- Absolutely Stunning & Inspiring Street Fighter Artwork #2
- Absolutely Stunning & Inspiring Street Fighter Artwork
Sunday, April 29, 2012
UDON CREW 6
THE REJECT REPORT 38
Movie fans can feel it. The Summer movie season is in the air, and we’ll be analyzing what it’s opening attack has to offer. For now, though, we’ve got four new films squaring off to soak up as much pre-Summer sun as they can, some of them sure to be more successful at that than others. Here’s a hint: the movie set in foggy Baltimore in the 1800s won’t be getting much sun.
Another action film for the adult crowd and an animated yarn have better chances, but it’ll end up being the romantic comedy hitting that top spot here just before we’re flooded with superhero blockbusters. It’s the final Reject Report before Summer hits, and the flood of new movies this weekend is just one more indication that the industry has no urge to slow down now.
The BreakdownThe Five-Year Engagement
Weekend Projection: $19.8m (#1 on The Chart)
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Weekend Projection: $15.6m (#3 on The Chart)
Safe
Weekend Projection: $9.5m (#5 on The Chart)
The Raven
Weekend Projection: $7.2m (#7 on The Chart)
The Chart
The Analysis
Even with numbers 8-10 hitting much higher than usual, the top 10 this weekend is set to bring in $102.9m, pretty typical for this final week before the Summer movies begin to trot out. It’s a dumping ground of its own, really, a tiny slice of January right here at the end of April. With the exception of The Five-Year Engagement, an Apatow-produced film that could have easily gotten a slot during the Summer months, none of the new hitters seem all that interesting.
The studios sights are primed and poised for May 4th when the real fireworks begin. Little will be won or lost this weekend. Without a surprise or two in store for us, it’ll be just another day at the office for many studio execs come Monday. Who knows? Maybe the Cusack contingent and the Poe-hards create such a mix that The Raven trounces all with $68m and change. It is Poe, so there may have been drinking before that last sentence.
We’ll be back early next week to go over the weekend numbers.
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Posted: 27 Apr 2012 08:00 AM PDT
Set sail for adventure on the high seas with the merriest band of buccaneers and scallywags this side of the ocean blue with Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt‘s rollicking and very fun family film, The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Arghs ahoy! Based on Gideon Defoe‘s comedic novels, the Aardman Animations film follows the Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) and his merry band of hearties as they attempt to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award, all while mixing it up with world-famous scientists, the Queen herself, sworn pirate enemies, and even a trained monkey.
Frequently funny and layered with humor to suit all ages, including a gaggle of solid sight gags and verbal jokes aplenty, the film is another feather in Aardman’s (large, triangle-shaped pirate) cap. All that good humor aside, the film occasionally suffers from some missteps translating two of Defoe’s written works into one film, but while the plot might not sail along effortlessly, just about everything else about The Pirates! does.
The good Pirate Captain’s gang is a merry one, a spirited family that includes the dutiful Number Two (Martin Freeman, also known as The Pirate with the Scarf), the chipper Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), the surprisingly curvaceous Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), the accident-prone Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), and everyone’s beloved pirate parrot Polly. Together, they might not be the best pirates on the high seas, but they’re certainly the most friendly. When the annual Pirate of the Year Awards roll back around, the Pirate Captain is determined to finally capture the prize, even if everyone thinks he is a loser and he has to go up against truly fearsome pirates like Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek, basically playing the exact same role as from Puss in Boots), and Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry). Set on proving their meddle (and metal, they really need to capture some more booty), the Pirates! go looking for trouble, and boy do they ever find it.
Cobbled together from two of screenwriter Gideon Defoe’s “The Pirates!” novels, the film’s one black mark is a tremendous lack of plot focus. While the film has been billed as detailing the crew’s attempts to win the Pirate of the Year Award, that story quickly gets jumbled up with the rascals setting off on a a trip to London for some high-falutin’ science awards that see them paired up with no less than Charles Darwin (David Tennant). It’s a fun spin on revisionist history, and it’s not likely to confuse any kiddos in the audience, though a few of them may end up with a residual fear of Queen Victoria (who ends up as the primary villain of the entire film).
