Netflix and Miramax Deal

Netflix and Miramax have reached a great deal!  Beginning next month, several Miramax movies will be available via Netflix’s instant view program.  That means that Netflix members will be able to instantly stream movies such as Pulp Fiction, Muriel’s Wedding, and Bad Santa.  I have a Netflix account and I love the instant streaming feature.  I did notice that movies such as Pulp Fiction were missing from the instant view list, so I’m really looking forward to this capability.

Check out this TV!

I have found my next TV and it will be great for those Netflix movie-watchin’ nights.  It’s a Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 85-inch 3D HDTV.  No price has been set yet, but Bang & Olufsen stuff ain’t cheap.

Feel free to get this for me.  Thanks!

Tron Legacy: Review

Tron Legacy did not just win the weekend box office for December 17-19, it blew away the competition. Tron Legacy earned $44M while the number two film, Yogi Bear, earned $16.4M.

I expected Tron Legacy to be all flash and no substance, with the plot taking a backseat to the special effects and 3-D technology. The storyline certainly had its issues, but I was pleased that the plot was stronger than I expected it to be, although a bit complex at times.

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) is the controlling interest shareholder of ENCOM, the company his father, videogame programmer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), helped bring success. Unaware that his father has been zapped inside the game the elder Flynn created, Sam feels abandoned by his father and has no real interest in participating in the day-to-day operations of ENCOM. Then, a mysterious page is received by Sam’s godfather, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) – yes, Tron himself. Sam decides to go down to his father’s old video arcade and investigate and, well, you know what happens then. Yep, the younger Tron is laser sucked into the videogame world (a little too easily, if you ask me) where his father has been for the past 20 years. That’s when the real fun begins…

I saw the movie in 3-D and I recommend that you do the same. Be aware that the scenes outside of the digital world are not in 3-D, but the scenes where it really matters take place within that world. The fight scenes are spectacular and the light cycle competitions are visually stunning – I mean, they are really, really well done. Really.

As I mentioned in previous posts, Jeff Bridges plays the aged Kevin Flynn, the young Kevin Flynn, and Clu, who, of course, has not aged since Flynn first entered the cyber world. Digital Domain created the younger looking Jeff Bridges characters and it was both intriguing and freaky at the same time watching those scenes.  It was “off” just enough that your eye could tell something was not quite right looking at the younger versions; still, it was very cool how they did it. Olivia Wilde does a great job playing Quorra and Michael Sheen does well as the flamboyant club owner, Castor.

I give Tron Legacy three and a half Slurpees out of five and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of special effects and lots of action.

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* Tron * Director: Joseph Kosinski * Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner * Writers: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (screenplay) *  Time: 127 minutes * Rated PG * Action/Sci Fi/Thriller * Trailers *

Tron Legacy fact: Visual Effects

Tron Legacy fact #6

Digital Domain created the younger looking Jeff Bridges avatar.  Digital Domain is a digital production studio that is behind the visual effects on such movies as Titanic, iRobot, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and 2012.  Trust me, they were involved with a wide variety of movies that you have heard of – go to their site and click Feature Film -> The Work.  Also, click Behind the Scenes to see a number of really cool “The Making of…” shorts.

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* Tron * Director: Joseph Kosinski * Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner * Writers: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (screenplay) *  Time: 127 minutes * Rated PG * Action/Sci Fi/Thriller * Trailers *

Tron Legacy facts: 3-D

Tron Legacy fact #3

Almost all of the 3-D in the movie will take place within the game, not in the real-life portions.  Those scenes will be shot with a special camera that was made by the team who made the cameras for Avatar.

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* Tron * Director: Joseph Kosinski * Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner * Writers: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (screenplay) *  Time: 127 minutes * Rated PG * Action/Sci Fi/Thriller * Trailers *

Upcoming Release: Skyline

This weekend, I saw a trailer for a movie that looks like my kind of movie.  It’s called Skyline and it’s yet another alien invasion movie, but it looks like it has some great special effects.  Here’s the synopsis:

“Strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, drawing people outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth.”

The movie was directed by Colin Strause and Greg Strause. It stars Donald Faison Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, David Zayas, and Brittany Daniel and it is set for a November 12 release date.  Here’s the trailer:

Upcoming Release: Tron Legacy

I recently watched the original Tron. Honestly, I really can’t remember whether I saw it when I was younger or not. It seems like something I would have seen, but it didn’t really seem familiar as I watched it. Anyway, it was released in 1982 and here’s a brief synopsis:

Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a video game programmer who works for ENCOM. Rival programmer Dillinger plagiarizes Flynn’s games then locks Flynn out of the system. When Flynn tries to hack the system, he is sucked into it. He is able to redeem himself by participating successfully in digital games as gladiator Clu, with help from Tron/Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner).

I can see how this movie would have been considered cool in 1982, with it’s vivid colors and video game look. Of course, watching it now, it’s looks pretty hokey but I thought it was a clever idea.

Enter Tron Legacy, which picks up some 30 years later. Bridges and Boxleitner are back as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley. Kevin Flynn’s son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) tries to find his long-lost father (who has been in the game this whole time) and ends up being sucked into the game himself. Together, Sam and his father team up to fight their way through the digital world.

