Hasta La Motion!

Paolo Sorrentino received worldwide critical acclaim with his Oscar-winner film “The Great Beauty” and he’s now a fundamental director in the european scenario. He’s known especially for his aesthetic taste (composed of long and beautifully composed shots), his persistent collaboration with actor Toni Servillo and the original combination between music and images in his features (combining classical compositions and mainstream electro-dance songs in the same film). Another of his stylistic trademarks is the loneliness of his characters: from Le conseguenze dell’amore to The Family Friend, from Il Divo to The Great Beauty, from Youth to The Young Pope, all of his protagonists are lonely people who fight their condition searching for some inner peace and meaning in their lives. This condition is reflected in the pace of the editing and in the visuals: in this essay I have collected some examples from his most recent features which clearly show this aspect.

Marijke Bakker lip-syncs her cover of “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” in this clip from the Australian TV series “Bandstand”.

Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the other big sci-film of 1977. In a year without Star Wars, the film’s effects practitioners would likely have won the visual effects Oscar (they were, of course, nominated).

That’s because Close Encounters managed to use miniatures, motion control, optical compositing and even cloud tanks to tell a sci-fi story in an incredibly grounded way, paving the future for the kinds of effects that became so integral in Hollywood storytelling.

If you haven’t seen Close Encounters at the cinema, Sony Pictures is releasing a 4K re-mastered version on September 1st to celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary.

I’ve recently been able to cover the old-school effects in the film, twice. For Masters of FX, I talked to special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull. And for a VFX Vault article in VFX Voice magazine from earlier this year, Scott Squires dived into his cloud tank innovations and other work on the film (his story about being given “$20 in petty cash and asked to experiment with liquids in a 20 gallon aquarium” is pretty cool).

It’s so great to see these classic effects films have a new life, especially on the big screen where they were designed to be seen.

Noting that creating awareness about Intellectual Property Rights can help in tackling piracy, the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) has launched a campaign against piracy through a series of animated videos on anti-piracy.

Joining hands with the industry, CIPAM took this initiative since limited knowledge about its social and economic impacts leads to circulation and consumption of pirated content.

This was revealed at the three day workshop on the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) organised by CIPAM. The workshop was held to help enforcement agencies establish a platform to share knowledge on IPR enforcement furthering appreciation and understanding among the enforcement authorities and common people.

Industrial policy and planning department joint secretary Rajiv Aggarwal stressed the need for Indians to respect and commercialise their intellectual property.

Patents, designs and trademark controller general (CGPDTM) O P Gupta spoke on “cooperation between various enforcement agencies, role of right holder and way forward.”

While talking about the importance of IP for public interest, all the eminent speakers emphasised that the creativity will be restricted to great extent, if creative output is not protected.

Delegates from World International Property Organization (WIPO), Central Government officials, police officers from across the country, people from the legal fraternity, industry experts and law students participated in the workshop. The renowned speakers shared the best practices and various aspects of effective implementation of IPR enforcement.

CIPAM has also launched a social media campaign with #LetsTalkIP hashtag to create more interest among people on intellectual property.

The post CIPAM launches animated videos in a campaign against piracy appeared first on AnimationXpress.

In yet another ostentatious but ultimately unfathomable sci-fi drivel, Nikolaj Arcel’s The Dark Tower is a towering mess of epic proportions. Based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, the movie is an amalgamation of eight different editions, stuffed in a ninety-minute film that regardlessly feels like a tiring rigmarole.

At the heart of the matters is a gunslinger Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) who relentlessly pursues the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), the antagonist who not only kills his father, but also threatens to topple the “Dark Tower” which holds the key to two different worlds.

And accompanying him in this preposterous journey is Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a young New Yorker who dreams about the dystopia that the estranged “Man in Black” causes, and scribbles the characters on sheets of paper.

For all the thrill-shrill-wham-bam that the trailer promised, the movie is a mere damp squib that loses its all the sheen in the terrible execution of its narrative. Save for a few impressive character arcs, The Dark Tower is nothing but an unmitigated wreck.

Here are some of the highlights, the lowlights and a final verdict of the movie.

Nikolaj Arcel fails to recreate the magic of the novels on the celluloid

The Dark Tower book series had taken all and sundry by awe. With a thematic concoction of sci-fi, horror, thriller and dark fantasy, Stephen King’s novelry was appreciated for its ingenuity and unique storyline. The movie though is a poor imitation of the same.

In an attempt to derive a script out of eight different novels, the makers end up creating a bland, tasteless cocktail that lacks the fizz and leaves a sour taste behind. Blame the flimsy foundations of the story upon which the film is made.

Arcel’s attempt to merge eight different stories into one deserves a mention, but the lousy pace at which the movie sounders and the poor storytelling, just buries all the positives deep under the debris.

It’s an opportunity lost.

Elba packs a punch

Not to say there’s nothing rosy in the garden. Idris Elba’s portrayal as the impeccably precisioned gunslinger is perhaps one of the few highlights of the movie.

His role demands him to go from someone emotionally-torn, grieving the murder of his father, to grow into a revenge-driven savior who goes hell for leather to thwart the evil machinations of Walter Padick. Suffice to say, Elba pulls the depiction of each emotion with just as much precision as his bullet-shots in the film.

The 44-year old Brit steals the thunder from his counterpart McCounaughey, who wears a perennially deadpan expression and thereby failing to exude any sort of menace that he was supposed to.

Arguably some of Elba’s best work is on show here.

The visual effects are mundane and underwhelming

The Dark Tower

Amongst the big-budget box-office duds of the year Transformers and Valerian, the former was criticised for its inane use of visuals while the latter salvaged some pride in truly enchanting graphics.

The Dark Tower seems betwixt and between.

The dream sequences that Jake experiences ooze quality left, right and centre, but the fight scenes in the village aren’t as gripping. Perhaps the best visual treat arrives towards the end of it all, when the gunslinger finally confronts the Man in Black and they go all guns blazing at each other.

Yet, the climax seems so hurried and haste, and therein loses some sheen.

Verdict: Don’t peer into this darkness

The Dark Tower is, eventually, no bigger than the sum of its parts. Despite the flashes of promise here and there, the movie never really builds on it. And entertainment is few and far between.

Sci-fi movies these days border more on pompous, pretentious action that don’t really add up or conjure a story worth telling. The Dark Tower is neither, strangely.

In case you haven’t watched it already, then gleefully continue to avoid it.

The post ‘The Dark Tower’ review: A rubble of mismanagement appeared first on AnimationXpress.