Brave
Pixar’s 2012 animated feature Brave has a new trailer. Looks interesting, though I still can’t really guess what it’s about.
Pirates
Aardman Animations’ 2012 animated feature The Pirates! also has a new trailer. Not sure if I’ll see this one in theaters or not, but it definitely looks more interesting than their Wallace and Gromit material, in my humblest of opinions.
I got the Jurassic Park Trilogy
I have not yet watched the two sequels or the new special features.
The Bad
I really hate how Universal structures their blu-rays; I’m forced to sit through their annoying logo three times before the movie starts, I hate their generic menus, and my laptop’s blu-ray player is not compatible with their screen saver which pops up automatically whenever the movie is paused long enough for me to go get a snack. Whenever it popped up, I had stop and restart the film.
The early 90’s CGI dinos unfortunately do not quite hold up on blu-ray. While most of the live-action shots are crisp and clear, the CGI dinos remain a bit blurry, and it is more obvious than ever before that they were pasted in there.
The Good
The live-action shots and the mechanical-puppet dinos look better than ever. Overall, the movie looks so much better on blu-ray than DVD.
It’s Jurassic Park.
It looks like Finding Nemo, my favorite Pixar film so far, will be rereleased in 3D next year. Monsters, Inc is scheduled for the beginning of 2013, which makes sense, since the prequel will come out sometime around there. The post also mentions 3D versions of Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, no doubt influenced by the success of the recent 3D rerelease of The Lion King. If I get the chance, I will try to catch all of these as they come out, but I would especially love to see Finding Nemo on the big screen again.
Very vague memories of this movie popped into my head today. (I was working on my novel and had a character say the phrase “land of far away” which suddenly conjured up half-remembered images from this film.) I was able to Google around figure out what it was… though this particular scene was far less cheesy and much more mysterious and magical in memory.
My little review of the 2011 film Limitless
"You know how they say you can only use 20% of your brain? Now you can use it all!"
Or something like that. The movie’s about a drug that helps you remember stuff, stay focused, and make rapid and accurate logical conclusions based on your subconscious perceptions. The "20% of your brain" thing is such a common cliche myth, I wouldn’t have put that in the movie. I’d either think of some more scientific way to explain the increased intelligence, or just left it completely mysterious.
What does the main character do with the extra mental power? The first thing I would try to do is figure out how the drug works so I can keep using it forever. He saves that for later, and is never really able to do it. But he writes a brilliant book. OK. I would do that too. But then he gets into the stock market, with plans to go into politics later.
It’s amusing but annoying how some people seem to think that there are secret patterns to be found in the stock market, and if only they could find them, they’d be rich. Even this movies makes a reference to an "algorithm for the perception of stocks." Um… no. Even if there was a pattern, or an algorithm, finding it would change it because you’d have to factor in your own finding of it. It’s ultimately just a silly daydream. Silly because it emerges from misunderstandings about how the world works.
And then he wants to go into politics? Why? I can only guess it’s because he’s less concerned about using his intellectual drugs in pursuit of science and creativity, and more concerned about climbing the social ladder and gaining power. Vanity! All is vanity! For many daydreamers, I suppose that’s the real value of intelligence. It gives you a social advantage. You achieve fame and power, and other people admire or envy you, and that makes you feel good about yourself. The main character enjoys getting attention, and having intellectual arguments with people, in which he participates in a laid-back I’m-so-cool kind of way.
I’d be more inclined to keep the increased intelligence a complete secret, using it to have fun (write books and symphonies and program things) and pursue other areas of intellectual interest (artificial intelligence, unsolved math problems, philosophy).
The writing was a bit odd in some parts. There were some weird metaphors in the movie.
Something like, "One minute you’re his best friend, the next you’re a leaper." A leaper? I guess it gets the point across, but it conjures up the image of a leaper. Why would you want that in the context of the scene? (It sort of reminds me of a metaphor they mentioned on the podcast Writing Excuses, something like: "Her skin was the color of a 3-day old corpse." It might be technically accurate, but conjuring up the image of a corpse might not exactly set the tone properly.)
Later in the movie: "… like Oliver Twist begging for gruel." I don’t remember Oliver Twist begging for gruel. He was forced to ask for more after drawing lots. He didn’t beg for it.
There were some other weird ones, but I forgot them.
Overall, it wasn’t a terrible movie, but it was nothing very amazing either. I can see how some people might like it, though; it was very fast-paced and captivating. The cinematography was pretty interesting, with these weird perpetual zoom-ins every now and then, which were a lot of fun. For example, here are the opening credits:
Weeee…
I am looking forward to seeing this film In Time (formally called Now); looks like a really fun idea for a sci-fi. Although most of those actors definitely look older than 25.
By the way, wouldn’t it be better to stop aging even before 25?
