With the recent rash of video games / books / poems / tweets converted into blockbuster summer movies, I put together a package to pitch to the studios. I think it’s going to be pretty awesome.
source photos provided by NASA. seriously.
Tag: movie
big screen
at least nobody sparkled.
DRM Theatre
digital is the future. bits, not atoms.
TRON ASCII
I always thought [TRON (1982)](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/) would have been cooler if rendered in ASCII, since that’s what terminals of the era could do. With that, I bring you the light cycle race from TRON, processed as ASCII art:
I rewatched the original the other day. Holy crap, were glasses big in 1982.
on Avatar
I finally saw Avatar, and left the theatre with lots of conflicting reactions to the movie.
- cinematically gorgeous
- amazing visuals
- fascinating biology
- but… why are the Na’vi simply caricatures of humans?
- but… in a fully 3D-modeled-and-rendered world, why are the Na’vi so human?
- why is Cameron so heavy handed in his Gaia-theory stuff?
- this is largely just a mashup of every Cameron movie I’ve ever seen, right down to characters and gadgets.
- what would this movie have been like had Cameron really let go of terrestrial biology, psychology, and sociology?
My first reaction, one that hit me strongly when the Na’vi first appear on screen, was: “A rasta jar jar binks would not seem out of place in this movie.”
My second reaction was to the colonial nature of the story. Big, bad, evil, greedy, corporate (white) humans travel to a new world and try to take it over. This is so much better described by Annalee Newitz. I was disappointed to not have a real story of The Other – rather just a glimpse of a (strongly humanoid) Other only insofar as it benefits or impacts Humans.
My third reaction was to the familiarity of the story threads. “Aliens 2: Na’vi in the Mist: Braveheart’s Revenge.” Carter Burke was there in full force. I’m guessing Paul Reiser was unavailable for filming Avatar, but the character was there in complete detail as reprised by Giovanni Ribisi. The robotic exoskeleton UFC championship match was replayed from the closing of Aliens. Sigourney Weaver brought back Ripley, as reimagined through the eyes of Dian Fossey. Everything in this movie felt familiar. And this completely deflated any sense of alienness or truly otherworldness.
As someone who spent a few years as an undergrad studying zoology, I had really high hopes. Here, we had an alien world, completely invented by Cameron. A world that was modeled and rendered inside a computer, free of terrestrial constraints and preconceptions.
Life on Pandora could have been truly different. Instead, it was compatible with terrestrial life – right down to the DNA. We have upright bipedal humanoids. Sure, they’re bigger (due to lower gravity on Pandora – see? they were paying attention to what life could be like off Earth), but they really just look like big humans in blue body paint. Why did the Na’vi even need arms and legs? What would life be like if they were vermiform? If they had no skeletal system? What if they were truly different, didn’t have DNA, and were not readily understandable? What if they didn’t eat? If they were able to generate energy directly from their environment? Instead, we have “aliens” with biological systems very much like our own. Where we were able to build colonial schools to teach the primitive natives to speak english so that we could improve them and rescue them from their indigenous existence.
The one notable exception is the ethernet jack woven into their dreadlocks.
Even alien sex is compatible with the human notion of it. We have a race of people who are able to directly connect with each other through the dreadnet jack, and yet their “mating for life” is making the beast with two backs. Sure, that makes for more identifiable actions on screen, and perhaps draws the audience in a bit more, but even this could have been Different.
Avatar was frustrating to me because Cameron and his team showed that they could think about biology with a bit of a fresh slate – or at least one drawn from non-terrestrial-land-based lifeforms. Many of the species shown in the Pandora forest were based on terrestrial deep sea aquatic forms. The filter feeders on the floor of the forest were fantastic. When I first saw Jakesully stumble into the field of fans, I thought “oh! those look like filter feeding tube worms. I wonder what would happen if he touched one of the tendrils…” And then Jakesully touched one, and PLIFF it retracted just as a tube worm’s fan would. Very cool. Not what you’d expect to see in a terrestrial forest. And yet still somewhat familiar.
The little lizard-like critters that could fly using what appeared to be a form of da Vinci’s Helicopter were interesting. Not sure that’d be physically possible, but still interesting. And different. Yet still familiar. Lizards. da Vinci’s Helicopter.
The seed pods from the Tree of Life were also fascinating – fluid air-borne jellyfish. These were probably the most unique organisms shown in the movie. And, still these were familiar. Jellyfish.
