I.L. @ The Movies
The Fountain
I liked this movie quite a bit, but I should be honest about my willingness to give a pass to a movie that presents me a lot of visual splendor (in lieu of coherent and down-to-earth plots, which seems to be some people's major beef with the film), which this movie has in spades (except for the bark that Bald Wolverine eats, which I swear looks like a cling-on).
The director, Darren Aronofsky, found these dudes living in an ancient (well, like, 400 year old) cow shed in England who built a device they dubbed the "Microzoom Optical Bench" which can take a tiny drop of water and -- through a system of Victorian prisms and some digital cameras -- magnify it up to 500,000 times. Most of the f/x he got these guys to make are in the futuristic third of the movie's timeframes, and they look fantastic.
Reading about the Bench immediately reminded me of something I'd read in an interview with Terry Gilliam. Gilliam was making Brazil and needed some convincing clouds during a scene in which one of the characters is flying through the air. They ended up shooting some high speed footage of some smoke wisps that Gilliam was really pleased with, and he made the point in the interview that it was the random and unplanned for results that made it so pretty -- and realistic. You just can't really get that with CGI; it limits you to only your imagination and takes out the role that chance plays in our experience of reality (and movies).
So I say kudos to this trend in Hollywood, and maybe those British guys will get some more work, too.
I liked this movie quite a bit, but I should be honest about my willingness to give a pass to a movie that presents me a lot of visual splendor (in lieu of coherent and down-to-earth plots, which seems to be some people's major beef with the film), which this movie has in spades (except for the bark that Bald Wolverine eats, which I swear looks like a cling-on).
The director, Darren Aronofsky, found these dudes living in an ancient (well, like, 400 year old) cow shed in England who built a device they dubbed the "Microzoom Optical Bench" which can take a tiny drop of water and -- through a system of Victorian prisms and some digital cameras -- magnify it up to 500,000 times. Most of the f/x he got these guys to make are in the futuristic third of the movie's timeframes, and they look fantastic.
Reading about the Bench immediately reminded me of something I'd read in an interview with Terry Gilliam. Gilliam was making Brazil and needed some convincing clouds during a scene in which one of the characters is flying through the air. They ended up shooting some high speed footage of some smoke wisps that Gilliam was really pleased with, and he made the point in the interview that it was the random and unplanned for results that made it so pretty -- and realistic. You just can't really get that with CGI; it limits you to only your imagination and takes out the role that chance plays in our experience of reality (and movies).
So I say kudos to this trend in Hollywood, and maybe those British guys will get some more work, too.
posted by PearJack at 10:47 PM
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