First shot of A-Team cast released

The A-Team was a pop culture phenomenon of the Eighties on par with Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazard. And since Hannibal, B.A., Face and Murdoch hold a special place in the hearts and minds of Gen-Xers, it was only a matter of time before the super-fake action show hit the silver screen. After all, we already saw (unfortunately) the Dukes remake, and our own Alex Nunez liveblogged the sucktastic time waster that was the new (now canceled) Knight Rider series on NBC. All three shows have one thing in common; a bad ass vehicle that serves a different purpose in each show. B.A.’s GMC G-Series, with its red stripe and red turbine mag wheels was the command center for our favorite wrongly sought soldiers of fortune.

The A-Team hits theaters on June 11, 2010 and at the very least, the actors chosen are better than we expected. B.A Baracus will be played by Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, and the one and only Liam Neeson will play Hannibal. Bradley Cooper from The Hangover checks in as Face and Sharlto Copely will be the wacky pilot Murdoch. If that isn’t enough star power for you, the beautiful Jessica Biel will play the part of Carissa Sosa. Naturally, the iconic GMC van is making a triumphant return to the A-Team, though we’re guessing General Motors isn’t going to stand for blacking out the GMC lettering from the van’s grille like the show’s creators did after season one.

We’d love it if this plan came together, though we admit that we’re not hopeful. These “turn a TV show into a movie” deals seldom work out the way our inner children hope for. Hit the jump to watch interviews with some of the movie’s stars.

[Source: ETOnline via Auto-Focus]

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/10/29/first-shot-of-a-team-cast-released-gmc-van-included/

To see the video - http://www.auto-focus.us/autoblog/2009/10/28/video-a-team-cast

Netflix streaming coming to PS3… via Blu-ray disc

By Jacqui Cheng

Netflix continues its domination of the video streaming market by partnering with Sony to bring its service to the PS3. The two companies announced Monday that Netflix’s “thousands” of movies and TV shows will be streamable to the PS3 as of November 2009, and at no extra cost to Netflix members. Though the implementation is a little less than ideal, the partnership will solidify Netflix’s spot as the go-to service for on-demand streaming.

The arrangement is “less than ideal” because PS3 users will have to insert an “instant streaming disc” into their consoles before they can take advantage of Netflix’s streaming content. The disc uses BD-Live, which allows Blu-ray discs to pull down content from the Internet—basically, the Netflix player won’t be native on the PS3 operating system, but will run within the device’s Blu-ray player software.

It doesn’t take a genius to observe that this is noticeably less polished than Netflix’s implementation on the Xbox, for example—content can be accessed through an Xbox dashboard application without the need to insert a disc or do anything that involves getting up out of that comfy dent in the couch.

As pointed out by Zatz Not Funny, this was probably to get the solution to market as soon as humanly possible, but may also have been chosen in order to avoid making Sony too much as a middleman. Either way, having to an insert a disc means one extra step that will take this feature from “welcome” to “slightly irksome.”

This may not be the case forever, though. The two companies predicated the news by saying that this would only be the case “initially,” indicating that the PS3 might still get native Netflix streaming sometime in the future. Indeed, this appears to be the case after we spoke with Netflix spokesperson Chris Garrity.

“Netflix members and PS3 owners have really wanted a way to instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix via the PS3 system. The instant streaming disc represented the fastest and easiest way to let them so this,” Garrity told Ars. “Late next year we expect to have an embedded solution available for PS3s via a system software update slated for release through the PlayStation Network.”

The move is not only meant to make PS3 fanboys happy, though—Netflix is also trying stay a step ahead of the competition. With online video giant Hulu considering charging for content—possibly on a subscription basis like Netflix—it’s possible that the two companies could be competing more directly in the near future. Netflix certainly has a distribution advantage, though, with its streaming content going to numerous set-top boxes already (Xbox, TiVo, Roku, and now PS3), while Hulu has repeatedly tried to shut out non-computer browsing from consoles and media centers.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/10/netflix-streaming-coming-to-ps3-but-via-blu-ray-disc.ars

“Rapunzel” Concept Drawings

By Julie Bonner

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Disney is remaking “Rapunzel” and the film is slated for a December 10, 2010 release. John Lasseter showed some clips and sketches from the film at the D23 Expo he also revealed three ways Rapunzel leads the pack when it comes to the Disney princesses we all know and love.

