Freyburg

Lego + Wu-Tang = AWESOME!

This time from the Reboot conference.

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Hollywood insiders spill the beans to the Guardian.

The LA Times is reporting that a lot of studio funded companies dedicated to creating web video are shutting down. Why this comes as a surprise to anyone is beyond me. It reminds me of the abortive attempts in the 90’s to merge Hollywood and video games, with predictably disastrous results.

Studios don’t like the short-form format prevalent on the web, and they’re used to pouring money at a problem, with webisodes costing anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 per episode. That sort of thinking is patent madness, of course, and is currently being shown up by any number of people making shows in their basement for no money…and succeeding at it. Since I’ve got some skin in this game, I’m hoping Hollywood continues to stumble forward. THey should stick to what they do best, which is huge, effects-laden spectacles that no indie web creator could ever hope to mach.

Which basically boils down to “everyone, anywhere, is now a publisher.” That sounds simple, but it’s actually a radical reconfiguration of our culture, as well as a widening of the funnel that allows ideas, memes and progress to propagate. Of course, you’ve got to choke down some idiocy while you’re at it, but that’s small potatoes considering the printing press split the Catholic Church down the middle and probably caused its fair share of wars.

I dunno what’s better about this video, the cool factor of molding robotic pixels in your hands in real time, or the cheesy corporate canned music and the shots of the boss going “hmm, well, that’s something alright!”

All in a weird still picture tableau. Dunno what in the hell it’s saying, but whatever it is, it’s mighty cool.

Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Coronal mass ejections and solar wind make for a film reminiscent of something from the deepest depths of the NFB circa 1965.

As a preamble, let me just say that I’m a massive fan of the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I picked up the original 12 comic run when it first arrived in comic book stores in 1986, and it (along with Frank Miller’s the Dark Knight Returns) blew my 15 year old mind.

Of course Hollywood being the avaricious creature it is, plans were soon put in place to make Watchmen into a film, but if ever the source material for a movie could be deemed “unfilmable”, Watchmen was it. The plot jumps back and forth over forty years of history, the supposed superheroes are at best washed-up and at worst psychopaths, the story delves into philosophy, human nature, politics and serves it up with dollops of sex and violence. Oh, and one of the main characters is a detached Superman who sees time differently than mankind and walks around with his (blue) dink hanging out.

Miraculously, Zack Snyder has taken all of those unfilmable elements and made a stunning bit of cinema. Snyder stuck very closely to the source material (even setting the film in 1985, as per the comic), and it’s paid off in spades. Watchmen’s alternate universe (explained brilliantly in an opening-credits montage that tours the audience through decades of could-have-been 20th century events) is a feast for the eyes. Add to that standout performances by Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan and especially Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach, and Watchmen does not disappoint. I have a few minor quibbles, like the presence of Ozymandias’s cat Bubastis (which makes sense in the comic but seems out of place in the film), but my tiny complaints pale in comparison to standout sequences like Dr. Manhattan recalling his life on Mars, or Rorschach revealing just what drove him over the edge from grim vigilante to full-bore lunatic.

Opinion on the film seems to be split; geeks love it, and critics scratch their heads, admire the pretty pictures, and go back to worrying about their increasingly irrelevant jobs and worshipping French art films. I think we know where I land on this debate.

See Watchmen. Revel in its geeky fidelity to the original comic, but enjoy it on its own terms as a bold, visually stunning, thought provoking superhero film of the kind you never thought Hollywood could make. I plan to see it at least once more in the theatre.