rishel.org » Movies

Beowulf 3D: Almost Out Of The Uncanny Valley?

Jay — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:28:56 +0000

As a late birthday present Gail and Bryon watched Cory for Meg and me last Saturday. We took the time to go see Beowulf in 3D.
The way the actual Anglo-Saxon text was integrated into the songs and the speech of Grendel was well done. The additions to the story line to make the story more than just “I am Beowulf, I killed a monster and his mother and then 30 years later I killed a dragon and died” were well done, a tied into the mythology setting. If the movie had been made with more traditional film-making (live action actors, CGI Monsters) , We’d only be talking about the brilliance of the Gaiman/Avery script, but with “Performance Capture” and 3D presentation are really what steals the show.
Unlike the dead mannequin eyes all the Tom Hanks clones had in The Polar ExpressPerhaps this is just a result of Tom Hanks? I kid, I kid. we see glimpses of actual emotion being portrayed by these fancy puppets. This is partly because the 3D nature of the film adds a lot of realism, but also the subtle movement of an eyelid or movement of pupils allow Anthony Hopkins character to really express the sorrow and grief he feels. Unfortunately, that level of emotion still hit or miss. For every character interaction where I feel like I’m seeing real emotion, there are 3 where it just doesn’t look right, often coming from John Malkovich and Robin Wright Penn’s characters. And I can’t define what’s not rightBut that not-rightness is detected by an ancient reptilian portion of my brain.. Perhaps I’m just studying their faces a lot more closely because I know what I’m seeing is not a direct capture of a human on film, so what I’m noticing are flaws in a performance translated by the computers to the screen, not a flaw in the capturing process.

Overall, I give this movie 2.5 waxy turnips.

Serenity In 2000 Words

Jay — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:02:33 +0000

Do not click on the following link unless you have already seen Serenity. Serenity in 2000 words. if you haven’t seen Serenity yet, why not? Nevermind, I don’t care, go see it.

Firefly Marathon: This Saturday

Jay — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:08:04 +0000

This Saturday (Tomorrow), Meg and I are hosting a Marathon of Firefly from 10 am to 10 pm, watching all 13 episodes. If you’re in the area and I haven’t emailed you about this, I’m sorry, leave a comment or email me if you’re interested and haven’t told us yet.

On a totally unrelated note, have you see the “this week last year” box on the right side of the screen? Wow, was I crazy-productive blogwise this time last year.

Finding Neverland

Jay — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 03:46:45 +0000

Meg and I went to see Finding Neverland this afternoon. Wow. What a movie. The cast was great: Depp, Winslet, Hoffman. The story was very good, and I learned a bit more about some of the metaphors that appear in the Peter Pan story. While watching the movie, I got a little upset. I’ve seen the old Mary Martin version of Peter pan a lot, and that darn blinking light that plays Tinkerbell gets me every time. She drinks the poison to save Peter and we have to clap to save her. Make fun all you want, but I get teary eyed every time I see that darn blinkin’ light and bell start to fade. It only got worse when… well.. I don’t want to give away too much of the movie. I hope it wins some Oscars. It sure deserves them.

Leaves!

Jay — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 20:26:10 +0000

Saturday I got up ealier and took Meg out for a surprise viewing of The Incredibles. I’d write a review of the story (Wonderful!) and of the voice acting (Samuel L. Jackson and Jason Lee, how can you go wrong?) but my problem with seeing Pixar movies, is I have to see them at least twice before I can appreciate them as movies. The first time I watch them, I’m too amazed at how much further they’ve come at animating (simulating?) whatever it is that they’ve decided to focus on. Toy Story, Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2 were all about getting simple character animation down. Monsters, Inc showed a clear emphasis on learning how to simulate the movement of hair. Finding Nemo was all about getting their use of light down, but even watching Nemo, you could see movement of hair that they learned from Monsters really paid off in the way they animated the anenenmeneone. The Incredibles was all about perfecting the hair work they started in Monsters and showing off the light work they got right in Nemo. Not only can we see the hair move when the characters move, we can see the hair get wet, we see each individual strand of hair, and how it has a unique coloration. Moving beyond just hair, you could see light reflected off of their uniforms in a distractingly real way to me. I’ll definitely need to see it again so I’ll be more prepared to pay attention to the story instead of staring in awe at the background and minutiae of character design.

More writing below, none about the above topics though.

The majority of the rest of the day was spent raking leaves. The backyard is mostly done, but I had to stop because I ran out of curb to put the leaves on and ran out of daylight to see the leaves with. Hopefully I can finish the leaves before the weekend, but I don’t have high hopes. It is generally dark by the time I arrive home. why did they decide to stop DST right when it would be useful? Sure, there is light when I wake up, but damn! can’t I have some when driving home from work? stupid artificial time manipulations.

Oh, and I killed another rake. He was a good rake. not nearly as entertaining as Stubby Jim, The Rake Who Is A Pirate, but a good rake. Only his handle broke, the strong metally bits are still strong, so maybe I will just put him in stasis until future technology can revive him, and replace his weak wooden handle with some sort of liquid metal cyborgy handle.

Fiberglass might be cool too.

While I was raking, Dave and Lon stopped by to ~~steal~~ use some bandwidth and play WoW. Looks like a fun game but I am not going to pay $12 a month to make my wife mad at me. I can do that just fine by myself.

Sunday we went to the late service at church, and I spent most of the time bitting my tongue as the pastor gave a sermon involving a very literal interpretation of Genesis. Next time I get to talk to him, I need to ask how old he thinks the planet is. I’m scared of the answer.

After church their was a meeting about the youth group leadership, and how they want help, which didn’t seem to go anywhere, that was a little disappointing, but we did at least decide to try again at a time that hopefully more people can attend.

The rest of Sunday was spent cleaning house, which it was seriously in need of. Hopefully we’ll do a better job of keeping it up. I skipped playing AU to get everything done, but it was worth it have a clean house and a happy wife. Hopefully my character won’t be drugged like he was last time I skipped a session.

Scott and Brenda from church came by and we had a nice dinner. I made Pad Thai Chicken, which was yummy. Then I futz around with Scott’s visor and got his medical reference books setup correctly. It was a nice evening. Tonight, my parents are coming over, and we’ll cut a hole in a door, and I’ll fix the disaster I made of mom’s website. Note: running SQL update statements without where clauses is a bad thing.