One of the ways this Rapunzel is different is she uses her hair as a weapon. Check out this concept drawing from “Rapunzel” with the prince using her long hair to climb into this dome.

There are some changes to Rapunzel when it comes to the other Disney princesses, but she will still hold some of the same characteristics we all know and love about them. She still sings, there is still a prince involved and films have been made out of all five Disney princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Beauty.

At the D23 Expo, John Lasseter said, “The sixth one finally comes to life. Take a closer look at the girl behind the golden hair.”

More concept art drawings of “Rapunzel”.

http://www.disneysociety.com/2009/10/15/rapunzel-concept-drawings/

Review: The Age of Stupid Gets Smart on Enviropocalypse

Blurring the boundary between sci-fi and documentary, Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid peers back in time from a climate crisis-wracked 2055 to lament our current inaction on the mother of all conflicts: The war on terra. The film premieres globally on Monday.

“We’re not at war at the moment,” explains Piers Guy, a British wind-farm developer who serves as one of The Age of Stupid’s compelling subjects. “But if people actually recognized the full implications of what’s happening to us, they would be treating it like a war.”

Armstrong’s docu-film isn’t shy about examining those implications. Beginning with the Big Bang, The Age of Stupid’s evocative CGI hurls toward 2055 at light-speed, only to find Earth’s once-mighty metropoles annihilated. From a drowned London to a buried Las Vegas and a burning Sydney, its dystopian imagery conjures up disturbing visions of humanity and hyperconsumption gone seriously awry.

That self-negating process is analyzed by The Archivist (Pete Postlethwaite), who has assembled a global digital archive in a forbidding tower in the melted Arctic. A brilliant actor, Postlethwaite brings restraint and sadness to his part, which is the only fictional role in the documentary experiment. The rest of the film is told by The Archivist’s digital materials, consisting of real footage and media feeds, as well as interviews with global-warming experts.

That includes Piers and his wife Lisa, who begin The Archivist’s flashback with a visit to French mountain guide Fernand Pareau. The wizened Pareau has witnessed the startling decline of Mont Blanc’s snowpack firsthand, and provides the film with its most poignant statement: “I think everyone in the future will probably blame us. We knew how to profit but not protect.”

Pareau, Piers and Lisa are joined by the film’s other subjects: Young Iraqi refugees Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud, Nigerian medical student Layefa Malemi, Indian airline entrepneur Jeh Wadia and Shell Oil paleontologist Alvin DuVernay, whose criticism of excessive consumption provided The Age of Stupid with its title.

These real-life players are quite moving. Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud witnessed their father’s murder during the U.S. invasion of Iraq and their resentment is lethal, as they sell used shoes on the streets of Jordan. Layefa Malemi struggles to survive in an ironically depressed Nigeria, the most oil-rich nation in Africa, while selling diesel on the black market and aiding villagers whose air and water have been irrevocably poisoned by Shell Oil’s gas flares and dumping. Shell’s DuVernay, who rescued more than 100 people in his native New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, laments the ignorant waste of cheap oil while digging for more.

That waste is brought home by arresting animations on resource wars, global emissions and more, as well as decontextualized music like Depeche Mode electro-pop hit “Just Can’t Get Enough,” Dragnerve’s speed-metal anthem “A Life in Ashes” and Radiohead’s eerie “Reckoning.” By the time The Age of Stupid’s flashbacks are over and the viewer is stuck in a ravaged 2055, the urge to do something immediate is palpable and powerful.

