The Reel Man

Dungeons and Dragons flashback

2011-04-01T01:50:00.001-07:00

Here's the intro to the animated "Dungeons and Dragons" series from the 80's! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JjhQ1Oi_3k

How To Train Your Dragon

2011-03-19T01:28:00.000-07:00

I cannot stop watching this scene from "How To Train Your Dragon" - so incredibly well done!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuuK7QQCkrw

My Oscar Predictions

2011-02-26T14:08:00.001-08:00

Still a bit more progress - still unfinished

2011-02-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

A bit more progress - still unfinished

2011-02-20T00:36:00.000-08:00

How Pixar made Day and Night

2011-02-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2011/02/17/oscar_video_how_pixar_made_day_night_short/

Supah Ninjas

2011-02-17T00:55:00.001-08:00

If you're not already watching Supah Ninjas, you should be!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DV3bI7pYAg

Removing people from Super 8 footage

2011-02-16T01:53:00.001-08:00

I'm about a quarter of the way through a project involving "people removal" from old Super 8 footage. Below is a sample of the work, which involves painting a backplate and tracking it to the footage since the camera is not stationary.

Unfinished head

2011-02-15T00:31:00.000-08:00

Above is an unfinished head I'm working on.

Tour of Pixar

2011-02-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/02/09/movies/1248069625002/a-rare-look-inside-pixar-studios.html

Did man first fly in 1632?

2011-02-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=6062&referer=newsletter

Cool article on Pixar shorts

2011-02-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.awn.com/articles/2d/newton-reher-and-wellins-talk-disney-and-pixar-shorts

Oscar nominations

2011-01-31T22:09:00.000-08:00

Last week, nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards were announced. No big surprises. There's the usual overhyped frontrunner ("The King's Speech") that threatens to render the awards meaningless - and maybe they always have been. But hey, we can't help but compare and rank one thing against another. If the nominees in the major Oscar categories offer nothing unexpected, there are still surprises to be found in the more obscure categories such as Animated Short and Live Action Short. Pixar's "Day and Night" (screened in front of "Toy Story 3") is probably the only one you've seen. The rest should be available for download on iTunes!

Playa Del Rey, 1979 by Adam Bartos

2011-01-21T01:21:00.000-08:00

Useful information... for me.

2011-01-20T00:37:00.000-08:00

This post is just for me, so only read it if you've finished reading the ingredients of your favorite box of cereal.

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/relax-and-quit-bluffing

My Tron!

2011-01-17T04:07:00.000-08:00

A Reel Man's Short

2011-01-17T00:46:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to decide (for quite some time) what computer animated short film I'd like to make. Since my production team consists of only me, it's been a struggle to think of an idea that is both interesting and doable by one person. At long last, I think I've come up with something that is possible for me to actually complete. I'm hoping I can finish it this year - so for now, I'm giving myself a deadline of December 31, 2011. The clock is ticking!

It's My TRON!

2011-01-16T21:03:00.000-08:00

I saw "TRON: Legacy" this afternoon and figured I'd try my hand at making a light cycle. Here's a still from 90 frames I rendered. Full video to come soon! Oh, and if Olivia Wilde is reading this, please marry me.

"Breaking Bad" is the best "new" show!

2011-01-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, a show which starts its 4th season in 6 months could hardly be called "new", but it took me a while to find it. Anyway, "Breaking Bad" is more addictive than the crystal meth everyone is snorting in it. A must watch television series if ever there was one - rent/buy/download it now!

Sizzle

2010-12-18T01:56:00.001-08:00

So here's a quick rendering I made of a fireball coming toward camera in an alleyway. Actually, it was the shot set-up and texturing that were quick, not the rendering. The rendering took a few days with the computer processing all day and all night, and running up my electric bill. Fluids devour RAM!

Tutorial on creating a carpet in Maya

2010-12-12T02:06:00.001-08:00

http://blog.cgsutra.com/2010/06/29/maya-fur-how-to-create-carpets-using-maya-fur/

The Price

2010-12-12T01:56:00.000-08:00

Christopher Salmon raised over $160,000 on Kickstarter to produce a CG-animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's "The Price"...

http://www.theprice-movie.com

Star field ball made with sprites

2010-12-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

Usually I make a star field using PaintFX, but here's a quick whack at a star field made with sprites. I didn't bother making an alpha channel with the sprite sequence (4), so it's by no means perfect, but this might be the most superior way of making a star field, especially if used with something more complicated than a nodal camera pan.

Hastily-made interior

2010-12-07T23:43:00.001-08:00

Thought I'd try my hand at a quick interior. The frame below was rendered with Mental Ray, Global Illumination turned on, using an Area light (scaled to the size of the window) with an intensity of 0, and a photon emission of 1900. The scene is roughly the size of Maya's default grid space. A directional light with an intensity of 1 is present to illuminate the photons emitted by the Area light.

Best CD of 2010!

2010-11-29T23:26:00.000-08:00

I'm much more of a rock 'n' roll kinda guy, but Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" is without question the best release of 2010! Below, have a look at the video for one of my favorite tracks: "Runaway" - enjoy!

More fun with Dynamics...

2010-11-27T22:10:00.000-08:00

Dynamics

2010-11-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

I built this crude brick wall to try some dynamics out. Considering re-doing and texturing to really make it look good.

THX short

2010-11-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm making a THX trailer to try my hand at character animation. The letters I made below were the easy part. Now it gets hard!

Technical reminder to myself: the letters are shaded with DGS_material with the Diffuse set to pure black, and the Specularity set to pure white. Rendered in Mental Ray. Two lights (an ambient and a spotlight) with intensities set to 0, provide the shadows. Raytracing is turned on. Final Gather is turned on with the number of FG rays set to 500. Caustics and Global Illumination are turned off. The actual light source is Image Based. To set this up, go to Render Settings, and click on the Create button. Then apply a 2D Noise texture, and experiement with the noise type to get best result. The noise type used above is Perlin with the following values:
Threshold = .174
Amplitude = .744
Ratio = .707
Frequence = 1

If I were a character on Family Guy...

2010-10-31T21:53:00.001-07:00

...I'd look like this:

Boring, but felt like putting something up...

2010-10-18T08:41:00.001-07:00

When this baby hits 88 miles per hour...

2010-10-12T01:05:00.001-07:00

Above is a picture of me in front of my boss's DeLorean - mocked up to look like the one from "Back to the Future".

Tomorrow (technically later today - in 10 hours!) is the Table Read for my script - very nervous - fingers crossed that it goes well!

Happy birthday, Pac-Man

2010-05-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

The video game Pac-Man turns 30 years old today. Consider yourself young if you don't remember the Pac-Man craze of the early 1980's. It spawned a breakfast cereal, Saturday morning cartoon, game watch (mine broke shortly after I got it), and even this hit single:

Glass shader tutorial

2010-05-07T11:27:00.003-07:00

Putting this post up here for me so I don't forget!

http://exodusdarkmatter.blogspot.com/2010/02/blinn-and-phong-glass-shader-tutorial.html

Star Trek Season 2 Opening

2010-05-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

Mucked Up

2009-11-02T22:53:00.000-08:00

A quick mucking around...

