After parsing through all the alleged Paul Ceglia and Mark Zuckerberg emails in the Ceglia vs. Zuckerberg amendment, all I can say is that I’m pretty excited for The Social Network 2 . In the meantime we’ll all have to make due with this animation from Taiwan’s NMA News. Partially traffic-baiting tech blogs and partially expressing creativity in what has to be hours of mind-numbing CGI work, the geniuses… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : TechCrunch Discovery Date : 13/04/2011 22:00 Number of articles : 2
The critics heap praise on Johnny Depp’s animated reunion with Gore Verbinski. By Eric Ditzian With top-notch fare at a minimum at the multiplex during these early months of the years, “Gnomeo & Juliet” has slowly crept up the box-office ranks, starting in the #3 slot and narrowly — by $135,000 — missing out on the top spot last weekend. This weekend, however, those animated garden statues will make way for a CGI lizard who will dominate the box office. With Johnny Depp voicing the title character and his “Pirates of the Caribbean” director Gore Verbinski at the helm, “Rango” has collected enthusiastic reviews. The only criticism, it seems, is whether the PG flick is most squarely aimed at children or their parents. For that critique and a whole lot of praise, read on. The Story “Depp plays a zonk-eyed pet lizard traveling cross-country through the Mojave Desert when a freak accident leaves him stranded in the blistering sun. Far removed from his natural habitat, the green-skinned, Hawaiian shirt-wearing reptile finds it virtually impossible to camouflage himself in his new all-brown environment, choosing instead to pass for something he’s not, a fearless gunfighter named Rango. With no real-world experience but a near-inexhaustible supply of good luck, Rango looks exactly like what the naively optimistic denizens of Dirt need right now: a hero. Their old-timey desert outpost is beset by predators and ruled by a corrupt mayor (Ned Beatty, playing a less huggable villain than he did in ‘Toy Story 3’), who clearly has a hand in the mysterious drought making all their lives miserable.” — Peter Debruge, Variety The Visuals “The technical production sparkles. The first feature-length animation from Industrial Light and Magic effects studio, ‘Rango’ is a holiday for the eye. Its action is set against grandiose, panoramic Southwest landscapes, whose epic vistas are rendered in rich color and vivid detail. Every mote of dust in a shaft of light, each facet in a barroom shot glass, the individual wrinkles in Rango’s reptilian skin — there’s not a pixel on the screen that hasn’t been art-directed to within an inch of its life. The action sequences are dizzying, death-defying marvels. The animated cast — a menagerie of gila monsters, horned toads, rattlers, rats and other frontier wildlife — is sharply individualized and expressive. The lizard’s asymmetrical poker face, with pop-eyed peepers that rotate like gun turrets, isn’t very mobile in human terms, yet it’s effortlessly easy to read.” — Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune The Comparison to Other Animated Flicks “A marvelous mash-up of Old West and newfangled, ‘Rango’ rewrites the animation playbook with its eye-popping critters and varmints, and its hero’s tale (tail?) of a chameleon desperate for a SAG card and a town desperate for a sheriff. What fun. In a world choked with animated films — the good, the bad and the ugly — it’s hard to be either original or great. Yet director Gore Verbinski has done both — and without 3-D — breaking the rules and new ground.” — Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times The Dissenters “[I]t’s completely soulless. I may be in the minority. But seeing this sour riff on everything from to ‘Cat Ballou’ to ‘Chinatown’ to ‘The Shakiest Gun in the West,’ with a big suburban preview audience, was instructive. Not much laughter. Moans and sobs of pre-teen fright whenever Rattlesnake Jake slithered into view, threatening murder. Any one crowd’s response to any movie may not be indicative; nonetheless the audience’s mood seemed in synch with my own.” — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune The Final Word “[T]he spirit is closer to those old Bugs Bunny cartoons in which Bugs would cross paths with real movie stars or perform Wagnerian opera. In other words, it is not self-conscious knowingness that drives ‘Rango’ but rather a quirky and sincere enthusiasm for all the strange stuff that has piled up in the filmmakers’ heads over the years. … In spite of a profile that should place it alongside ‘Megamind’ and ‘Despicable Me’ and the long list of other overblown, have-fun-or-else cartoons, this rambling, anarchic tale is gratifyingly fresh and eccentric. Much of the time you don’t quite know where it is going, which is high praise indeed given the slick predictability that governs most other entertainments of its kind.” — A.O. Scott, The New York Times Check out everything we’ve got on “Rango.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
Something we are not showing at the Rankin-Bass tribute on Tuesday is Thundercats, the studio’s 1985 response to Filmation’s He-Man. As you may know, Warner Bros. (who now own the property) is preparing an update for Cartoon Network. And from the look of things, they may have improved upon the premise: Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Cartoon Brew Discovery Date : 26/02/2011 18:15 Number of articles : 2
Something we are not showing at the Rankin-Bass tribute on Tuesday is Thundercats, the studio’s 1985 response to Filmation’s He-Man. As you may know, Warner Bros. (who now own the property) is preparing an update for Cartoon Network. And from the look of things, they may have improved upon the premise: Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Cartoon Brew Discovery Date : 26/02/2011 18:15 Number of articles : 2
Something we are not showing at the Rankin-Bass tribute on Tuesday is Thundercats, the studio’s 1985 response to Filmation’s He-Man. As you may know, Warner Bros. (who now own the property) is preparing an update for Cartoon Network. And from the look of things, they may have improved upon the premise: Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Cartoon Brew Discovery Date : 26/02/2011 18:15 Number of articles : 2
