The Oscars

OK… so the Oscars were last week. I didn’t watch them, I never do (I’ll get to that later), but I did manage to see the cool Horror Montage the morning after. Very cool.

A couple of days later, my buddy Cinesthete, at Reel Friction posted his thoughts on the Oscars. Upon reading it, I felt that I had express some of my own thoughts… mostly as rebuttal to his thoughts, and adding a few of my own.

I reproduced most of his article here, at least the parts that I had felt the need to comment. To read the whole article, go here. There were a few things that I had no thoughts or cares about.

Here goes:

I don’t pretend to understand cinematography (anyone who has seen my films can attest to that), but does lighting generated on a computer count? I’m surprised Avatar won.

I won’t even claim to understand any cinematography (at least you made a few films, Cinesthete), but as a 3D artist and animator, I can say that lighting is one of the most challenging aspects of the job. Every aspect of lighting is translated through hundreds of parameters that we take for granted. Positioning, intensity, and attenuation are just a difficult to determine in a virtual scene as it is in real life. And then there is the whole science of Radiosity (shadows and light bounces) that need to be configured… otherwise you’ll end up with something like a scene in the original Tron (they may have been ground breaking in 3D, but we have gone a long way since then).

Once you tweak all the parameters in order to imitate real life, you then have to marry it to actual real life footage. Granted, on many of todays sophisticated computers and equipment (thanks to George Lucas), this is not too difficult. But trust me, it takes damn near rocket science to figure out how to use all that equipment and programs.

So “lighting generated on a computer” is really putting it lightly. It’s like saying anyone can pickup a camera and become a James Cameron. It is, after all, just “looking through a lens”, right? I’m not shocked that Avatar won that award. As a matter of fact, I am shocked it didn’t received more technical awards, but thats how the Oscars work…
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Sharktopus withdrawal? SyFy has something to help…

Some of you may have recalled my article on Sharktopus. And some of you may find it difficult to wait for this film to arrive (like myself). Well… fear not. Roger Corman has something to tide you over.

Mark your calendars: March 13 for Dinoshark!

I just wish that SyFy would do this more often on the weeknights, and not the Wrestling or Wisps-of-air…er…Ghost Hunters. At least they have all day movies on the weekends, even if they are not always available to me…

BTW… love the Jaws reference: “Think we’re going to need a bigger chopper…” (two-fold!)

Vampire Slayers in History

You know, Buffy isn’t the only vampire slayer out there. She’s not even real! But did you know that Abraham Lincoln was, secretly, a vampire slayer? Yep. While writing para-phrases for the Emancipation Proclamation, he was driving stakes into the blood sucking vile beasts!

No… I have not lost it. But in all seriousness, Seth Grahame-Smith, who brought us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an parody(?) of Jane Austen’s classic, has just released Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. How awesome is that?

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

To help promote the book, a trailer was made. Just more awesomeness. No, really! How ofter to you hear a “theatrical” trailer made for a book. You need to check it out!

I don’t know about you… but after seeing this, I caught myself thinking “This would even be more awesome if they actually made a real movie out of this!”

And, then, low and behold…. someone felt the same awesomeness and I did!

According to The Hollywood Reporter, there is going to be a film adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. And we’re not talking about some no name people here… Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov are getting together on this! Most likely producing, and not directing… but still, it promises to be some “awesome” entertainment…

Another thing about “The Thing”

Just a quick note about “The Thing” prequel that I reported about the other day. Some more recent news, positive news, surfaced that sheds a bit of light to the prequel that is definitely a prequel…

From the What’s Playing website:

…Australian actor Joel Edgerton spoke briefly about his next project, a prequel to John Carpenter’s classic horror-hit The Thing.

Edgerton, who’ll appear in the film opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead, tells Hit he can’t say much about the Matthijs van Heijningen Jr-directed project only that it takes place before the original movie.

“Anyone who is a big fan of the John Carpenter version of The Thing knows that it starts on the American base station but the investigation of where the Thing has come from leads us to know something very bad has happened at the Norwegian base station and the prequel centres itself around there and what happened pre-Kurt Russell”.

