THE DARK KNIGHT

WOW, I went to see The Dark Knight twice in it's first weekend. It is really good. The medium is just right, not too dark, but not too commercial. Chris Nolan was the perfect director for this series, he has some how taken the comic book cheese genre and turned it into a serious thriller. Which is F*****G brilliant. The film has been a massive success so far in the USA and its been the first film this year that i've seen fill a cinema, every seat was sold. I even saw one person sat on the steps! Both nights i went to see it...PACKED. I couldn't believe it.

Heath Ledger as Joker was such a good choice. When i first heard he was taking the role i was a bit unsure, but he did it better than i could ever imagine. And, it's a real shame, i knew he was a talented actor, but this performance will go down in history. Even if he hadn't have died it would have still been a historical performance.

There wasn't enough of the Joker, when he was on screen it was really exciting and you didn't know what he'd do next. Ledgers performance brought so much energy to the film.

It seemed like an introduction to his manic personality and the next film would have shown you the real Joker.

There as been talk on the net that the Joker was written to be in the third film, but rumours have it they've scrapped the script. They don't want to re-cast him, but i think they should. Ledger has brought to life a great character and there must be more than one person who can do character acting well.

On the movie forums Johnny Depp's name is being thrown around, and yeah, i think he'd be good. But, there must be more than Depp around. His name is up for every role.

The SFX were outstanding too. I'm not going to in to them too much. But, it's been awhile since i've seen some real nice big explosions. It's all CGI these days, i'm sure there were CGI in there to make it look bigger. But i remember the days when if you have written that a helicopter gets blown up, then you blow up an helicopter. I understand that its quicker and cheaper to do it CGI, but never looks the same.

All in all, it was a fantastic film, the best this year and it'll be very hard to beat it.

HD not for me.

My step dad has recently bought an HD TV and a blu-ray player (he has taken back the player because blu-rays are a little over priced).

I can't stand watching films or even programs on this new technology. It seems to make everything look tacky. I believe there is TOO much detail.

I watched a seminar With Robert Rodriguez not so long back, it was just after he finished filming Once Upon A Time In Mexico. It was the first film he shot in digital HD and he said you can't get enough detail. RR is one of my all time favs, but i have to disagree with him. I watched 10,000 BC a couple of nights ago, really bad film and not a good choice to test HD out, but i knew that before i put it on. Just wanted to see how bad. HD made it look unbelievably crap, it was like watching a film in layers, like a pop-up-book. The real layer with the actors and a set, then a layer of CGI mammoths and a green screen background. I'm not over-reacting it was that bad.

I thought it might just be 10,000 BC, so i checked the sky movie channels and saw Spider-Man 3 was on. I was blown away by Spider-Man 3 at the cinema and HD even made that look poo. I watched Frankenstein (the Rob De Niro one), which was made a while back, but i wanted to see what it did. And that looked really bad, you could clearly see that they were on a set and using stage lights. I dread to think what 300 looks like.

I think the film industry hasn't caught up to the TV technology yet. Old films will never look right on HD, but hopefully the future ones will.

Off To See THE DARK KNIGHT to night.

Had my tickets for awhile now, and i'm honestly unbelievably excited, like when it was christmas as a child.
And, what got me more excited was this remarkable website.

I will give my full review on the Dark Knight tomorrow.

Wall-e

Wall-e Website, check it out it's cool.

So, went to see Wall-e last night.
What can i say, which hasn't been said already?...WOW.

Last year Pixar brought us Ratatouille and i didn't think they'd top that animation for a couple of years. How wrong was I? Wall-e has taken this beautiful art to the next steps already. The detail on Wall-e for a start is incredible. You can see all the mechanism's working in his eyes, the rust and most of all the emotion. The film doesn't have dialogue for 75% of it, but you know exactly what he's thinking. Also getting back to detail, Earth looks brilliant, well it looks like a mess. But, that mess looks brilliant.
The sound design was very clever, reminded me of R2-D2 (Star Wars). You can clearly tell what the certain sounds mean. The use of camera angles were good, No, they were outstanding. The was a scene where it started as a long shot of earth and then zoomed right in to show wall-e at work. I picked up on the good use of camera angles on Ratatouille, focus pulling, quick editing, it makes it feel more like live action feature.

When i first saw Eva i didn't think she looked that great. I know she is suppose to look modern, Ipod-ish, next generation sort of thing. But, next to Wall-e it looked plain.
However, towards the end of the film there is a super close up of her face and you can see all the little lights under the plastic that make up her eyes. It's his sort of detail that makes you want to stand up and applaud the Pixar gang for there work.

If i had to pick fault, i mean really had to dig deep to find fault. I would say there wasn't enough of Wall-e and the bug by them self. Within 15 minutes Eva is on the seen and i really liked watching Wall-e explore the world and his reaction to the items he found.

Stan Winston RIP

This last month one the great visual effects and make up wizards Stan Winston died.
He had done some great creatures, including the Terminator, the Queen Alien, the Preditor, Edward Scissorhands, the T-rex in Jurassic Park and the none CGI Iron Man suit.
He worked with Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton and James Cameron many times.

There aren't many still in the model making business and he was the go too guy if you needed one. He Won 4 of the 9 Oscar's he was nominated for. He was a true legend.

This made me think that there are many people in the film business that get under thrown. You always hear about the Actors and Directors and they get the big awards, but films would be nothing without SFX, editing, music score, camera men, etc

So here are some amazing people (off the top of my head)
Danny Elfman (music)
Ray Harryhausen (SFX)
Ray Winston (SFX)
John Williams (music)
Frank and Ollie (animators)

The Phantom. The Spirit. The FRANK MILLER.

The Phantom is a new camera, which has become the key gem for Frank Miller's new film THE SPIRIT.

The phantom shoots in super slow motion, it captures 1,000 frames per second rather than the usual 25. This mean you take a tenth of a second and turn it into a minute of footage.
The Digital effects guy for the film Stu Maschwitz says "It's an astonishing effect - not like anything you've ever seen". Which, is unbelievable because this man who also did Davey Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean, Superman Returns baseball pitch scene. Die Hard 4.0 Fighter jet fight with Bruce and the Iron man suit.
He is pretty ground breaking and if he can be shocked at this then it must make the average film geek (like myself) go wild.

Frank Miller isn't as-well-known for his film making, but in the last few years he has brought us Sin City and 300, which were both amazing films. And, both re-invented film making. With them being shot completely on green screen. Again The Spirit is another green screen film and from the trailer it looks a lot like Sin City, but in the recent preview in Total Film magazine Frank Miller re-assures us that it is very different from Sin City. Plus, its in full colour.
It looks like a comic book come to life and i can't wait to see it.It's due out in November. If you can't wait that long then go buy the special two disc version of Sin City and sink your head into the bonus features, they're mind blowing and if your interested in making movies it also gives you some tips.