Category — Uncategorized

Over the years, I’ve read some pretty cool blogs about movies and televisions. I love to hear other people’s take on things. A new thing I’ve been seeing on blogs are interactive quizzes customized by the blog writer. One of the best I’ve seen is Filmbrain’s screen capture contest on Like Anna Karina’s Sweater.

He posts the previous week’s answer above the new image. So you have to remember to check back for the answer, which is a pretty genius way to get traffic to your blog. I also like the little hints he gives with the image alt text. The image below is from Scorcese’s King of Comedy.

It’s also nice that the images are very clear. They’re not some blurry grab of the television with a hard disk camcorder, but digital images taken from the source. With the right graphics card and cable, you can hook up your computer to grab images from your dvd player or dvr.

Just today, I discovered the The Movie Quiz. This quiz combines the screen capture concept with other elements like word jumbles and sequencing. It is way more in-depth and has four different parts! They even have an entire page explaining the rules. It takes some serious knowledge of film to answer some these questions. Each quiz even has a word scramble that contains three movies!

Check the example below:

“Clue - Spielberg
Word - AJEWMATISASTD
The clue suggests that the answers will be Steven Spielberg movies, so that makes it much easier. The correct answer would be ET, Jaws and Amistad.”

That’s pretty tough and very time consuming. Personally, I prefer Film brain’s simple screen capture quiz. It makes me nostalgic for movies I correctly answer or curious about the ones I haven’t seen yet.

To gear up for the Oscars this weekend, I decided to watch the BAFTA award ceremony on BBC America. The BAFTAs are the UK equivalent of the Oscars, and as such, many of the same films were nominated. The ceremony took place at the Royal Opera House in London. The broadcast was more condensed than the Oscars, since not every single award was included. Also, from a technical aspect the production seemed less pretentious and stylized than the Oscars.

The award I found most interesting was the fellowship given to Sir Anthony Hopkins. It’s sorta like an honorary Oscar where they put together a montage to recognize a respected member of the filmmaking community. Hopkins accepted the award with modesty and grace. He deflected some of the attention from himself by thanking Sir Richard Attenborough who presented the award to him.

They even had a special award for the best 60 second film made with a digital camcorder. Crazily, the winner didn’t bother attending the ceremony to accept it. Save a few exceptions, the award categories are almost exactly the same as the Academy’s. Atonement won best film, which I thought was pretty predictable seeing how it was an all British production, including the writer of the source novel. This win doesn’t bode well for There Will Be Blood winning the Oscar, which is my personal choice. If you like predicting the winners, visit imdb for your own ballot or to read their guesses.

The actor video diary of the shoot has become a popular dvd extra or online feature for television and movies.

“Heroes”, which already had a strong online community of fans, has youtube videos shot by members of the cast. The videos don’t necessarily reveal how the show is made, and more often than not are a way for the actors to kill time between takes. Nevertheless, the videos enhance the overall buzz for the tv show.

By giving an actor a JVC camcorder, you can get a non-technical point of view of the filmmaking process, which can prove to be more appealing to the average viewers than a standard behind-the-scenes featurette. I’d love to watch the film or show from the actor’s personal point of view. The more open ended the diary, the more interesting it seems to me. I like seeing how they keep the make-up continuity or one of the cast members goof off.

Blooper reels or outtakes at the end of the program have been around for some time. I feel like the video diary is simply an extension of this idea, especially since camcorders are so easily accessible.

It took me a minute to realize that all the movies this week are being released today. It looks like the studios are hoping to cash in on Valentine’s and President’s Day by releasing stuff on Thursday instead of Friday.

After reading the poor reviews for Jumper, I doubt it will be number one at the box office. Kinda of a bummer for Fox since they’ve spent a ton on marketing. I’ve even seen a custom trailer emphasizing the romance element on Lifetime network. It looks like a really awesome concept that probably wasn’t executed very well.

My money’s on The Spiderwick Chronicles, since it’s targeted at kids (and their parents of course).

Both these films rely heavily on special f/x, while Step Up 2 and Definitely, Maybe are more focused on characters and were probably easier to make from a technical standpoint. It would probably be quite easy to make my own version of Step Up 2. A similar story could be told using a Canon digital camcorder and group of talented dancers.

Pajiba did a hilarious mock review of the urban dance genre and basically came to the same conclusion as me. I’m not saying these movies are bad, it’s just quite amusing that studios actually invest money into this simple concept. And this concept has now morphed into a genre commodity.

USA Today featured a new article on the Atlantis shuttle, which is currently docked at the International Space station. It got me wondering what sort of camcorders they use up in space.

NASA’s website doesn’t post very many details of the tools and technology they use over time, but I did find their initial HDTV camcorder plans from 2001. I also read that various space experiments are monitored with miniDV camcorders that are quite similar to ones used by consumers. And just last year NASA asked the public to submit videos of the Aurigid meteor shower

I never thought to look at camcorders from a scientific perspective before, and usually focus on the entertainment side. But now it makes total sense that NASA uses camcorders everyday in their work. The development of camcorder technology doesn’t just make better movies, but also helps scientist record events and experiments more accurately.