BASED on the best-selling children's book by author Lemony Snicket, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is set to be a big-screen blockbuster to top our cinemas' playlist for the next few weeks.
Nominated at the recent Oscar for visual effects and a winner in the Best Makeup category, the movie promises audiences spectacular and picturesque sets, unique costumes and make-up, as well as stunning visual and special effects.
The character of Sunny, an 18-month-old baby alone was developed withlots of visual effects.
For shots of having her dangling from a table by her teeth and catchinga wooden spindle in her mouth like a dog snagging a Frisbee, Industrial Light & Magic was drafted to work wonders with computers what Kara and Shelby Hoffman (who played Sunny) couldn't pull off on camera.
The visual effects team used a computer-generated imagery (CGI) double, where little motion-capture suits for the cameras were used to choreograph Sunny's intricate performances, and finally made "digital" Sunny blend seamlessly with the shots of the Hoffman twins.
CGI can also be seen in most shots in Uncle Monty's (Bill Connolly) reptile room and Aunt Josephine's (Meryl Streep) cliff house.
At the reptile room, both animatronic and CGI were used for scenes where a deadly viper escaped from the cage and petrified Monty and the Baudelaire orphans, and where Sunny played with the viper.
Watch out for the eye-popping sequence of how, with the help of visual effects, a huge hurricane destroyed Aunt Josephine's house. It looks real and convincing.
Interestingly, the film was shot entirely indoors. There are some amazing panoramic views in the movie such as a huge cornfield with endless train tracks, the Britney Beach and Lachrymose cave.
The filmmakers incorporated innovative combinations of painted backdropsand forced perspective, creating the illusion of more space.
The opening sequence featuring the Little Elf is hilarious. The cuteclaymation segment sets the mood for audiences to embark on a fast-paced yet exciting plot in discovering one unfortunate event after another.
The movie is now showing in cinemas.
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COMICS-TO-FILM adaptations are not new in the movie industry. We've seen anumber of famed comic characters, especially those from comics powerhouse Marvel Comics, being brought to life on the big screen over the past fewyears - X-Men, The Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil, to name a few. Now Marvel Studios is adding another to its stable with the introduction of the movie Elektra.
Jennifer Garner is Elektra, a highly paid assassin who recovered fromher mortal wounds (in Daredevil) with the help of her blind martial artsmaster Stick (played by Terence Stamp).
Elektra's assignment is to kill Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic) and Abby Miller (Kirsten Prout), a father-and-daughter team on the run from The Hand, a powerful syndicate whose members practise dark magic.
When Elektra changes her mind and decides to rescue Mark and Abby from The Hand, she ends up in a confrontation with the evil swordsman Kirigi (Will Yun Lee) and his team.
Kirigi's sidekicks comprises Tattoo (Chris Ackerman), who derives his magical powers from the animals engraved on his skin; Typhoid (Natissia Malthe), whose femme-fatale breath is so frigid it can slay; Stone (Bob Sapp), a 374-pound man with rock-hard body; and Kinkou (Edson T. Ribeiro), a man who can't be knocked down. From here, Elektra must tip the balance between good and evil.
For a movie with a kick-butt heroine, visual effects is bound to come inserious play. The effects for Tattoo were absolutely amazing - see howeagles, wolves and snakes materialise out of his tattoos and attack people.
The computer-generated imagery blended the images so well and theoutcome seem real and convincing. The behind-the-scenes tattoo process,which involved transfers, ink drawing and airbrushed colouration, took the special make-up effects team about six hours to apply.
Visual effects was also applied to other members of The Hand - Typhoid's fatal kiss and deadly touches, and the members vanishing into green smoke.
The fight sequences, especially the climatic battle between Elektra and Kirigi, were spectacularly choreographed with the aid of visual effects.
Director Bob Bowman applied a similar technique used by Hong Kong's Zhang YiMou in his highly acclaimed movie Hero and The House of Flying Daggers - an elegant dancing white sheet sequence in slow-mo style. The result is beautiful cinematography and lively and vibrant colours.
The movie opens today.
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ONE night. It all happened in one night, from sunset to dawn in the city of Los Angeles.
Collateral opens with Vincent (played by Tom Cruise) exchanging a briefcase with a stranger at an airport. No one knows that Vincent is actually a contract killer. His mission: To kill five personalities involved in a lucrative court case in one night.
He gets into Max (Jamie Foxx)'s cab and hires him for the night when he discovers that Max is savvy about the streets. And this is where the story unfolds.
Touted as an action-thriller, director/producer Michael Mann (The Insider) has a nose for technology. Knowing that the standard 35-millimetre film will never be able to capture Los Angeles at night the way he wanted the audience to experience it, he became the first director to shoot a major motion picture almost entirely on digital with a modified
Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream camera.