Tron Legacy is set for release on December 17, 2010. Prepare for some great special effects, 3-D, and sound! I will be posting much more information about the movie between now and release so stay tuned.

* Tron Legacy * Director: Joseph Kosinski * Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde,  Bruce Boxleitner * 2010 * Not Yet Rated * Soundtrack * Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Netflix App for iPhone

Netflix for iPad has been available since April, but now you can download the Netflix app to your iPhone or iPod touch – for free! Your Netflix membership allows you to watch streaming movies and TV shows from Netflix.

With this app, you can do a variety of things related to your instant Netflix queue. Specifically, you can:

• Continue watching an instant movie you have already started. It picks up where you left off viewing on your TV or your computer.
• View instant movies or shows suggested by Netflix.
• Search for and watch instant movies by Genre.
• Search for additional movies and add them to your instant queue or play them right away.
• View your current instant movie queue.

I did notice lots of buffering issues and movies paused/freezed quite a bit.  Also, you cannot reorder movies in your instant queue, but you don’t really need to because you can just touch a movie poster to start watching a movie at any time – so the order of your queue doesn’t really matter. Touch the arrow beside the movie title to see details.

Overall, I think this is a great app which allows you to watch your Netflix movies anytime, anywhere.

Screen shot of my Netflix queue

Movie details on Netflix application

Shot from Orson Welles' The Stranger via Netflix app

* Netflix app * Version 1.1.0 * Cost: Free *

How the Inception Corridor Scenes were Filmed

Here’s detailed information about how the corridor scenes in Inception were filmed.

Director/writer Christopher Nolan wanted things to look as real as possible and decided to keep the CGI (computer generated imagery) to a minimum. Sets were built inside a huge hangar in Cardington, England to film the rotating and tilt scenes in the movie. The effort took coordination between Chris Corbould (special effects supervisor), Guy Hendrix Dyas (production designer), and Wally Pfister (Cinematographer).

Keeping with the realism, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur) filmed his own scenes, rather than use a stunt double.  Weeks before filming of the corridor and other hotel scenes began, Gordon-Levitt trained and rehearsed with stunt coordinator Tom Struthers’ team.

There were actually two versions of the corridor built: one that rotated and one that was stationary. The stationary one was built in the vertical position. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur) wore a harness and wires while filming those scenes so he could fly, fall, and jump around. When the film is played back showing the hallway in the normal, horizontal position it gives the effect that Arthur and the other characters are floating in zero gravity. They also did things with the actors’ clothes, such as put wires in their shoestrings to keep them stiff, so it added to the effect that the people were actually floating and not falling.

The spinning version of the corridor set was 100 feet long and could spin up to eight revolutions per minute. It was suspended from massive, equally spaced rings and was powered by two electric motors. A remote-controlled camera was mounted on a plate that ran on a track beneath the corridor floor.  Because they couldn’t use the normal movie lights to brighten the scene during filming (or they would be in the shots), they devised a lighting scheme using the sconces and pendant lights that were on the walls of the hallway to brighten the scenes.

Similar effects as those mentioned above were used to film scenes in the hotel bar, the hotel room, and the elevator shaft.

So, now that you know that, here are some clips I took from the Inception trailers showing some of the things discussed in this posting.

Source: Inception production notes.  Song: Dream within a Dream from the Inception soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.

The magic of the spinning corridor and 9 other Inception resources

Want to know how they filmed that spinning corridor scene in Inception?  Here’s what I found out.  Also, here are several other great Inception resources I have come across – sites, articles, notes, videos – that I thought you might like.  Enjoy!

1. The official Inception web site is pretty cool and has a lot of great info.  You can skip past the trailer to enter the main site. Look closely on the left side of the screen and click the Menu.
2. This link on the official Warner Brothers site provides production notes about Inception including how writer/director Christopher Nolan pulled his team together, where and how filming took place, and details about all the major characters and the actors who played them.
3. The 5 Levels of Inception by Matt Sinopoli and Josh Tyler provides a great explanation of each of the levels, including who was dreaming, who was there, and what the goal was of each level.
4. Chris Corbould is the mastermind behind the spinning corridor and other cool moves in Inception. Wired magazine’s Behind the Special Effects of Inception article by Kevin Maher describes how Corbould did it.
5. In Dissecting Inception: Six Interpretations and Five Plot Holes, Peter Hall provides his opinion of what really happened and describes some holes he feels exist in the story.
6. Here is the kick ass Inception soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.  Listen to it while you’re working to make your job at least sound epic.
7. In The Neuroscience of Inception, Jonah Lehrer explains how the very act of watching Inception affects the brain similar to the way a dream does: “…a process in which your senses are hyperactive and yet your self-awareness is strangely diminished.”
8. The company Double Negative was involved in creating the effects for Inception.  Here is Double Negative’s full project list and here is a showreel of their best work.
9. This is a fun video on YouTube that shows Toy Story 3: Inception.
10. Here is some B-roll behind the scenes footage from the movie: