Put together by John SmithVFX, this Sherlock/Doctor Who mashup from 2013 is quite nicely done. Looking at the Wholock VFX Breakdown, which is the second video here, it becomes obvious this was primarily a masterful job of masking, compositing, and chroma/light balancing to create the finished product.
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Pretty much nothing this week, unless you are near one of the theaters showing Detective Chinatown, and even that won’t be available in very many theaters until next week. This might be a good time to catch up on recent movies you have missed.
In Movies we have the somewhat silly The Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, complete with an attack squad of zombie kitty cats. I suppose I should also mention Deathgasm, another horror/comedy but with a heavy metal beat. I think the non-genre Memories of the Sword, a historic fantasy of Korea’s Goryeo Dynasty (roughly a thousand years ago), is the best movie bet this time around. I did not see anything genre in TV this week, and Anime only has one new release; Dai-Shogun: Great Revolution. That one is from a parallel universe where giant steam-powered robots fought off the foreign ships, so the 1868 Meiji restoration never happened. Japan is left still fragmented, with various warlords running different areas and the Tokugawa Shogunate fighting internally for control of the fragments.
The Studio Ghibli masterpiece Only Yesterday is finally being released in North America 25 years after its Japanese debut thanks to the folks at GKids. Rather than the fantasies of Miyazaki which Studio Ghibli is famous for, this one is one of the sumptuous slice of life presentations of co-founder Isao Takahata. GKids financed a whole new English dub of the film, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Daisy Ridley to voice Taeko, the heroine of the story. It is on the big screen today, January 1st, in NYC, and come February it will get a wider release to the rest of the continent. I can not think of a better way to start off the New Year than with a Ghibli film I have never seen; what a treat!
2015 was a great year with some excellent films, and 2016 looks like it will do just as well. Zootopia is an example of one of the ones I am waiting for, filled with the kind of animals-as-humans animation Disney is famous for and looking quite tasty in the second trailer for the film. This will be hitting the big screen on March 4th, and has an amazing cast doing the voice overs. Other movies worth checking out in 2016 include La belle et la bête, The 5th Wave, Ip Man 3, Kung Fu Panda 3… and that is just in January!
If Anomalisa waits for Friday it will not be eligible for the upcoming Academy Awards round, so it is launching on Wednesday, the 28th. As far as I know it is not genre, but it is animated and it has gotten some excellent critical reviews. I have every intention to see this one on the big screen so I will know whether or not to cheer it on for the award.