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Cubism For CG And Movies
Aidtopia writes "Computer Graphics pioneer Andrew Glassner has a cool page on virtual cinema. The Matrix Reloaded introduced us to virtual cinema--re-rendering live action to show it in a way that would be difficult or impossible in real life. Glassner takes this much further by using unusual (and physically impossible) camera distortions, morphing multiple points of view simultaneously in single continuous image. Could this be the next big revolution in film? How long until we see a movie done like this?"
The movie industry seems to lack creativity lately.
Lately? The movie industry has always been the same. For every piece of "great cinema" there have been 1000 goofy mass-appeal movies.
I'm tired of folks with selective memories pining for the olden days.
In the sixties we had great movies like the Elvis series, or Frankie and Annette or Santa Clause vs the Martians! Gack. Or, worse, the sappy melodrama and atrocious acting of the 40s and 50s.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No, lots of people want bullshit and nude scenes. It's always been thus. The arthouse and high cinema crowd is but one potential audience. For every Citizen Kane there have been 50 Shirley Temples.
So it was, so it shall be.
Sometimes I dont want to follow a plot, and rather just relax and watch shit blow up.
Last weekend, par example, Godzilla was on one channel, Out of Africa was on another. I watched Godzilla. It was even one of the later really stupid ones, with Godzooky and all the monsters living on monster island together.
The Hollywood remake of Godzilla was crap, know why? They tried to saddle my nuclear dinosaur friend with the energy beam breath with a plot.
Bah. Plot shmot, Godzilla just shows up and smashes Tokyo or battles monsters until he gets bored. There's your friggin plot, Hemingway.
Same with video games. Sometimes I dont want to play a super intricate RPG, sometimes I just want to blow stuff up or beat the crap out of zombies.
So just relax. Some movies go for the arthouse set, some just for pure entertainment.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The Godfather and the LOTR series are excluded because they are originally written works
It seems to me that's WHY THEY HAVE GOOD STORIES. Most good movies are adaptations of novels (e.g. "The English Patient"), or of several books on the same subject (e.g. "Lawrence of Arabia"). Instead of either (a) writing half-assed scripts or (b) taking a Philip K. Dick short story and converting it into a vehicle for the future governer of California why don't we go to the motherlode of great SF and Fantasy novels that have never been turned into film:
1) "Forever War", by Joe Haldeman, has been optioned pretty much continuously since it was published, but never gotten a green light.
2) Where's "Neuromancer" -- the book from which everything in the Matrix (including its name) that didn't come from Kung Fu movies was stolen? Again it's been optioned continuously but never green-lighted.
There's a boatload of great novels (and comics -- how about making "Watchmen" instead of "LXO" or "The Dark Knight Returns" instead of "Batman") waiting to be made into films. Why are we making $100,000,000 films of atrocious scripts?
this scene used to bother me as well. but if you think about it a little, it almost makes sense.
Neo is basically god in the matrix. He has nothing to fear from anything inside.
Here is Agent Smith, sans ear plug, and obviously not exploded.
neo stays to fight, precisely because he isn't losing. he's near god, and he has absolutely nothing to fear. so he fights to see just how strong Smith has become, to see what he can learn from Smith.
when he decides he's seen/learned enough, or is actually scared, he leaves.
as for not trying to blow up agent smith - well, clearly smith didn't stay blown up - and he only learned new tricks from the experience. so if i was neo, i sure as hell wouldn't run the risk of giving him another powerup.
the important thing would have been for the wachowskis to convey this better. perhaps have Neo explain to morpheus and trinity back on the nebuchadnezzar that he was starting to lose and freaked out... or that he was actually scared.
put a little tension back into the movie. also, perhaps explaining to someone that he was afraid of trying to jump inside smith again, for fear of amplifying his power yet again.
i mean, they had a brand new driver for the ship, it would have been easy to do some basic exposition. this new driver would have heard and seen how neo could destroy or defeat agents at will - he'd have asked why he ran, why he didn't blow up smith, etc.
but yeah, the wachowskis flaw was that they didn't recognize the scene was weak.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"