2009-10-25T04:23:00.001-07:00

This is a familiar shot from "Star Wars" which I recreated and rendered twice, once in Maya Software to get the Toon lines, and once in Mental Ray to get the Raytracing Shadows. Both renders were then composited together in After Effects, Normal Mode, but with the Mental Ray render on top, set at 55% Opacity. I also added a glow effect. May the Force be with you... sometimes.

Family Guy is up for Best Comedy Series!

2009-08-18T04:48:00.000-07:00

5 frames an hour

2009-07-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

5 frames an hour - that's the pace at which my computer rendered the above 1100 frame sequence - so if you're doing the math, that's days. Although I could have adjusted certain render settings and achieved the same result in less time. As it was, I turned off shadows to speed things up a bit. In any case, I'm happy with the post work I did on this - namely the warp effect, very derivative of the Star Trek: The Next Generation main titles. I also took a page out of the JJ Abrams' interpretation of all things Trek, and included a couple of lens flares - the tell-tale sign of an amateur, but hey, it works in some instances.

Miracle grow

2009-07-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple PaintFX tree. I animated some of the values such as gravity and texture color. There's tons more fun to be had with other attributes such as turbulence, wind, etc.

Grass

2009-06-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah, bitches, that's grass that I rendered! Okay, it's nothing to get so excited about, but normally I use Maya PaintFX for this kind of thing - however, the grass featured above uses Maya Fur and looks much better. It was rendered with minimal tweaking, and with default lighting so I'm pleased that it looks as good as it does since the opening shot of a short I want to produce features a fair amount of grass. So as I said before, "Yeah, bitches!"

Hearst Castle in 3D

2009-06-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

I took a tour of Hearst Castle and made this stereoscopic photo. Something tells me he never had any trouble paying the bills. Double-click on the photo to get the full effect - and obviously, wear anaglyphic glasses.

Stereoscopic Photo

2009-06-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

My computer is currently rendering a stereoscopic image sequence of the starship Enterprise - the latest trend in animated features. I began the batch render around 8AM this morning, and it's only a little past half-finished ONE CAMERA! Tomorrow is Camera 2. Then I also need to render the background twice. So hopefully I'll have something to post by Friday. In the meantime, above is a stereoscopic image I just made. You'll need anaglyphic glasses to see the 3D effect. It's an imperfect experiment, but its true value is what I'm learning from it. I'd like to try this with actual live action video. It's entirely doable - just requires a bit of planning. There are choices to make - but each choice comes with its own set of somewhat unbreakable rules. With parallel cameras (just one of several options) there is a point where objects too close to the foreground become unfusable. I love this shit.

Up

2009-05-31T23:50:00.000-07:00

***SPOILER ALERT***
"Up" is the latest animated feature from Pixar. With its combination of adventure storyline, sympathetic characters and animation in eye-popping Digital 3D that floats the viewer to heights that would make even an expert skydiver dizzy, this tenth Pixar film is easily their best work to date.

While the visuals of octogenarian Carl's house floating through the clouds are stunning, the most shocking and effective moment takes place on terra firma. Carl hits a construction worker over the head causing him to... bleed. While blood is no stranger to anime, I'm almost certain "Up" represents Pixar's first use of it. It's an effective device that immediately raises the stakes and informs us that there is actual jeopardy ahead. When the bitter and evil adventurer Muntz hints at the many "trespassers" he has killed in the past, we really worry for Carl's life.

"Up" is nearly perfect. If there is any nitpicking to be done, the visual pun of dogs flying planes in a, um, dogfight, is a misstep. It seems like something that probably came up in a story meeting and got a big laugh in the room, guaranteeing its inclusion. But dogs flying planes seems somehow beneath "Up," (if you'll now pardon my pun) especially for a film more sophisticated than your average animated feature. Secondly, the joke of Beta's Alvin & the Chipmunks voice went a little too long.

Workspace

2009-05-31T01:03:00.001-07:00

My bedroom is small. At first, I tried to make do with the layout and the furniture I had, but every time I sat down at my desk to work I was immediately annoyed and felt cramped in. Solution: design and build the perfect desk.

I'm nearly finished - just need to add a stabilizing beam to the back, plus some shelving. Above is a photo of the desk as it stands now. The top is 8 feet long and is supported by six 4X4 pine wood posts. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out - especially since I've never built anything like this before. This also represents my first time staining wood, which was more fun than I thought it would be.

The only bad experience I had was with Home Depot. Getting them to cut wood at 90 degrees is asking a lot. I ended up having to take the wood to an independent lumber yard to clean up the mistakes made by HD.

This whole project has been a gigantic learning experience - I'll impart just one probably obvious piece of advice: if the wood is heavier than you think it should be, don't buy it - the extra weight isn't because it's more dense or sturdier, it's because it's filled with water, and if left outside, will eventually cause the wood to crack.

Excuse the unmade bed - I'm going to get a smaller mattress and push it against the opposite wall. In any case, I already feel less boxed in. Los Angeles freeways have enough congestion, so who needs it in the bedroom? Well, maybe Wilt Chamberlain, but he's the exception, not the rule.

Another Enterprise clip? Are you F'ing serious?!

2009-05-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I guess the starship Enterprise has been on my mind lately since the release of the latest "copy and paste" update to the Star Trek franchise. Of course, the effects from Abrams' film are billions of light years away from what I've done below - another stab at the Enterprise in space - similar to a final project I did a couple years ago. This needs to look way better, but it's helping me figure out the right camera move - which this is not. I did something a little different this time: rather than creating the warp effect in post, I parented two particle emitters behind the nacelles, key framing them to turn on when the ship warps out. From a distance I think it works. The real reason for this project is to create an animated stereoscopic sequence, which I will do once I nail down the scene.

Super 8

2009-05-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

As a gift for my brother, I assembled a simple book of stills from the dozens of Super 8 films my parents shot between 1966 and 1979. Below is just one of those stills of the two of us. Aw...

Another quick pass at toon shading Enterprise

2009-04-25T13:50:00.001-07:00

Here's another pass. I spent a minute trying to match three shots from the original series main titles. It's not an exact match as I didn't bother with the focal length of the camera. Needs a LOT more work. Again, just call me Mr. Quick and Sloppy.

Toon shader

2009-04-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

A lack of time has forced me to be Mr. Quick and Sloppy, so forgive the awful framing and thick lines. Using the model of the Enterprise I had already built, I decided to see what it would look like using Maya's built-in toon shader. I have to say, with a little more tweaking and better camera moves, this has the potential to look superior to the hand drawn animated Star Trek series from the 1970's. Click below to boldly go where no-- Well, you know.

