and The Man of Steel bows June 14, 2013.

Trailering Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Animation, Books, James Bond, Movies, Tech, Trailers, VFX | Leave a comment

While awaiting the steely Bond 23 (Nov. 9, 2012), John le Carré’s masterful Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy gets a big-screen remake, and it looks like it delivers all the delicious espionage goods. Gary Oldman reprises the role of George Smiley made famous by Alec Guinness in the ’79 mini-series, the anti-Bond called out of forced retirement to weed out a Soviet mole, possessing the same “quiet intensity and intelligence” to pull off the end of Cold War cat-and-mouse. Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, and Benedict Cumberbatch round-out the remarkable cast of suspects. Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) directs from a script by Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan. Thankfully, this really is a teaser in the best sense. I once had the pleasure of interviewing le Carré (David Cornwell) about The Tailor of Panama: “In retrospect, the Cold War was a war of fantasies as well as a war of hardware. It was a war of perception,” he told me back in the spring of 2001.

VFX by Framestore (some animation and matchmoving, supervised by Oskar Larsson). Opens Nov. 18 from Focus Features, and I see lots of Oscar potential.

Cowboys & Aliens VFX on IndieWIRE

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Animation, James Bond, Movies, Tech, Trailers, VFX | Leave a comment

I’ve got an article about ILM’s space invaders from Cowboys & Aliens under my new Immersed in Movies moniker at IndieWIRE’s TOH.

Will Zemeckis’ Yellow Submarine Resurface?

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in 3-D, Animation, Movies, performance capture, Tech, VFX, Virtual Production | Leave a comment

With yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter announcement of Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers resurfacing at Universal with a two-year, first look deal, does this mean that his performance capture-animated Yellow Submarine is back on track? We’ll know soon enough.

However, when reporting on Mars Needs Moms in March, the last movie made for Disney at  ImageMovers Digital in Marin County, production designer Doug Chiang told me that Zemeckis was still very enthusiastic about re-imagining the 1968 Beatles classic and proud of the test, and apparently Paul McCartney was supportive as well. It was previously announced that the director had secured the rights from Apple Corps. to use 16 Beatles songs, and that Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz and Adam Campbell would portray the Fab Four.

So, even though the ImageMovers Digital gang has disbanded (Chiang wants to direct, Kevin Baillie co-founded Atomic Fiction in Emeryville, and Huck Wirtz launched Bayou FX in San Rafael and Louisiana), they confirmed that they’d be willing to regroup when Zemeckis has a new project. Then again, Zemeckis could return to Sony Pictures Imageworks, where he helmed Beowulf and The Polar Express and produced Monster House. (He’s currently attached as producer at Sony Pictures Animation to adapt Chuck Sambuchino’s book, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack.) He could also make it at Digital Domain (Tron Legacy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), with its own performance capture prowess.

Who knows? There still might be a new 3-D journey to Pepperland to fight the Blue Meanies.

More Spielberg and Jackson on Tintin at IndieWIRE

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in 3-D, Animation, Books, Movies, performance capture, Tech, Trailers, VFX, Virtual Production | Leave a comment

I’ve just posted more extensive Tintin coverage from my trip to Weta last week at IndieWIRE’s TOH. There will be more coverage to come from Weta about both Tintin and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Favreau and Craig Talk Return of ‘Classic’ Bond

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Bill Desowitz in Books, James Bond, Movies, VFX | Leave a comment

Director Jon Favreau had fun chatting with his Cowboys & Aliens star Daniel Craig about Bond 23, which begins production in November (with India confirmed as a primary location) and opens Nov. 9, 2012. Craig was naturally coy about details, but admitted that it would contain some classic Bond elements (Naomie Harris is supposed to introduce Moneypenny) and had high praise for director Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition).

“It’s a great choice because Sam has a fervor and energy to really direct a Bond movie with a capital B,” Craig enthused. “He’s read every book and just soaked up everything about it. I read the script the other day and I’m more excited about this than I was about Casino.”

Favreau admitted that he filled the gadget void with Iron Man given Craig’s grittier, more realistic reboot. Craig said that gadgets pose a challenge for Bond because they’re so ubiquitous today and that it’s harder to find something unique unless you have access to classified military hardware and equipment.

In terms of humor, Craig also suggested that less is definitely more with his Bond. In my first interview with Craig, he professed an affinity for gallows humor, which served him well as a defense mechanism in Casino Royale, so we can probably expect a continuation of this dry wit.

In fact, the highlight of the conversation was a discussion about how Austin Powers has helped kill the self-reverential Bond in this post-modern era. “It’s been killed because now you can’t wink at it — he’s double-winked,” Craig offered. “It’s like a bird that flies in smaller and smaller circles until it flies up its own ass,” Favreau quipped. It just makes it all the more challenging to layer in humor that’s organic to the character and situation.

Indeed, Bond has always been a delicate balancing act between danger and humor, trying something new and going to extremes and then switching gears and repeating the cycle. I’m smack in the middle of this right now with the chapter on Moonraker in my Bond book. So it’ll be fascinating to see how Craig continues to bring Bond full-circle back to Fleming, while at the same time being true to the franchise.

Meanwhile, Peter Caranicas of Variety reports that Steve Begg (Casino Royale) has signed on to Bond 23 as visual effects supervisor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pw7i82JUaw

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