Finding Home Film

Some interesting facts about cinema

Admin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

1. A copy of the original version of the silent film, Metropolis 1927 (reissued in 2010), which contains 30 minutes more than the released commercial version, was found in Argentina.

2. It is found that James Cameron has been trying to produce Avatar since the release of his first film Titanic in 1994.

3. Match Point, the American film produced by Woody Allen, won the Goya Award for the Best European Film, only because it was recorded in London.

4. Katharine Hepburn, popularly known as Kate Hepburn, had won 4 Oscar awards for the role of best actress from the year 1933 to 1982.

5. Glauber Rocha directed his first ever feature film in the very same year when he joined the Faculty of Law.

6. Walt Disney won an Oscar in 1939 for the first feature-length animation movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He was honored with a full-sized statue and seven miniatures.

Admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:33:14 +0000

A great euphonious in every box

Admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:16:54 +0000

an ostensible was designed with green mold

World of Cinema in the 1920s

Admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:00:05 +0000

The cinemas of the 1920s were characterized by the onset of the talkies. It was the age that popularized the so-called American way of life, their daring fashion and the jazz bands which lasted until the great crisis of 1929. The biggest idol of Hollywood industry in the 1920s was Rudolph Valentino, who debuted in 1921.
This decade gave birth to the never fading American Mass Media called as Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Corporation or the MGM Corporation. Several great artists like Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Bebe Daniels and others also emerged in this decade.
The Jazz Singer Al Jolson opened the sound film in 1927. Its popularity grew after it became common for the theaters during the projection of a film.
The animations and cartoons of Fleischer Studios revolutionized in this era. On the other hand, the period of 1920s brought success to Felix the Cat, an animated character whose popularity started spreading across the globe since then.
This decade also paved way for some of the best movies like Battleship Potemkin, The Cabinet of Dr.. Caligari, The Phantom of the Opera and The Gold Rush.

What is meant by Blender 3D animation?

Admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:00:29 +0000

Blender, also known as Blender3D is an open source computer program developed by the Blender Foundation for animation, texturing, modeling, rendering, composition, video editing and creation of interactive 3D applications such as games, presentations and other. All these tasks are made using the Blender Game Engine which is made available under a dual license: GNU General Public License (GPL)/ License Blender (BL).
The program is a cross platform and is therefore available for almost all the operating systems out there. Blender implements tools such as soft body dynamics and fluid dynamics, rigid body dynamics, modeling tools based on modifiers, a system composition based on “we” of textures, character animation tools, image and video editor and scenes and images, which are similar to those of other proprietary programs used in designing. This kind of animation includes Python as a language script, which can be used both in Blender as well as in its engine. This tool currently supports 25 different languages, including Brazilian Portuguese.

Small information about Stop Motion Animation

Admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:47:04 +0000

Stop motion is a technique of animating an image frame by frame with the help of a camera, camcorder or a computer. They use real models in various materials like modeling clay or simple clay. Many systems contain mechanical joints which are attached with very complex mechanisms. The modeling materials are made more resilient and flexible, since they need to last for months as for each second of film approximately 24 frames are required.
The models are all photographed on a frame by frame basis. These frames are then assembled into a motion picture film, creating the impression of movement. At this stage sound effects such as speech or music can be added. One of the many films made with the technique of stop motion is The Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton released in the year 1993. Others such as Chicken Run , Corpse Bride , Wallace and Gromit , Coraline , The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Wes Anderson , are few more examples of Stop Motion Animation .

Creating Animation movies is a huge task

Admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:00:06 +0000

Animation refers to the process by which each frame of an image is produced individually and can be generated either by computer graphics or photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model and photographing the resulting image. When the frames are connected together and the resulting film is viewed at a speed of 16 frames per second or more, an illusion of continuous movement is created. The construction of an animated film thus becomes a very labor intensive and sometimes boring task. The development in the field of computer animation has greatly increased the processing speed, thereby eliminating mechanical and repetitive tasks.
The production of an animation is time consuming, which often becomes very complex.
With the popularization of internet, the task of making animations has become extremely easy as there are lots of online animations creating tools available in the web.

The Haunting

Admin — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:09:57 +0000

Take one haunted house, three insomniacs, and one psychiatrist, mix them up in one experiment in fear gone bad, then add in a bunch of CGI ghosts to taste and bake for just under 2 hours-what do you get? One disappointing movie with no surprises, lack luster performances, and dumb looking ghosts in a really cool looking house.
Liam Neeson (Gun Shy, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Rob Roy, Schindler’s List) stars in this sad attempt at horror. He plays Dr. David Marrow, a psychiatrist running a controversial experiment to study fear. He recruits a group of insomniacs under false pretenses and sticks them in a huge castle-like haunted house to see if they get scared, only to find that the house is really haunted. The story actually turns out to be okay; it has some decent plot points that drag the story forward and it actually does a pretty good job of grabbing your interest from the start and pulling you in to the movie. But once the CGI ghosts show up, it pretty much falls flat on its face from that point on. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Entrapment, The Mask of Zorro, The Phantom) running around scared in sexy outfits can’t even help at this point.

To be honest though, the movie makes for an okay video rental for when you are home sick from work and don’t want to watch the daytime soaps. They did a pretty good job on the house and its back-story. That alone, does manage to keep the movie in the two stars (just okay) range.