Crowd-funded by a profit-sharing partnership comprising a mere 228 people and groups, including a hockey team and a women’s health center, who each invested portions of its £450,000 budget, The Age of Stupid is a destabilizing experience. Its Monday global opening is concurrent with United Nations Climate Week, although the film has already been screened by the Scottish, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch and U.K. parliaments, as well as the European Union and Obama’s think tank, the Center for American Progress. The result is a full-court press aimed at influencing nations to come to the U.N.’s 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen with their heads and hearts in the right place.

Which is to say, a much better place than Earth, circa 2055.

(See the movie trailer) -http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/09/review-the-age-of-stupid-gets-smart-on-enviropocalypse

How Rapunzel changes everything for the Disney princess film

Princesses have been good business for Disney. They’ve turned classic fairy-tale characters such as Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty into the stuff of little girls’ dreams. They also look good on bed sheets, greeting cards and adorable Halloween costumes.

Disney is in the middle of revamping another literary princess for the holiday season of 2010: Rapunzel will join the Disney pantheon in a computer-animated film starring the voices of Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, from Bolt co-director Byron Howard and Super Rhino short director Nathan Greno.

Walt Disney Animation chief creative officer John Lasseter showed clips and sketches of Rapunzel during his presentation at the D23 Fan Expo earlier this month and revealed three ways Rapunzel leads the pack in feminist Disney princesses such as Jasmine, Mulan and Belle, and three more ways she honors the old traditions of Cinderella, Snow White and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty).

New developments

1) This princess doesn’t wait. The tale of Rapunzel is that she sat in her tower waiting for some hunk to climb her hair and save her. That doesn’t fly in the new millennium. This Rapunzel (Moore) takes care of herself and goes on a swashbuckling adventure with a bandit named Flynn (Levi). “There’s a lot of girl power in this movie,” Lasseter said.

2) Her hair is a tool and a weapon. Computer artists have given Rapunzel 70 feet of fully articulated hair that she can use as a lasso, as a whip like Indiana Jones, and in more surprising innovations, Lasseter promised. It flows through her entire house, and when she’s out in the forest, she has to wrap it around trees to keep it contained.

3) She’s been there, done that. Men still climb Rapunzel’s hair and say that famous line, but Rapunzel’s ready for them. Now they barely get to “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your … ” before she drops her pile of locks with a bored thud.

Classic traditions

1) This Rapunzel sings. All of Disney’s famous princesses sing in their animated musicals. This Rapunzel has the music of Alan Menken and the lyrics of Glenn Slater, the duo behind Home on the Range and Sister Act: The Musical. Individually, Menken’s credits range from Little Shop of Horrors to Aladdin and Enchanted. Slater is working with Andrew Lloyd Webber on a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera.

2) She completes Disney’s collection. Lasseter pointed out that Disney had made films out of five of the six fairy tales named after their princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Beauty (half the title of Beauty and the Beast). Rapunzel is the feather in their cap. “The sixth one finally comes to life,” Lasseter said. “Take a closer look at the girl behind the golden hair.”

3) It’s a Disney milestone. As if completing its princess collection wasn’t enough, Rapunzel just happens to be Disney’s 50th feature-length animated film, in case you were counting. It is their first computer-animated fairy tale, so take that, 2-D princesses!

http://scifiwire.com/2009/09/how-rapunzel-reinvents-th.php

Disney Acquires Marvel

In the voice of Stan Lee – “could this be the end of our fearless heros?  Stay, tuned..”

UPDATE 8:30 AM PDT – There have been a number of developments since the initial press release about Disney’s acquisition of Marvel went out. Disney held a conference call with investors that just finished to discuss the deal and while much of it was focused on the financial aspect of the deal – with regards to both current and future opportunities – there were a number of comments concerning publishing and Marvel’s film slate that are of interest. The bullet points are: 