Resistance 2 / Live Action Mash-up

2009-04-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

This is a super rough pre-viz of a gag I want to do: putting everyday, unarmed, live action people in the middle of a violent video game. This took 10 minutes so don't expect much. I need to buy Dazzle so I can get a good quality recording of game play rather than this poor man's process of pointing the camera at the TV - yes, that is sad. Oh, this also represents my first use of color keying/green screen. I was surprised to see the relatively clean edges I was able to achieve with poorly lit green construction paper.

Yellowstone 2007

2009-04-13T03:02:00.000-07:00

This was sitting on the shelf for a long time, but below is a trip I took to Yellowstone National Park in May of 2007. If I had more time I would have done more than just a crappy one-take demo of the song.

H2O

2009-04-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

I'm much happier with how this came out. Below are some fluid dynamics set to simulate water. Maya wasn't designed for this purpose, but as demonstrated below, it can get somewhat close. Any CG water you see in film or television was most likely created in software such as Real Flow. If I find a few thousand dollars between my couch cushions, maybe I'll purchase the program. Until then, here's to getting wet in Maya.

Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid

2009-04-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

This came out looking like crap, but I'm posting it anyway. The 2D explosions were rendered in Maya, then composited in After Effects. Oy.

Star Blazers

2009-03-08T00:30:00.001-08:00

This animated series scarred me for life - hopefully in a good way. For anyone unfamiliar, Star Blazers is, in my humble opinion, the best animated cartoon series ever. I'm sure as an adult, I'd laugh at the plot points and logic - after all, it is about a World War II Japanese battleship flying through space to save the Earth - but having said that, it's a series that offered a much more complex story than your typical kids' show. There were unexpected twists and reveals as the series progressed - not to mention (pardon the pun) stellar music. While the animation itself is minimal at best, nothing beats the build up to firing the wave motion gun. An updated live action Star Blazers feature film has been bouncing around from studio to studio for years, but has yet to materialize. Below are a couple of video links - the indelible main titles from season one, and the firing of the coolest sci-fi weapon ever - the wave motion gun. My guess is that the preachy speech about the wave motion gun [read "atomic weapons"] is not accurately translated. Enjoy - and hurry, Star Force, there are only 365 days left to save the Earth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMcrep48Wz0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty-1zWsXFNs

Fun with compositing

2009-02-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

Below is a clip from the as yet unfinished next Detective Bleak webisode highlighting a composited shot I'm pretty happy with. The two people you see in the shot are, in fact, the same person - videotaped a few minutes apart and composited together to form one shot. I was a bit sloppy so if you look carefully, you'll notice a plane disappear in the background - whoops - but overall, not too shabby.

Rough Cut

2009-02-09T01:25:00.000-08:00

Working on a short Noir webisode thang. The CG intro is a rough pre-viz - the final pass will look MUCH better, but that's at least weeks away.

A Beautiful Goodbye

2009-02-01T04:48:00.001-08:00

A line of 25 police cars led Ralph's body to its final resting place, first passing borough hall, his home, and the park named after him. At each location stood several police officers who saluted the caravan as it drove by, paying respect and honoring a great, but humble man. Below is just a small portion of the funeral service.

Ralph

2009-01-16T01:19:00.000-08:00

To the majority of people in my hometown, he was the mayor. To me, he was simply Ralph, my stepfather. On Wednesday, January 14th, Ralph passed away at the age of 87 due to complications resulting from pancreatitis. Ralph was also in the early stages of Alzheimer's. My last visit over the holiday was especially difficult, as Ralph seemed a ghost of the man he was six months before. I drove him to the hospital, where the combination of pain medication and pancreatitis quickly robbed him of the rest of his mind, leaving a vacant look in his eyes. However, there were brief moments of clarity during his last days. My mother held Ralph's hand, told him she loved him, and he smiled. Ten minutes later, Ralph died. My aunt put it best: "Ralph let everyone off the hook." It was true, no matter your faults or mistakes, Ralph had pockets full of forgiveness. He was deeply religious without being preachy. It was a personal choice - he felt no need to convert others. I am agnostic, but if there is a Heaven, I'd like to think that Ralph has just been given the best seat in the house. I'm headed home in a few hours with the video below to be shown at the service, set to the tune of Ralph's favorite song. I'll miss him.

Be seeing you

2008-12-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

Where am I?
In the village.
What do you want?
Information.
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want information.
You won't get it.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Who are you?
The new Number 2.
Who is Number 1?
You are Number 6.
I am not a number, I am a free man!

Just finished watching the final (17th) episode of The Prisoner. And yes, stop reading if you don't want the big reveal spoiled. I hadn't seen the series since I was a kid, but Rover has always been an idelible image in my mind. Number 6 wants only his freedom - and when he eventually recovers it, the door to his London apartment opens on its own, just as it had in The Village. Unfortunately, what has happened before, will happen again... and again... history repeats itself, and spins 'round and 'round like the wheel of progress - or the symbol of the Village, the penny-farthing. This defeatist cyclical message is also present in Pink Floyd's The Wall. The Wall (of the prison?) is torn down, only to be rebuilt and brought down again ad infinitum. It is progress that series creator and star (and sometimes writer/director) Patrick McGoohan believes is moving too quickly - and that mankind, as a result, is doomed.

The identity of his captor, Number 1, is revealed in the series finale "Fall Out" (in 52 frames or so) to be Number 6, himself - an interesting argument that we are all prisoners to ourselves. Great series - a desert island-- or should I say Village-- DVD set if ever there was one.

Charity art auction

2008-12-12T22:09:00.000-08:00

I was more than happy to participate in tonight's auction - it was a great opportunity to challenge myself, learn something new, and in the spirit of the giving season, the proceeds are going to the Children's Miracle Network. Below is my submission, the starship Enterprise NCC-1701 which I modeled in Maya. I created two cameras for a custom stereoscopic image which is viewable through anaglyphic glasses - the kind that bully in "Back to the Future" wore. Unfortunately, the print version is inferior to this - I suspect because this is RGB as opposed to CMYK. I'm going to test this theory - as well as adjust the convergence to give the saucer section more clarity and prominence. This being my first attempt at anything stereoscopic, I'm pleased. But grab a pair of 3D glasses and judge for yourself!

Car Paint

2008-12-07T00:53:00.000-08:00

The 1958 Corvette I'll be modeling (hopefully soon) will be predominantly yellow (there's chrome, too, but that's a whole other challenge.) Below is a test to create photorealistic car paint. A few things of note: The sphere uses a Blinn shader and a Sampler Info utility (specfically, its Facing Ratio attribute) and a ramp (its color connected to the Blinn's specularity, and its alpha connected to the Blinn's reflectivity.) This is image based lighting - not with an HDRI as it should be, but with a single raw 2K image of the moon. This sequence was rendered in Mental Ray with Raytracing/Final Gather. As this is just a test, I didn't feel the need to go to all the trouble of creating an HDRI. While this is by no means a stellar result, it is a promising one; I'm considering lighting my car this way. Of course, there are so many ways to skin a cat and I guess 9 tries to get it right. You heard me, cat... Better run.