Before the London plot is sewn up, the pirates are back on pirate stomping ground Blood Island (apparently modeled after Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but buckets more fun), before they’re back in London – the plot zinging back and forth between conflicts and evil-doers seemingly without a map. While there are threads between the stories – the pirates find Darwin while searching for booty to impress King Pirate in their quest for the Pirate of the Year Award, their exploits in London eventually help them win pirate acclaim – they’re fragile threads and feel shoe-horned in around everything else.
Fortunately for The Pirates!, the rest of the film is buoyant enough to keep the entire endeavor afloat. Like other Aardman classics, such as recognizable titles from the Wallace & Gromit franchise and Chicken Run, The Pirates! is mostly stop-motion claymation animation (as IMDb notes, computer-generated animation was used for much of the scenery), and the effect of such technical work is consistently beautiful and charming. There’s clearly been a lot of love put into the film, and it shows on the screen. The film is available in both 3D and 2D, and while the other technical merits of the film are outstanding, its third dimension is not necessary for audience enjoyment, it’s simply fun enough as is.
The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a relentlessly amusing and crowd-pleasing trip on the high seas, one that begs for further journeys with this ragtag group of adventurers.
The Upside: Consistently funny, scrappy, and charming, The Pirates! delivers laughs for all ages; gorgeous Aardman animation is as fun and dazzling to watch as ever; memorable voicework from a talented cast.
The Downside: A choppy plot that doesn’t find its aim until far too late in the film.
On the Side: Gideon Defoe adapted the first of of his own two “The Pirates!” novels, “The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists” and “The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling,” for the film. Defoe has written four “The Pirates!” novels since 2004, with a fifth hitting shelves this summer.
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AURAL FIXATION 26
At only twenty-eight years old, Spanish-born Lucas Vidal has not only over come a battle with cancer, mastered the ability to write orchestrations, instrument by instrument (all by hand), and honed his ping pong skills against director James McTeigue, he is also beginning to make a name for himself here in the states starting with his score for the upcoming film, The Raven. I had the opportunity to sit down with Vidal in his studio in Santa Monica and see just how this up-and-coming composer brought his ideas from the page to the screen.
Vidal may be young, but his approach to composing is almost “old school” in the sense that he begins with tangible paper and pencil to actually write out his music rather than immediately going to the computer to begin and map things out. Vidal is a skilled piano player and treated me to seeing how he begins by creating the sheet music to then playing the music and eventually mixing it all together to the final picture. While The Raven takes place in the 19th century, the score Vidal created (per McTeigue’s direction) is actually fairly modern, filled with more electronic elements than just orchestral instruments, which created an interesting juxtaposition between the film and the music, allowing the music stand out rather than simply play to the background.
Despite all his accomplishments so far, Vidal is incredibly humble and easy to talk to, lighting up the moment the discussion turns to music. It is clear that this is truly his passion and that passion shines through on screen and in his work. Write this name down as a talent to watch.
Check out my interview with Vidal along with some behind the scenes footage of the process of creating the score for The Raven.
Friday, April 27, 2012
MAGNA'S JOURNAL 14
10 Untranslatable Words (And When You'll Want to Use Them)
By Esther Inglis-Arkell
English is so limited sometimes. There are so many kickass words in other languages, that describe concepts that we just don't have one word for in English. And that's a shame, because sometimes we find ourselves in situations that English just can't describe.
Science fiction and fantasy are full of those sorts of quirky situations and concepts, in fact. Here are 10 words that have no English equivalent, and the science fiction and fantasy classics that you'd want to use them to describe.
10. Aware (Japanese)
The Meaning: Aware is a word, quite well-known, for the bittersweetness of a brief and fading moment of transcendent beauty. It's that "last burst of summer" feel, or the transience of early spring.
