Spectre

I was among the first in Finland to see this, and I saw it a week ahead of most of the world. But, to do so, I had to not sleep for a night, due to the fact that the screening was at seven minutes past midnight. While I was glad to see it, waking up at 3 PM just now, was pretty embaressing.

But this is a rewiev, not my autobiography, so lets get on with it! 

Spectre opens with a great action piece with bond having gone rogue again. After the great yet somewhat nightmarish title-song by Sam Smith, wich leads to a very good opening act. We get nods to stuff, intresting plotlines, an explonation to how Bond ot his Aston Martin in Skyfall. All very good stuff, but by the second act, the movie turns into a rushed collection of barely connected scenes made with the sole purpuose of more action set-pieces. And thats not even half of Spectres problems; Bond is much closer to the Roger Moore, goofy; Bond with an endless supply of quips and jokes. And alot of the elements seen in the trailers are wasted, underused or just bad. And some thigs happen only because they have to, and because they are things that were in the original movies. 

Even the Aston Martin DB10 is underused and extremely unintresting, partially because of the way its used. it only really has one scene, and in it, its placed in a parking lot with 53 other supercars, all of wich look exactly the same. 

There is however alot to see in this film, Q is back, and hes used extremely well, even getting his own actionscenes. Other returning characters are; Gareth Mallory, or M, Miss Moneypenny and for a few moments, Mr White, remember him? of course you dont, but he is important, for whatever reason. And then theres the big guy! We all know who he is, and what he is. Still the movie tries to hide this for the first hour and a half. And if you dont know, I wont spoil it. 

While not the best of the reboot-series, it also isnt the worst. so if you liked skyfalls look and atmospere, but preferred the stories of Casino Royale, but wished for a more human bond, then a) Why? and b) then this movie is for you! go see it if all this didnt out you off, its not the  worst movie to see right now.

How to make a Half Life- movie-series

If you follow my twitter and you dont but you should, you'd know that I'm a big fan of Half Life. And seeing as how the Half Life movie is still floating around, I decided to make this help ful guide to making a 4-part series of films. Keep in mind that I will spoil mostly everything.


First: lets look at the basic plots and titles for the movies. I'm not saying they should be this, but they are the best version of a script I've seen so far.

1. Half Life: Resonance
This one would be set during the first game and would follow the story of it pretty closely, the major difference I would make is to have Gordon Freeman and Adrian Shepard team up. At the end, Gordon would be transported to Xen, while Adrian is left behind and then reqruited by the G-man. In Xen, Gordon defeats Nihilianth and also gets put into stasis by mr. man.

2. Half Life: Suppression
Suppression would take place during the seven-hour war and would feature Adrian as the main character. This part of the lore is barely mentioned in the games, and ends in the Combine winning. And thats the point. Adrian is also never heard of again in the games, but the G-man appears to reference his failurre during the first dcene of Half Life 2. This could be a straight up war movie, happening maybe a few months after the events of Resonance. In the end, Adrian would of course die, or would he???

3. Half Life: Resistance
Aaaand were already at the start of the final few days in the Half life- timeline. Covering the expiriences that Gordon goes through between his arrival in City 17, all the way through to him leaving Ravenholm. So setting the scene for the rise of the resistance. This film should be droughted in loneliness, making any interaction between characters something important. Much like the game. Splitting the game into 2 movies, in this case, would make sense, it would provide a good narrative on its own, and setting the scene for the destruction of the Citadel in the next one. And making the end set in Ravenholm would be a great way of setting the tone of the final one.

4. Half Life: Anticitizen One
Speaking of the last one; here it is. maybe, well see. As the title implies, it  would be the second half of Half Life 2. Highway 17, Nova Prospect and the citadel would all be here, some parts would of course have to be stripped down, but a must is the game of chicken with the razor-train. Mostly retelling the game, The ending would naturally be: "Time, doctor Freeman?" And gordon being put into stasis. And the future of Earth left uncertain, Gordon waiting for his next assingment. The Episodes dont need movies yet. Conclusion to the games first, Dammit! These ideas arent, and probably shouldn't be what the movies will be, but this is a good start, make sure this gets to valve.

Here are the posters and some guidelines to the look and making of the movies, as well as tips and musts for making a half life movie

What comes to the tone and visual style of the motion-pictures. Look no further than Children of Men, with a similar setup and a perfect bleak European setting, Gordons bright-orange HEV-suit would really look like a symbol of hope and act as a strong contrast for the Combines filtered down and grey colours. The tone should be similar to the games, serious but with a spoonfull of humanity, a pinch of humor and a bucket of optimistic and fun characters. 

Tips and musts to making the a Half Life movie

-Dont wander too far from the source material, look what happened to the Far Cry movie. Sharing only the name with your source material is the biggest mistake you could make here.

-Victor Antonov. The desinger of the visual style and City 17. That is all.

-Get G-man right. G-man is the most mysterious character in all of gaming. Telling too much or too little would ruin the story and the narrative of the entire franchise. You should mostly stick to what we've seen from him in the games.

-Writing is key! If the story is great but the dialouge and pasing are horrible, youll be in trouble.

-Have someone from Valve look over.

- Make the relationships realistic, so like in the games

Casting and Directing and Writing

Techincally, you could cast anyone who looks the part as Gordon, but he should be playn simillary to Mad Max. Others are a bit harder, there are though some obvious choises; Morgan Freeman as Eli, Sean Connery as Wallace Breen and Rowan Atkinson as Odessa Cubbage. For the rest, hire Andy Serkis and mo-cap him for all I care. No real candidates come to mind. Maybe Edward Norton as Gordon, though he might be too old to play the 27-year-old MIT-graduate.

