Good movies you've seen recently

[Slippery Jim 65]

rubbish? It would've had to be much better to attain the level of rubbish! :thumbsdown:

[Alexander L 80]

it should never have got made.

[fukdane 2]

Never seen Godfather, never really appealed....what's so good?

[Metabo Oyaji 71]

Got to see Star Trek: Into Darkness at last. Seems like an age waiting.

 

Well, I enjoyed it but not gushing. Having said that, memories of Nemisis make it better.

 

Prefered the previous one a few years back.

 

I concur. I like how they have handled the characters, but could wish for a more Star-Trek-y plot. Grand concepts and all that.

[seemore 66]

Spring Breakers

Pile of Shite 2.5 Snowballs for the boobs though

[nagpants 1]

Finding Nemo in 3D.

'Twas really good.

[Alexander L 80]

good in 2D too

[DoctorOctopus 2]

Aren't they making a follow up, can't remember the name 'Finding (some female name)'.

[DoctorOctopus 2]

'Finding Nemo' sequel changed due to 'Blackfish' controversy

 

Directer Gabriela Cowperthwaite told NBC News.com this week that she "didn't have one goal" in mind for how audiences would react to "Blackfish," her documentary about SeaWorld orca Tilikum.

But according to the New York Times, Cowperthwaite's film had a big effect on an upcoming blockbuster -- Pixar Animation Studio's 2015 film, "Finding Dory," the much-awaited sequel to 2003's "Finding Nemo."

Although "Finding Dory" is still in its early stages, the Times reports that a Pixar employee says its initial ending involved a marine park.

"But as a result of the sometimes harsh 'Blackfish,' directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, and the resulting publicity battle SeaWorld has had to fight, Pixar decided to restructure that part of the story so that the fish and mammals taken to its aquatic center have the option to leave," the Times reported.

Pixar declined to comment to the newspaper.

Ellen DeGeneres, who voiced Dory, the regal tang who befriended Nemo's father Marlin in the first movie, will return for the sequel. DeGeneres had long been gently nudging Pixar to make a second "Nemo" film, and announced the news of the new movie on her talk show in April.

"It's hilarious, it's fantastic, it's warm, it's everything you want it to be," DeGeneres said of the script at that time.

[Alexander L 80]

2003 and 2015. Wow has it been that long.

 

Monster Inc was 2001 and 2013. They don't seem to age.

[grungy-gonads 54]

How do they actually make 2D movies into 3D?

 

[surfarthur 22]

How do they actually make 2D movies into 3D?

 

Today, moviegoers across the country will have the opportunity to see a 20-year-old movie on the big screen — and with an extra dimension to boot. Jurassic Park 3D is the latest case of a two-dimensional movie getting the three-dimensional (or “stereo”) treatment, following in the footsteps of several Disney titles and last year’s 3D re-release of Titanic. Since this is a new process, one that’s not yet been painstakingly demystified by DVD extras and behind-the-scenes reports, it seems, frankly, to be some sort of witchcraft; how do they take a movie that was finished two decades ago and transform it into a 3D experience? Luckily, we were able to get William Sherak to break it down for us.

Sherak is the president of Stereo D, the company responsible for the 2D to 3D conversions of Jurassic Park and Titanic, as well as more recent titles like G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Green Hornet. It is, as he explains it, a multi-tiered process, attempting to merge both creative and technological considerations. It starts with a creative meeting with the filmmaker, in which they watch the movie film together, discussing it scene by scene and point by point: “What are you looking for, what do you want from this, how do you want it to work?” For Jurassic Park, that meant a long sit with Steven Spielberg, which Sherak defines as “the most awesome meeting of my life… I’m sitting in a screening room with Steven Spielberg watching Jurassic Park on mute and talking through how he did the movie 20 years ago. Just as a fan, I mean, talk about a cool meeting! You try and do that as many times as you can just ‘cause you wanna relive it again and again and again.”

Next comes a step that will warm the hearts of film preservation advocates: a full 4K digital scan of the original negative, followed by a restoration to eliminate scratches, grain noise, and other natural artifacts incurred in the 20 years since its completion. And then the conversion begins, which breaks into four basic steps:

• Rotoscoping. This is the process, according to Sherak, of “literally isolating on the computer, tracing every single image in the frame so that we can then assign depth to it. And when I say every image, I’m actually talking, you’re isolating somebody’s nose separate of their cheek — so that the nose can play further from the cheek — down to every drop of rain during the rain sequence, during the storm, every move is isolated.” They do that for every single frame: 24 frames per second, 1440 frames per minute, equaling 182,880 frames for the 127-minute Jurassic Park.
  