Mann explains that the primary benefit of the Viper FilmStream is the way it records the distinct colour palette that defines the city at night.
"The Viper records colours in a whole different way, particularly orange, yellow and red."
Collateral actually turned out to be a multimedia film project.
Approximately 80 per cent of the film shot digitally with high-definition video cameras, including the Viper FilmStream and Sony CineAlta, and the results (with help from cinematographers Paul Cameron and Dion Beebe) are
impressive. The film really captures the look of downtown Los Angeles at night.
Another highlight is Cruise's new look in the movie. At the beginning of the movie, you'll notice a dress-to-kill "silver fox" coming to town.
Well, Cruise's appearance - steel-grey hair and stubble - is more than just a look. Mann actually came up with the whole visual design of Cruise's character - the hair, the beard and the suit - on the computer first.
Though most of the conversations between Vincent and Max take place in the cab, moviegoers will still enjoy the movie, thanks to the good performance of the two leading actors.
Collateral is now showing in cinemas.
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By Lee Chiew Lan
IT'S Chicago in 2035, where robots are a trusted part of everyday life. Toprotect humans, the robots are trained to be docile servants andprogrammed with three laws: they cannot harm humans, must obey humans, andcan only protect themselves by following the first two laws.
Enter detective Del Spooner (played by Will Smith), who is prejudicedagainst the robots. With the suicide of Dr Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), a pioneer in thedevelopment of robotics, Spooner is sent to investigate. This puts him incontact with Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), the head of US Robotics (USR), which is about to roll out its new model - the NS-5 automated domesticassistant.
Spooner suspects Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk), Lanning's latest creationwhich is programmed without the three laws, as the murderer and he has toconvince robot psychologist Dr Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan) to helphim.
I, Robot, directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City, The Crow), is packed witheye-popping visual effects, thanks to its strong behind-the-scenes team,including production designer Patrick Tatopoulos (Dark City, IndependenceDay) and Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor John Nelson (Gladiator).
The design of the NS-5s, including Sonny, consists of threecharacteristics - transparency, a human-like form with a unique musclestructure, and a perfect symmetrical face.
Sonny's face has three levels - mechanics on the inside, an under-skullsimilar to human skull bones, and an outer clear layer. On top of theskull is soft skin. To distinguish Sonny (and the rest of the NS-5s) from previous cinematicrobot incarnations, "futuristic muscles" for Sonny's joint mechanics werecreated. In creating the musculature, Tatopoulos was inspired by recentadvances in artificial limbs, including new materials that respond toelectrical impulses and react like real muscles.
The visual effects team made the action sequences - escape from acollapsing building demolished by a "demo-bot", chase sequences throughtunnels, and robots and humans fighting - come alive on screen in aconvincing manner. With the impressive technological advances, visual effects artistsdeveloped a new level of photo-realism that seamlessly integratescomputer-generated images with practical sets of human characters. Thesestate-of-the-art tools include Global Illimination Lighting Models (akaBalls & Bots), High Dynamic Range, Robo-Tile and Encodacam.
I, Robot's futuristic transportation systems are also critical to itslook. All the cars were designed exclusively for use in the film, withGermany-based Audi collaborating to build Spooner's "hero" car.
Technology is what makes I, Robot truly exciting as it enhances the filmand the fear-of-machines plot. Coupled with Smith's impressive performanceand tons of visual effects, this movie is a must-see. The movie openstoday.
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By Lee Chiew Lan
IT'S very enjoyable to watch the 2003 version of The Italian Job. Comparedto the 1969 original, the remake offers more action - heaps of chases andplenty of plot twists - not to mention state-of-the-art technology.
The scene is Venice, where a gang of thieves plan to get away with RM35million in gold bars via the city's canals. Among them are DonaldSutherland as John Bridger (safe cracker), Mark Wahlberg as Charlie Croker (mastermind), Seth Green as Lyle (computer whiz), Jason Statham asHandsome Rob (driver), and Moss Def as Left-Ear (explosives expert). Thejob was executed perfectly and the escape was clean, but the payoff wentmissing. It turns out one of the thieves Steve Frizelli (played by EdwardNorton) double-crossed the team. One year on, Bridger's daughter Stella(Charlize Theron) joins the team which wants to get back what's due tothem, and this is where it gets interesting.
The BMW Mini Cooper is the star vehicle for the movie. With its smallsize, the Mini can easily get around big-city traffic.
Audiences get to see the Minis carrying the 5,000-pound gold and racingthrough traffic jams, sidewalks and into subway tunnels, or escape duringa car-and-helicopter chase when the helicopter hovers over a Mini withonly a foot between them and making a 270-degree turn.
Though audiences will see only three Minis - red, white and blue -filming the getaway with the gold during the peak of rush-hour traffic inLos Angeles took 32 Minis. Due to the elaborate sequences, some of thecars were rigged for jumps and others were fitted to withstand numerousbullet hits while the "hero" cars stayed pristine throughout.
