I haven't check but I'm guessing there's a lot of folk in computer land who've been having their say about The Incredibles, well I want my say too. It's brilliant. Beautifully designed with more than a nod to 50's and early 60's design. The superheroing aspect is surprisingly, and smartly, kept to a minimum, oh there's fighting and big outrageous peril and flying and so on, but a lot of the action reminded me of spy movies, the kind that have big sets, the early Bond and Flint, even the music seemed to reflect that. CGI is my least favourite animation and I'd like to see less CGI in films in general but the better CG films seem to emulate claymation instead of desperately trying to look 'real' (Polar Express being the latest example of this pointless endeavour), a move that seems to work very well. It's not how it's animated that makes a film great though, it's the script (in animation the scripts have to be in place to a much greater degree than in live action so it's rock solid by the time 'camera's roll' - the lack of respect Hollywood seems to afford the scriptwriter is unbelievable) and it's here that The Incredibles really shines. Pixar create films of wit, inteligence and the creators clearly love what they do. I get the impression that that the people in Pixar are a bunch of smart geeks who can't believe their good luck in getting to do exactly what they want. More me it was the little details that elevate The Incredibles but I won't tell you what they are, go see for yourself.
Sadly the whole thing was nearly spoilt by the trailer for The Magic Roundabout movie. The inclusion of Robbie Williams was enough to break my heart but it looks awful, the makers clearly want to poke my childhood with sharp sticks and permanently tarnish the memory of the original. Shame on them.
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My own work has beening coming on very well, the first draft of Simian Smith is almost finished, in fact it's only a couple of thousand words away. With the end so close my big concerns have finally come to the fore. I'm pretty much happy with the story, it needs work but it's all in place and I like it, but the truth is it's going to be a hard sell, a very hard sell. Pick up a kid's book and there's more than a fair chance that it'll have a kid in it, there might only be one child character in it, but s/he'll be there. The only exception occurring in books where the cast are all animals. There isn't a single kid in my story. As well as it being an obvious homage/pastiche/rip off of old hard boiled crime books it's got a talking ape with no reason given to why he can talk or how he came to exist, he's also the character the reader's got to identify with and he's not a kid. I'm not sure a prospective agent or publisher will get past the synopsis. But I wrote this for me and I honestly believe that kids will like it so what the hell, here's hoping I can change the industry! Failing that I could always try and write some thing about a child magician, wizardor witch, you can't have to many kid's fantasy books.
4 comments:
CGI should look 'unreal', that's the beauty of it. Trying to ape a naturalistic look seems kind of futile to me, when you can doing someting more imaginiative with it, and more of the imagination. Roger Deakins made a really interesting point about digital stuff to the effectv tht it will mean that coinematographers will get to the same point as painters did in terms of depicting a realistic world. Once painting got sophisticated enough to be able to depict the world as we see it, they went the other way, and pursued more abstratcted images. Digital and CGI technology offers much the same opportunity to the medium of film.
Re: your concerns about the dificulty of selling Simian. True, it doesn't feature a central child character, but it does feature an animal which is the next best thing. I always thought it'd be easier for a child to relate to an animal character than a human one. Anyway, I reckon it might not be as difficult as you might fear.
And if anyone knows what they're talking about it's Deakins. It would be nice to see CGI used to a more abstract or impressionistic effect, maybe when some small enterprising indie director does it some big budget blockbuster'll copy it.
I guess I'm hoping Simian will be the focus for the kid's who might read his adventure, fingers crossed!
Deakins is a genius, in so far as I can tell anyway. It was rather heartening to see that he once did a documentary on the Muppet Show back in the 70's. It's one of the extras on the first set of DVD's...
Deakin's work on Barton Fink is amazing, didn't know he did anything for the Muppets, that's really cool.
Geoffrey Unsworth was a great DP, his work on Superman was brilliant, he also did a film I was a big fan of as a kid, 'The Assassination Bureau'. Dean Cundy did pheonominal work with John Carpenter but recently seems to be working on some seriously lame films, mind you Carpenter's not exactly at the top of his game either. I've become quite interested in DP's recently, I never really paid attention to them but was always impressed by the 'look' of films, I just credited the directors and left it at that. With DVD extras directors seem to spend a lot of time honouring their DP's, the Amreican Beauty DVD is a perfect example.
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