The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
| It's no Joker: Batman's car is for sale Posted: 30 Nov 2012 04:22 AM PST LOS ANGELES: It's no Joker: Batman's car is for sale. The original 1966 Batmobile is expected to go under the hammer on January 19, the Barrett-Jackson auto auction house said Thursday. The iconic vehicle, which was featured in the Batman TV series as well as the movie adaptation starring Adam West, is capable of a quick 180-degree "bat-turn" thanks to two rear-mounted parachutes, the auctioneers said. "The 1966 Batmobile by George Barris is one of the most famous Hollywood cars in history and it has become a true icon that has been carried from generation to generation of Batmobiles to follow," Craig Jackson, chairman and CEO of Barrett-Jackson, said in a statement. "This vehicle not only marks the significant Bat logo that sits on the middle of its door, but a time in television history where they defied the odds of making a car the real star of the show." The Batmobile, a 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car adapted by customizer Barris, features the Batphone, a Bat Eye Switch, Bat Smoke "and many other Bat gadgets," according to Barrett-Jackson. The auction will take place in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jackson has reportedly said it could fetch millions of dollars. - AFP |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2012 01:21 AM PST Alex Cross – Matthew Fox plays a serial killer who is all about dishing out torture and pain. On his trail is a homicide detective (Tyler Perry, pic) who becomes obsessed with trying to catch the killer. Alex Cross is based on James Patterson's bestselling novels. The Last Tycoon – This thriller tells the story of a gangster who ruled Shanghai during the 1920s and 30s and features the talents of Chow Yun-fat, Sammo Hung and Francis Ng. |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2012 12:33 AM PST The filmmakers behind Life Of Pi learned that water can be a challenging element to work with. And then there were the four live tigers ... WATER has never been kind to directors. "Water movies" are notoriously expensive to make – 1995's Waterworld (US$172mil) and 1997's Titanic (US$200mil) being good examples – and often pose logistic problems for both cast and crew. Taiwanese director Ang Lee was keenly aware of this when he took on the task of adapting Yann Martel's award-winning novel Life Of Pi. After all, nearly three-quarters of the movie takes place at sea. "Water movies. I learn now why they are always three times over budget!" he said, laughing wryly during a media set visit in Taiwan last year. He went on to say how it took four days to fill the giant tank used to film the movie's water scenes. "With that amount of water, everything becomes very unreliable. It's very hard to control," he added. Fast forward to the present and the movie, which has a reported budget of nearly US$100mil (RM306mil), will be released in Malaysia on Nov 29. It has already garnered ecstatic reviews from critics and was even touted as the "3D phenomenon the Oscars have been waiting for" by Britain's Guardian newspaper. The set visit began in time for us to witness Lee filming a scene inside a huge water tank at a former airport in the central city of Taichung. Pi (newcomer Suraj Sharma) was in a boat, staring at the horizon in despair. The lights above were a soft amber, and if it wasn't for the hum of the wave machines or the blue screens around us, we might have thought we were in the middle of the ocean. "I figured I needed to build something to accommodate the work – to imitate God's work," Lee said about the water tank. He thought the perfect place to do this was in Taiwan, where he would get all the help he needed from both the Government and local industry. The tank is the world's largest self-generating wave tank ever designed and built for a motion picture. The 70m x 30m x 4m deep tank had a capacity of 6.4 million litres (1.7 million gallons) and could generate different types of waves – though for the pivotal "storm of God" sequence where the ship Tsimtsum sinks, the water was replaced by CGI. "We want to bring water work to the next level, so this is a big thing for me. We've never done anything like this before, so we designed (the water tank) along the way. It took us half a year to design and build it, and another month to learn how to use it," he said. Shooting a film in 3D was also a new experience for Lee. "I couldn't learn anything from anybody. This is a new deal. You can learn as much as you can – you can watch them all – but then, first of all, I want to do it differently. Second of all, that's passé now and now it's something else. You have to figure it out yourself and nobody helps you," he said. "It takes extra work but it's an adventure." To ensure that the movie didn't run way over budget, Lee had to be very sure of what he was going to shoot. We were taken to a small room where the walls were covered with storyboards. Every scene was meticulously mapped out, even to the point of what Pi would be wearing in a certain scene. Next, we were taken to a small cinema, where we saw the dramatic scene of a sinking ship in 3D animation. "This is something I don't do by nature or even by second nature," said Lee about this pre-visualisation process. "So, it's a stretch for me. But you have to do it, otherwise you cannot even do a quarter of that film. It's so expensive. If a shot costs you US$300,000 a day, then you have to see it before (you film it)," he said. Still, despite that, he found that he had to change most of the shots when they were on set. "We still do guerilla filmmaking," he said. "Like martial arts – if it doesn't work, you figure it out from there." Exotic locations Filming in the former French colony of Pondicherry, India, was a must for Lee. "It's unique and somewhat unfamiliar to the rest of the world. It's like you can just drop a camera anywhere there, turn it on, and the picture will be beautiful," Lee said in the movie's production notes. There, the crew of 600 (half of them locals) and 5,500 background actors (local residents), filmed at 18 locations in and around Pondicherry including the 1,000-year-old Villanur temple and Munnar, the popular hill station in Kerala on India's south-west coast. The mysterious meerkat island, which appears at the end of the book, was filmed in Taiwan where the filmmakers found a colony of banyan trees at Taiwan's Kenting National Forest. Lee was rather proud of the fact that he involved his home country in the production and the crew got to know Taiwan while working there. "I want them to have a good time. I watch what they eat, I go over their menu, watch over their livelihood and how they live in Taichung. In the meantime, I hope that local young filmmakers have a chance to learn from them," he said. Exotic menagerie The logistics of location filming and set management aside, working with animals – especially tigers – brings a whole other set of concerns. The tigers – three French tigers and one Canadian tiger, we were told – were brought to the Taichung set to play Richard Parker. Unfortunately, they left two weeks before we arrived and all we saw were the big cages which used to house them, and the remnants of the zoo set. King, the fiercest tiger, was cast because it matched the director's vision of Richard Parker, and became the primary physical model for Richard. A special unit shot hundreds of hours of footage on the tigers. "(The animals) are actually quite inspiring. Eventually we should train actors like animals," Lee said, joking. "Animals don't think your way. You have to think their way. That's how it works." Looking into the eyes of a tiger is humbling, said Lee, waxing philosophically about the animal – how it is a powerful symbol in Martel's tale, a reflection of nature, God's work and a human being's inner self. "What's most inspiring to me is that (after everything that happens) the tiger doesn't even look back," Lee added. "That really humbles you … it sort of represents the unrequited love for the unknown, from God to religion. In the end, it doesn't really care what you think." |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan