DVD of the Week 17/05/2012 Shame

	Thursday 17th May 2012    Warning: This review contains descriptions of sexual acts and is of an adult nature. Shame Shame follows Michael Fassbender best known for his role in X Men:First Class as Magneto but this role couldn't be further from X men.      Fassbender's character Brandon lives a very plain life and as a viewer you find nothing out about his character. His apartment is modern and clean,he has no photos on the wall, no dvd's lying about on his coffe table and no books on his book shelf. There is at no point any information you can take from his surroundings that inform us of his character. When Brandon is at work there are no signifiers of what he actually does as a job.The film spends a good few scenes in his office but there are no posters on the wall, no flip charts, No white board and no useful office banter that suggests his profession or his position in the company he works for.          The empty world that is around Brandon really juxtaposes the various sexual scenes where Brandon is very much exposed casually showing him fully nude early in the film and watching him perform various sexual acts ranging from simple intercourse , masturbation and even a threesome.These acts are usually quite sacred acts done in privacy and usually done with loving partners and wife's. I believe director Steve McQueen is trying to make a statement about not just sex addiction but on the casual nature that the modern world approaches sex and how un personal and un romantic intercourse and the naked body has become.          However this film might contain many scenes of a sexual nature but it also contains as many scenes that are incredibly deep. Steve McQueen being the artist he is put a lot of camera moves very elaborate camera moves and lighting in some very basic scenes that work very effectively ranging from a great scene where Fassbenders character runs down many blocks of road in New York and the camera is alongside him and just follows him nicely with no Cars parked so we can see him clearly, there is also a scene starring Carey Mulligan singing New York New York that reminded me a lot of the famous scene from Cabaret that was rather emotional and i have to disagree with some other critics i dont think her performance of this song was terrible and i found the scene rather emotional (Excerpt of the song is in the trailer at bottom of page).               Steve McQueen is a very exiting director and i do have to admit when i first watched Hunger in cinema and the film ended and the credits started, his director credit rolled on screen i assumed it was the legendary Steve McQueen of The Great Escape and Bullit. I did some research and found out that my initial suspicions of him dying in the 80s was correct and this Steve just has an awesome name as well. Now getting a bit side tracked with random info back to the review. I am not a fan of unnecessary sex scenes in movies, a good example is  Crank with Jason Statham which is just pure crazy but this film has one of the most bizarre sex scenes i have ever scene in any movie, It actually makes me cry at night... Why God Why!!!! Shame's sex scenes and nudity as a whole are very well handled. Incredibly the characters are not portrayed in a sexualised way but instead the sex scenes are there purely to serve for character development.Possibly not the last threesome which is a bit longer than it needed to be. Ultimately what makes this film is Fassbender's performance. In the entire film there was not one bad shot cinematically and acting wise. Acting wise there was not one scene where Fassbender would be able to relax as a character and the performance he gives is a very intense one. Brandon ultimately has nothing in his life apart from Work and Sex until his sister Sissy come in to the picture but Fassbender makes this troubled bachelor seem really likeable and makes him very human. Something that i was unable to conclude on was the suggested backstory that is never explained.Brandon and his sister are both broken in there own ways and it seems that McQueen is pushing towards the suggestion of an incestuous relationship with Brandon and Sissy and if not that a very dark and troubled childhood.  I do suggest this film, I would stress its not the sort of film you would watch in the company of your parents and grandparents but it is a very though provoking piece and strangely felt a lot like Chris Nolan's Inception in many places. I am not sure if this is just me that felt this but i do feel there are certain similarities. As far as extra's go on the dvd they are very minimal with a very interviews and a trailer so over nothing special there that you couldn't find on youtube.   D Waterman