The Work: The Lord of the Rings is the work that most needs this word to describe it. Sure, it's an adventure and linguistics tale, but backing the battles is an ever-present tone. The whole point of this fantasy trilogy is a chronicling of the end of an era. The days of magic, both terribly evil and extraordinarily beautiful, are coming to an end. With destruction of the ring — the ultimate evil in the world — all the good of the dwarves and hobbits and elves retreat from the world as well, and the age of myth gives way to the more prosaic age of humans.
9. Maya (Sanskrit)
The Meaning: This word is one that could be applied to a lot of protest movements and many political speeches. It refers to belief — the often unfortunate belief — that the symbol of a thing is the same as the thing itself. It's the, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," of the literary world.
The Work: V for Vendetta is a work that plays with symbolism and how symbolism becomes real in the eyes of the populace. The eponymous V is armed with a mountain of symbols, from the letter and roman numeral of his name to a particular kind of rose to London buildings to the Guy Fawkes mask that he always wears. Whether this mistaken belief — that a guy playing around with cops and bombs can free a whole country — would actually lead to the kind of sweeping social change depicted in the book is up to you to decide.
8. Wei-wu-wei (Chinese)
The Meaning: Wei-wu-wei is conscious nonaction. It's a deliberate, and principled, decision to do nothing whatsoever, and to do it for a particular reason.
The Work: Zone One, by Colson Whitehead is the non-action zombie novel. Leaving aside stupid comparisons in reviews that shall remain linkless, it is an understandably frustrating book. The narrative meanders through the current clean-up job, past wanderings, and extended social commentary of a man in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. It's light on action and heavy on description and sustained metaphor. Whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing, you know it's a deliberate thing. Our own Charlie Jane Anders review of the bookstates, "you get the sense, after a while, that Whitehead is deliberately trying to deny the reader any feeling of narrative satisfaction, through denseness and obfuscation." It's a definite wei-wu-wei novel.
7. Bricoleur (French)
The Meaning: A bricoleur is someone who starts building something with no clear plan, adding bits here and there, cobbling together a whole while flying by the seat of their pants.
The Work: Oh, golly. We can all think of at least five different series that were worked on by some real bricoleurs, can't we? But I'd have to say that Lost is the most recent, and the most startling, one of them. They seemed to be making it up since the beginning and hoping no one noticed. Bricoleurs don't always make a shamble of things. The word can also refer to someone whose loose and improvisational style leads to an inventive and engaging whole. Doctor Who, in its continuous broadcasting under many different creative directors, can be said to be a, um, bricolage? And the series has built an engaging world with something for everyone.
6. Schlimmbesserung (German)
The Meaning: A schlimmbesserung is a supposed improvement that makes things worse. There are actually a lot of words for this in a lot of languages, and that makes me think that English needs to get on the ball and coin a native word for this concept. Everyone needs it.
The Work: Did people want the 'first' episodes in the Star Wars series? You bet they did. Did they need them? Debatable. Did that new-old trilogy add anything to what was already there? No. Quite the opposite. And you could say the same for the many re-released CGI upgrades that the original movies received over the years. Some things shouldn't be improved. Or at least, certainly not in the way they were.
5. Orenda (Huron)
The Meaning: Orenda is the invocation of the power of human will to change the world around us. It is set up to be the opposing force to fate or destiny. If powerful forces beyond your control are trying to force you one way, orenda is a kind of voiced summoning of personal strength to change fate.
The Work: For me, the most interesting part of the Matrix Trilogy was the part that can be described by orenda. I wasn't too impressed by the first movie's reveal of Neo as the chosen one, or the idea of all of reality being fake. What I liked was when we got to the second movie, and all that 'chosen one' stuff fell victim to the power of predictability and statistics. Neo wasn't the chosen one. He was a familiar protocol, and he and his fellow humans would obey the dictates of that protocol. Changing that, and the moment when he went from embracing his 'destiny' to fighting it, was the point of the series, I thought.