Somewhere near the top of SketchUp’s all-time list of feature requests, there’s a big, bold headline that reads ANIMATE THE MOVEMENT OF OBJECTS . It’s something all of us have wanted to do at one time or another. Unfortunately, it’s also not something we’ve managed to tackle just yet. And that’s why Ruby script plugins for SketchUp are so darn useful. A while ago, I found out about a nice little plugin… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Official Google SketchUp Blog Discovery Date : 15/02/2011 19:00 Number of articles : 2
‘They weren’t shooting for a Daft Punk record. They wanted to create a full-bodied, timeless score,’ film’s music supervisor Jason Bentley says. By Eric Ditzian Daft Punk Photo: Disney Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter rock sleek robot helmets in public, rarely submit to interviews and have left electronic-music fans wondering for more than two decades, “Just who are the dudes from Daft Punk?” Now, thanks to their collaborative work on the “Tron Legacy” score, the curtain shielding the French duo from the public eye has been pulled back perhaps farther than ever before. Music supervisor Jason Bentley (“The Matrix” trilogy) worked with de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter for two years on the project, and in a wide-ranging interview, Bentley gave MTV News all sorts of insight into Daft Punk’s creative process and what they’re like to hang out with on a day-to-day basis. Here are five secrets revealed about Daft Punk and their “Tron” score . Daft Punk Might Make a Film in the Future It took a year for Bentley and director Joseph Kosinski to convince the group to take part in “Tron Legacy,” Disney’s follow-up to the 1982 original about a man sucked into a computer world and forced to engage in trippy gladiatorial games. The commitment would mean no touring and no other work for a full two years. So what finally convinced them to do it? Daft Punk might have their eyes on making their own movies. “They were looking at this as much more than a composer gig,” Bentley told us. “It was going to be an education in filmmaking. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made movies from here. There were too many questions about lighting and cameras and lenses or effects. The Daft Punk guys are very, very interested in filmmaking.” Daft Punk Look Like Gorillaz Characters What do Daft Punk look like beneath those helmets? According to Bentley, just picture two animated creatures. “You know the animation style of Gorillaz? They totally look like characters out of Gorillaz videos. It’s pretty funny. I’d turn around, and whether they were working or walking across a lot to meet me, I’d chuckle to myself because they’re just the oddest couple.” Bentley went on to joke that they hardly need to wear the robot outfits “because they’re such colorful characters.” De Homem-Christo, he explained, “is the quiet one. You’ll think he’s not listening or there’s a language issue, but it’ll turn out he’s been listening to everything.” Bangalter, meanwhile, “is much more expressive and almost overcompensates for Guy-Man.” Daft Punk Are Huge Pop Culture Nerds When Daft Punk set out to score “Tron Legacy,” they had one goal in mind: to make an iconic film score. “They’re such huge fans of popular culture,” said Bentley. “The score that they set out to make was one that could stand with ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Superman.’ They weren’t shooting for a Daft Punk record. They wanted to create a full-bodied, timeless score.” The guys could often be spotted wearing “Back to the Future” T-shirts on the Disney lot. And Bentley recalled a time when they were all in a van together and Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” came on the radio. Daft Punk then launched into a highly detailed deconstruction of the song’s 1992 music video starring Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour. “It was so crazy how vivid it was in their minds,” Bentley laughed. The “Tron” Score Is Better Than The “Matrix” Scores We’ll let Bentley explain this one. “What’s amazing is how for the score, they fused the acoustic orchestral layer, the electronic layer — big kick drums or synth lines — and the granular, atmospheric level. I was the music supervisor for ‘The Matrix’ trilogy and we tried to merge those three layers and I think we did pretty good, but I don’t think we nailed it. The problem was we were putting two different mind-sets in the room. It was our composer, Don Davis, who was fully on the orchestral side, and then we were introducing electronic people to him like Fluke or Rob D or Juno Reactor. We just didn’t get a unified concept. With Daft Punk on ‘Tron,’ you feel that unified vision. ” ‘Solar Sailor’ is a really good example of that,” he added of one track. “It’s not an easy task to bring those two worlds together, orchestral and electronic. It can sound really clunky. But for ‘Solar Sailor,’ you can hear the strings coming in, and they fused that with the other layers. It’s amazing.” Daft Punk’s Cameo Started Out as a Joke The group’s presence is, of course, felt throughout the film, but Daft Punk actually show up for a cameo toward the end of the film. They play DJs in the computer world’s after-hours hot spot called the End of the Line club. The cameo is a satisfying bit of insider hat-tipping on the part of the filmmakers … and it started out as a joke. “It was Joe Kosinski’s idea,” said Bentley. “At first it was just a jokey, amusing fantasy and it stuck. They liked the idea and just went with it.” Almost all of the material the DJs play in the club made it onto the “Tron” soundtrack, except for one track. “The second of three cues — that cue did not make the soundtrack,” Bentley explained. “No one has noticed that. It’s somewhat in limbo. I don’t know if it will come out as a Daft Punk track or bonus material. It’s damn good, and who knows where it will end up?” Check out everything we’ve got on “Tron Legacy.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos ‘Tron Legacy’ Clips Related Photos ‘Tron: Legacy’ Premiere In Los Angeles Related Artists Daft Punk
Posted onNovember 16, 2010by|Comments Off on Tom Bergeron to Bristol Palin Conspiracy Theorists: ‘F*ck You.’
After a dozen years of consistent emceeing, Tom Bergeron remains one of TV’ s best and funniest hosts. On Hollywood Squares he traded spicy innuendos with Whoopi Goldberg, and as the host of Dancing with the Stars and America’s Funniest Videos he lends a stately air to glitzy proceedings. We caught up with the Emmy-winning Massachusetts native to discuss his favorite funny people, hosting nightmares, and his impatience with Bristol Palin conspiracy theorists.