I just read a blog that said that the original Planet of the Apes film had a “phenomenal twist ending.” What? No it didn’t. When I first watched the original Planet of the Apes, the ending did not surprise me. Maybe it had somehow already been revealed to me (it must’ve been 20-something years old by the time I first saw it). But the crew crashes on a planet with an earth-like atmosphere (the air isn’t toxic or anything, and is just the right temperature), the animals are just like animals on earth, except the apes are the ones who can talk (albeit using many less facials muscles), they all speak English, and, as if that wasn’t enough, they dig up some old human relics. It should be plainly obvious where they are. I never thought the ending was meant to be a “twist” as if the audience was supposed to realize anything new; it was just a powerful way for the main character to at long last face the painful truth.
I do, however, remember Darth Vader revealing his fathership to Luke being a genuine surprise to me, even though the film must’ve been out for almost 20 years by the time I first saw it. I thought that was the coolest twist ever; I never saw it coming.
Animation studies
Whew, busy month! It’s week 3 of class 4 of Animation Mentor. Last week I got through blocking out another practice shot, which I’m continuing to add breakdowns to and I hope to start splining soon; next week will consist of polishing. I’ll upload a video eventually… maybe.
Drawing
In other news revolving around the self, I bought a Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet
I also bought Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics
My eventual amibition (perhaps years or decades down the road, if I actually put in the practice hours), aside from trying some simple 2D animations, would be to write and draw a graphic novel. Maybe even turn the novel I’m writing now into a graphic novel; it’s very visual, especially since it takes place in non-Earth worlds. It could be so much fun to come up with a look and feel for different worlds, yes?
I don’t have any fancy drawing software like Photoshop yet, but since I’ll just be practicing, I can probably just make do with some simple free programs.
Google plus
Thanks to Luke for Google plus invite! A while back, somewhere, I blogged about how Facebook needed to allow you to “follow” strangers and celebrities as you can on Twitter, instead of having to mutually friend everyone. Google plus allows just that, along with privately organizing friends into “circles.” For example, you could group some friends into “old annoying high school classmates.” Then you can easily hide their boring annoying updates and shared links, hide your own updates from them if you want, and they’ll have no idea that they’re in such a group. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook soon steals this concept.
So I like the overall concept of Google plus; it’s just the kind of social network I want. But they still need plenty of more features (something like Facebook’s “fan” feature, “tag” feature, verified celebrity accounts, integration with more stuff so it’s easier to share links, etc.) and more users, and if it doesn’t get them soon enough, people will lose interest and it’ll quickly become archaic. I’ll be interested to see where it goes.
Hugo trailer
The trailer for Hugo (based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Cars 2
I saw Cars 2 the other day. Despite hearing many bad reviews, I thought it was good! It just doesn’t try to make you cry like many other Pixar films do, which is fine with me, because those sentimental moments tend to seem forced and cheesy to me anyway. (Finding Nemo and Ratatouille are the ones that really work for me; the beginning of Finding Nemo just gives me shivers, as does Ego’s flashback.) But the story was fun and the humor, though sometimes corny, had me laughing out loud like a big dork. (“That’s right Mater, you are the bomb!”) Overall, the movie reminded me of being a kid playing with toy cars. You don’t imagine them going through some Doc Hollywood story about a small town in troubled times; you imagine them racing and shooting and crashing and falling off cliffs and flying, and that’s what Cars 2 delivers; it’s what the first Cars should’ve been. Pixar is still standing strong in my books.
(Although that Toy Story short that preceded the film was as awful as watching the Disney Channel.)
The Lion King 3D
Preceding Cars 2 was a trailer for The Lion King 3D rerelease. I have mixed feelings about it. Some scenes looked really awesome in 3D, when they were really able to separate the different layers. Other scenes just look funky, especially facial close-ups. It looks like they just “bubbled” the characters, stretching them out in one direction for one eye, and the opposite direction for the other eye. The overall effect is: “Uh… hmmm… huh? Eh…” My overall judgment: Disney, you either have to put more effort and money into 3D-izing something like this, or forget it. But I’m a hypocrite, because I’ll probably still go see it.
Hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend (or regular weekend). I spent the three-day weekend sleeping in, watching movies, reading, and working on a new piece of music. This is so far the only piece I’ve had time to write this year of 2011. Feels great to write some music again. After I write music, I sort of become obsessed with it and listen to it over and over a bazillion times…
Movies watched include: The Roommate (creepy and ultimately kinda pointless, but a good movie to make fun of while watching with others), The Fighter, Momento (a fun movie, but not as amazing as everyone says… kinda gimmicky… still a good movie, but all of Christopher Nolan’s later movies are better in my opinion), Gnomeo and Juliette (what producers thought this was a good idea?), Despicable Me, and Kung Fu Panda (hilarious film… will probably go see Kung Fu Panda 2 sometime soon… great 2D animation at the beginning and end as well).
Yeah, that was pretty much the weekend. Movies and music. Went by way too fast. Later today, I’m going to let the rest of my frogs go.
One of my rare impulse buys… I can’t wait to see the Extended Editions in theaters, woohoo!