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Teaser Trailer for 'Cars'; Info on 'Polar Express'
Michael Wyszomierski writes "The teaser trailer for the final Disney/Pixar film, Cars, is now available on Apple's Movie Trailers page. The film will open in theaters on November 4, 2005." And reader BoredStiff writes "The movie Polar Express will open Wednesday and could create a film genre somewhere between animation and live action. Made almost exclusively with a method called performance capture, which drops digitized human actors into a computer-animated world. The technique has been used in some video games and, to a limited extent, in earlier movies. Warner Bros. says The Polar Express is the first feature made solely with the process."
If the trailers are any indication, then this "performance capture" technology has a long way to go. The background animation is fantastic, but the characters look wooden, stiff, and completely lacking emotion. I find the animation style they've created to be very uninvolving and distracting (if those two things can coexist).
Great idea. Lousy execution.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I've seen the Polar Express trailer in theaters a couple times, now. Every time I see it I think one thing: Uncanny Valley.
Just an opinion, nothing to see here.
Zemeckis was a talented director pushing the envelope in just about every movie he did.
I really felt ripped off and gyped with "What Lies Beneath" and "Castaway" with the marketing and even more so with the fact that he alone approved the maketing.
What I'm referring to is the fact that the endings of both movies were given away in the trailers. Watching those movies was just a waste of time if you've already seen the trailers.
What I can't believe is what he said about giving away the endings. He said that people continue to buy Big Macs because they know what they're going to get.
I'm just going to appreciate "Used Cars" to "Contact". If "Polar Express" is a good movie, then fine but I've already seen the trailers. The story is good and I'll just leave it as a book for me.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I know that the Disney-Pixar deal lasts through the Incredibles (also Cars?) but unless there's some 11th hour deal to bring Pixar and Disney back together, one has to wonder what Disney is doing. Pixar is beating them to the punch with good characters and stories, and Polar Express looks pretty cool from a technology point of view (I can't comment on the story as I never read the book).
... "
My guess is that Disney is either in deep denial, and will let Pixar slip away and then truly be SOL, they'll resolve their differences (at which point Disney is happy that they don't have to put out their own stuff to counter-act Pixar, which would probably put some unfinished and poorly thought out stuff (think Treasure Planet), or they're really honestly working on something very cool that will come out of left field a la Toy Story, and everyone will say that "Disney has found the magic again", and "Who needs Pixar when you've got Disney's
Disney had a pretty long dry period until they hit it with Little Mermaid. Seeing how they were progressing (albiet slowly) from the ballroom scene in B&tB to the rather cool herd technology of Lion King (years before RotK), I'm actually pretty shocked that they've been unable to link good technology to a good story, being content to let Pixar do both jobs for them. My guess is that the Pixar-Disney deal never mentioned sharing source code, so Disney presumably will have to figure it all out for themselves.
OTOH, maybe they're abandoning animation altogether so they can put out more "Old Yellar" movies. In a few years, they may not have much choice.
Really all that is necessary is a good story. $150 million worth of special effects WILL NOT guarantee a success, as much as Hollywood wants entertainment to be a widget factory and as much as all other entertainment (except publishing) wants to be Hollywood.
Movies and television shows often fail miserably because stories are "written" by formula. Tired setting + predictable characters + smartass pop-culture insults = crap and it will always be crap.
Yet, just like the game industry, when something does succeed (Pixar) everybody comes running, checkbooks in hand and starts throwing money all over the place (Disney) in an attempt to duplicate the financial success without taking the time to understand the reason for the success. People like a good story. It doesn't matter if its a book, a comic book, a television show or a movie. Only the story matters.
And note, for all their money, and all their former excellence, Disney is so busy trying to avoid paying royalties to Marvel and the Winnie the Pooh licensors (and firing their animators) that they are completely unable to compete in the animation industry. Oh sure, their name is on "The Incredibles," but buying a ticket to a concert doesn't make someone an orchestra conductor.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
You have a cartoon that basically looks just like Tom Hanks, sounding like Tom Hanks, but isn't Tom Hanks... so why not just draw him totally synthetically, rather than attempting some live-action morph effect?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Just because movie makers are hard pressed to find decent stories today and they continue to go back and remake old films, TV shows, and wonderful books into shitty, overbudget, special effects nightmares doesn't mean that they shouldn't hear some people speak their mind.
But when it's done so at both the expense of the original author and the screenplay creators, one has to ask whether the artistic view of the original is kept in sync with the movie screen version. Sure, most screen representations aren't completely true to the original, but typically the vision and result of the director is congruent enough that the intent is both fluid and sufficient to the story. That, as they say, is the true key of filmmaking.
My big problem with the movie, based on the trailers, is that they just adapted the graphical style of Van Allsburg to animation. While the illustrations in the book are riveting and amazingly done, I don't think they work well as animation. It looks hokey and kind of creepy. I don't know how they could have done this differently while paying the proper respect to Van Allsburg. It's the same as seeing Mickey Mouse in 3D animation... it just doesn't have the proper feel.
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Sheesh. I've very much enjoyed the Pixar movies so far. I give them the full benefit of the doubt. Some people here just like to WHINE.
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This is a teaser for a movie coming out a year from now. If you had seen a teaser for Toy Story with just a bunch of clips of toys you would of had the same rant. And again with a bug's life, finding nemo, and monster's inc.
Pixar surprises everyone time and time again with amazingly polished and deep movies. Have they given you a reason to doubt them before? No.
The racing part appears to have nothing to do with the movie, the only real hint of the movie is the clip with the sports car and the pick up talking. How can you judge a movie by that?
Relax and maybe you'll enjoy another great Pixar movie.
The above list contains all the things the average kid likes. These cartoon movies are made for the average kid, with elements that their parents will like so they'll sit thru the movie with their child. Kids aren't bored with movie titles or topics like the above. Keep it rollin, Pixar, you're doing fine.
Your judging the movie by the title? That's kind of ridiculous. Taxi Driver isn't a very exciting title either, is it?
By the entertainment value of the other pixar movies, I predict The Incredibles and Cars to both be enjoyable. I won't predict that Cars won't take a disney style nose dive the way their movies went after Lion King, but hey, they are fun so far, and have definitely taken children's movies to another level.
Also, the alternate worlds shtick has never worn off. It's nothing new to the children's genre and Pixar by far isn't someone who pioneered it. What matters is the acting, directing, and plot. Is it good and entertaining?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Tell the Chevron people that talking cars aren't popular.
Baby Geniuses 2?!?!! There was one before this?!
ye gods.
The animation in The Polar Express looks similar to that of the movement of the puppets in Team America.
The motion capture wasn't detailed enough to catch most of the facial expressions that are created by a human face.
The way the actors are moving it seems they are over acting everything as if they were cartoons except the animation tries to go a completely different directions. What's left are ridiculous and stiff motions with out of synch speech.
It's really creepy.
WARNER BROS MOVIE
This is a WARNER BROS MOVIE WARNER WARNER BROS MOVIE. See? We've even got snow on the logo! Warner Brothers! Remember that!
30 seconds of LOOK HOW IMPORTANT HOLLYWOOD IS!!
End of the trailer, for less than 0.5 seconds, the name of the author. Yeah! Way to reward the people with the ideas!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
From an industry perspective, the problem with "Polar Express" is that it only took 30 days of principal photography, all of it in the studio, yet it still cost $150 million. "Sky Captain" was supposed to be low-budget, but wasn't. What's needed is technology that can produce similar movies for $20 million.