Spin VFX Game of Thrones Effects Work

Great video showing the 3D and compositing work Spin VFX do for Game of Thrones.

The results are amazing.

Feature film quality every week.

Check it out.

Demon Statues

Buer

Bronze ones based on the etchings of Louis Le Breton, and resin ones of Bosch's creations.

Belphegor

Just in time for Christmas.

Map Heaven

Literal Chinese translations of nation names; map by haohaoreport.com

Twisted Sifter has compiled an absolutely awesome collection of maps. Here are just two. There are 38 more.

Pangaea showing modern states; map by eatrio.net

We don't need no stinking elevator!

Apparently the Intempo skyscraper in Spain has no functioning elevator, after being expanded from 20 to 47 stories.

No worries.

I'm sure they'll be able to sell this as a fitness feature.

Roll with the punches.

Stereo

Open Top

Eureka!

A Loving Lord

For The Globe and Mail

Best of the Top 50 Highest-Grossing Films of All Time

The top 50 highest-grossing films of all time includes such eyeball pummeling fare as Transformers, The Hobbit, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

It's no surprise that franchises with pirates, superheroes, spaceships, dinosaurs, or wizards dominate. They're either huge action adventure flicks or 3D kids films.

Does this mean the ultimate blockbuster would pit evil space pirate dinosaurs against an adopted superhero wizard?

Or is that a jump too far?

The one oddball in the group is The Da Vinci Code. It really sticks out.

But there are some gems. Out of the top fifty, these are the 10 best, the ones I'd take to a deserted island that inexplicably has a widescreen TV, power, and a DVD player:

1) Star Wars (Episode IV)
2) The Lion King
3) Jurassic Park
4) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
5) Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
6) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
7) Finding Nemo
8) The Dark Knight
9) Shrek 2
10) Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Warlord of Io Promo Video Number Deux

Another silly promo video for Warlord of Io. Whut can I say? I like silly. Warlord of Io is a graphic novel by James Turner, of Rex Libris fame, about a rich kid who inherits a planet, but he only wants to play video games. Can the space empire survive? The book merrily mushes and stomps together sci-fi tropes into a fine wine of bubbly retro-future goodness that hits the palate with delight, humour, and a touch of oak. Check it out. Published by SLG under the fearless leadership of Dan Vado.

Hell Lost Wraps Up

Hell Lost: Book One is done. Finished. Written in virtual stone with an emboss filter. Give it a look, a like, a tweet, a blog; thanks to all who gave it a read.

Now it is time for a vacation.

As a door closes, new ones open...

Hell Lost: The Penultimate Page

Check it out. Thermidor lies in ruins as the War Party (BYOB) dies down. Lots of elements to linger over, and a few references. Can you spot them?

Killer

Broken Frontier Interview

Levi Hunt interviews yours truly over at Broken Frontier about my new graphic novel: Rebel Angels.

Check it out, give it a read, a pin, a like, a tweet.

Pick your social media poison.

There are pictures!

Movie Rating Mania: This is the End, Iron Man III, and Haywire

This is the End

Affable, comedian doofuses try to survive The Apocalypse. It's a plotless, self-indulgent home movie pumped up with blockbuster quality effects, but also intermittently hilarious in a juvenile, crude way.

Better watched with beer, pretzels, and some buddies. That's how they wrote it. Well. Plus pot. And maybe some coke. Not sure if prostitutes were involved, but it is Hollywood.

Cinema Worthiness: 3

Character: 6.5

Story: 4

Action: 2

Costume Design: Whatever was on hand

Production Design: 5

Visual Effects: 7

Plot holes: Just add to the fun

Funny: 7.5 

Iron Man III

Where The Avengers was two thirds punching and one third wit, Iron Man III is two thirds wit and one third punching. Robert Downey Junior owns the role and elevates this effects-fest above the competition almost single handedly.

He excels at being a charming, brilliant, flippant dick.

Cinema Worthiness: 7.5
Characters: 7 (Robbie 9)

Story: 5
Action: 7.5
Costume Design: 7
Production Design: 8
Visual Effects: 8.5
Plot holes: Large but you can weave between them
Funny: 6.5 (Mostly Downey, but others get some precious lines)

Haywire

Bare bones revenge plot serves as an excuse to serve up fight scenes. You get plenty of them, and lead Gina Carano is convincing as a tough, sexy, female assassin. When she beats someone up, you can believe it.

Stylish but forgettable.

The material doesn't give Carano much chance to act, but if she can, she'd be a great Wonder Woman.

Cinema Worthiness: 5

Character: There were characters?

Story: 3.5

Action: 9

Costume Design: 5

Production Design: 5

Visual Effects: 7.5

Plot holes: There was a plot? Oh yeah...

Funny: 3

14-Year-Old's Photo Manipulation

BuzzFeed posted a set of great photo manipulations by a high school student, Zev, titled "This 14-Year-Old Boy Is Kicking Your Ass At Photo Manipulation."