In the film, due to film in Vancouver, Edgerton plays Sam Carter a helicopter pilot who teams with a graduate student named Kate Lloyd (Winstead) to pursue an alien life form.

No talk about some brother of a lead from the original. This, to me, sounds like the movie is going in a positive direction. Even if it does go sour, it will not mar the original.

Now, if people would just stop whining about it, we can get on with our lives. That is, at least until the movie is released.

“The Thing” Prequel Progressing

A while back (more than a year ago) I caught wind of a possibility re-make of John Carpenter’s The Thing. This really upset me. The movie is a perfect sci-fi/horror that does not need to be remade. Even when I watch it today, it’s suspense and creepiness rivals most of what is being put out. There simply was no need for it.

The rumors basically died and everyone forgot about it. But then, I heard new rumors that a prequel is being made. Actually, now they’re no longer rumors. It’s official. Shooting will begin in mid March. However, the idea of a prequel does not sound so bad. It’s definitely better then a remake. But, it could go bad in many ways, as well. According to BloodyDisgusting.com, there is some notion of having a character that will be the brother of one of the leads from the original (MacReady played by Kurt Russell). This would be bad. Very bad. It just does not fit in with the story and it would be just plain stupid.

You see, in original 1982 version, there were events that occurred up to the present point of the movie. These events focus on a Norwegian Camp in Antarctica (the movie take place on an American research outpost on Antarctica), and from what I have read, this prequel is supposedly focused on these events. This fine… I can accept this. But to have MacReady’s brother involved… NO! Ronald D. Moore (of new Battlestar Galactica) is penning this new story. While I’m not not too crazy about his recent work, he did write for Star Trek’s Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. One can only hope he will look back to his roots and not cheese out like he did for Battlestar.

Setting that aside… if things don’t go too sour (like this brother angle), I’ve recently came across some refreshing news that could work in its favor. Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. have been added to head the special effects. The good news is these guys are NOT CG artists. They do special effect the old fashion way: Make-up and Animatronics. Frankly, with the rise of CG graphics lately, some movies are becoming more and more like cartoons. It’s good to know that some old fashion techniques are still used. This, and the fact that an up and rising director, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., are on board with this project, Things are looking a little positive.

PS: While looking for the latest news regarding The Thing, I can across an interesting article from CoronaComingAttractions.com. While I knew that SciFi Channel (now just SyFy) had originally planned on making a sequel to The Thing, I never knew how far it went. The news came and went so fast that most people were not aware of it (I didn’t hear about until after they decided not to do it). Patrick Sauriol from CoronaComingAttractions so how got hold of the script that was made for the SciFi special (set to be a miniseries). He writes about it and the sequel sounds pretty decent. What was it shelved? Probably for budgeting reasons.

The Terminator Franchise: Could it get… Terminated?

For some of you, this might be old news, but the rights to the Terminator movies have been sold to the hedge fund Pacificor. It’s the very same type of investment organizations that is partially responsible of our, rather, bleak economy (one out of many, of course). Franchises always have a tendency of being bounced around from owner to owner to anyone looking to make money. But, in some way or another, those owners are usually production companies, writers, even actors/actresses… but not investment company like a hedge fund. However, they are the ones who loaned money to the previous owners, Halcyon, and forced them into bankruptcy. Selling the Terminator rights would have been the only way to get Halcyon out of debt. Sure, there was an auction. Sony, Lionsgate, even Joss Whedon, all placed their bids. In the end, it was Pacificor that made the highest. Yes, that is some bad fish that you are smelling. And yes, Sony and Lionsgate were pissed.

So, needless to say, many eyebrows were raised when news of a non-production company buying the rights to the Terminator series and are concerned with it’s future. I am. Okay, so some of you might be saying that the last Terminator film sucked so bad, that the franchise is dead. No true! Many frachises have bounced back from one (or two) bad movies. Yes, I was disappointed in the fourth installment, much in the same way I was disappointed with Phantom Menace. But it bounced back. Not to the same level that it was before (rarely it does). But the Terminator series still has a lot of potential. It is about time travel… so that, in itself, opens a lot of opportunities. The TV series had a good run, albiet only two seasons. I blame Fox and not the writting. I always thought that Josh Friedman’s writing was clever and the show was going places. Remember, Fox has a history of cancelling some rather good shows… way too many.