PaintFX trees and headlights test

2008-12-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

This is a test of the PaintFX trees - they don't look photoreal, but for this nighttime sequence they may look real enough. I've got an area light overhead casting a blue light to mimic the moon. The headlights are two spot lights parented to a cube that will eventually be a Corvette. This is just a roughing out and getting a sense of how it will look. Eventually I'll be adding clouds, stars, a moon, a textured road, ground texture, rocks, (possibly some fog) etc.

A work in progress...

2008-11-30T22:38:00.000-08:00

Below is a quick test clip - I'm building an existing house (interior as well as exterior) in 3D and compositing the CG footage I render with actual Super8mm footage of the same house. The trick is to match the camera attributes such as focal length of the real world camera with which the original footage was shot in 1966 for some hopefully seamless transitions. This clip is entirely CG to which I added some noise/grain in post. Just a work-in-progress in the embryonic stage - obviously there are a lot more things to model and texture, but I'm pretty excited about how this is turning out so far.

Space chase

2008-11-17T01:27:00.000-08:00

Just having some more fun in Maya. Here are three "beauty passes" edited together...

Art Auction

2008-11-17T00:52:00.000-08:00

The art auction was on November 7th. I stayed up all night finishing my submission. The thing was practically still dripping when I hung it up. Anyway, great show. I'm happiest with the frame since I'd never made anything like that before. Below are some photos of the finished product...

More than a thousand words

2008-11-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

The Quahog Zone

2008-11-03T00:22:00.000-08:00

I'm submitting a "piece" (sorry for how pretentious that sounds) in a "Family Guy" art auction. The entry must be based on a specific television series and incorporate "Family Guy" characters. Hopefully, it is obvious that I've chosen "The Twilight Zone." My drawings below need some cleaning up before I can begin painting them onto transparencies. There's also a frame that I'm in the middle of assembling - a recreation of the door seen in the main titles of season three. Fingers crossed that the six episodes depicted below are recognizable; each is based on a specific shot. (Click on a photo to enlarge it.) I'll post pictures of the finished product upon completion.

WALL-E

2008-07-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Great, top-notch animation does not a good film make. It helps certainly, but Pixar's WALL-E suffers from lazy writing, perhaps lazier than the consumer-driven, obese space travelers (read Americans) the film pokes uninspired fun at. Also, the inclusion of a live action Fred Willard doing a thinly veiled George W. Bush seems a desperate production move to finish the film in time for a summer release - Mr. Willard probably shot all of his scenes in one day as opposed to the weeks (if not months) it would take to animate such a sequence. And the integration was jarring - it reminded me of a reverse version of the "Kidd Video" opening from Saturday mornings of the 1980s. As much as I dislike (and that's way too kind a word) #43, it came off heavy-handed and easy. Plus, Pixar had the opportunity to take shots at "W" in 3, if not 4, films before WALL-E, but I guess it wasn't safe then. Nothing worse than a late wink-wink.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

I hope The Dude will abide if time constraints have forced me "into the whole brevity thing." Here's a short review: The Dark Knight is must-see. The most important part of a film is its ending. It's why films like The Graduate, Lost In Translation, and yes, even Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, stay with us long after the last frame reflects off the screen. The last 45 seconds of The Dark Knight are perfect and elevate what would otherwise be a good film to a great film. I'll be seeing it again!

Bored yet?

2008-07-21T00:27:00.001-07:00

Haven't had a lot of time, so apologies to anyone who looks at this blog and is tired of small tweaks to these stars and planets, but alas, here's yet another. :) Oh, ignore the stars that appear in front of Earth - again, the problem is that Maya applies the glow effect after the render. To fix this, I'll just have to render it in passes and composite in After Effects - like a good professional should anyway. The thing to pay attention to here is the alteration to the camera move during the planet flyby. Still needs adjustment, but this is definitely more dynamic. Sadly, I just saw a clip from "Space Chimps" featuring a similar sequence, but hey, Star Trek really did it first anyway.

Test animation

2008-06-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a rough draft of an opening sequence for a video I'm working on. A couple things of note: something weird happens with the Alpha channel when you render PaintFX stars in Maya. I think it's actually in the Post Render when a Glow is applied. As a result, it's not possible to composite anything - so the whole sequence was done "in camera" - certainly not the way I wanted to do it, but I just like the look of those stars so damn much. Another new thing I tried (new for me) is adding Motion Blur - that significantly reduced the jaggedness during the camera turns. I'm not completely happy with the look of Earth. No fluids here for the atmosphere, but I think I'll add that. I will be adding a lens flare in After Effects, but again, the botched Alpha channel will be a bit of a problem. Anyway, if you're bored, have a look:

The last of the "Nine Old Men" dies

2008-04-15T22:55:00.001-07:00

Anyone remotely interested in animation knows about the "nine old men." Among them were Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston whose book The Illusion of Life has been in my reference library for years. Fans of Pixar's Incredibles may remember a quick exchange between two old men, both voiced by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Sadly, Ollie Johnston passed away on Monday. This is from the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ollie Johnston, the last of the "Nine Old Men" who animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Fantasia," "Bambi" and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95.

Johnston died of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard Green said Tuesday.

"Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today," Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and director emeritus of the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement.

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his "Nine Old Men," borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of the U.S. Supreme Court's members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs.

Although most of Disney's men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Johnston and Thomas and their families became neighbors in the Los Angeles suburb of Flintridge, and during their 45-minute drive to the Disney Studios each day, they would devise fresh ideas for work.

Johnston worked as an assistant animator on "Snow White" and became an animation supervisor on "Fantasia" and "Bambi" and animator on "Pinocchio."

He was especially proud of his work on "Bambi" and its classic scenes, including one depicting the heartbreaking death of Bambi's mother at the hands of a hunter. That scene has brought tears to the eyes of generations of young and old viewers.

"The mother's death showed how convincing we could be at presenting really strong emotion," he remarked in 1999.

Johnston's other credits included "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "101 Dalmatians," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," "Robin Hood" and "The Rescuers."

"[People] know his work. They know his characters. They've seen him act without realizing it," film historian Leonard Maltin said. "He was one of the pillars, one of the key contributors to the golden age of Disney animation."

After Johnston and Thomas retired in 1978, they lectured at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe. They also co-authored the books "Bambi: The Story and the Film," "Too Funny for Words," "The Disney Villains" and the epic "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life." They were the subjects of the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie," produced by Thomas' son Ted.

The pair's guide to animation is considered "the bible" among animators, said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios and Johnston's longtime friend.

Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was born October 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California, where his father was a professor at Stanford. He once noted that he and Thomas "were bound to be thrown together" at the university, as they were two of only six students in its art department at the time. When not in class, they painted landscapes and sold them at a local speakeasy for meal money.

Johnston had planned on becoming a magazine illustrator but fell in love with animation.

"I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the stories," he once said. "But I found that [in animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings."

