Narnia

[cured]

No threads about this? Opens tonight and it has gotten some very good reviews. Looks like the G-rated Lord of the Rings, it being as clean as Disney, after all. I'm very much looking forward to seeing it this weekend, I just dread the lines at the Ontario Mills. 2 theaters in the same parking lot, one a 22 screen and one a 30 screen...and I'll probably end up waiting an hour beforehand for seats in the front

[lukeyd]

kids movie, so cheesy as hell in some parts. awesome cgi and effects and production stuff from weta workshops.

just a bit meh really. some amusing bits of dialogue, and then some really cringe worthy bits too. im gonna have to go read the books cos im sure massive parts of it didnt happen like the movie.



they need a dvd extra with brian blessed as the voice of aslan

[chuck]

saw it on friday - in a cinema where something was off with the audio - it was dropping out whenever there was a dramatic LOUd bit.... as in, whenever a certain Liam Neeson sounding lion roared. very frustrating.

children were wooden as well, wooden things. - not sure what the casting director was going for - i mean, they got the 1940's era "look" right, but apart from the little one who plays Lucy, it was like watching a rather stiff version of Famous Five or something.

talking animals.... um. just. can't. make. any. emotional. connection.

struggled too.

and that's really the whole movie isn't it - you're meant to connect with these children thrown into an amazing world populated by animals and creatures of myth and legend, to battle a terrible witch and save the land.

instead, you're stuck with listening to ray winstone do cockney rhyming impersonations and watching a battle sequence that's LOTR-lite, but without the kickass-ness.

Tilda Swanson was the best of the lot - although having to walk around dressed up as a snow cone can't do much for your ego.

regardless of the cgi and the production values - the point of any movie is to make an emotional connection - and I just couldn't in this one.

just have to say was v. underwhelmed.

the monkey will have the lion methinks.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by lukeyd

kids movie, so cheesy as hell in some parts. awesome cgi and effects and production stuff from weta workshops.

The bulk of the cgi work was actually done by Sony Imageworks and Rhythm & Hues. Most of the performance work (wolves, beavers, etc.) at Imageworks, more of the pure effects stuff at Rhythm.

[b.miller]

yeah as far as I know, Imageworks and Rhythm & Hues got the CGI, Weta got the weapons and armor, and KNB got the practical effects

It's interesting to hear that Imageworks did most of animal performance stuff though. Wasn't Rhythm & Hues, at least initially, "known" for their animal stuff?

[Sean]

Originally Posted by b.miller

yeah as far as I know, Imageworks and Rhythm & Hues got the CGI, Weta got the weapons and armor, and KNB got the practical effects

It's interesting to hear that Imageworks did most of animal performance stuff though. Wasn't Rhythm & Hues, at least initially, "known" for their animal stuff?

Mostly for their face replacement work, ala "Babe". Imageworks has always been stronger with full character performance animation than Rhythm & Hues in my opinion. It's similar to the first Stuart Little, where we did all the character work on Stuart and the Stouts, and farmed out the facial replacement stuff on Snowbell and the other cats to Rhythm & Hues. They actually got pretty type-cast where that kind of work was just about all they were getting for a few years. Made for lots of frustrated animators over there. But we've been doing full character performance animation here at Imageworks pretty non-stop since the first Stuart.

[b.miller]

Originally Posted by Sean

Mostly for their face replacement work, ala "Babe". Imageworks has always been stronger with full character performance animation than Rhythm & Hues in my opinion. It's similar to the first Stuart Little, where we did all the character work on Stuart and the Stouts, and farmed out the facial replacement stuff on Snowbell and the other cats to Rhythm & Hues. They actually got pretty type-cast where that kind of work was just about all they were getting for a few years. Made for lots of frustrated animators over there. But we've been doing full character performance animation here at Imageworks pretty non-stop since the first Stuart.

cool. I find all that kind of stuff very interesting. Especially because in the end credits they list off all these different companies but we the audience never really know who did what.