Waiting ’til 2012 is what I hates!
Check out the first image from The Hobbit movie, provided by Entertainment Weekly. It’s actually being made after long debate.
Archive for the ‘Movie’ category
Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
June 24th, 2011Rendering Spanish Versions of Animated Movies
June 22nd, 2011I love DVDs.
When they first came out, the big push in my neighborhood came from Hollywood Video, a video store franchise that has long since gone out of business. Their main argument was that DVDs offered so much more content for movie fans. When I bought my first DVD, the only bonus feature it had was the original theatrical trailer. Big let-down. Now, they have tons. Most Disney animated features include some sort of game. I’m sure people play them, but that’s not how we spend our free time.
One thing that I noticed today, though, was an awesome feature for those who enjoy other languages. If you’re like me and have a preschooler at home, I’m willing to bet that Tangled is in your rotation of Movies the Kids Can Watch that Won’t Drive Me Bonkers but May Very Well If We Watch It One More Time.
Having watched it a bajillion times, I was looking for some variety. Before the main menu, the DVD gives you three options: English, Descriptive English, and Spanish. Descriptive English is like VoiceOver on the Mac. It narrates everything that’s going on, which is especially fun during Tinkerbell’s flyover of the Disney logo. “There’s a burst of light and then pixie dust.” I visited with my friend at Accessibility Insights one day and that’s his entire computer experience. Every little detail on the Internet is read off at super-human speed. “Page load at 40%. Page load at 45%”. Crazy-making.
It was one subtle feature of the Spanish version that made me pause today. A character is holding up a wanted poster and I realized that every piece of text in the Spanish version is in Spanish. I know that sounds obvious, but it wasn’t always the case.
This is huge for me, someone who bought Spanish VHS tapes all through college. VHS never gave me the option to watch it in English if I felt like it. I’d have to buy another copy, which I was too cheap to do.
Rendering text in another language means that Disney re-did a scene. That costs time and money, albeit not as much time since the words are just a texture map applied to a 3D model. But Disney could have gone the easy route and put the Spanish translation of the wanted poster in subtitles like many movie companies have done. I know that Disney hired big-time voices from Latin America for the Spanish audio track on the DVD. The soundtrack is great. They re-wrote all of the songs so that the lyrics rhymed/flowed well. I’m just impressed that, if I didn’t know the original movie was in English, I could watch the entire thing in Spanish seamlessly.
Katniss looks like she’s from 1984
June 1st, 2011
Here’s a shot from the set of the Hunger Games movie. It looks like Katniss has a 1984 style (the book, not the LA Gear) that echoes a miner/proletariat feel. The outfit definitely looks like it’s from the early 20th century. Instead of a sci-fi feel, like if an Uglies movie ever got made, they’re going retro.
The cover of Entertainment Weekly, though, shows a more modern arena outfit:
It provides a great visual contrast between the oppressed districts and a capitol that has everything.
Another exciting announcement is Donald Sutherland as President Snow:
Has Donald ever played someone who started the movie as a likeable fellow and ended the movie as a likeable fellow? He always seems so…Sutherlandy.
Katniss, Peeta, and Gale cast for the Hunger Games movie
April 4th, 2011
You’ve probably heard that Katniss is going to be played by Jennifer Lawrence. You’ll also be seeing her as a young Mystique in the new X-Men movie coming out later this year.
Gale, Lone Wolf hunter extraordinaire, will be played by Liam Hemsworth, Miley Cyrus’s boyfriend (as of the time of this writing).
Peeta, the lovable baker’s son, will be played by Josh Hutcherson. You might see him in the remake of Red Dawn that comes out later this year. He was in Bridge to Terabithia and The Vampire’s Assistant.
Hunger Games Movie Release Date
January 26th, 2011Mark your calendars for March 23, 2012. We’ll see what director Gary Ross does with it. As for the rating? Some say they want it to be R because of the violence. My wife made a good point, though. The main readership, while many adults have read it, is still under 18. Here’s what the director has to say about it, from Entertainment Weekly:
“It’s not going to be an R-rated movie because I want the 12- and 13- and 14-year-old-fans to be able to go see it,†says Ross. “This book means too much to too many teenagers for it not to be PG-13. It’s their story and they deserve to be able to access it completely. And I don’t think it needs to be more extreme than that.†He promises though that his vision for the movie will be just as stirring as anything found in Collins’ prose. “I don’t need to have a huge prosthetic budget or make this movie incredibly bloody in order for it to be just as compelling, just as scary, and just as riveting.â€
The fact that Gary Ross was the screenwriter for Seabiscuit and Big has me excited. He knows what it takes on the literary side of things and will hopefully do the book justice. A March release date is better than Forgettable February, but it’s no big summer release.
I’m extremely curious about Lionsgate being the distributor. They’re the company that puts out Barney and LeapFrog DVDs, but are also the ones behind the Saw movies and the new Conan the Barbarian adaptation.
Heist Society to be a movie
February 5th, 2010The script has been optioned by Warner Brothers (who beat out Disney…interesting, since Disney-Hyperion is the publisher) and has the same team that made the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie working on it.
A change will happen, though. They’re turning Kat and her gang into people in their early 20’s instead of teenagers. Does this mean it will be a more mature-themed movie?
Check out the Hollywood Reporter article here and my review of Heist Society here.
Edit: If you look at the acting pool for the early 20’s versus the teen range, Kat behaves more like the 20-something roles than the teen actors. Also, there are bigger names at the 20-something age range right now. Finding one teen actor to pull off the role of Kat wouldn’t be too tough, but to find people for her whole crew would be a challenge. (Think about the cast of Glee and their real ages.) Let’s just say a reliable source clued me in.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Movie!
January 30th, 2010I’ve been so excited about the Lightning Thief movie (which there’s another cool trailer out), but no one told me about:
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid MOVIE!
I don’t care what you say about the book; I think the whole series is hilarious. One afternoon I couldn’t figure out what to watch on DVD or Hulu. I had just picked up Dog Days and read that instead. I laughed the entire afternoon it took to read the book from cover to cover.
Here’s the official website and here’s the trailer:
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid
April 2, why aren’t you here yet? It’s tough to cast a movie based on black and white line art, but I think they’ve done a good job with the essence of the characters (at least from what I can tell of the trailer).
Lightning Thief Movie Trailer
July 14th, 2009Check it out on the MovieFone site.
Hunger Games Movie
July 14th, 2009Scholastic is all over Facebook announcing that there will be a Hunger Games movie scheduled for 2011. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I would like to see it scheduled for summer, like a blockbuster, instead of the normal winter release dates for YA books-turned movies.
You can find more info at the IMDb and the Scholastic page. It’s interesting seeing the illustrations of the characters.
You can also check out the game here.