Johnston was honored with a Disney Legends Award in 1989, and in 2005, he was the first animator honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

He was also a major train enthusiast. The backyard of his Flintridge home boasted a hand-built miniature railroad, and Johnston restored and ran a full-size antique locomotive at a former vacation home in Julian, California.

Johnston's wife of 63 years, Marie Worthey, died in 2005. Johnston is survived by sons Ken and Rick and daughters-in-law Carolyn Johnston and Teya Priest Johnston. The Walt Disney Studios is planning a life celebration for Johnston. Funeral services will be private.

Not quite there...

2008-04-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

I need to adjust the transition a bit, but I like the beginning...

Fewer clouds

2008-04-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a longer push, but with fewer clouds...

Rev. Rough Clouds

2008-04-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Some clouds combining Maya and After Effects...

Ready-made clouds in Maya

2008-04-08T00:31:00.001-07:00

Here are some ready-made clouds found in Maya's visor which I animated a camera through. They look better than the ones I made from scratch.

Light sabers

2008-04-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

And here's something I made goofing around, but never finished. So don't adjust your speakers, there's no sound...

Stars

2008-04-07T02:07:00.000-07:00

Here are some stars (very similar to the ones seen in my Enterprise project) I'm testing for a CG short I'm writing and producing. It's an idea I've had for years. I have this unrealistic goal of getting nominated for an animated short Oscar. Whether that happens or not, at least once it's produced I can be rid of these images that are swimming around inside my head - ha ha.

Pale Blue Dot - well, maybe not quite so pale

2008-04-02T00:58:00.000-07:00

The Earth below is a little better, though not perfect. I made it, the moon and the stars in Maya while I created the clouds in After Effects. I also did a small bit of color correction in AE to desaturate the blues - although I think more attention to color is needed here. The Earth and moon are NURBS spheres with high tesselation to get a smooth edge. The Earth's atmosphere is made with fluids. And the sunlight of course comes from one directional light. Although this is only a still frame, the Earth modelled here is fairly large - with XYZ scale values just shy of 4700 - in case I animate any camera moves with hero objects such as a starship (I've given a name to my pain and it is parallax.) This was rendered using Maya's software. Mental Ray produced an undesirable grid pattern on the planet - I'm not sure why. Have a click for a closer look...

Earth

2008-03-31T19:34:00.000-07:00

Here's an Earth I made. Obviously I need to work on the lighting which spills past the horizon - but my main goal here was to create a realistic-looking atmosphere. I think this one is not quite right, but I'm getting there.

CG clouds

2008-03-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some clouds I made in Maya using particles, a NURBS plane, and a lattice deformer...

Final project for Intro to Maya Class

2007-12-13T02:12:00.000-08:00

Below is my final project for the Intro to Maya course I took. It needs more work, but this is the best I've done to date.

Very Rough Pre-Viz of Maya Class Project

2007-12-03T02:07:00.000-08:00

The model needs a LOT more detail and texturing, the camera work needs adjusting, but here's a perfect example of how great audio can elevate a crappy video.

I LOVE Maya

2007-10-30T00:03:00.000-07:00

For anybody who reads this blog, my apologies for the absence of recent film reviews. I'm immersed in computer graphics - possibly the coolest thing there is in the entire world, if not the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies. It's become an obsession. I listen to CG podcasts in the car, read CG magazines cover-to-cover, and am taking a class with a super cool instructor who makes it all look easy.

Above is a hand I modeled. It needs some more work, but it's getting there.

I'm pretty happy with how this light saber effect came out:

And here is a cool animation I made with a very simple effect:

And here is an UBER ROUGH Pre-Viz of a Star Blazers short I'm working on:

Anyway, this particular post will serve only those interested in learning CG. Below is a list of sites featuring references, tutorials and other CG related items. My inbox was getting too crowded with emails I sent to myself with the subject heading: "Check this site out too."

I promise there will be more film reviews in the future (and soon if the WGA strike happens this week!) Until then, here are some very helpful CG related websites for you aspiring CG artists in this or any galaxy:

Autodesk's community website:
http://area.autodesk.com/

Another good CG community website:
http://www.simplycg.net/

Texture a real person's face onto your 3D model!!!:
www.3dtutorials.sk/userimages/noesis/PhotoshopFacemaps/Photoshop_Facemaps.mov

Vehicle blueprints:
www.suurland.com
http://www.onnovanbraam.com/

Modelsheets and more:
http://www.animationmeat.com/

Modeling guides & Tutorials:
http://www.fineart.sk/
http://www.learning-maya.com/23-0-modeling-tutorials.html

Anatomy of a human being from planet Earth:
www.bartelby.com/107/

Medical images & illustrations:
www.mic.ki.se/Medimages.html#hematol
www.chiro.org/chimages/diagrams/ (Human Spine)
hon.nucleusinc.com/categorie...0&TL=512&A=1027

Boats:
www.modelismonaval.com/servi...arga_planos.htm
http://www.tutorialscentral.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=30

Airplane blueprints and measurements:
avia.russian.ee/index2.html

Cars:
http://jpracing.racerplanet.com/modules/myalbum/viewcat.php?op=&cid=1
http://www.racesimcentral.com/

House references:
http://www.houseplans.com/

Smorgasboard:
qbranch.cottages.polycount.com/ref_links.shtml

CG Society:
forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=25&t=39710

How to render wireframes in Maya: http://www.konradbeerbaum.com/tutorial_wireframe.php

How to draw Bugs Bunny (traditional animation):
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/10/heckling-hare-step-by-step-construction.html

Make an explosion in Maya:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:X5czZDppR24J:www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/display_video_store.php%3Fvid%3D210+%22Fluid+effects%22+maya+explosion&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

Free sound effects site:
http://www.therecordist.com/pages/downloads.html

If anyone knows of a site featuring wireframes from Pixar films, please let me know.

In The Shadow Of The Moon

2007-09-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Director: David Sington
Rating: PG
Runtime: 100 minutes
Trailer: Click here to view
Release Date: September 7, 2007 (limited)
The Reel Man: 5 reels
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***MINOR SPOILER ALERT***
If humankind has a purpose, it is to explore and discover. From Magellan to Lewis and Clark, humans are driven as a species to, as one fictional Starfleet captain once said, "boldly go where no one has gone before." And there is no more awe-inspiring example of man’s quest for answers than NASA's Apollo space program. While the motivation to land a man (after all it was a boys' club back then) on the moon had very little to do with exploration, it is a triumph that also exists outside the politics of the Cold War.
With new interviews of the surviving Apollo astronauts, In The Shadow of the Moon relates through first-person accounts, the stakes, fears and discoveries of humankind's greatest achievement, peppered throughout with stunning archival footage. Looking back on their missions of the late 60's and early 70's, the astronauts are surprisingly animated, eloquent and even humorous - especially Alan Bean (Apollo 12) and Michael Collins (Apollo 11). Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) also delivers a big laugh when he recounts what he was first to do on the moon (hint: it rhymes with "kiss.") While one astronaut invokes the son of God (I'd like to see Jesus try and pilot the lunar module), I much prefer the presence of the more nondenominational, spiritual insights the journey impressed upon these men.
To the delight of conspiracy theorists who see it as a silent confirmation of the “truth,” first-man-on-the-moon, Neil Armstrong, turned down the opportunity to be interviewed for the film. His absence is a shame as it would be interesting to hear more from the Apollo 11 commander whose words (missing article forgiven) so perfectly encapsulated the real meaning of the mission. Perhaps it is just his reclusive nature or maybe he simply recognizes that the first lunar landing was not the accomplishment of one astronaut, but rather hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers and other contractors behind the scenes, every bit as, and in many ways more, important than his contribution.
Our lives can be traced by the footprints we leave behind, and those footprints in the lunar dust left by a jury's worth of astronauts are profound ones to be sure. My father was there to watch the launch of Apollo 11, and I hope I am able to witness liftoff of the first manned (or wo-manned) mission to Mars.