And he is.

Once upon a time, Photoshop was a college level undertaking.

Now experts can be found in high school. Grade school is next. Software engineering will be arriving in kindergarten within a decade.

Change.

Movie Rating Mania: The Hunger Games, The Pirates, Men in Black III

The Hunger Games

Cute kids fight to the death and slit each other's throats for the amusement of post-apocalyptic America in this dystopic epic starring Jennifer Lawrence, based on the uberpopular young adult book by Suzanne Collins.

Mostly shot in verdant forest (cheap to shoot but spectacular), it's like happy-time-summer-camp movie meets Death Match. 

Kids can relate to competing for position, and feeling helpless in a mad world run by manipulative adult hypocrites. It's emotional truth over rational perspective, but it resonates. 

The twist, and every film ending these days worth it's salt seems to have one, is actually pretty good. Enjoyable and primal, Hunger Games may be too intense for smaller younglings.

Cinema Worthiness: 7

Character: 6

Story: 7

Action: 8

Costume Design: 7

Production Design: 7

Visual Effects: 7

Plot holes: Nothing that derailed the flow 

Funny:3

The Pirates

Aardman's first film since Wallace & Gromit: The Curse  of the Were-Rabbit, it starts with promise but never delivers. So visually scrumptious you can serve it as a dessert, it lacks both heart and conviction.

A real shame, given the craft behind it.

The jokes are limp and the film drags.

Completely inoffensive, Pirates is torpedoed by its own good natured blandness.

Even the voice acting of Brian Blessed can't save it. 

Cinema Worthiness: 4

Character: 6.5

Story: 4

Action: 6

Costume Design: 8.5

Production Design: 8.5

Visual Effects: 8

Plot holes: Don't care 

Funny: 5

Men in Black III

After the cataclysmic cinema disaster that was MIB II, no one expected anything from this effort, but MIB III delivers in spades. It even has heart. Barry Sonnenfeld unexpectedly returns as director, and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones reprise their roles in spite of it. Well. Mostly. Tommy is replaced by his younger self, Josh Brolin, much of the time. His impersonation of Tommy Lee is freakishly uncanny. Maybe Tommy Lee Jones has secretly invented time travel and brought his younger self forward to co-star. Two paychecks. Booyah!

Tommy Lee/Josh Brolin's Agent K must stop the repulsive Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) from going back in time and destroying the world in the future. Whatever. It sets up lots of action and jokes. Clement is criminally underused here, after his brilliant turn in the otherwise disappointing Gentlemen Broncos. Perhaps the director's cut will give him more screen time. As it is, the film focuses on Smith and Brolin's relationship. Michael Stuhlbarg's precognitive alien Griffin has some fun with time travel tropes.

Worth a watch.

Cinema Worthiness: 7.5

Character: 7.5

Story: 7

Action: 7

Costume Design: 7

Production Design: 8.5

Visual Effects: 8.5

Plot holes: Again, didn't care

Funny: 7

Instant Hipster Logos!

Man, will this come in handy.

Barbie says storytelling is hard. No, wait...

Barbie says math is hard.

And that's true.

So is storytelling. 

Just ask a movie critic.

Big blockbusters these days look better than ever, but they aren't grabbing me emotionally in even the perfunctory way an action film should. 

The way Die Hard did, back in the day. 

Todays action films are superficial imitations, without the underlying meaning or heart. It's turning me off mainstream cinema, and it's a shame, because so much work and incredible talent is poured into them. I just gape at the production design of these magnificent cinema confections.

On a certain level, it feels petty to criticize such magnificent visual feasts. 

And there's a growing movement of Suck-it-ups out there who insist movies just be blindly accepted, without any critical evaluation by the audience: 'You'll take what's given to you, you ignorant, spoiled masses, and you'll like it. Biatch!'

Not the most appealing marketing slogan. 

We take our chances when we go to the cinema, as with most other things. Theodore Sturgeon famously claimed that ninety percent of everything is crap. We remember Casablanca, and think that era was better. Yet they churned out films by the dozen (hundred?) back then, with the same speed and efficiency they used to pump out of B-17 bombers and blockbuster bombs. 

Thousands of forgettable films have been rightly forgotten.

Movies are such massive endeavors now it's a miracle any of them turn out as hoped. Almost nothing in them can be criticized in isolation. Not the actor, the writer, the producer, the director, or the effects; everything is interconnected. Related. Sometimes these competing elements gel and it's magical. Most of the time, it doesn't, without even being the fault of anyone involved. It leaves everyone perplexed, wondering what went wrong.

Even The Man, Steven Spielberg, has made a dud or two. 


 

Wolverine

The characters aren't engaging, and the underlying emotional themes didn't resonate. On the plus side there's lots of decently choreographed action. 

To top it off, the ending has a lead-in to the next X-Men film. 

That's the best part.

