Went to a preview of this supposed £45 zombie film at the BFI for Halloween. The director, Marc Price, was a really lovely, humble guy and I hope he gets the success he deserves. The film was good, the microbudget shows but the passion and story shine through the short comings. Like the zombie main character the story meanders and slightly outstays its welcome, it is also extremely hard to feel sympathy for a zombie and the film struggles partly to muster any kind of empathy and emotion for its main character. It flits from individual vignettes as the zombie travels the streets, to the overarching story of Colin himself – and the mix can be a little jarring (when we move to another scene debating the point of the previous). However all this said, it’s a good little movie with some fantastic scenes. Definitely catch it if you get the chance on its limited cinema run.
Screen legend Paul Newman passed away today after a long battle with Cancer. He was truly one of the great screen actors of all time and if you haven’t explored his career you really should – he provided legendary performances in many classsic films and will always be remembered as one of the greats. In fact, I’ll let his performances do the talking, do “Cool Hand Luke”, “The Sting”, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Towering Inferno” ring any bells? He was also on Richard Nixon’s list of enemies! What more could you want?
Just an update to say the very awesome looking “In The Fall of Gravity” is having its premiere at the “NYIIFVF” New York film festival, on the 24th of September at 8.00 AM – you have to book in advance but if you are around the area I am sure it will be worth it. Looks like a really awesome and innovative project! Good luck to Ron Cole the creator, I hope it goes well. Check out my previous post for a little bit more infomation on the project.
You may not know his name but you know his voice – the king of trailer voiceover has passed away. Don LaFontaine IS that awesome husky voice on the trailers, he came in to the industry completely by chance and effectively changed the way trailers were made by becoming the first in a long line of “deep authorative voiceovers” that are now the staple of most big budget trailers. If you want to be reminded of some of his classic trailers just youtube him, and if you want to find out a little bit about the man behind the voice check out this video. He may be gone but his voice will not be forgotten.
Koji Morimoto is one of my favourite directors and animators. You may not recognise his name but if you have a remote knowledge of Japanese animation I’m sure you would recognise his work (Akira ring any bells?). While he is perhaps most famous for animating on large anime films and series I am personally most fond of his work as a director – he directed “Magnetic Rose” by far the best film on the “Memories” anime shorts DVD, and directed “Beyond” on the original “Animatrix” DVD (again my personal favourite of the collection). As a director his films have a distinct style, inhabiting dreamy scifi worlds not far removed from our own (and, of course, the animation is always phenomenal). Anyway, I heard there was an artbook of his lurking around so after much hunting I managed to get myself a copy, and it didn’t disappoint.
My last post was about 2D and 3D animation, well here is a short film that combines the two to an enchanting degree. It’s a couple of years old now but still looks absolutely fantastic.
I watch a lot of short films on youtube and this one really blew me away. The story isn’t particularly fantastic but visually it is just beautiful with some charming character animation to boot. 3D elements have been frequently implemented in to 2D animation (see “The Iron Giant”, “Futurama” or even “Spirited Away”) but this takes it to a new level, embracing the combination rather than trying to hide it.
As you may or may not have gathered from the posts of this blog so far one of my greatest passions is animation and animated film. There has been some really great stuff out already this year (“Kung Fu Panda” and “Wall:E” specifically) but every time I go to the cinema I am dismayed by the complete lack of 2D animation coming to our screens. It would certainly be wrong to say 2D animation is dead but I definitely find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the sparse upcoming projects from this fading school of animation. Read the rest of this entry »
Check out this tailer for a short film called “In the Fall of Gravity”.
This is being made by a guy called Ron Cole, who is basically reinventing stopmotion animation by implimenting cable control to his stop motion puppets. This gives the puppets a really unique look, with facial animation that is more expressive and realistic than anything seen in stopmotion before! Really impressive and inspiring stuff.
Just to prove I’m not dead I thought I’d post an absolutely insane trailer for a crazy upcoming b-movie called “Tokyo Gore Police”. As you may have guessed it contains A LOT of gore, with quantities of fake blood to rival Peter Jackson’s record breaking “Braindead” and some pretty inventive gore effects (that sadly don’t cover up the film’s obviously low budget). This film looks to embody the b-movie spirit in it’s trashiest, campest form. There’s a little bit more information about the film on the link provided.
Okay “Stardust” FINALLY came out in the UK this week – a film I have been extremely anxious to see due to my love of the source material on which it is based. I’ve always been a big fan of Gaiman’s work, and his original novel “Stardust” was no exception – I just fell in love it, an epic fairytale that quickly became one of my favourite books. And so when I found out a film adaptation was on the way that actually had Gaiman’s blessing (with Gaiman even involved with production) I was very intruiged. Could it possibly do one of my favourite books justice?