DVD of the Week 10/05/2012 War Horse

	Monday 10th May 2012    War Horse Finally this week is the exiting dvd and blu-ray release of another Steven Spielberg classic.  Now i do really believe this is a classic and based on rottentomatoes.com 77% of critics believe it to be a good film and possibly some of those critics would agree with the use of the term classic. When i say classic i am very aware that Spielberg has a very impressive back catalogue were classics are easily found from Jurassic Park, Jaws, ET,Saving Private Ryan, Indiana Jones and Close Encounters and timeless classics they are. So good in fact they have been the driving force and influence of so many young directors as examples the likes of  JJ Abraham's (Super 8) and Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) but these films have influenced many. But if that is his range of timeless classics i believe Spielberg has a lower rung on his lader of just classics they are not quite Jaws or ET but then not everything can be. I think that films like Munich, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, Amistad,Colour Purple,Sugar land and Duel are all fantastic films and deserve a lot of respect and it is in this second category where War Horse sits. Please dont think that  all Steven Spielberg have been incredible he is only human and  therefore he has had his flops as well with  the latests Indiana Jones, The Terminal, AI,Hook,Always and most famous flop Jurassic Park:Lost World. Now about the film, War Horse is a lovely film it has a lot of heart and whats nice about War Horse putting everything aside is it's about a relationship between a boy and his friend/Horse. It doesn't ever stray in to Equus territory but has more of a Finding Nemo feel about it. The War acts as more of a background to the whole friendship and is used very effectively to pull the characters further appart, create jeopardy and allow for some action. The balance of relationship and war is for me perfect and really strengthens what the film is trying to say.  Telling the incredible story is  quite an ensamble of talent starting with David Thewlis most famous these days for Remus Lupin in Harry Potter it also stars Loki and Sherlock Holmes as in Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch as well as the always delightful Emily Watson and impressive newcomer Jeremy Irvine.           The film moves from country to country, landscape to landscape but what's great about the film is all you want to watch is the Horse named Joey and his owner Albert. This was originally a play that has become very popular worldwide and i have not seen this play so i can not comment on the transition, i can comment that the story makes a great film and having a runtime of just over 2 hours i didn't get bored once. If given the choice i would highly suggest getting this on Blu- Ray as the cinematography and lighting is incredible and will really flourish in HD. I would recommend for anyone who enjoy's a good emotional drama with good characters, beautiful visuals, and an incredible setting but if you are expecting a War film prepare to be disappointed.

Pitch 1: Kraft Foods

	Kraft Style Frames Often we will work very hard on pitches to secure the job for ourselves sometimes we get the job and sometimes we dont get the job. There is no rhyme or rhythm to it. The thing that upsets us is we work hard and no one sees our work so now we have decided to showcase our unseen work here. We will add more and more pitches to the blog as we take them on and even go back in the the C&W archive for some early day pitches. Working in the adverting sector very often you have to pitch for projects that go no where. Here are some images that we created for an advert for american food giants Kraft Foods. Here are the various style frames we created. To find out if we got the pitch or not scroll down to the bottom of the page.                                         We did not get this job for unknown reasons. D Waterman

DVD of the Week 03/05/2012 Dark Shadows

	Monday 3rd May 2012      Dark Shadows  - The Revival This week was a week with a few exiting DVD releases which made picking one quite difficult. First release that was considered was Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol. Directed by Pixar director Brad Bird this addition to the series actually split out team. Carse was not such a fan of the film but Waterman loved it. I will write up another blog about that as there is a good argument about technology advancing films.            The other big film that was released was The Iron Lady, That got a lot of its hype because of the oscar winning performance of Meryl Streep and more importantly the un mentioned masters behind the film J.Roy Helland, Mark Coulier and their team for the fantastic make-up applied to Mrs Streep that made her performance all that more believable. Unfortunately it was a slightly misjudged film that didn't have an opinion on her politics and forgets that she was successful enough to be in power for three Terms. The film focuses more on her now. It focuses on her distant relationship with her children and her with dementia whilst going back to a few moments in her politics days. The Film was actually very boring and Streep's performance was wasted.           Now I have got that out of the way lets get on with DVD of the week. No guessing from the Title i am review Dark Shadows. Dark Shadows origins are from a black and TV shows from the 60s of the same name. Dark Shadows was remade as a colour TV series in the early 90s by NBC but was cut after the first series. The thing is Dark Shadows series was a fantastic series and was watch by 1/4 people who owned a TV in america It had bits of Horror and suspense that made it something that would have no doubt influenced the original Buffy with Kirsty Swanson which was released a year later.               This TV show stars the great Jean Simmons from Guys and Dolls not Gene Simmons from Kiss it also has a young star in the making. It stars a 10 year old Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his first serious acting role. The cast is great i would go as far to say an ensemble and now days this series is forgotten about. The only reason this is getting a re-release is due to a remake  of this series in the form of  a film.            The film is being directed by Tim Burton and if we can take one good thing from this film it is that it allowed the higher gods to see enough financial sense to release the original on DVD. The remake has a very exiting cast so i am not dismissing it entirely. Being a Tim Burton film it of course includes Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter but surprisingly it has a nice mixture of others including Eva Green,Chloe Moretz,Michelle Pfeiffer,Jackie Earle Hayley and Christopher Lee.                 I would really recommend checking out the series before the new film as if you base your opinion of the series from your view new film you will probably not choose to watch the series as the series is very different to how the series is being advertised.                              D Waterman