4. Gâchis (French)
The Meaning: This one means 'a wasted opportunity.' Specifically it means an opportunity that was wasted by ineptness being hurled at it from all directions.
The Work: Sounds like the on-air run of Firefly to me. I'm not among those fans who think that Firefly would have been a runaway success. It was a risk. It was a niche genre in a niche genre. Still, it seems like jumbling up the episodes and airing them, you know, whenever, was a bad way to handle an original concept.
3. Weltschmerz (German)
The Meaning: It could be termed world-weariness or ennui, but this particular has the quirk of almost only being applied to privileged young people.
The Work: Can anyone place the follow lyrics: Life can't be easy/ It's not always swell./ Don't tell me truth hurts, little girl./ 'Cause it hurts like hell. The fact that this was sung to, and about, a fifteen-year-old LARPing suburbanite with a room over-crowded with toys, a closet full of costumes, and a loyal pure-bred sheep dog makes Labyrinth the perfect movie to embody this word. What makes it even better is it is a call for such people to grow up and be more mature, all the while adding in enough dramatic elements that real-life people in the same situation (and let me reluctantly raise my hand, here) felt that it really spoke to them. I still love Labyrinth. It's a fun and well-done movie. But it definitely resonated with a certain demographic.
2. Kalpa (Sanskrit)
The Meaning: Time passing on a cosmic scale
The Work: That's what 2001: A Space Odyssey is all about. Everything, from the music to the subject matter to the deliberate invocation of shapes and symbols as a way of signalling both change and continuity, was meant to show how the 'cosmic' passage of unimaginable amounts of time. Since we're now well past 2001, perhaps Kalpa would have been a better title for the movie, and novel, in the first place. But who knew - for sure - that it had that kind of staying power?
1. Razbliuto (Russian) Update: Or English!
The Meaning: This word, pronounced ros-blee-OO-toe, describes the feeling that a person (generally meant to be a man) has for the person who he once loved, but now no longer loves.
The Work: Take your pick. I have my eye on a few big franchises nowadays that I think will cause a lot of people some razbliuto in a few years. Maybe even a few months. For me personally, though, I suppose I've come full circle to The Lord of the Rings. I adored it at one age, and read it over and over on car trips and at school under the desk, and late at night with my room light being switched off - not at all sneakily, I'm sure - whenever my parents came by. And while I respect the work and world-building that went in to it, I have no desire to pick it up ever, ever again. I didn't even see the movies. And there's a reason why I added the pronunciation guide to this particular word. I think it needs to get in to circulation in general, since everyone knows the feeling of loving a story at one particular time in their life, and then that love falling away. But I suspect this kind of feeling is particularly strong in sci-fi and fantasy fans. These works don't just offer a book to love, but an entire world to immerse oneself in, with every character, situation, and story a shining possibility. The stories in these genres can mold themselves to people's inner lives more than realistic fiction can. But inner lives change, and the things that fill us with joy and inspiration at one point in our lives simply aren't relevant at other points. While there are plenty of sci-fi and fantasy stories that endure, there are many that drop away as we change. There are some former Ann Rice fans out there who have something to say to Twilight fans. There are people who love Xena who have something to say to fans of Katniss. But to say it, they have to know the word. So say it with me: ros-blee-OO-toe.
Update Note: After some comments from Russian speakers, I took a look around the internet for razbliuto. It seems to be up on some dictionary sites, but only one site traces the history. I got the words for this entry, including razbliuto, from They Have a Word for It, a book about words by Howard Rheingold. It seems his information came from a book called HodgePodge, by J Bryan in 1986. Before that, it looks like it came from a mistaken translation and conglomeration of two words, one of which means 'a lost love' and the other meaning 'whore'. However, it seems since it's only English linguists who use the word - it's kind of an English word after all. I say we keep it.
Via They Have a Word For It.
Via They Have a Word For It.
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