Beary Creepy Paddington

If you were around your usual social media haunts yesterday, chances are you would've come across a bunch of memes skewering the forthcoming live-action version of children's book favourite Paddington by inserting the character into famous horror movie scenes (click here for a collection of them). Now the first trailer's out, and though Paddington comes off slightly less creepy than the memes have made him out to be, the film does have a weirdly disgusting WTF moment where the CGI bear (voiced by Colin Firth) sticks toothbrushes into his ears and pulls out globs of earwax and proceeds to sniff and lick said earwax.

Anyway the trailer seems to have Garfield/Yogi Bear vibe, which isn't really a good thing in my books. But I didn't grow up reading Paddington so hey what do I know... Gather your kids close around the monitor and watch Paddington destroy a bathroom:

Only God Forgives: VFX Showreel

To say that Nicolas Winding Refn's Thailand-set crime-noir Only God Forgives arrived last year to hugely polarising reactions would be an understatement -- it definitely didn't garner the same kind of consistent acclaim as his previous film, Drive. In fact most Fatso customers hated it, if this sampling of reviews are anything to go by:

But if you're a fan of the film and/or the director, you'll want to check out this clip that breaks down all the special effects shots. Love or hate him, you can't deny that Refn knows exactly what he wants to see on-screen... down to blinking eyes....

I'll be the first person to say that CGI is overused these days, BUT when it's used as smart and subtly as this, it can be a brilliant tool to help you achieve a very specific artistic vision that doesn't involve cities getting decimated. Good stuff.

Action Movie Kid is All Kinds of Awesome

What do you do when you're a special effects wiz at Dreamworks Animation with a kid? If you're Daniel Hashimoto, you turn your three-year-old's imagination into action-packed reality. Check out this super-cute compilation of short videos he's created with James, who gets to wield a light saber, fire rocket launchers, amongst other things...

Trailer: Godzilla

Last time Hollywood tried to do a Godzilla and it didn't turn out so good, so this hotly anticipated forthcoming remake by Gareth Edwards has nowhere to go but up really. Edwards has only one film to his name, the indie alien invasion flick Monsters, but with that, he's already proven himself an elegant and smart handler of special effects, and this thundering stomp of a trailer is a promising glimpse of what he might be able to do on a larger canvas. The question remains though is whether Godzilla '14 will offer anything more than the de riguer city-demolishing spectacle that's now the blockbuster norm (see everything Cloverfield to Pacific Rim). Watch the trailer below, where we get to see Heisenberg get all growly again, jets falling from the sky, nuclear mushroom clouds and a wee peek at the Big G. It's out on May 15; if you feel like revisiting the 1954 original before then, you can rent it here.

Super Bowl Teaser: Transformers: Age of Extinction

Although Michael Bay has given us a few reassurances that Transformers: Age of Extinction might be an improvement over the previous series entries (didn't he say Transformers 3 would be less goofy too?), watching this Super Bowl teaser makes me think otherwise. It looks pretty much like robot Bay-hem as usual, albeit with Mark Wahlberg hammin' up a storm in the lead instead of Shia LeBeouf. And wait, is that Optimus Prime riding on a dinosaur...? Admittedly I loved the Dinobots when I was a kid, so I'm curious to see what Bay does with those characters, but yeah, I'm keeping my expectations extremely low. Who's hyped?

Trailer: Noah

The first trailer for Darren Aronofsky's retelling of the biblical tale Noah has landed, and as expected, it's loaded with CGI animals, catastrophic weather changes and epic battles, which on the surface, doesn't make it look that far removed your last cheesy Roland Emmerich disaster picture. I'm still curious though, to see what Aronofsky (Black Swan) can do on a large-scale blockbuster-level production, and let's hope the recent news of fights with the studio haven't impacted too heavily on his vision. The film stars Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe, Ray Winstone, Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson, and is due for release March 28 next year.

In Space No One Can Hear You Nitpick

Firstly if you haven't seen Alfonso Cuaron's spectacular Gravity yet, just set aside 90 minutes this week and buy a ticket to a 3-D screening at your nearest IMAX pronto. Reviews have been largely, universally positive (it's currently boasting an impressive 96 rating on Metacritic), and having seen the film, I can attest that it IS a big screen experience worth savouring. And not just any normal screen, but the biggest screen possible, hence the IMAX recommendation. I rarely go back for seconds at the movies these days -- heck I barely make it out to the theatres anymore -- but Gravity is one film that could justify another viewing. It's just that kind of film. 
Plenty have been written about Cuaron's gob-smacking technical achievements already so I won't go into detail, but for those who've seen the film and need some post-viewing reading, Vulture has a great interview with director Cuaron and former US astronaut Scott Parazynski, who fact-checks the film's space experience. Meanwhile, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson unleashed a barrage of tweets nitpicking the film's "realism". Trust me though, none of this will matter when you're watching it -- Gravity is one of the most beautifully immersive blockbusters ever created, and definitely the best of its kind released this year.

Ray Harryhausen: "If you make fantasy too real, it loses the quality of a dream."

AMEN! I was watching Life of Pi last night thinking, "Okay, that's a pretty impressive and realistic-looking computer-generated tiger and all... but...". This weird kind of feeling - attributed to a phenomenon called "uncanny valley" - has yet, for me anyway, to be overcome by CGI, no matter how good it looks. There's so such problem with Harryhausen's pioneering stop-motion animation creations. The hand-crafted charm, the jittery quality, the fact that an actual three-dimensional object was photographed, the onus being on the viewer to do some work filling in the gaps - these elements make, say the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts, feel a whole lot more real than some of the slick, overblown CGI effects we've seen and been accustomed to in recent years.