• Depth map. “This is where real artistry comes in,” Sherak explains. “This is where hundreds of artists sit down with every frame and they assign depth where we believe Steven will be happy, so we create depth of every frame — meaning we isolate every image. You place it in space, and then you create internal volume inside each of the items individually as well. So a body is not just separated from the chair it’s sitting on, you then have to give that body volume as well.”
  
• Creative feedback. When the depth map is complete, the filmmaker — in this case, Spielberg — comes back in to take a look and approve it. “Steven watches it and gives notes on how he likes the depth,” says Sherak. “Is he happy with our choices? Does he want us to make changes? What would he like, you know, I want this out more, I want this dinosaur to feel bigger, I want this glass of water to have less volume so that you’re really focusing on the person that’s holding the glass, all of those.” After all, “it’s the first time he’s seeing his movie in 3D.”
  
• Painting. Once Spielberg and the conversion artists are happy with the depth on every frame (“Yes, every single frame,” Sherak laughs) they begin the cleanup process. “When you assign depth to something that was 2D,” he explains, “there’s missing information in the frame. Right? If I create volume in your head from a 2D photograph, the side of your head you could never see before is now visible, because now there’s volume so that information on the side of your head is stereo noise on the frame, a bit blurry, so we now have to go and clean all of that up. And that’s what’s called the painting process.”
  

The filmmaker continues to give feedback on the work (“Steven might watch the shot five times until every note is addressed”); once they think they’ve got it down, they’ll run the film on a giant screen to check for little imperfections that they might’ve missed on their smaller screens and computer monitors. In the case of Jurassic Park, a new sound mix was created for the 3D re-release, and voila: project completed.

For this project, Sherak says, the process took a total of about nine and a half months, with more than 700 people on the job. Contrary to what you might think, the film’s age didn’t make it a particularly difficult conversion: “The challenges in this film were not because it was old. The challenge in the film was because – remember when we talked about the rotoscoping process? The challenge in this film is that it took place in a jungle with a rainstorm.” That means isolating every drop of rain — and that’s rain that was created practically, on the set, not in a computer after the fact (as might have happened were the film made today). “In today’s world you’d be given the visual effect,” Sherak says, “and then we’d just dimensionalize the CG rain that’s already technically in 3D and then we’d just add volume to it, because the CG raindrop is created in the 3D program inside a computer.”

 

With Jurassic Park in theaters today, Sherak is plenty busy, in the midst of 3D work on the upcoming Star Trek sequel, Guillermo del Toro’sPacific Rim, and Iron Man 3. Those were all films initially intended for stereo exhibition (unlike Jurassic Park of G.I. Joe), but Sherak stresses that, contrary to the negative connotations that have sprouted around some post-conversions, “we still convert the movie after it’s shot. You still have to let them capture the image. The difference is, yes, we were involved from the beginning.” They’ve got people on set, working with the filmmakers during production; “they’re making the decision before they shoot but they’re saying I want more leeway later so I’m gonna shoot the movie in 2D, then we’ll convert it later but knowing 100% from day one that it will be 3D.” But these conversions of older films are a dream come true for a movie lover like Sherak. “When we sat with Steven and he was talking about lens choices – I mean, 20 years later, how many movies… he remembered the lens! This was a 45 mil. Wow. Like, really? You can tell me every lens choice from that film? I’m the film geek who watches the behind the scenes on the DVD extras, right? So I got to do it for real.”

[Alexander L 80]

Can't stand 3D movies. Go out of my way to watch 2D.

[rach 1]

I watched a bluray on a friends tv the other week.

It was incredible.

He said it was 'passive 3d' or something, which is better than 'active 3d'.

doesn't mean anything to me, but it was really good and my eyes were not tired at all.

[grungy-gonads 54]

Thanks surfarthur, interesting!

[surfarthur 22]

Actually, it sounds like a pretty mind numbing and boringly repetitive process to me, but I guess the overall process is interesting.

 

I bet there are a bunch of graphic design graduates thinking they would be doing amazing and groundbreaking things, only to find themselves making raindrops into 3D. Definitely not the job for me.

[Alexander L 80]

Saw Elysium. Very bloody, very good effects.

 

But really reminds me of District 9. Wonder why.

[DoctorOctopus 2]

Does sound boring (the process), but some very talanted people in design. Wonder if they are wasted on that.

[rach 1]

Elysium.

 

Yeah enjoyed that one.

 

Have hardly been the cinema at all in recent years.

[joshnii 2]

Saw Elysium. Very bloody, very good effects.

 

But really reminds me of District 9. Wonder why.

 

Why?

 

I caught up with Moonraker the other night. Silly Bond.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

I think it's the same director

[Alexander L 80]

And of course bloody Sharlto Copley

[Alexander L 80]

Worth a butch. Good effects.

[@tokyo 14]

Haven't been the cinema in over a year now.

[Slippery Jim 65]

Just watched Ted, not outstanding but certainly fun. Those easily offended may want to avoid.