Our Favourite Unintentionally Funny Movies

	We are not recommending you watch these films and its more of a warning. Youtube.com will have the key parts that you should watch.         Mega Piranha - (2010)       In this clip it would suggest the film makers are having a bit of a laugh with the film but surprisingly the film has a serious tone and scenes like this feel rather out of place.                   Troll 2 - (1990) Troll 2 is not so serious and a good thing too. This film is considered by many the worst film ever created. Below is an example of the script, acting and effects that gave it the crown as Worst Film. Enjoy !!!!                  The Room - (2003)     Just watch the trailer its pretty bad and may  i remind you this was made in 2003 the same year  Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was released.                 The Happening - (2008) The Happening is probably one of the greatest accidental comedy's around. A big shame as this was a film that i was really looking forward to before its release.The scene below was one scene out of many that makes this film so amazing for me but also why you cant really take it seriously.                Mortal Kombat Annihilation - (1997) This classic is known world wide singularly for the 9 second clip below. This is one of the worst line of dialogue ever written. The video below has over 5.5 Million Views of people watching this piece of film history.        Flash Gordon - (1980) Flash Gordon is the King of all B movies starring Brian Blessed, Timothy Dalton, Topol and Max Von Snydow in one glorious film. The soundtrack is classic,Acting is questionable and Set design is magnificently cheesy.        I hope you enjoyed this sampler of classic unintentional funny films. This is a small sample of the films in the main stream market and B movie back catalogue. More to come soon...   D Waterman

2D to 3D in Pictures with Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Kanye West.

	Turning 2D drawings to 3D Models. This is no easy task and many people try and give up. Here are 3 turnarounds of well known musician's drawn in photoshop. Usually a turnaround is made up of an image from the Front,Back and Side of the character.                       Taylor Swift Turnaround                   Justin Bieber Turnaround                     Kanye West Turnaround The images are then given to a talented modeler who then sculpts the characters in 3D. The process of sculpting a character is similar to sculpting something in clay and involves many days to sculpt a character working hard to model detail and transfer from 2D to 3D. The sculpting can be done in Maya which is the animation package we use or to gain more advanced features of modeling there are separate software's to use like Z Brush or Mudbox. Tutorials of how to use these software's can be found on youtube but we recommend the subscription service that digitaltutors.com offer and that is what we subscribe to in house as do Pixar, Micrsoft, Nasa, Blizzard,EA and Sony.         Here is Taylor Swift taken from her drawing and t-posed as a stunning 3D Model to then be textured and passed down the animation pipeline.Texturing the model can be very complicating and involve creation of many shaders but Below is an example of a UV which is a flattened net of the 3D model that can then be painted .        Taylor's UV when unwrapped and painted. As you can see with a UV there is no obvious pattern to this image and on first view there is no obvious body parts to be painted but as you can see where the 13 is that is actually taylor swifts Hand and now that is painted if attached correctly will line up with the CG Model and Taylor will have the number 13 on her hand and this is just the beginning of how to make these characters look beautiful. D Waterman