The Pixar Story

2007-09-01T16:54:00.001-07:00

Writer/Director: Leslie Iwerks
Runtime: 87 minutes
Release Date: August 28, 2007 (limited release)
The Reel Man: 2 reels
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I can write with some degree of authority about The Pixar Story. I have two subscriptions to animation magazines which I read cover-to-cover, I religiously attend the Oscar shorts festival every year specifically to see the entries in the Animated Short category, I dropped a thousand dollars on a CG course at UCLA Extension, and I am currently working on my first animated short film. Surprisingly, I found myself bored watching The Pixar Story.

With talking heads, behind the scenes video and enhanced photographs, the movie plays like an extended DVD-extra engineered to instill faith in stockholders. There is not a lot of new information here. Anyone remotely interested in computer animation is already very familiar with the evolution of Pixar, its triumphs and struggles, including its on-again, off-again relationship with the entertainment corporation headed by a gloved, but shirtless mouse seemingly suffering from a permanent overdose of Prozac.
In a small way, The Pixar Story is also guilty of the all too common crime in Michael Moore documentaries and Fox News reports: the half-truth. Of course, the subject matter here is not as important, nor does it try to be. But to instill a somewhat false sense of jeopardy, the film champions the "risk" Pixar took in hiring outside director Brad Bird to helm The Incredibles. It depicts his film, The Iron Giant, as a hand-drawn 2D animated feature… except, it isn't. Well, half of it isn't. In fact, the film’s title character is a CG creation rendered to look like hand-drawn 2D. Point being: Bird wasn’t so out of his element in the world of Pixar.
To be fair, the movie is not devoid of entertainment. There is a brief, but engaging segment in which an animator is given notes on a sequence from Finding Nemo where the clown fish appears to be on the verge of suicide. This part of The Pixar Story works to personalize the job of the animator and it adds a much needed, relatable human element that is missing from the majority of the film.
For those who know nothing about Pixar, this is certainly an opportunity to catch up, but I'd recommend instead watching Ratatouille which is still in theatres.

Feast Of Love

2007-08-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

Writer: Allison Burnett (based on a book by Charles Baxter)
Director: Robert Benton
Rating: R
Run Time: 102 minutes
Trailer: Click here to view
Release Date: September 28, 2007
The Reel Man: 1 reel
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***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Master of the voiceover, Morgan Freeman opens Feast of Love with a monologue (likely lifted from the Charles Baxter novel it is based on) about how the Greek gods, to cure their near clinical boredom, invented humans. And when that didn't work, Freeman continues, “they invented love. And then they weren’t bored any longer.” But rest assured you won't find this film in any of the gods' Netflix queues - except maybe Zeus's, because despite popular belief, the ruler of Mount Olympus is a pretty easy deity to please.

An ensemble piece set in hip-city-of-the-month, Portland, Oregon, Freeman plays Harry Scott, a college professor on indefinite leave after the sudden death of his son from a heroin overdose. One of the finest actors to ever carry a SAG card, Freeman conveys volumes in a single look or raised brow. Unfortunately, his talents are wasted here and one can't help but wonder what better projects Feast of Love forced him to turn down.
Harry's friend is Bradley Thomas, played humorously by Greg Kinnear. Bradley owns Jitters, a coffee shop where a lot of the characters first meet. It is his story we are most invested in, and it delivers the majority of the comic relief. For instance, after a softball game, Harry, Bradley and his wife, Kathryn (Selma Blair), are at a bar when a woman from the opposing team joins them at their table. Within seconds, a more-than-friendly connection forms between the two women. Later, Harry remarks to his own wife, "Funny thing is, nobody noticed. Not even the husband.” His wife responds, "I’m sorry I missed that.” Harry adds, “I imagine he will be too."
But soon the film plays it safe as the lesbian story drops out entirely, as if to imply that homosexual couples do not encounter the same relationship hurdles as heterosexual couples. Of course, Kathryn is most likely not a lesbian, which will mean copious amounts of entertaining drama, entertainment that the film seems bent on avoiding. The feast, it turns out, is more of a snack.
Meanwhile, Bradley meets the cure for his broken heart, the sexy, oft naked realtor, Diana, played by Radha Mitchell. But Diana comes with enough baggage to tire even the Samsonite gorilla. To her, being faithful isn't anything more than a word.
There is also the young lovers' story. As good as Alexa Davalos looks in her Daisy Dukes, she looks even better out of them. In Feast of Love, she plays Chloe, new girlfriend to Oscar (Toby Hemingway), the "ex-jock, druggie” who still manages to make his bed and put his teddy bear on the pillow each morning. Their budding relationship is threatened by Oscar's abusive, knife-wielding, alcoholic father, Red Herring-- I mean, Bat.

Then there is the ham-fisted attempt to connect the battle of the sexes (or sometimes same-sex) with sports. Oscar and Chloe make love in an empty football stadium. And Harry witnesses another couple bump uglies on the 50-yard line (though perhaps the end zone would have been more appropriate.) And there is the aforementioned softball game, as well as a very significant plot point involving a friendly game of touch football that proves psychics really can see the future. I wish I had consulted one. Then maybe this mortal movie reviewer would not have been so disappointed.