The Hurricane

Admin — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 12:09:53 +0000

Denzel Washington (The Bone Collector, The Siege, Fallen) plays Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, boxer and falsely accused murderer. Hurricane is a black man who has been repeatedly harassed and wrongfully accused of crimes since his youth by bigoted white police officer Detective Vincent Della Pesca, played by Dan Hedaya (Dick, A Civil Action, Alien: Resurrection). Hurricane escapes from a youth detention facility and finds himself in the military where he turns himself in to a champion boxer. When he returns home from service, the police are waiting and immediately detain him and throw him in jail to finish his time. When he gets out he vows to never return to jail (lame foreshadowing). He marries a local woman and fights his way to the top of the boxing world. Even with his success, he still can’t manage to escape the racist views of the people around him, especially Detective Della Pesca. After losing a boxing match by having it taken away from him by white judges, he tries to forget at an after hours club. On his way home from the club, he and a friend are pulled over by the police because they are looking for two black men in a white car who were spotted leaving a bar shooting. One thing leads to another and he winds up in jail serving three life sentences for murder. While in jail he fights to remain free in his mind and heart and spends his time writing a book about his life. Lesra, played by Vicellous Reon Shannon (Can’t Hardly Wait, Senseless), is a young man who is learning to read and buys his first book, Hurricane’s book, and becomes impassioned with Hurricane’s life story, and sets out to free Hurricane with the help of his tutors: Lisa played by Deborah Unger (Sunshine, The Weekend, Payback), Sam played by Liev Schreiber (Scream 3, Jakob The Liar, Sphere, Scream, Scream 2, Ransom), and Terry played by John Hannah (The Mummy, Sliding Doors, Four Weddings and a Funeral).
Based on a true story, this movie tries very hard to pull on the old heartstrings. It paints a picture of a man who grew up in a very poor neighborhood who never did anything wrong and continues to be persecuted because of the color of his skin. In many respects it succeeds in this mission, but I couldn’t help feel a bit manipulated. I tried very hard to forget that this is a true story and just watch this movie as I would any other. In this light, I found that it was slow, boring and full of lost pages of script. First, this movie takes forever to get where it’s going. We spend the middle hour of this film watching Denzel Washington write and read letters between his character and the character of Lesra. During this time, each letter is narrated aloud by the person that wrote it. This is tedious movie watching. The first rule of filmmaking is to show the story, don’t tell the story. This is a perfect example of what not to do. Secondly, even if they showed this part of the story, they certainly could have shortened it. This is a long movie, and there really is no need to take as long as it does to get through this material. Finally, the lost pages I’m referring to are the ones that tells us what happens to Hurricane’s family as he goes through this ordeal. The movie spends some time building up the relationship with Hurricane and his wife, played by Debbi Morgan (She’s All That, Asunder). Then one day in prison, Hurricane sends his wife away and we never see or hear from her again. Wouldn’t she have gotten involved with the attempt to prove her husband free, and if not it may have been interesting to see why not. The only time we learn anything else about her is at the end with a one-sentence blurb-again by telling instead of showing. The director should have cut some of the letter writing and shown us more of his wife and thickened her character up a bit. The story also lacked a huge chunk in the middle. The letter writing takes up a ton of screen time building up the relationships between our leading characters that leads to them coming to see Hurricane in prison. Hurricane gets upset and sends them away, much the way he did with his wife. Two or three scenes later, they are right back in the story helping him with his case. How did that happen? It seemed like a huge jump. I wish I could say that I am being a bit harsh, but sitting in the theater, I could hear the audience around me moving restlessly in their chairs and sighing every few minutes with boredom. To be fair though, I must say that Denzel Washington did provide a very good performance, strong enough to keep this film from being a flat out stinker.

What Lies Beneath

Admin — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:07:53 +0000

Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer: The Story Of Us, Being John Malkovich, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Norman (Harrison Ford: Random Hearts, Six Days Seven Nights, Air Force One) have strange neighbors. They make great voyeur subjects, until their activities become frightening and suspicious. Claire fears the worst and confides in her husband. Norman convinces her everything is fine and it’s just her imagination, until she starts seeing a ghost who resembles the young woman who moved in next door.
As I came out of the dark theater after viewing What Lies Beneath, I over heard snippets of conversation about what the audience had just experienced. The usual questions: “What did you think?”, “Did you like it?”, etc. Most of the answers were very positive. Some stated that they would have nightmares, and that the movie was extremely scary. Many young girls argued about Harrison Ford’s looks, did he still have a good body, was he too old. These are usually goo signs for a film—the buzz that studio execs bank on. The problem is, I don’t think th ey saw the same movie I saw. Yes, we sat in the same theater watching the same screen, but I was not impressed with what I experienced.

What Lies Beneath is a simple ghost story filled with clichés and plot twists that have been overused to the point that they are not scary or surprising and are used extensively as jokes in films like Scream and Scary Movie. Examples of this include the ghost face in the mirror, the dead person in the lake, the ghost writing in the steamy bathroom mirror, and my personal favorite the framed picture that breaks open with a clue hidden inside. The many “scares” in this film all fall into the jump cut edit that suddenly shows an unexpected face/ghost/character behind the main character. These are old staples in horror/thriller films and they work, but you must have something else in the movie or the audience expects it at every turn. I can honestly say that I did not jump a single time. Every single scare, I expected—even the red hearings were predictable.

So how was the acting, you ask? Michelle Pfeiffer was bland and boring, and Harrison Ford barely had a character to work with. Their relationship as husband and wife was not romantic, passionate, or even believable; which made sympathy for the characters very hard to find. The entire movie consisted of Pheiffer trying act scared and haunted—she’s just not good at it.

My recommendation…stay away from this one, unless you’ve seen every movie in the theaters and you absolutely can’t think of anything else to do.