Pingu’s The Thing

I’m not familiar with Pingu, but claymation penguins re-enacting THE THING — especially so accurately — pushes all the right buttons for me.

I bet if I did know Pingu this would really blow my mind though. I imagine it’s like seeing the Teletubbies doing REQUIEM FOR A DREAM.

Either way, dude who made this is terrifyingly talented. I think my favorite part is the music over the end credits.

(via SlashFilm)

Have You Seen the “Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn” Video?

For the last couple months I’ve been working freelance on this music video, which was just released today. The video passed through a number of other compositors’ hands before reaching me, but the producers hadn’t yet got quite what they were after and the deadline was looming up. So I worked with them and the final project is now on YouTube:

I’m planning to do an FX breakdown of some kind after I decompress a bit (I need one for my reel anyway). In the meantime, enjoy!

Pokémon Apokélypse

After my posts earlier this year regarding treating “silly” material with a level of dignity that can make it work as a real movie instead of the usual high-budget, low-coherency crap we end up with instead, and praising “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” as a great example of this principle, I would be remiss not to address “Pokémon Apokélypse.”

MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH

Considering my previous post, the timing of this video is serendipitous.

Video game movies arguably suffer the most from the attitude “Meh, it’s a video game movie, what do you expect?” We have yet to have a video game-based movie that treats the source material with the respect shown to novel adaptations. Comic book movies used to suffer under the same yoke, but in the last decade or so, some filmmakers have realized what I was talking about before: just because they’re comic book movies doesn’t mean they can’t be good movies.

Video games, sadly, are still caught in the catch-22. Filmmakers don’t take the movies seriously and the movies wind up shitty. Since the movies are shitty, they bomb. So filmmakers get it in their heads that a video game movie isn’t going to do well at the box office because it’s a video game movie, so they don’t bother to take it seriously. And round and round. (It looked like we might be able to break out of that cycle when Gore Verbinski was attached to BIOSHOCK, but alas.)

Which is why this video, titled MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH, is pretty exciting.

IRON BABY

This is pretty damn cute. And an impressive FX piece.

Regarding “Cap and Trade”

President Obama is in Copenhagen right now with other world leaders, trying to figure out what to do about the crisis we’re facing.

The number one solution on the table is something called “Cap and Trade.” I’m sure you’ve heard of it. A lot of liberals support it as a good idea because, in concept, it sounds sensible. A lot of conservatives oppose it because that’s what they do.

But Cap and Trade may not be all it’s cracked up to be. From the makers of the Story of Stuff, a look at why this solution could just contribute to the problem.

Check out the comments on the video if you want to see the ridiculous politicization at the heart of this. Some people would literally rather die than sacrifice some of the decadence of the culture, or think of someone besides themselves.

Regarding “Climategate”

Seriously. These emails, even if they did indicate some kind of conspiracy, wouldn’t change the fact that the ice caps are melting and water levels rising. We’re treating this as a political and rhetorical issue when it’s actually quite a practical one: we need to do something soon, and it needs to work fast, or we’re all going to die. It’s as simple as that.

Skeptical Sunday: A Glorious Dawn

I’ve watched this many times now, and each time I’m overwhelmed with awe at the magnitude of the universe, and how we, through the power of our collective intelligence, might experience it in yet more incredible ways. This video has literally moved me to tears more than once. It sums up Carl Sagan’s passion for scientific knowledge and possibility, providing us with both a promise — “we will, one day, venture to the stars” — and a warning — “if we do not destroy ourselves.”

Without a single appeal to the supernatural or divine, a three-and-a-half minute rationalist meditation that, if you let it, will nonetheless give you a vibrant sense of the numinous.

Skeptical Sunday: Putting Faith in its Place

YouTube user QualiaSoup has produced a number of fantastic videos, which clearly explain — with entertaining visual aids — the scientific method and the skeptical perspective. I’ve previously posted his treatise on the concept of open-mindedness.

He’s been away, but he returned this week with a fantastic video titled “Putting Faith in its Place.” It actually answers a number of questions that come up on this blog about the subject, from the proper application of faith to “why do you need to prove God doesn’t exist?” It also addresses an overall issue with Case for a Creator.

I highly recommend taking the time to watch all his videos. They are well-thought-out, easy to follow, and will clarify a lot of questions you may have about reality-based worldviews.

Enjoy.

100 Years of VFX

I make no bones about the fact that I consider visual effects to be the purest form of movie magic. So this video that goes through examples from the past century of visual tricks is gold.

There are some surprising omissions (where’s Méliès?) but I do understand that you can’t include everything. Of what is included, I find myself taken aback by some of the early stuff. Some of it “holds up,” though most of it doesn’t, but what I find really stunning is just the fact that they had the ideas at all. They imagined something that no one had ever seen, and made them happen, often by processes that no one had ever done.

It’s a reminder that VFX in itself isn’t, in fact, the real movie magic, but a tool. The real magic is the imagination behind the effects.