Getting More Immersed with Indiewire
Immersed in Blu-ray: Hitchcock and Bogart
Immersed in Books: Farber on Film
As director Steve Martino emphasized in our first interview, Blue Sky had to raise its game to get pen line accurate in translating Charles Schulz’s’ iconic 2D aesthetic into the CG version of The Peanuts Movie. Funnily enough, the design team had no idea that it would turn out to be its most difficult challenge. Read more
Brad Bird’s fascinating, if under performing, Tomorrowland arrives on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD combo pack from Disney. It’s worth taking a second look at anti-dystopian fantasy starring George Clooney. Read more
Watch Rey (Daisy Ridley), a scavenger from the desert planet of Jakku, go up against Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), commander of the First Order, who wants to finish what Darth Vader started. It’s 30 years later but what’s old is new again. Read more
Houdini 15 has been released with onion skinning, new shader building tools, crowd ragdolls, RenderMan 20 and RIS shading support and Houdini Engine 2.0. Read more
Guillermo del Toro has always been great at morphing genres into his own deliciously baroque stew, and, with Crimson Peak, he magnificently turns the Gothic romance and haunted ghost story on their heads in classical fashion. For Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen, who last worked with del Toro on The Mimic, it was a refreshing return to a brightly-colored palette after a string of desaturated movies (including Brotherhood of the Wolf). Read more
Watch the first clip from Pixar’s compelling short, Sanjay’s Super Team, opening in front of The Good Dinosaur (Nov. 25).
Capitalizing on the 20th anniversary of Toy Story, Pixar highlights buddies from Woody & Buzz to Arlo & Spot from The Good Dinosaur (Nov. 25). Read more
Moving Picture Co. (MPC) handled 425 shots on Mars for The Martian as the lead VFX studio. Richard Stammers was the production VFX supervisor and the MPC team was led by VFX supervisors Anders Langlands and Tim Ledbury. Read more
I was up at Pixar last week for a sneak peek of The Good Dinosaur (Nov. 25). Although they screened only 30 minutes, you got a fuller awareness of the danger and intimacy for Arlo and Spot in this boy and his dog reversal adventure. The contrast between the cartoony-looking characters and the “painterly reality” of the Jackson Hole-inspired landscape is something totally new for Pixar. I kick off my extensive coverage with director Peter Sohn (Partly Cloudy), who took over from Bob Peterson and stripped it down to its basic elements with a personal touch. Read more
Saschka Unseld (The Blue Umbrella), who left Pixar to become creative director of Passion Pictures and co-founder of Oculus Story Studio, appeared this week at Future of Storytelling Summit. We discussed re-imagining the theatrical experience with VR. Read more