• Existing licensing and distribution deals should remain where they are.
• Disney believes there’s real opportunity with the Marvel catalog of characters and will work on where those opportunities are greatest and how best to leverage them across the existing Marvel and Disney infrastructure.
• Disney executives went to great lengths during the call to make the point that they don’t pretend to be more expert than Marvel is in handling their characters, citing the hands-off relationship Disney has had with Pixar since the acquisition of that studio. Disney said Marvel manages the properties from a business perspective very intelligently and trusts them to make the right decisions for these products for a long time to come.
• Disney said the deal was attractive not just because they’re buying great characters, stories and brand, but about working with people who know these characters best and how best to work with them in other media.
• Again, referencing the Pixar deal, Disney finds working as one company with Marvel removes friction and creates value that’s very compelling. Licensing offers very attractive opportunities, but nothing is better than being one. International expansion of Marvel properties through Disney was cited as a potential growth area.
• Cable channel Disney XD is currently running about 20 hours a week of Marvel content and Disney has been looking to license more Marvel content and this deal gives them that opportunity as well as the opportunity to expose these characters internationally.<.li>
• With regards to video game publishing, Disney praised Marvel’s licensing agreements with some of the best video game producers and publishers in the business and said moving forward they will consider what’s best for each individual property as each licensing deal comes up for renewal and that there would likely be a blend of licensed and self-produced/self-distributed titles.
• With respect to Paramount’s distribution deal with Marvel and the Iron Man franchise, Disney has every intention to respect the deal that’s in place, but noted that it’s in their best interest, overtime, to become the sole distributor of Marvel films.
• Will Disney3D be used for Marvel movies? That will be determined by those who are in charge of producing Marvel’s theatrical films.
• When asked if there was potential for cross-polination between Marvel and Pixar, Disney said that Pixar’s John Lasseter has met with key Marvel creative executives recently and the group got “pretty excited, very fast.” Disney will look at all opportunities and thinks there are some exciting product that could come from this sort of partnership.
• Disney said this deal is expected to benefit Marvel’s retail efforts, being able to leverage Disney’s shelf space and relationships with major chains and distributors.
• The deal began when Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger reached out to Marvel Chief Executive Ike Perlmutter earlier this year. Again, Disney noted that they believe in the creative team at Marvel and see no reason to upset that applecart.
• Disney has not made any real estate decisions and sees no reason to move Marvel Studios from their headquarters in Manhattan Beach, California. No mention of Marvel Publishing’s offices in New York City was made.

 

In addition, Marvel Editor-In-Chief twittering this morning and has made some comments on the deal:

“G’ morning, Marvel U! Welcome to this moment in history. Everyone relax, this is incredible news and all is well in the Marvel U.”

“Everybody take a deep breath, all your favorite comics remain unchanged and Tom Brevoort remains grouchy.”

“If you’re familiar with the Disney/Pixar relationship, then you’ll understand why this is a new dawn for Marvel and the comics industry.”

Developing…

Disney To Sell Movies On MicroSD Cards

Think DVDs are old fashioned? Already looking forward to the end of the line for Blu-ray? If so, you may be interested in what Disney and Panasonic hope is the next big thing: movies on flash cards. Yep, those same diminutive memory chips that you buy for your digital camera will soon be available with major motion films loaded on, giving consumers with flash card-supporting media players the ability to watch flicks whilst on the go.

Walt Disney Company has partnered with Panasonic in order to kick-start the initiative, which will “package pre-recorded microSD cards together with DVDs holding the same movie content,” giving users and easy watch to watch their favorite DVDs on portable players. The move is just the next in a long line of tries. Here recently, many DVDs and Blu-ray Discs have arrived with download codes that enabled consumers to login to iTunes (or a similar site) and download the film onto their portable device. We can only imagine that the chance for pirating is less with an actual flash card, but we’re not so certain we see the appeal here.