The official Pandorapedia has entries for a few species, but I would love to see info about the other organisms that make up the world of Pandora.
And… unobtanium? really?
I can only hope that the sequel doesn’t involve some kind of lame Star Trek notion of a universal genome, salted by a grandfather species billions of years ago. Avatar had the potential to be a game changing story of an alien world. Instead, we got a rehash of White Guilt, told through bits of every major motion picture ever made. I hope there are some follow-up documentaries, exploring the species of Pandora without the lens of human superiority and domination.
harry
we’re reading the Harry Potter books, and are up to “episode 4” (Goblet of Fire). I wanted to wait until we had a few books under our belts before watching any of the movies. Safe to say, The Boy™ is a fan. 🙂
movie night
popcorn and a movie with The Boy™ – tonight’s show was Water Horse.
Up!
Evan and I went to see Up! this afternoon, in Digital 3D™. What an amazing, amazing movie.
I give you KONG!
King Kong (2005)
Year: 2005
Writer: Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens
Director: Peter Jackson
Length: 183
Category: Action
Media: Film
Cast:
Rating: out of 5
This is neither the first, nor the best review of Kong. Check out Michael’s take on it for a good read. These are just my thoughts on the movie…
I wanted to love this movie. I really wanted to love it. I’d heard from friends that Jack Black was corny in the role of Carl Denham. I’d heard the effects were amazing. I’d heard it was the spectacle movie event of the year. Basically, I’d heard stuff from all points of the spectrum. And I chose to suspend disbelief long enough to give the movie a decent chance.
So, I schlepped off to the theatre today, grabbed my 15L tub of Coke™, and my 2kg bag of popcorn. Foreshadowing: don’t get the large Coke™ when heading into a three hour movie.
I sit down, best seat in the house – geometric centre of the theatre – and sit through the pre-movie ads and teasers. Then, the lights dim, and – hey! more ads! Great! I spend $10.95 for an afternoon matinee ticket, another $10.25 for a Coke™ and popcorn, and the theatre needs to show 15 minutes of freaking ads before a three hour movie – because, I guess, we didn’t pay enough to get in, and the movie wasn’t quite long enough without assistance. Grr…
A mom sits a few rows behind me, with her 2 kids. Who are so small that they both need booster seats to see over the seat in front. I’m wondering (almost out lout) about what kinds of nightmares these kids should be having, because this is going to be some seriously messed up stuff, and I hope it would be too much for a 5 or 6 year old. If it’s not too much for a kid that age, I’m really worried about what those kids are exposed to…
Movie starts, and I’m getting into it. Jack Black is actually pretty good as the slimy sleazeball producer. “You can trust me. I’m a movie producer.” Sure, Jack. I keep wondering just how much of Carl Denham is Peter Jackson…
As the action builds, and they make their way to Skull Island (“it’s not an adventure story, is it?”), I keep thinking that Weta might be recycling models from The Lord of The Rings, because a lot of Skull Island would look entirely at home in Mordor. Giant wall with gaping maw of a gate? And the texture/colour/shading of the rocks is extremely reminiscent of LoTR. Fine. Let it go. It’s still pretty freaking impressive. The detail is absolutely stunning.
Really impressed with the “natives” of Skull Island. Scary as hell, with an air of mysticism – voodoo priestess with eyes rolled back in trance waiting for Kong to arrive, etc… Very cool stuff.
The machine that delivers Fae RayAnn Darrow to Kong was pretty slick, too. Hmm… Who built this stuff? Not the natives… Not Kong… Maybe it was Dharma. Keep on the lookout for numeric strings etched into the walls… 4 8 15 16 23 42
OK. So Kong gets a boner for small blonde chicks. WTF? Sure, she’s hot and all, but dude, she’s 1% your size. It just won’t work. There’s physics involved. Oh, right, she makes you laugh. Clever, Peter. Clever.
