The animated short Sun-Knapping was put together at ESMA (Ecole Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques in Montpellier, France) by Martial Fontan, Guillaume Hoffmann, Boris Kaufmann, and Deborah Yver. It was posted to CGBros on April 3rd of this year, and I liked it so much I wanted to share it here. I have to wonder what other projects these talented people might get up to in the coming years; whatever they are, I hope I get to see them.
Sooner or later it had to happen; a Nerdcore artist, MC Lars in this case, did a tribute to George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. The track is called Dragons Blood, and both the video and the song are fun. As someone watching the end product it is hard to tell if Editor Mike Sobo, Visual Effects master Tobias Arturi, or the
Effects Mixer Samarei was the one responsible for the excellent time/speed frame shifting during the combat choreography. It is truly well done, whoever pulled it off.
Clive Owens and Morgan Freeman star in Last Knights, an epic fantasy adventure about the fight for freedom and justice against those who seek to oppress. The reviews have not been great, but it could be entertaining. I am a bit more interested in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, taking place in 1943 Calcutta, with a full assortment of potential evildoers both military and civilian. This one is based on the fictional detective in Bengali literature created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, and if the movie does well we could have many more, since the original stories were published at a rate of 1 to 3 a year from 1932 to 1970. Interestingly enough, the author also worked in Bollywood writing screenplays, but not of Bakshy. There have been a number of other movies made about Byomkesh Bakshy, and after I see this one in the theater I am probably going to have to start tracking them down.
Oh, yeah, if you thought the two tracks they used in the trailer were the only good songs in the movie, allow me to correct that misconception by including the official Full Song Audio Jukebox. I wish western movies would do this, but since Bollywood movies are so music-centric it makes sense they would have started making these available before anyone else got around to it. Not just on YouTube to stream either, since they always give you a link to go buy the soundtrack on iTunes after you have streamed it and decided which songs you need in your permanent collection.
The new live-action Cinderella is probably going to get a large number of seats filled, if only for the opening short Frozen Fever. I will probably be at that one myself, but The Cobbler also looks pretty interesting; a shoe repair man working in the same shop his family has run for generations is granted the ability to live his customers lives by walking in their shoes… literally. The Lovers takes place 5 years from now and in 1778, with the protagonist crossing timelines to save the ones he loves. Supposedly Air is coming out as well this weekend (two maintenance guys in a bunker full of frozen folks waiting to repopulate the world), but I haven’t found any direct references to it yet.
I spoke too soon in Monday’s post about this weekend; I didn’t know then that Snow Girl and The Dark Crystal would be in the theaters this Friday. It is Well Go’s first 3D Theatrical Release, which is a romantic fantasy adventure about the legendary hero Zhong Kui. He was a warrior with mysterious powers who was forced to conquer the realms of Heaven and Hell to save his people and the woman he loves. It is only going to be in a few dozen cities across the country, if you are lucky enough to live in one of them it looks like the big screen would be a great way to see it.
In Movies Birdman deserved its Oscar nominations, a sort-of superhero movie that spoke about the art and the actor, rather than the character. Then there is The Theory of Everything, where one of my real life heroes, Steven Hawking, was the character at the core of the story; and yes, this one too took home its share of Academy Award nominations. It won a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild, and another dozen awards, so I look forward to seeing what it wins in the next round. We also get the latest Studio Ghibli feature film, The Tale of Princess Kaguya. It is based on one of the oldest and best known folktales from Japan, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, which would have fit right in with anything from the Brothers Grimm.
In TV we have Doctor Who: Last Christmas, where Nick Frost gets to be a companion while playing Saint Nick… or something very much like him. For a completely different flavor of sci-fantasy there is Game of Thrones: The Complete Fourth Season, continuing George R.R. Martin’s epic mad battle to rule the world. Fortunately, not our world.
Anime gives us Hozuki’s Coolheadedness: Complete Collection, a story about the chief bureaucrat in Hell, and how he deals with the day to day running of the place. Space Dandy: Season 1 also comes out this week, quite the twisted reality!