So where is the Terminator going? I’m scared to say. There’s talk about a “reboot” type of thing… I hope not… please anything, but that. The Hollywood phrase “Reboot” is getting so overused, and nothing good, in the past ten years, has come of it. I think that a reboot will definitely kill it.

However, there is a hope. A glimmer of light from the corner of our eyes. William Wisher, a writer that actually worked on the first two films, just a submitted a detailed 24-page treatment for Terminator 5, and a 4-page concept outline for Terminator 6. And according to Mike Fleming, from Deadline.com/hollywood, who read the material, says the it has some potential. Some of the details that he laid out in his article sound good. And it’s not a reboot.

Now, it’s up the hedge fund to take a chance and acutally put a good story to production and not fall for the Hollywood money making formula, which usually leads to disastrous results (granted profitable… but all boyhood dreams are trashed at this point).

Roger Corman and SyFy Present: Sharktopus!

I have to admit… I’m looking forward to this new upcoming feature, produced by legendary Roger Corman, titled Sharktopus. Syfy has been known, for quite some time, to present some really usually creature features: Mansqito, Dinocroc, Chupacabra, and most recently Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Creature features just don’t get old… even if it they are bit cheesy and overly campy. Its still entertainment.

No idea as to when its going to be here, just news that it’s actually being done. Here are some artists’s renditions of what the creature may look like… just to get your imagination going…

Facticious Science: Good Science or Bad Science?

The main focus of the blog is to examine the factious science found in story based media. Whether it’s in a movie, literature, or even video games, I consider the setting, and it’s science, equally as important as the structure of it’s wrapping story.

Discover Magazine online recently released a great article (coinciding with its Extreme Universe issue) that points out just that… the science in fiction. This particular article was written by a lad who likes to call himself the “Bad Astronomer.” I’ve been following this fellow for years (before joining Discover) and his writings were awesome. He basically scanned the internet and found articles where science was abused: written to appear like real science, but really just a bunch of cow fodder. So I though it was pretty fitting that he pointed out some inconsistencies in movies that just defy science.

You see, sometimes it may not be real or even possible, but it can be believable. Science Fiction movies of the old days are funny now simply because we know better… our real science has advanced so much, that we find the old ideas comical. You can’t get away with that some much these days… How many times have you watched something that had some kind of scientific thing that was so blatantly not possible that it just ruins the story? Many movies fail because of this. However, many movies can get away with it because it crosses over the science barrier and into the magic. But even magic has it’s weaknesses. One has to be very careful with the details: once there is an inconsistency in those details, the story will be destined to fail just as badly.

This little interactive on the Discover website is pretty cool with some very interesting, valid, points. It’s nice to know that there are others out there that think like I do. Check it out!

My Best and Worst of 2009, à la Fictum Scientia

It was an eventful year. I lost my job in May, thanks to our dark economy. So, I took that opportunity to start this blog and start enjoying movies a bit more. Being that I started this thing half way through the year, I did not get to see all the movies that I wanted to.  I also didn’t get to write as much as I wanted to. I started to write about movies I’ve seen, but never finished! I have issues with finishing what I started.

Anyhow, I present to you my Ten Best and Five Worst of 2009, à la Fictum Scientia. À la Fictum Scientia? Yes, it’s the focus of this blog: Movies (as well as other media) that have some elements (not just the story) that are beyond reality… or fictitious. If you’re looking for Drama or Romance, it’s not here. Typically, you’ll find only Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror here… even if it’s just remotely related. Remember… if it has some unrealistic quality to it, it’s probably Fictum Scientia.

The Best… Read the rest of this entry »

Time to get Primal

Picked this one off from FearNet. It looks pretty awesome. But, for the life of me, I can’t find out when and where it will be released (and in what form). This trailer did premier at last year’s Cannes festival. And I did find out that it will be presented at the European Film Market festival in February. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how well it does there for final distribution.

Find out more at primalthemovie.com (you’ll find an alternate trailer there, too).