The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters

2007-08-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Director: Seth Gordon
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 79 minutes
Trailer: Click here to view
Release Date: August 17, 2007 (limited release)
The Reel Man: 5 reels
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Long before learning how to carry numbers or diagram a sentence, I discovered what a perfect afternoon consisted of: a walk to the local 7-Eleven (back when its name reflected the hours it was open) for a Slurpee and arcade game. If you were good enough, a quarter could pay for the entire day-– well, except of course for that Slurpee. Pong was already a distant memory, and classics like Asteroids and Space Invaders were about to be supplanted by an angry simian at a construction site.
Simply put, The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters is a nostalgic documentary about an egotistical “celebrity” video gamer, Billy Mitchell, and the good-natured, everyman, Steve Wiebe, who threatens to break Mitchell’s record high score on Donkey Kong. Full of unexpected twists and gut-busting laughs, it is quite possibly the most enjoyable movie experience you are likely to have this year. It features a “cast” of characters, most of who convention-going Trekkers would be in their right to bully. However, the heart of this film is found in an unlikely hero we can all relate to.
35-year-old Wiebe is a family man who, after losing his job at Boeing, earned his masters degree to teach 7th/8th grade science. When he sets a new Donkey Kong record, Wiebe’s integrity is called into question due to his association with an old rival of Mitchell’s, gamer Roy Schildt, the self-proclaimed “Mr. Awesome.” Wiebe must try and prove himself by leaving the safety of his garage to play the game in public.
Mitchell, Wiebe’s nemesis, ranks among the most entertaining foes to ever grace the silver screen. The mullet, trimmed beard, patriotic ties and dark shades speak volumes about this Floridian restaurant owner and hot sauce manufacturer. Mitchell struts and primps his way through the film like a rooster in a hen house. Nothing is more important to him than retaining the title he won in 1982. At best, his tactics are insulting; at worst, they are downright dirty-handed.
The greatest triumph of King Of Kong is the way something as passive as a video game seems as dynamic as the World Cup. But what really pulls us in is the spirit and passion which these gamers exhibit. To his credit, Wiebe manages to escape being labeled pathetic, no small achievement given his commitment to an arcade game that most people quit playing decades ago.
On the downside, the nostalgic feeling the film delivers begs for a soundtrack featuring more than just a handful of tunes from the synthesized era that Donkey Kong was born in. Director Seth Gordon misses an opportunity to needle-drop Pac-man Fever by Buckner & Garcia, as we learn that Mitchell once played a perfect game of the hungry Japanese import. Of course, music rights are very expensive and so the absence of familiar songs is an understandable omission given the film's small budget. And on the plus side, it leaves room for Wiebe to provide a surprisingly listenable contribution on piano.

Bottom line: The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters is a cinematic ride that will tickle you out of your seat and leave you wanting to play Donkey Kong as much as you did in that 7-Eleven convenience store of yesteryear.

The Invasion

2007-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Rating: R
Run Time: 93 minutes
Trailer: Click here to view
The Reel Man: 2 reels
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On its surface, The Invasion is just another summer horror flick. But as much as the original 1956 adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a parable about the threat of communism, director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s updated remake is about the threat of terrorism and its effect on the American psyche. Unfortunately for the hopeful science fiction geeks (myself included), it is not entirely successful. Nicole Kidman stars as Carol Bennell, a Washington, D.C. psychiatrist and single mother who soon finds herself in the minority of people whose mind and body have not been “hijacked” by an alien endospore brought to earth by a doomed space shuttle (not so accidentally named Patriot). Once a person is infected with the extraterrestrial bacteria, a metamorphosis occurs during REM sleep, yielding their will to that of the invaders.
In a nod to the 1978 film (a remake as well) for which she also guest starred, perennial alien horror movie actress Veronica Cartwright plays Wendy Lenk, a patient of Bennell’s who is one of the first people to notice that something is not right. At her regular therapy appointment, she anxiously explains, “My husband is not my husband.” When Bennell’s ex-husband begins to exhibit odd behavior, posing a threat to her and their son, Carol finds support in friend and romantic interest, Ben Driscoll, played by the current James Bond, Daniel Craig. What follows is a familiar plot that leads to a sudden and unsatisfying conclusion.

Thematically, The Invasion hopes to be a comment on our times. It examines our collective fear through the lens of post-9/11 America. That by now ubiquitous paranoia that fills the vacuum left behind by the end of the Cold War. With “terrorism” on the verge of surpassing “the” as the most common word in the English lexicon (or at least in the news media and State of the Union Address), we’ve come to suspect as “evildoers” the pedestrians we pass on the street, the passengers we sit next to on the commuter train or who stand in line at the airport security check, impatiently watching their carry-ons pass through the X-ray machine. To quote Carol Anne's (from Poltergeist) indelible observation: “They’re here.”

But The Invasion offers only a weak cinematic discourse on the subject and it is much too self-conscious. It redundantly reminds us of the September 11th vantage point that it’s coming from. Much like the hijacked planes of the terrorist attacks, here the space shuttle is hijacked and sent crashing to the ground, delivering the alien endospores to Earth. And standing atop a building surrounded by the infected, a couple leaps to their death while holding hands, an obvious allusion to the World Trade Center victims who tragically jumped to escape the inferno. The "War On Terrorism" gets an "honorable mention" in the form of looped radio and television news reports about the Iraq War and North Korea.

There are several spots in The Invasion where it seems as though a scene has been cut, as if we must piece together what happened during the two minutes we missed on a trip to the restroom. Indeed, there are scenes absent. Dissatisfied with the film as delivered by Hirschbiegel (who also directed the Oscar nominated Downfall), the studio hired the Wachowski brothers and James McTeigue for reshoots. Although such recasting of significant production roles does not always mean disaster (the highest grossing film of all time Gone With The Wind changed directors), such an outcome is a rarity.

But there is an interesting argument made by the film about those handy portable devices we all carry: cell phones. Driscoll reminds Bennell of a trip they took to the Aspen Grove in Colorado and how it made her ponder what the world would be like if "people lived like trees, completely connected to each other as one.” In contrast to this, the saturated use of cell phones in the film suggests that despite putting us more in contact with one another, they actually serve to distance us by dissolving the impetus we would otherwise have for some quality face-to-face time. Our iPhones and Blackberries enable us to have more frequent conversations that often amount to nothing more than chatter, lacking any real substance and meaning.
But in a point of view seemingly sponsored by the Church of Scientology, The Invasion puts psychiatry on trial. Humans infected with the virus are without emotion, their mood is flat-lined. But Carol's converted ex-husband argues the same was true before the aliens arrived. Being a psychiatrist, Bennell writes out the gamut of prescription medication to her patients. And when Bennell is on the run, she seeks refuge in, where else, a drug store.

While The Invasion offers some genuine scares, these are undercut by some unintentional laughs. For example, during a press conference, two aliens vomit into pots of coffee to contaminate it with their endospore. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to do that in the kitchen where there’s no one around to witness it? Maybe they’ve never seen a Folgers commercial. As a result, the scene plays like something out of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
There is also the small but distracting matter of product placement. Perhaps it helped finance all those reshoots. To avoid being taken over by the alien virus coursing through her blood stream, Bennell must stay awake, but she chooses to drink only Pepsi products. Sure, Coke is caffeinated too, but I guess it just doesn’t taste as good as Mountain Dew. And when the very survival of the human race is at stake, there’s nothing more important than taste.

Finally, without spoiling the ending, I'll offer only that it includes an unnecessary bit of exposition that states explicitly what the subtext is. It’s a flaw even in the last minutes of Hitchcock’s Psycho. A good film (even a bad one) doesn’t require a college lecture at the end.