The Italian Job is a beautiful-looking film, with its scenes of theVenice canals, Italian Alps and the streets of Los Angeles, credit todirector F. Gary Gray (A Man Apart) and cinematographer Wally Pfisher(Insomnia, Memento).
Producer Donald De Line (Pretty Woman, Armageddon) recalls the days filming in those canals as the most challenging of all.As Venice is a historic monument, city officials put a lot of restrictionson the shooting team. "We had to put off some of the most action-intensivework involving visual and special effects, and some extraordinary stunts,especially the boat chase in the Venice canals," says De Line.
However, there are still some superbly choreographed chase sequencesthrough the canals of Venice and the streets of Los Angeles.
There are some good comical moments, a number of them provided by Green,who insisted that he had the idea for Napster (the music downloadingprogram) and it was stolen by his college roomate while he was "napping"at his computer. Shawn Fanning of the Napster fame makes a cameo appearance, helping to perpetuate the joke.
The film also indirectly highlighted the use of hi-tech tools to get thejob done. Such was seen through Green's role as a hacker who can tap intothe Los Angeles' traffic control system and reprogram the signals tocreate havoc on the streets of LA, and leave only desirable pathways forhis teammates to escape.
The Italian Job opens today. More details athttp://www.italianjobmovie.com.
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By Lee Chiew Lan
TECHNOLOGY helps director Zhang Yimou to realise his glorious vision inHero. Famous for his brilliant storytelling and incisive portraits ofChina, Yimou managed to make his martial arts debut flick a feast for theeyes and ears. About a plot to kill the brutal but venerated Emperor QinShihuang who united China in 221BC, the film has an all-star castcomprising Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk and Zhang Ziyi.
The film opens explaining that in the Warring States Period (circa 402-221BC), there were seven kingdoms (later to become unified China), allfighting for supremacy and that the king of the Qin kingdom (Chen Daoming) was the most ruthless and powerful of them all.
Enter a group of assasins trying to prevent the king of Qin fromconquering the six states but none were as fearsome as the trio of Sky(Donnie Yen), Broken Sword (Leung) and Flying Snow (Cheung).
To protect himself, the king promised great power, mountains of gold and a privateaudience with anyone who could defeat the three assassins. Then whenenigmatic county sheriff Nameless (Li) arrived at the palace with theswords of these three assasins, he was granted an audience with the king.Sitting in the palace, only 10 paces from the king, Nameless told hisextraordinary tales, setting the stage for the rest of the film, which isa series of flashbacks detailing Nameless' encounters with the threeassasins.
Yimou has divided the movie into four chapters, each symbolised by aspecific colour. It starts with red, representing the narrow-mindedness ofdifferent positions; blue, the most rational; green, the turmoil; andwhite, the truest and a Chinese colour for mourning.
The film is epic in scope, as seen in sequences when the king sent hisforces against the neighbouring Zhao kingdom. Thousands of warriorsstormed through the desert on foot, wagon and horseback until they reachedtheir target city. From here, we learn that the Qin's devastating powerwas in its vast array of archers, who unleashed volleys of lethal arrowsin such punishing force that nothing could withstand them. One memorable shot has the camera in the midst of "arrow rains" as they sailed highoverhead, focusing on one arrow in particular in its trajectory into acalligraphy school where two of the main characters hid.
Each image is ravishing: from a swordpoint that slo-mo sliced throughdrops of water, to a swordfight in a grove of golden leaves that turnedred, plum and magenta and fell like confetti to a grey landscape of dunesdaubed with Flying Snow's turquoise gown.
The casts are standouts. Take Maggie Cheung for example, she iseffective as Flying Snow, whose graceful and serene fighting style makesher seem like a supernatural entity, particularly in one beautiful forestsequence where she used golden leaves on the ground as a weapon to wipeout Moon (Ziyi).
To shoot a fighting scene between these two actresses at the height ofthe fall foliage, the director and a 300-strong crew had to squeeze theirimaginative juices till the last drop. They travelled hundreds of milesand headed to an ancient oak grove in inner Mongolia. "I had a guy outthere specifically to keep an eye on the leaves," Yimou says. "He madevideotapes of their progress as they turned from green to yellow."
As soon as the leaves turned golden, the crew rushed north. "We usedthree or four cameras simultaneously at different angles and the leaveshad to be perfectly yellow. We even implemented a leaf classificationsystem," Yimou adds. Such obsessiveness is matched by Academy Award-winning costume designer Emi Wada. For the costumes in Hero, Wada tried no less than 30 colours,hand-dying each individual sample. And so meticulous was her control ofthe design that the red costumes were created using 54 shades of colour.