Hugh Jackman delivers the usual gruff, tortured hero with aplomb, but only Tao Okamoto stands out from the supporting cast. The most intriguing thing about her character is that she seems surprised to be in an action movie.

Cinema Worthiness: 6.5

Character: 4

Story: 3

Action: 6.7

Costume Design: 4

Production Design: 6

Visual Effects: 6

Plot holes: Noticeable, but low expectations make them easier to ignore

Funny: 3

Man of Steel

This Superman cares about innocent bystanders as much as Joe 'Steel' (Stalin) did. Is it something about taking 'Steel' as a moniker? He used to care about innocents being killed in the crossfire.

No longer. 

And after the destruction and carnage finally end, we skip over the deaths of millions to a chipper fellow asking out a couple chicks to a ball game. 

Classy.

That being said, I thought it was a beautifully shot film; some sequences look like an expensive insurance commercial, they're so finely tuned and directed. On the other hand, Snyder can be heavy handed (such as placing Christ directly behind Superman in the church). 

Cinema Worthiness: 7.2

Character: 5.5

Story: 5

Action: 8

Costume Design: 8

Production Design: 9

Visual Effects: 9.5

Plot holes: Planet devouring, movie derailing singularities

Funny: 1 

Is this an awesome postcard or what?

Oblivion

Looks gorgeous. Jaw dropping good. Great effects, wonderful design work, fabulous sets, breathtaking vistas. Filming the post-apocalypse in Iceland was a stroke of genius.

Would make a lovely series of postcards.

Cruise jumps about and throws all his considerable energy into the role. He's always interesting to watch. Morgan Freeman pops up briefly to explicate, and manages to look even more bored than he did in White House Down.

I didn't think that was possible.

Cinema Worthiness: 7

Character: 3

Story: 3

Action: 5

Costume Design: 7

Production Design: 9.5

Visual Effects: 8.5

Plot holes: Sucked up the entire ending, then ate my brain

Funny: 2

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Star Trek: Into Darkness was Wrath of Khan on methamphetamines.

Pacific Rim is Godzilla plastered in hundred dollar bills, from the tip of his steaming nostrils to the end of his armour plated tail.

An American film set in Hong Kong and based on Japanese monster movies, it stars an international cast (Japanese, British, American, Australian, Chinese) and is directed by a Spaniard.

Talk about Globalization. 

The dialogue is perfunctory, and much of it was unintelligible due to poor sound quality. But are you really missing much?

Characters are over the top and drawn with broad brush strokes. One seems defined by his bow tie and mutton chops. There's not a lot of room for them, but there's an awful lot of punching.

The actors include Charlie Hunnam, who does a decent job as your typical, square jawed lead, and Idris Elba who brings his usual gravitas. Rinko Kikuchi deploys a devastating demure gaze. Caricatures make up the rest of the cast, as they did in the giant monster movies of old.

Hunnam's Appreciative Glance meets Kikuchi's Devastating Demure Gaze

Obviously, the real stars are the monsters (Kaiju) and the giant robots (Jagers).

The props are impressive, and the design work impeccable. It has the feel of a real, lived in world, albeit one where the Laws of Physics have been beaten near to death.

It's fun, and if I were ten I'd have absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, I am no longer as enamored by giant robots pummeling gargantuan monsters for ten minutes at a time as I once was.

And this film has a lot of punching in it.

Did I mention the punching? Granted, that's a feature for many, but it went over my tolerance level and drove me into boredom. Just too much of a good thing. Because it's well done punching.

I must be getting old.

The fights are almost all shot in rain or underwater (They seem to forget they're underwater at times), making the effects work easier. Godzilla did that trick a decade ago.

For some reason I keep mentioning that big green lizard guy.

Unfortunately chaotic camera work makes it feel like Godzilla crashed The Bourne Identity and stepped on poor Jason. Shaky-cam vérité on an epic scale. It works for the most part, but I found it hard to understand what was going on as big, rain soaked and unidentifiable monster or robot parts flew by.
The giant robots were suitably magnificent, and much easier to interpret onscreen than their Transformer peers. Del Toro kept their surfaces much cleaner. Transformer bots look like massive jumbles of indecipherable machinery packed into a dense mass.

A rule of thumb I remember being put forward by an ILM alum is that the audience should be able to 'read' a shape within three seconds of it appearing onscreen. If it's more complex than that, you're going to confuse a lot of eyeballs.

The monsters had extra legs and arms and weird blue goo oozing nematocysts sticking out all over and didn't always fare as well on my retina, but the fundamental aesthetic of them was intriguing. Ace fantasy-anatomy artist Wayne Barlowe was behind many, and his genius shines through.

You can tell Guillermo Del Toro loves the whole giant monster genre, and he pours his enthusiasm into every frame. This is no hack job, but a real tribute. There are some wonderful touches and details to be found in the film. Far superior to the Transformer franchise. Just not quite my cup of tea these days.

Little boys will love it. Probably be video games and toys to follow.

There better be.

They have a 200 million dollar budget to recover!