Ooh. Dinosaurs. Of course! Cool. They’re pretty well done, too. Apparently the dinosaurs of Skull Island aren’t very physically able, as the panicked band of humans is able to outpace them with relative ease. I mean, these giants should be able to blast past the tiny hu-mans with ease. But they can’t seem to get past them no matter how hard they try. Some impressive scenes with the thunder lizards, though. Wonder if there’s going to be a PETA or SPCA approval notice at the end of the movie…
I’m not going to spoil any plot (ahem) elements or anything, but anyone who’s seen the trailers will be aware that there is a battle scene between Kong and a bunch of scary dinosaurs (T.Rex?). It was a really great fight sequence, masterfully choreographed. But, I kept having flashbacks to Paul Hogan. “That’s not a knife. That’s a knife!” Just as the fight started, out of nowhere a new dinosaur would stumble across it and join the fray. Sure, having a mouthful of a tonne of reptile meat is nice, but any intelligent T.Rex would gladly throw that away for a chance to have a part of Ann Darrow. There was a completely comic escalation of the fight sequence, from what could have been plausible (you know, in a world where giant apes and giant non-extinct dinosaurs live on the same island, and have insane lust for hot blondes) to a completely over-the-top (but still amazing) fight spectacular.
I kept picturing Peter Jackson in the storyboard meetings for this fight, saying stuff like “yeah, that’s great. But what it needs is ANOTHER T. Rex, who is BIGGER than the other ones. That’ll be even cooler! OH! And they should all fall down a cliff! OH! And they should swing around and – YEAH! AND KEEP FIGHTING! YEAH! That’ll be SOO COOL! OH! OH! And Kong should pith a T.Rex WITH ITS OWN JAW! YEAH! THAT’S AWESOME!”
(several minutes of intense battle sequences – with me almost shouting out “Oh, come ON!”, trapping, and magic teleportation back to New York)
Kong gives up. Chained and dressed up on stage. He’s cool with that. Until they bring out the blonde hottie. Is it Ann? BOING! Nope. Just some bimbo. Must. Kill. Bimbo. Must. Kill. All. Bimbos. After the initial rampage, I think the composite IQ of New York City may have actually risen as a result of the Blonde Bimbo Cull of ’32.
Then, Kong finds Ann. This is going to be… doh… 12L of Coke™ make it impossible to find out. I leave the theatre early, missing what I can only assume was a COOL! AMAZING! WAIT – HOW ABOUT IF HE JUMPS OFF OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING AND SMACKS A BIPLANE! THAT’D BE SOOOO COOL!
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like I’d missed anything. I’d seen the effects – and they were absolutely incredible. I forgot that Kong was computer generated (or even occasionally that he was an ape at all). The story was not bad. The fight sequences were waaaay over the top.
Update: Almost forgot. One of the highlights of the movie was a trailer preview for Michael Mann’s Miami Vice movie, with Jamie Foxx as Tubbs and Colin Farrell as Crocket. I’m a bit disappointed that the IMDB entry for the movie doesn’t mention cameos by Don Johnson, Phillip Michael Thomas, or Edward James Olmos…
Tags: movie review kong
King Kong (2005)
Year: 2005
Writer: Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens
Director: Peter Jackson
Length: 183
Category: Action
Media: Film
Cast:
Rating: out of 5
This is neither the first, nor the best review of Kong. Check out Michael’s take on it for a good read. These are just my thoughts on the movie…
I wanted to love this movie. I really wanted to love it. I’d heard from friends that Jack Black was corny in the role of Carl Denham. I’d heard the effects were amazing. I’d heard it was the spectacle movie event of the year. Basically, I’d heard stuff from all points of the spectrum. And I chose to suspend disbelief long enough to give the movie a decent chance.
So, I schlepped off to the theatre today, grabbed my 15L tub of Coke™, and my 2kg bag of popcorn. Foreshadowing: don’t get the large Coke™ when heading into a three hour movie.
I sit down, best seat in the house – geometric centre of the theatre – and sit through the pre-movie ads and teasers. Then, the lights dim, and – hey! more ads! Great! I spend $10.95 for an afternoon matinee ticket, another $10.25 for a Coke™ and popcorn, and the theatre needs to show 15 minutes of freaking ads before a three hour movie – because, I guess, we didn’t pay enough to get in, and the movie wasn’t quite long enough without assistance. Grr…
A mom sits a few rows behind me, with her 2 kids. Who are so small that they both need booster seats to see over the seat in front. I’m wondering (almost out lout) about what kinds of nightmares these kids should be having, because this is going to be some seriously messed up stuff, and I hope it would be too much for a 5 or 6 year old. If it’s not too much for a kid that age, I’m really worried about what those kids are exposed to…
Movie starts, and I’m getting into it. Jack Black is actually pretty good as the slimy sleazeball producer. “You can trust me. I’m a movie producer.” Sure, Jack. I keep wondering just how much of Carl Denham is Peter Jackson…
As the action builds, and they make their way to Skull Island (“it’s not an adventure story, is it?”), I keep thinking that Weta might be recycling models from The Lord of The Rings, because a lot of Skull Island would look entirely at home in Mordor. Giant wall with gaping maw of a gate? And the texture/colour/shading of the rocks is extremely reminiscent of LoTR. Fine. Let it go. It’s still pretty freaking impressive. The detail is absolutely stunning.