Writing could be done by the writers from valve, if they can do it properly, otherwise. Here I am!
Though J.J. Abrams was rumoured to be working with valve, his invovment in both star wars/trek, makes him basically impossible. Ridley Scotts visual directing and work on such movies as The Martian and Alien, make him my favourite. Guillermo Del Toro could also prove rather fitting for the rather surrealistic world of Half Life. And if you cant find any "good" ones; Alfonso Cuaron would most likely nail it.

And if youre only making one; make Suppression. But explain who Adrian Shepard at the start, Maybe a flashback during the G-mans mandatory speech.

Sorry for the long post but this is a subject that is very dear to me.

Everest

I spent a long time thinking on how to write this review. And waiting for my laptop to start working again. The movie is based on a true story, and as such, the story won't exactly be the prime example of a perfect three-act arc. 

The film retells the story of a mountaneering group whom have hired Rob Hall to take them to the top of Mt. Everest. The beginnig goes well, a few dangerous moments. But have you ever seen a movie based on a succefful event? Titanic didnt get made because everyone survived now did it? I wont go over the plot or characters too much, rather, I'll tell you about the experience. And boy is it one! The close-up shots of the mountain look so real that I'm starting to think if they actually climbed on to the top of the mountain, even the snow looks so real!! (I'm from Finland, I know how snow works) The over-head- and wide-shots look rather fake though, it might have been the 3D but I just wasn't convinced by the swoopy- musicy- establishing shots of the mountain. 

While its not the next Titanic, in terms of "based on a true-story"-type films, its perfectly good to see if you're a fan of climbing, mountains or a set-piece- enthusiast.

The tag-line is false though, Mt. Everest isnt even the most dangerous mountain.

The Martian

There were three movies opening in Finland yesterday. Unfriended, a movie thats been out elsewhere for 6 months, Pan, a movie thats the namesake af a cooking appliance, and this one. The choise was obvious; Go to the space movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring the man who's costantly being saved from places after being sent to that place by the U.S., exept this time he isnt a total dick about it. Yes this is another Matt Damon movie. And he rocks it, surviving on Mars like a real Botnist should. 

The movie was a great expirence and all the different aspects worked together, seeing such a well-made movie about space. The setting is this: a research group is researching Mars when a Martian storm hits and they need to evacuate, Matt Damons character Mark Watney however gets knocked out and left behind. But he lived! wouldve been a short movie if he didnt. If you know anything about space, you know that its pretty deadly, so, Mark needs to survive until he can be retrieved. And thats how the movie plays out. Matt Damon on mars, making Vlogs and poop-jokes, while the people on earth try to come up with a plan to save him. It's a pretty good plot. The characters are realistic, have good chemistry and are well-acted. 

This being Ridley "I made the best horror-movie ever" Scott, space is of course, beautiful. Clearly a lot of sets, props and real locations were used to make Mars and the base believable places. The weightlessness looks extremly convincing and the make-up department clearly worked really hard on this one, you'll see when you watch the movie yourself. There was aparently a Nasa-space advisor on set and it shows, everything makes sence, everythings scientifically accuarte and the slightest details are all real space-things, like the way one would use the bathroom on Mars. And while I think the movie maybe would have been better as a Moon or Alien sort of film in wich the isolation really shows, it was darn good anyway.

All in all I'd say that this is the best movie of this year in wich Kate Mara leaves someone behind on a strange planet. And judging by Ridley Scotts movies, its certainly better than Prometheus.

And its allways nice to see Jeff Daniel do something good for a change.

Sean Bean didnt die though. And they chose Starman instead of Space Oddity. (if you dont understand, you are too young for this blog)

Is motion capture really the future of CGI?

When Andy Serkis first appeared as Gollum in The Two Towers, the whole world was stunned at how greatly he nailed the role, and more importantly perhaps, how good the corrupted little smeagol looked. That started the slowly-growing trend of mo-cap, while it had existed since the early nineties, it was only now that film-makers saw to what ends it could be utilized to. After the success of the Lord of the Rings, motion capture has been utilized in video-games and movies alike. 

Before mo-cap, CGI would have painstaicingly hand-made, one polygon at the time, and while movies like Terminator 2 and Tron made huge leaps in the craft, it was Jurassic Park that made living, breathing CG-creatures a reality, emplying a sort of mo-cap device called a dinosaur input device:

The device would bring together stop-motion and computer graphics, with the animator animating the dinosaur on the screen by moving the device in the desired motions. This ensured the working-style was familiar to the animator, and prevented un-natural movement of the animation, something that plagues CG-fests to this day. But things have only moved forward since the earliest days of coputer animation in star wars. 

But is motion capture the way to go? Smaug was nearly perfect in the Hobbit, Avatar broke every box-office record in thee world, and The adventures of Tintin: the secret of the Unicorn was a movie that happened that one time. (also King Kong used mo-cap, remember how it was over 3 and a half hours long? good times) Ever since Gollum, things have only gotten even better, directors only needed the technology to be perfected by someone. Now that more and more characters have gotten mo-capped, movies have gotten more immersive and actors have been able to give better performances now that they have something to interact with, rather than standing in an empty room, talkong into a microphone about things they couldnt see or touch. So maybe motion capture is the way to go, even with the problems it causes, like the animation being inconsistent when switching between captured and hand-animated footage.