Silicon Gulf

I really got excited seeing this.More pictures at cinema-pedia.com.

The great Charlton Heston passed away over the weekend. He will be missed. If there's any genre that I will forever remember Charlton Heston for, it's in fantasy and science fiction. "Planet of the Apes", "Soylent Green", "Omega Man"... but to these I would also add "Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur", surely ranking among the best of fantasy films despite their origins. I cried during the leper

Via Spidamang: Aaaaah! Jet Li and Jackie Chan together! Fanboy heaven! And here I thought that Jet Li had kissed Kung-Fu movies goodbye. Thank goodness he changed his mind. Never mind that it's a Hollywood production, and never mind that it has the obligatory American "Chosen One" teen hero. I am going to WATCH this movie.

Pardon me if this seems overlong: this was written for my Literary Criticism class and the teacher wanted a 5-page report. It seemed a shame to just throw it away after submitting it, so here it is. Speaking strictly from an average moviegoer's perspective, without any pretensions to critical analysis, "Shakespeare in Love" has all the hallmarks of a hit movie. It has everything going in its

ABS-CBN Interactive has a story: UST’s new battlecry: Go Lozada, go USTE! Which brings to mind a quote from a recent movie: "It's Go-Go, not Cry-Cry." Care to guess which film?

Just found out that actor Roy Scheider succumbed to myeloma. People will probably best remember him for his role as the police chief in "Jaws" but I will always associate him with "Blue Thunder", "Seaquest DSV", and "2010". My favorite tough-guy actor from the 1980s. Scheider, by the way, was also the source for the name of Space Sheriff Shaider (the original, not the execrable GMA spinoff).

Heath Ledger, Actor, Is Found Dead at 28 Oh very young what will leave us is time. You're only dancing on this earth for a short while. And though your dreams may toss and turn you now. They will vanish away like your Dad's best jeans, demin blue, fading up to the sky. And though you want to last forever you know we never will, you know we never will. And that just makes the good bye harder

Ohh yeah! It’s the year of the rat! As few may know. I always watch Ratatouille when life gets bored. Hmm, maybe I already watched it for 7x or more. I just love watching this movie because of the great concept and CG detail given to it. Imagine a rat that can cook, “Anyone can cook” [...]

The old meets new in this blockbuster animated film from Robert Zemeckis. “Old” being the ancient poem Beowulf and “new” being the cutting edge 3D technology employed by the visionary director Robert Zemeckis. Here, the pioneering director takes a second stab at the visual gimmickry that he used in Polar Express in where real actors became puppet masters to the digitally created characters. I say gimmickry, because it felt like a solution looking for a problem as the digital veneer offered no advantages over traditional live action/computer graphics combo. In addition, it introduced new problems like creepy eyes and forced movements. The hackneyed story didn’t help either.

Armed with newer, more powerful digital technologies and a meatier story. Will the director, emulate the titular character and emerge victorious over the naysayers and doubters?

Beowulf, tells the story of a Geat warrior who sails to a Danish Kingdom to slay Grendel, the tortured son of a she-devil. With a penchant for nudity, exaggeration, and machismo, Beowulf (Ray Winston) vows to defeat the abomination on equal terms, bare hand and bare naked. Beowulf defeated the monster, monster limps back to mother, who for commercial reasons is fabricated and happens to be Angelina Jolie… in the nude… with a stiletto… Anyway, the last thing mother hears is the name of her son’s killer. Beowulf. Revenge is really best served warm so before dawn breaks, Beowulf wakes up to find his private army, save his right hand man, slaughtered like animals. The rest of the story involves interspecies sex, women, singing, suicide, becoming king and slaying a dragon.

So, to answer the question. It succeeds but mostly because of the solid and entertaining adaptation of the Beowulf epic. As for its lofty ambition as a viable alternative to real live motion films. It failed. While everything is rendered realistically its not convincing enough to make you forget you’re watching digital dolls. The hair sways unrealistically, the gallop of the horses are robotic, the skin, rubbery and everything looks too smooth. It was obvious that more care was given to the characters, Beowulf and Jolie, and this presents a problem. As the scene goes from having Beowulf to other characters viewers will be jarred incessantly at the discrepancy between them. Only when theres only Beowulf(battle scenes, etc) does it takes succeeds in immersing viewers in the story.

The story is good, the action scene exhilarating and the actors mostly great (Malkovich over acted), there is little here average moviegoers will find fault. But put against its ambition of being a watermark in this pioneering technique, Zemeckis, failed. But he failed majestically. One can feel that he is on the verge of something important in film making. He might have failed but I can’t wait for him to try again.

New blog over at villageidiotsavantfilms.blogspot.com. Very basic template for now, which I'll fix when time permits. Did I really want to put up another blog? Well.... One of my subjects at the Ateneo de Davao University this semester is Film Appreciation, under Rene Estremeras. Every Saturday, we watch films and write our analysis. While I could just as easily have filed those reports in