K2: The King, The Kong, and the Ugly
K2: The King, The Kong, and the Ugly by G4
The Pitch: In the future Steve Wiebe sets an unbeatable Donkey Kong World Record. Billy Mitchell sends a cybernetic version of himself to the past to kill Wiebe before he breaks the record.
Thanks to Jonny for passing this along.
Major fire at Universal Studios
This news will leave a hole in the gut of movie and TV fans.
A giant fire broke out at Universal Studios in Los Angeles early this morning, destroying the courthouse square from the Back to the Future movies and damaging the famous clock tower. The King Kong attraction was destroyed, along with over 40,000 videos that were housed in a vault, including footage from I Love Lucy and Miami Vice. Not sure why videos aren’t stored in a fireproof vault, maybe underground or some other safe area, but luckily there are copies of the videos in another office.
There have also been a few sets that have been destroyed, including fake New York City and New England street sets that have been used in various TV shows, commercials, and movies. No word on how the fire started but officials say that it has now been contained. One firefighter and two other have been hurt (the latter in an explosion at the vault after the fire was out), but the MTV Movie Awards will go on as scheduled tonight.
James Cameron’s Avatar to Overcome Uncanny Valley?
James Cameron revealed at the Microsoft Advance ‘08 event that Avatar will be the first film to feature photo-realistic characters which actually look real.
“Avatar will make people truly experience something. One more layer of the suspension of disbelief will be removed. All the syn-thespians are photo-realistic. Now that we’ve achieved it, we discovered CG characters in 3D look more real than in 2D. Your brain is cued it’s a real thing not a picture and discounting part of image that makes it look fake,” said Cameron. “Avatar is the single most complex piece of filmmaking ever made. We have 1,600 shots for a 2.5 hour movie. It’s not with a single CGI character, like King Kong or Gollum. We have hundreds of photo-realistic CG characters.”
Has Cameron overcome the Uncanny Valley? For those who don’t know, Uncanny Valley is basically a theory that “when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.” Imagine a graph showing the progression of realism in computer generated characters. The “valley” in question is a dip in that proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.
The theory is that “if a entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is ‘almost human’, then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of strangeness’ in the human viewer.” For example, many moviegoers complain that the humans in Hironobu Sakaguchi‘s 2001 computer animated film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within look like zombies (see image below).
Cameron says that he has created “a complete ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and a native people with a rich culture and language.” Hundreds of photo-realistic CG characters which supposedly surpass the uncanny valley? Call me skeptical. Call me excited. I’m really hoping that this movie will live up to the hype. Quotes like the one above get me really excited for the endless possibilities, but then the quote below brings me back to earth.
“I don’t know whether will be great film from narrative and critical standpoint,” said Cameron. “The experience of Avatar will be an experience unlike any other movies.”
I would also describe The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer as “an experience unlike any other movie”, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean much. In other news, James Cameron also revealed at the event that Ubisoft will be releasing a 3D version of a game based on the movie, which will run on a standard XBox 360 - complete with 3D glasses! First-person shooters will become true first-person experiences, he said.
“If you play Avatar on a 50 inch monitor, you’re in the game.”
Again, very skeptical and very excited.
sources: searchenginewatch.com, marketsaw, cnet, wikipedia
Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to Co-Direct Third TinTin Movie?
Steven Spielberg has confirmed that the current plan is to co-direct the third TinTin movie with Peter Jackson.
“We are going to make three Tintin movies back-to-back. I’ll direct the first one, Peter will direct the second one. We’ll probably co-direct the third one.”
The first movie in the performance capture series is scheduled to begin production in September with Speilberg in the directors chair. Jackson will helm the second film in the series. Based on the classic comic-strip, Tintin follows the adventures of a junior reporter and his faithful dog Snowy. Jackson regular Andy Serkis (you know, the guy behind the characters of Golumn and King Kong) is signed on to play Captain Haddock. The first film is tentatively scheduled to hit theaters in 2009.
source: stuff.co.uk