For starters, many portable media players don’t have a microSD card slot. In fact, we’d wager that most of these will be sold to mobile phone users, as cellphones and digital cameras are the primary devices out these days with microSD compatibility. At any rate, we’re told that the DVD+microSD bundles will start shipping in November, with some of the first titles to include the popular “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “National Treasure” series. Disney’s not placing any bets in regard to sales figures, but considering that the bundles will retail for around $53 (converted from 4,935 yen), we aren’t so sure cash-strapped America will be quick to buy in.

http://hothardware.com/News/Disney-To-Sell-Movies-On-MicroSD-Cards/

Inside the New Harry Potter Movie’s VFX Tech

Millennium Bridge

At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—the first Potter film in two years, out today—things are looking pretty grim not just for the boy wizard, but for everyone. Gray storm clouds roll ominously over London as pedestrians, eyes on the sky, hurry across the city’s Millennium Bridge. Suddenly, the bridge begins to quake. Cables snapping, the bridge undulates and twists, pulling free of its piers, and crashes violently into the Thames. Voldemort has recently returned from the dead, and he isn’t satisfied to wreak havoc only in the wizarding world: His Death Eaters take his campaign of violent mayhem into the Muggle realm by destroying the Millennium Bridge in the film’s dramatic opening sequence.

The establishing shot of the 1241-foot steel suspension bridge is of the real bridge over the Thames River in London. But for the bridge’s collapse, filmmakers switched to an all-virtual plate, building the bridge and London completely in the computer. Creating a photorealistic computer-generated copy of a bridge millions of people have walked across is no easy feat. Director David Yates and Half-Blood Prince’s VFX supervisor Tim Burke tasked London-based VFX house Double Negative, which also created effects on three previous Potter films, with the job.

In addition to taking high-dynamic-range-image (HDRI) photography of the bridge and the area along the Thames River, Double Negative worked with the architects of the bridge. “They were given plans and CAD files that were used to recreate it as accurately as possible, down to every nut and bolt,” Burke says. A team of five to 20 people spent several months building, texturing and rigging the bridge in 3D animating program Maya, using the HDRI photography to create the right texture and detail.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4324866.html?page=1

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4324866.html?page=2

How the giant-robot F/X in Transformers 2 nearly broke ILM. Seriously

Shia LaBeouf hurt his hand and Megan Fox looks good leaning on a motorcycle, but what about the real stars of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumble Bee and Starscream, who all return, and Devastator, twins Skids and Mudflap and The Fallen himself, who are new?

Visual-effects supervisor Scott Farrar was in charge of turning Industrial Light & Magic’s computers up to 11 to create the new characters and told reporters that the sequel features 40 new characters. That and the increased resolution of the characters for new IMAX footage nearly exhausted ILM’s render farms: After one hard night of rendering computer-generated footage, some of the hardware actually exploded.

“

We did, we lost some machinery that night,” Farrar said in a press conference on last week in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Little puffs of smoke, just like in the movie.”

The largest sequence in Revenge of the Fallen was also the biggest in ILM history: the climax in which Devastator tears apart one of the great pyramids in Egypt. “We’re trying to hit new levels of realism in every single thing we do, whether it’s the render of the robot or the physical environment that they’re reacting with,” Farrar said. “It’s just like upping the game on every level, so it was a pretty complicated show.”

To give you some sense of just how big Devastator is, Farrar said that Optimus Prime has 10,000 moving parts. The computer algorithms actually manipulate each part to go from truck to standing robot. Well, Devastator is made up of upwards of 80,000 parts. The only thing that saves time is the camera position. The animators only have to transform the parts that are visible on screen.

http://scifiwire.com/2009/06/how-the-giant-robot-fx-in.php

Pixar Grants a Dying Girl’s Final Wish

Those animation magicians are as good at studying the human condition as they are at making pretty pictures that walk and talk … but this is something pretty special. I’ll refer you to the full story at The OC Register, but the short version is this: A 10-year-old girl was dying of cancer, and her last request was to see Pixar’s Up. Unfortunately she was too fragile to make a trip to the multiplex … so Pixar sent someone to her house with an Up screener and an armful of presents.

Young Colby Curtin died about seven hours after the movie.

Our hearts go out to her friends and family, and (once again) we owe a debt of gratitude to the Pixar people. They did all they could to make Colby’s final hours as sweet as possible, and they never once looked for any attention or praise for their actions. Well, we want to give it to them anyway. Stay classy, Pixar.

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/06/19/pixar-grants-a-dying-girls-final-wish/

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pixar-up-movie-2468059-home-show