Hero is no doubt worth watching. It's a movie that combines uniqueelements together with a memorable storyline and exquisite camera work.The movie is currently showing at local theatres.
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By Lee Chiew Lan
THE partnership between East and West continues in The Transporter, amovie that combines the skills of director Cory Yuen and writer-producerLuc Besson.
Yuen, well-known for his Hong Kong action films such as Fong Sai-Yuk Iand II, starring Jet Li, and Besson, with Wasabi as current release,worked hand-in-hand to offer yet another James Bond-like action and stunt-packed feature.
The Transporter stars Jason Statham (who made his debut in the Britishfilm Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) as Frank Martin, a retiredspecial forces agent who has settled in France to become a freelancegetaway transporter. He will transport anything at a price, no questionsasked.
Martin operates by three rules: one, never change the deal; two, nonames; and three, never look into the package. Needless to say, he breaks all three when he is asked to drive Lai (ShuQi), an apparent kidnap victim, to the home of a gangster known as WallStreet (Matt Schulze). From that moment on, he is on the run with allsorts of bad guys on his trail, with the discovery that Wall Street isoperating a human slave ring with Chinese businessman Kwai (Ric Young).
Egged by Lai and Tarconi (Francois Berleand), a police detective whosucpects Martin's transporting activities are somehow connected to illegalactivities in the area and also a friend, Martin sets out to stop WallStreet once and for all.
Statham is delightfully cool as the transporter. He possesses impressiveathleticism, honed by years of training in boxing, martial arts,kickboxing and scuba diving.
Meanwhile, Shu brings nothing little more than a pretty face and afairly poor command of English to her damsel-in-distress role. However,she was also game for much of the demanding action and stunt work,including riding in the trunk of a car inside a large bag.
The action sequences are virtually non-stop. Every example of hand-to-hand combat features lots of martial arts, a testament of Yuen's creativeleadership. For instance, an ingenious use of motor oil to ward off deadlyassasins as well as a set piece involving a sweater that transforms into adeadly weapon.
Overall, The Transporter is likely to satisfy anyone looking for a B-grade action flick. For details, visit The Transporter's Web site by 20thCentury Fox at http://www.transportermovie.com.
The movie opens in local theatres today.
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By Lee Chiew Lan
LOVE being a timeless and complex subject, it's no wonder that moviedirectors and producers never tire in making movies revolving aroundromance and relationships.
Hundreds of films have been made on this subject, but they have neverbeen able to satisfy the insatiable appetite of movie-goers - audiencesstill want more. Realising the demand for such movies, Hollywood ispresenting yet another flick, America's Sweethearts, which boasts of astrong cast.
At least, if you are not interested in the storyline, there is thepresence of award-winning actors to look forward to.
America's Sweethearts treats audiences to an insider's look at the wackyworld of movie-making where narcissistic megastar, self-centred directors,greedy studio execs and break-up of popular movie star couples are alljust part of everyday Hollywood.
Gwen Harrison (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Eddie Thomas (John Cusack) area married Hollywood couple known as "America's sweethearts" and have madetheir appearances in many popular movies.
Unfortunately, they are heading for divorce after self-centred Gwen hadan affair with a Spanish actor, Hector (Hank Azaria). As a result, Eddieends up in a mental recovery centre.
As Gwen and Eddie's last and yet-to-be released movie Time Over Time wasat hand, anxious studio chief Dave Kingman (Stanley Tucci) had to askveteran Press agent Lee Philip (Billy Crystal) to get the both of themtogether for the movie's Press junket.
At the same time, movie director Hal Weidmann (Christopher Walken) haskept the movie under wraps so that no one gets to see it before the day ofthe Press junket. In order to get the troubled couple "reunited" for the last publicappearance to promote their latest movie, Lee set up the Press junket at aremote desert resort. He convinced Eddie to attend and got Gwen's personalassistant-cum-sister Kiki Harrison (Julia Roberts) to also do the same. At first, it seemed that Lee and Kiki's biggest challenge was tomaintain the peace between Gwen and Eddie and keep their high-profilepublic image intact, but soon Kiki found herself facing a more importantconcern when the course of events make a surprising turn.
America's Sweethearts is directed by Joe Roth, written by Billy Crystaland Peter Tolan, and produced by Susan Arnold, Donna Arkoff Roth and BillyCrystal. The movie is scheduled to hit cinemas nationwide this Thursday.
Personally, though the movie is no Oscar material, it is light-heartedand witty, a worthwhile watch if you are looking for something to feelgood about. Sceptics may find it a waste of time but with such a stronggroup of actors, at least the acting will not disappoint.
Movie-goers who wish to have an insight to the movie can log on toAmerica's Sweethearts' official Web site athttp://www.spe.sony.com/movies/americassweethearts. Fans will be able tosee interesting images, brief video footages of the film and many othergood stuff set to win your hearts.
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