Really impressed with the “natives” of Skull Island. Scary as hell, with an air of mysticism – voodoo priestess with eyes rolled back in trance waiting for Kong to arrive, etc… Very cool stuff.
The machine that delivers Fae RayAnn Darrow to Kong was pretty slick, too. Hmm… Who built this stuff? Not the natives… Not Kong… Maybe it was Dharma. Keep on the lookout for numeric strings etched into the walls… 4 8 15 16 23 42
OK. So Kong gets a boner for small blonde chicks. WTF? Sure, she’s hot and all, but dude, she’s 1% your size. It just won’t work. There’s physics involved. Oh, right, she makes you laugh. Clever, Peter. Clever.
Ooh. Dinosaurs. Of course! Cool. They’re pretty well done, too. Apparently the dinosaurs of Skull Island aren’t very physically able, as the panicked band of humans is able to outpace them with relative ease. I mean, these giants should be able to blast past the tiny hu-mans with ease. But they can’t seem to get past them no matter how hard they try. Some impressive scenes with the thunder lizards, though. Wonder if there’s going to be a PETA or SPCA approval notice at the end of the movie…
I’m not going to spoil any plot (ahem) elements or anything, but anyone who’s seen the trailers will be aware that there is a battle scene between Kong and a bunch of scary dinosaurs (T.Rex?). It was a really great fight sequence, masterfully choreographed. But, I kept having flashbacks to Paul Hogan. “That’s not a knife. That’s a knife!” Just as the fight started, out of nowhere a new dinosaur would stumble across it and join the fray. Sure, having a mouthful of a tonne of reptile meat is nice, but any intelligent T.Rex would gladly throw that away for a chance to have a part of Ann Darrow. There was a completely comic escalation of the fight sequence, from what could have been plausible (you know, in a world where giant apes and giant non-extinct dinosaurs live on the same island, and have insane lust for hot blondes) to a completely over-the-top (but still amazing) fight spectacular.
I kept picturing Peter Jackson in the storyboard meetings for this fight, saying stuff like “yeah, that’s great. But what it needs is ANOTHER T. Rex, who is BIGGER than the other ones. That’ll be even cooler! OH! And they should all fall down a cliff! OH! And they should swing around and – YEAH! AND KEEP FIGHTING! YEAH! That’ll be SOO COOL! OH! OH! And Kong should pith a T.Rex WITH ITS OWN JAW! YEAH! THAT’S AWESOME!”
(several minutes of intense battle sequences – with me almost shouting out “Oh, come ON!”, trapping, and magic teleportation back to New York)
Kong gives up. Chained and dressed up on stage. He’s cool with that. Until they bring out the blonde hottie. Is it Ann? BOING! Nope. Just some bimbo. Must. Kill. Bimbo. Must. Kill. All. Bimbos. After the initial rampage, I think the composite IQ of New York City may have actually risen as a result of the Blonde Bimbo Cull of ’32.
Then, Kong finds Ann. This is going to be… doh… 12L of Coke™ make it impossible to find out. I leave the theatre early, missing what I can only assume was a COOL! AMAZING! WAIT – HOW ABOUT IF HE JUMPS OFF OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING AND SMACKS A BIPLANE! THAT’D BE SOOOO COOL!
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like I’d missed anything. I’d seen the effects – and they were absolutely incredible. I forgot that Kong was computer generated (or even occasionally that he was an ape at all). The story was not bad. The fight sequences were waaaay over the top.
Update: Almost forgot. One of the highlights of the movie was a trailer preview for Michael Mann’s Miami Vice movie, with Jamie Foxx as Tubbs and Colin Farrell as Crocket. I’m a bit disappointed that the IMDB entry for the movie doesn’t mention cameos by Don Johnson, Phillip Michael Thomas, or Edward James Olmos…
Tags: movie review kong