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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Legion (2010)

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Directed by Scott Stewart.

With Paul Bettany, Lucas Black, Dennis Quaid, and Kevin Durand.

Who knew Angels could be so bad ass. I mean, really. And the Angels in this movie were the bad guys… or the good guys? I know, it’s confusing.

God loses faith in man. One Angel, Micheal, does not. Another Angel, Gabriel, follows orders and takes his army of angels to kill the one unborn child which is humankind’s only hope. You know how the movie is going to end, so you are watching just for the thrill ride.

Actually, it was less thrilling, and more hilarious than anything else. Read the rest of this entry »

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The new X-Men film (fourth, overall) is based on the highly popular superhero Wolverine. Of course, Hugh Jackman returns as the main character that originally made him popular (although, he is a good actor outside of this genre).

Oh, and for the record… I avoided watching the bootlegged “working copy” that was available on the Internet because I did not want to spoil my initial experience. I have promised myself to watch it and make a comparison, so perhaps that will be another discussion.

The movie, in general, was very exciting. It was full a great action sequences, awesome fights, and cool villains. But, in the end it lacked in depth of story and there was one lousy villain that left a sour taste upon completion.

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