Anywho Ray Harryhausen's passing is a great loss to the film world. Without this guy there would be no Star Wars, no Jurassic Park, no The Thing, no Nightmare Before Christmas etc!  A lot of Hollywood's greatest and most memorable creatures, aliens and monsters simply would not exist.

Here's a pretty good comp of Harryhausen's work:
If you 'd like to catch up on some of the films he's worked on, this is a list of what we've got in our library:

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
It Came from Beneath the Sea
Earth vs the Flying Saucers
20 Million Miles to Earth
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
Mysterious Island
Jason and the Argonauts
First Men in the Moon
One Millions Years B.C.
The Valley of Gwangi
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Clash of the Titans

Thoughts on Oblivion

Tom Cruise's shiny new sci-fier Oblivion is out in cinemas today. Wondering how it is? Let's break it down into easy-to-digest bullet points and stray obseravtions (no spoilers):

• Director Joseph Kosinski, who previously gave us the thoroughly underwhelming Tron: Legacy, is not a natural storyteller. He's first and foremost a stylist, a lover of sleek, painstakingly designed surfaces, and it's evident in the way Oblivion's lumbering, lurching narrative is at odds with its seductive tech glossiness.
• Tom Cruise performs with his usual generic leading-man intensity.
• It's a thinly veiled anti-God screed.
• Olga Kurylenko: miscast, wooden. All the romantic stuff is dreadful.
• I was wondering where I'd seen those spherical drones before, and it just dawned on me: Phantasm! :)

 

• Actually you'll be wondering where you've seen a lot of Oblivion from, and the answer is a LOT of other sci-fi. Unfortunately Kosinski never transcends the material's lack of originality.
• The effects work on Oblivion IS superb but I'm starting to get a little iffy of the following type of shot, which I first started noticing in Prometheus.... basically it's a lone-figure-riding-in-a-vast-landscape-type shot that's meant to convey just how dwarfed the figure is by the expansive surroundings etc. But I think my problem with it is is that it doesn't (not to me anyway) - the super-crisp CGI rendering looks pretty and all, but somehow robs the image of its intended power. Too unreal? The "uncanny valley" thing? I dunno. I'm probably just talking out of my arse - but it's just something that's crossed my mind.

 

Verdict: Some nice eye candy but mediocre, leaden movie.

Craziest Action Sequence of the Year!!!!#%@!!

Prepare to drop your jaws... Michael Bay could definitely take a few tips here

Short Film: The Raven

Ok here it is, the latest web short film sensation thing that's probably on the way to create some District 9-like buzz soon. Apparently Peruvian director Ricardo de Montreuil made it for only $5K. There seems to be a growing trend with these "calling card" shorts: show how much bang you can deliver for a small buck and you'll have studios lining up to make you offers (also related: the declining need for A-list names). And sure, The Raven is a glossy, polished product with impressive special effects, but also terribly derivative and not the least bit interesting. It falls in the same boat as Panic Attack! - no matter how fancy the CGI is, it looks like dozens of other films (clue: aliens/robots/end-of-the-world etc).

I should add that Montreuil isn't some newbie but already an established filmmaker in his home country with many commercials, music videos and at least two features under his belt. So it's not a "calling card" for a young filmmaker as such, but it is one for Hollywood, who're all about the kind of blockbuster-ready spectacle which The Raven so slickly provides in bitesize form.

THE RAVEN - 720 HD from THE RAVEN FILM on Vimeo.

Making Waves

If you've been to the movies in the past few months you've probably seen those amazing-looking tsunamis in the trailer to Roland Emmerich's upcoming disaster juggernaut 2012. Yahoo Movies have just posted a little behind-the-scenes clip featuring the effects guys talking about creating those waves:



But for a funnier and more interesting 2012-related clip, watch this, a re-edit of the trailer which cuts out all the visual effects and leaves the actors "acting". Needless to say, this movie is not a showcase for them.

Trailer: Avatar

Finally found an Avatar trailer that works! Didn't have Quicktime here at the office to watch the one on the Apple site, but apparently that has issues. Anyway here's the French trailer on msn. First impressions? My enthusiasm has slightly dimmed. The trailer has a good build-up but once those creatures come in, the only thing I could think of was 'hmmm'. Maybe the CGI will pop in 3-D but it just doesn't look all that from where I'm sitting. It's no more impressive than say, Revenge of the Sith, and in comparison, District 9's effects are much more photo-realistic. And how corny are those creature designs?!

At this point I just gotta remind myself "It's only a trailer, it's only a trailer...".

Cameron Screens Avatar Footage

After months and months of keeping us in the dark, some concrete evidence of what James Cameron's sci-fi spectacle Avatar will look like has finally surfaced at Amsterdam's Cinema Expo. In a 24-minute presentation, Cameron screened a number of scenes from the film which has left several minds blown, if this report from comingsoon.net is anything to go by. Words like "jaw-dropping" and "amazing" are being used to describe the effects, which is said to combine CGI, motion capture technology and live action. The film, starring Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, is set to be released on December 18. Here's a stunning-looking still that's doing the rounds:

Hyped? Hell yes.