'John Carter,' aka the Edgar Rice Burroughs 'A Princess of Mars' adaptation

70% of Avatar's sales come from 3D; 40% of Harry Potter 7.2 came from 3D. Not a bubble as much as cyclical, I think.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jeffrey-katzenberg-why-hollywood-is-196616

Not 18 months - 9.

i almost feel bad when i'm completely blasé about these incredibly expense visual effects they spend hundreds of millions of dollars to put on the screen. like, they're trying so hard, good for them, but i can't remember the last time i looked at CGI in a live action movie and felt like the money spent was remotely worth it.

everybody's sick of artificially inflated spectacle, i think. it ain't a barnum and bailey world any more; throwing vast fantastical expanses and computerized pyrotechnics and digital establishing matte shots at the screen just leads to fatigue.

what's astounding to me is the that CGI at one point was considered a way to bring costs down, no? virtual worlds costing pennies on the dollar compared to models etc

watching buck rogers episodes on netflix with the kids and still totally enjoyable even though they spent five bucks an episode. 3 of that went to guest stars like jack palance and roddy mcdowell and one dollar for spandex and one dollar for fx.

I can't remember the last time i was intrigued or impressed by the CGI-exaggerated scope/scale of a world. Maybe 'How to Train Your Dragon'? It's a sad state, when the basically limitless possibilities of world-building and fantasy representation afforded by new techology elicits, like, a jaded shrug.

It's a failure of imagination and creativity, i.e., "Ooh, we can put basically anything on screen. So let's do a regressive sword and sandals epic but make the monsters bigger and uglier."

longstanding lament of mine:

When Is Someone Gonna Make A Sci-Fi Show Or Movie Without Any People In Them?

ss: i have referenced that thread in real life conversations. the asesthetic of fantasy and sci-fi movies/tv seems to be locked in a '70s airbrushed van art groove, but lamer.

It's a failure of imagination and creativity, i.e., "Ooh, we can put basically anything on screen. So let's do a regressive sword and sandals epic but make the monsters bigger and uglier."

yeah, this is a fair point. imagine that a lot of that CGI money went to generating boring, barren martian landscapes (which looked pointedly dull in comparison to the gorgeous and obviously real shots of the ride down the river iss) and unimpressively "grand" interiors. there were some nice ruins here and there, but they were briefly glimpsed, unexplored. sort of wondered why they didn't have carter travel way, way back in time as well as across the solar system, even if that meant deviating from ERB. would have allowed for a more visually interesting mars.

and it's not like it's impossible to create interesting world-visions w CGI. i recently watched this super shitty french sci-fi flick called renaissance, which managed to create an intriguing (if clearly blade runner-derived) world on what was probably less than a 10th of john carter's budget.

Slate has had several good death of 3D pieces. This may be the best, and it's two years old:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/08/is_3d_dead_in_the_water.html

I can't remember the last time i was intrigued or impressed by the CGI-exaggerated scope/scale of a world.

Zodiac.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT491ctM8Kk

was not at all impressed by the very obvious CGI in zodiac. took me completely out of the movie. everything seemed weird and fake, most gratingly the overhead shot of the cab ride.

Seriously? So you saw all the scenes above and knew it was all CGI at the time? Or did you go into the movie knowing it was CGI? Because I had no idea.

Seriously? haha xp

Were you actually like, "Fuck this bullshit, I can no longer enjoy this gripping crime thriller because they CGI'ed a cab instead of rebuilding 1969 San Francisco and renting a helicopter!!!"

Zodiac cgi was fantastic.

nah, i mean, i probably missed a lot of the more "ordinary" looking stuff, but the cab ride scene really threw me and after that i was looking for (and finding, no suprise) fakeyness everywhere.

plus i just didn't dig the movie, overall. been meaning to rewatch it for quite some time because i seem to be in the minority on this, love downey and loved the social network.

contenderizer contending

Robert Downey Jr. was an entirely CGI creation. You didn't know that?

Rango was all right as a world, but the visual style was hardly new or exciting.

whoa i had no idea there was cgi in zodiac, that video just blew my entire mind

it has that effect on people

See? Awesome. I rest my case.

the cgi in zodiac is great, but sometimes i wonder why they can't just find a two lane highway at night.

bcz david fincher

they should have cgi-extravagandapted c.s. lewis' out of the silent planet.

or as it no doubt would have been called, out of.

in case of potential confusion with Disney flop Treasure Planet

i keep hearing that's good.

Treasure Planet? No, it was really by the numbers.

lol a friend of mine did some of the CGI shots for Zodiac (specifically the Transamerica pyramid going up + the aerial shot that goes over the ferry building) - easily the best thing he was ever involved in, nice to see that work get some love

actually i guess out of the silent planet would have been called ELWIN RANSOM, which sounds like an ealing heist.

Shakey - Mr Veg lived in SF for abt 15 years through college etc, late 80's-late 90's, and he STILL talks about the Transamerica sequence and the aerial shots in Zodiac. I think those sequences were almost 100% of why he loved the movie! Well, those and the SF TV station/Melvyn Belli footage, he said it looked exactly the way he remembered it. Pretty sure your friend contributed to the adoring nostalgia of a lot of 40-something & older San Franciscans :)

david denby review in the new yorker is ugh. he is so ugh. he says that nobody could possibly understand what is going on in the movie. actually, i'll quote the line cuz i can't find the whole thing online:

"I wouldn't trust the sanity of any critic who claimed to understand what goes on in this movie."

i also think this line is actually racist somehow:

"The Therns, the Tharks, Dejah Thoris? You can't speak the names aloud without sounding like Daffy Duck."

David Denby is an interplanetary racist. There, I said it.

they're all color-coded!

yeah the civil war parallels are REALLY hard to pick up on. wtf.

i hope he never has to review a bollywood movie. those CRAZY character names! how do they come up with them? american movie critic in stupid-ass stupid face shocker.

(sorry i hate that guy. not like i wish him harm or anything many blessings to him and his just his writing and his thoughts. and his stupid-ass stupid faceness.)

no, no, it's good. denby's sole purpose at the new yorker afaict is to make all the other writers look good by comparison. he's like the dero of movie writers.

I would fight denby tbh

he's like the derpy of movie writers

http://images.wikia.com/mlp/images/7/73/Derpy_id.png

this movie was very easy to understand, btw

There's CGI in Zodiac? Must watch it again.

Once again, tried to see John Carter tonight, and the showtimes were totally inhospitable. Like, 6:20 or 9:40. Fuck that noise. It's almost like they're trying to bury this cat turd. Oh well. Saw "21 Jump Street" instead. Was funny.

There's CGI in Zodiac? Must watch it again.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, March 20, 2012 6:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every shot in fincher's recent movies is like a composite of several takes, using CGI. it's insane.

AV Club loved it, though they point out that a fully faithful version would have to be made by Paul Verhoeven and unreleasable in the US.

Vulture has an interesting story about how it was massively mishandled partly because the director made Finding Nemo and Wall-E and was basically made of gold to Disney.

Also read somewhere that Disney's films department is now making a loss for the fourth year in a row after betting bad on Mars Needs Moms, The Sorceror's Apprentice, and Prince of Persia.