DVD of the Week 23/04/2012 Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

	Monday 23rd April 2012 GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Anyone who has traveled on public transport over the past few years, or entered a book shop, or just left their home would of, at one time, seen someone reading the novel Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was no surprise that this worldwide best seller originally published in 2005 titled “Men Who Hate Women” took only four years to get released as a film in Swedish, by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev. The film was welcomed to good reviews and, to most of the world, unknown actress Noomi Rapace blew everyone away with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. The success of GWTDT allowed two sequels to be created based on succeeding novels of the already existing literature trilogy. Its Awards success included 3 BAFTA nominations, but in the end only won a single category for Best Film Not In An English Language. Once the hype for this book began to slow down Sony released the news that David Fincher would be following up his Major success of The Social Network with a re-telling of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. A lot of people seemed to find upset in this decision to remake a film that was only originally created a few years before and started asking what the point, saying things like “Hollywood has run out of ideas” and “What do we need two of the same film for?”. Here I begin my mini rant: Now Hollywood is full of unoriginal remakes like Clash of the Titans and Nightmare on Elm Street and they are pointless remakes but to generalise is wrong. I believe it depends on the creators of the film and as long as it is approached as a re-telling based off the original source material, in this case Steig Larson’s 2005 novel Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I believe there is a good chance that the adaptation will be entirely different and completely worthy of being its own film Films like (1982) John Carpenter’s The Thing is actually based on an original by the same name in (1952) Howard Hawks' The Thing. The gangland classic (1983) Scarface also is not an original but based on a film by the same name in (1932). Remakes are that much of the industry that Alfred Hitchcock who is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time created the film The Man Who Knew To Much in 1934 and then he remade the exact same film in 1956. Other remakes like The Fly (1986), The Departed (2006) and even Clint Eastwood’s classic a Fistful of Dollars are “just remakes” and they are not examples of lazy film making but some of the greatest films in cinema history. It’s  comparable to a musician covering a song. Some cover version’s are poor like Madonna singing American Pie and some covers become classics of there own like Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog or Aretha Franklin's Respect it just depends on the artist who is covering it. In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s case the original was a decent film very enjoyable and it displayed good acting but there was room for improvement and American director David Fincher was the perfect director to do it I have to say I enjoyed this remake far more than the original for its eerie visual style that Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth worked so hard for, also with any Fincher film the edit is always very exiting and this is where GWTDT and Fincher picked up its Oscar this year. To me the thing that stands it high above the original is the soundtrack. The soundtrack created by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor set the tone perfectly with a very creepy edge and it included a very fitting cover of Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song. It is a very dark film and still captures the tone off the original film that people loved but just made it better. After watching GWTDT I would highly suggest watching Roman Polanski’s Chinatown  (1974), if for some strange reason you haven’t watched it already. Whilst watching GWTDT I could not help but think of Chinatown - and what a great film to reference. From the very beginning title sequence I began to feel parallels and it just continued. The film as a whole is a strong film and focuses on two main stories with two main characters that are well developed and have you gripped from the start. It is not for the faint hearted, with moderate violence, a badly fucked up cat and some very disturbing rape scenes, it is not an easy watch but, if you can stomach the task, it is a fantastic piece and an overall good watch. Successfully proving that this is not just a re-make but an artistic retelling. Special Features I am reviewing the Blu-Ray this week and it is overall very nice and comes in a charming cardboard case. What annoyed me about the Blu-Ray was the printing on the disk, according to online sources and international sellers the design on the international disk was meant to replicate the look of a pirate dvd with the standard CD-R logo on the disk with Girl With The Dragon Tattoo scribbled on in black marker pen (Pictured Below) I was unhappy to see that was not the case for the Blu-Ray which was rather disappointing.    Watching the special features I especially liked the comparison of one of the main character’s  Lisbeth to another well known fictional Swedish character Pippi Longstocking. This might not be a comparison you would make by yourself but watch the special features and it will all make sense. D. Waterman

James Cameron's Titanic in 3D

	To anyone who hadn't seen this already James Cameron's legendary film Titanic has been re- released in 3D. Some people might not like 3D!!!            But what better film to go through the 3D conversion than Titanic. Some people believe that there is a moral discussion whether it is fair to drain so much money out of what ultimately is a tragedy and would people be so up for seeing a film like United 93 based on the events of September 11th in 3D. I believe most people aren't actually that bothered and would much rather see 2 humorous images about Leonardo Di Caprio and Titanic's ending Enjoy ....     Leonardo Dicaprio's Unlucky Career    Could the image below prove that the ending of Titanic doesn't work?     The big question is would the buoyancy of the Raft hold up with 2 people ? D Waterman

Insect's 2D and 3D

	Below are initial design's for a Music Video we worked on ingeniously called Insects.          The project was created in Maya and we also used the 3D characters in a christmas card. The characters were quite a nice bunch of characters and we do hope we can work with them again. We are certain that it was the only christmas card sent out that year that had a decomposing worm on it. When creating the christmas card we felt it really represented us as there is a good mixture of 3D and 2D elements in the image and that is something we enjoy doing.      D Waterman

Carse & Waterman Animators Assemble

	With less than a week to go until the release of the highly anticipated superhero film The Avengers, at Carse & Waterman Productions we have created this image to show our excitement. On Thursday 26th April we will finally get to see the Joss Whedon directed blockbuster. We recommend if this weekend is getting unbearable in the wait for The Avenger's you should take to the cinema and watch the other Joss Whedon film that is out at the moment. Directed by Drew Goddard, Cabin In The Woods is a film that i will not say anything about and i would suggest not watching the trailer because of annoying spoilers. If you like Buffy, Evil Dead, Hell-raiser and Scream then go and watch this to help deal with the wait.. If you are interested to know if The Avengers will be any good check out Empire's Review. http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=136194           D Waterman