So if you’ve never seen the 1978 remake, add it to your Netflix queue. Hurry - before it’s too late!

Once

2007-08-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Writer/Director: John Carney
Rating: R
Run Time: 85 minutes
The Reel Man: 5 reels
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Some of the best films don’t seem like films at all. The characters pull us out of our butter-flavor-stained seats and into the fictional, but seemingly real world they inhabit. These movies make benevolent spies of us, the kind we become while people-watching on a park bench or waiting for the boarding call in an airport terminal. Once is the latest example of that rare cinematic experience.

A modern-day musical set in Dublin, Ireland, Once centers around a “broken-hearted hoover-fixer sucker guy” played by Glen Hansard, frontman of the Irish band, The Frames. “Guy” (his character does not have a name) is a struggling street musician who in the not-so-distant past, lost the love of his life. He meets a young salesgirl, “Girl,” played by Marketa Irglova, a Czech immigrant, who is dealing with a similar loss. After several stumbles we’ve all been through more than we would care to remember, the pair form a unique relationship, a respite from the depression they’ve been suffering under. But to say much more than that plot-wise would spoil the film.

Once sits atop a sturdy foundation of memorable, and sometimes heart-wrenching, music. We are left with the impression that Hansard himself lived the pain his character is singing about. But this was almost not the case. Director John Carney (also of The Frames) had a choice to make: hire actors that could half-sing or musicians who could half-act. Fortunately, his decision was made easier by the loss of Cillian Murphy who was originally cast in the lead role.

Now on to the technical pluses… The majority, if not all, of the lighting is natural. And with the exception of two perfectly placed crane shots, most of the camerawork is handheld. Both elements contribute to the film’s documentary feel and overall realness. In addition, the camera moves do not seem staged, but rather discovered in the moment. This is especially true in the music store scene where our heroes first perform together.

It should be noted that Once is a film that is more than the sum of its parts. It rises above being just another dramatic movie to, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, a priceless work of art. There is an intangible, unnamable element that exists between the frames. The overall result is that we believe “Guy” and “Girl” to be more than just characters born out of a starving screenwriter's mind (in this case, Carney's), but living flesh-and-blood people with beating hearts.

If there is any nitpicking to be done, there are times when the shadow of the boom microphone pulls us briefly out of the experience to remind us for a moment that it is a film after all. And in the same way a crowd forms behind an on-the-scene television news reporter, the drummer in Once is a bit preoccupied with making sure he is on camera. Also, “Guy” and “Girl’s” cute-meet is perhaps a little too cute.

The bank scene bends the reality that the film works so hard to achieve, but given that it provides a good laugh as well as explain the ease at which the characters get over their financial hurdle, it’s a forgivable indulgence.

Once stands, to date, as one of my favorite films of 2007.

I Know Who Killed Me

2007-08-05T02:02:00.000-07:00

Writer: Jeff Hammond
Director: Chris Sivertson
Rating: R
Run Time: 105 minutes
The Reel Man: 0 reels

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After recent run-ins with the law, including a car chase through Santa Monica, queen of the supermarket tabloid, Lindsay Lohan, has become so ubiquitous that every morning I half expect to pour her out of my box of cereal. The likely result of this scenario would be Lohan clinging to a Cheerio life preserver, and no matter how many times I tried to submerge her with my spoon, she would resurface somewhere else in the bowl.

The irony of Lohan's arrest is that it may have actually saved her career for it prevented the freckled starlet from promoting what is arguably her worst cinematic outing to date, I Know Who Killed Me. The movie theatre I saw it in was empty. Although to be fair, it was the 10:45AM, Sunday matinee, as well as the Open Captioned version for the hearing impaired - because everyone knows that deaf people are notoriously early risers.

Lindsay Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, a good-natured, high school senior and aspiring writer. The central character of her short stories is Dakota, a teenager who escapes the horrors of her life by retreating to the shelter of her imagination. The town is shaken by the recent disappearance of Jennifer Toland, a classmate of Aubrey’s, whose body is soon discovered with her right leg and arm amputated. It isn’t long before Aubrey is abducted and found near death, with similar injuries. An FBI agent investigating the case explains that the dismemberment of the victims is about punishment. Ah, our first clue as to who the killer is.

Aubrey doesn’t recognize her parents and, in fact, claims she is not Aubrey at all, but rather Dakota Moss, a down-on-her-luck exotic dancer from a seedy gentleman's club. Is she telling the truth about her identity? Or is Dakota really just Aubrey’s alter ego, a kind of psychological safe haven? After the fastest amputee rehabilitation program in screen history, complete with bionic prosthetic, Aubrey-- er, Dakota, goes in search for answers.

In his first produced screenplay, writer Jeff Hammond phones in a plot that is as uncooked as the yellowtail sashimi at Nobu. It seems as though he worked backwards, using the title of the film as a starting point. He might have done well to read Aubrey’s tackboard with notes on Three Act structure. The FBI agents come off more two-dimensional than the paper their dialogue is printed on, which is no surprise since their purpose in the story never rises above the occasional mislead or piece of exposition. Inept to a fault, they fail to ask the most obvious question: What do Aubrey and Jennifer (the first victim) have in common? And that sound you hear is Sherlock Holmes vomiting into his overpriced bag of popcorn.

The list of suspects is long, a writing tactic intent on hiding the “ball." Is the killer the hunky landscaper, the helpful bus passenger, the disappointed piano instructor, the creepy father or the eunuch boyfriend? Unfortunately, the writing is not the only flaw in this alleged summer thriller.

Bruce Dickenson is to cowbell as director Chris Sivertson is to blue. It’s a color motif that is beaten over our heads. There’s the blue rose, the blue competition ribbon, the blue hospital gloves, the blue cat collar, the blue football jerseys and the blue condom (Dakota may be the daughter of a crackwhore, but she still practices safe sex.) Sivertson employed so much blue, in fact, that American films currently in production are scrambling to import the color from overseas. But blue is not the only important color in the film; red is just as significant although less obvious. Both colors play as stand-ins for the film's central Yin-Yang theme. Blue is Aubrey; red is Dakota. It's a somewhat interesting device made a little less so by its abundant use the past three seasons on ABC's Lost.

I confess that when Aubrey tells her friends about a killer on the loose who stabs theatergoers in the back of the neck, I did a whiparound to check if anyone was behind me. However, that speaks more to my paranoia and cat-like reflexes than it does to any success of the film.

But despite this diatribe, the film is not without its positives, most notably Production Assistant Lindsey Isaacson, who I’ve been told never let the office phone ring more than once before answering. In fact, often she would pick up before it rang. The catering is also reported to have been quite good, although a handful of the crew complained about a lack of cream cheese at the bagel table.All kidding aside, for me personally, the best thing about I Know Who Killed Me is the opening song, "Step On Inside" by Vietnam. Singer Michael William does little to hide his influences, especially that of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. It is a track destined to make my Best of 2007 CD. Holler if you want one.