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Behind the Scenes of Narnia's Special Effects
louismg writes "Walt Disney Pictures' Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe took in more than $100 million at the box office worldwide in its opening weekend, riding the back of special effects powering nearly all the movie's characters, from the lion Aslan to the Gryphon, Minotaur, Centaurs and more. VFXWorld has a series of diaries with the technology geeks at Rhythm & Hues behind the special effects. (Part 1, 2)
For the fantasy film's special effects, Rhythm & Hues teamed up with Industrial Light and Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks to deliver more than 1,400 shots for the film, and used cutting-edge technology from BlueArc, NVIDIA and others to keep the effects' production running."
Stupid login reuqired to RTFA, feel free to use mine...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
I loved it. I'm a huge fan of The Chronicles of Narnia. The movie followed very closely to the book. This made me very happy. The actors did a great job, espcially the actress who played Lucy.
I only have one complaint. The Talking Beasts and Aslan weren't big enough. Especially Aslan. Aslan should have been twice the size he was portrayed in the movie.
Other than that, I didn't have a problem with the movie. Loved every minute.
I have no idea why you've been modded down- it's a valid question.
My wife and I saw a preview showing last Monday. We recently finished reading this book to our kids so it was still pretty fresh in our minds.
The extent to which it is true to the book is pretty great. About the only really big deviation I saw is mentioned in the first response to this question. They really tamed things down in regards to blood and especially so in the sacrafice of Aslan. But looking at the intended audience and the rating this is understandable.
I wrote it up in my journal after we saw it and to sum up my impression, if you liked the book, I think you'll like the film. If you didn't like the book, I doubt you will like the film. If you were indifferent to the book, you might like the film due to all the fantastic creatures. I thought the effects were pretty incredible.
The beginning of the film deviates slightly from the book, but I think it is also a good choice in that, at the time the book came out, the reason for the children leaving London would have been understood. For children today a little explanation is probably helpful.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
With that kind of doe, you'd like they could at least get the blue/green screening done properly. Quite honestly, I felt the effects in this film were very poorly done.
One more tidbit. It's interesting that on IMDB the first 20 pages of reviews are all very positive (and submitted before the offical release), yet 80% of the more recent ones (since Fridays US release) are all very poor.
I didn't see the film, didn't read the books, so I'm not here to defend. But I actually went to IMDB and looked at the user reviews, sorted by date, and they are mostly all positive.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
The "new" ordering of the books is:
That ordering works because the "Magicians Nephew" is the one where Narnia is created, and "The Last Battle" is the book in which it is destroyed/ascended. The original ordering has "The Lion .." coming first, and the "Magician Nephew" being a followup after the initial success.
Personally I read them in the published order, and the small paperback set I have has them numbered in the "old" order - not a big deal to be honest.
Read a this page for more details on suggested reading order.
What you are looking for is "The Magician's Nephew", the sixth book in the Narnian series that is actually a prequel to the entire series. It explains where the witch came from, what the professor knows about Narnia, and who Aslan is (as well as what is up with the lightpost :-) ). These questions were all mysteries in the original books (in their original order) that were not answered until the second to the last book, and with the possibility of making all seven books into movies, they must have decided to keep them mysteries now as well.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
I'm not sure you went to the end. There are like 20 pages of reviews posted before the US release date.
s tart=1
s tart=350
Begining: (Start here and move forward)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363771/usercomments?
End: (Start here and move back)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363771/usercomments?
She's evil. There are more details in another Narnia story, 'The Magician's Nephew.'
He is ruler of many countries, so he was off visiting them.
That's detailed in 'The Magician's Nephew.'
'Magician's Nephew'
Other countries to rule.
His Father is the Emperor over the sea and always has been. It's a bit like asking who put God in charge of everything. This is more apparent in the other stories.
I thought it was good. My wife loved it. She had never read it as a child and actually cried in parts. I felt they did a good job of it and I was very pleased they didn't take out the Christian content. The original book was very much Christian in context and to remove it would have been to destroy the intention of the author. I would say if you liked the book you will like the movie.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think they call this magical literary device the Third Person Omniscient Perspective. It is a wonderful way for the author to relate information that would otherwise be unavailable if the story were to be told in any other perspective...in other words, rather than being limited to a first person view (single character perspective, can only internalize ones own thoughts and relies on five senses to understand everything else that is going on) or third person objective (unseen/uninvolved narrator, but limited to the five senses), you get to know everything. Though it may be a dated concept (as are the other devices), it is historically a very reliable device for fantasy/sci-fi stories.*
* - trying to be helpful here, not a jerk.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)