Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Star Trek: The New Frontier

I just saw the newest trailer for the new Star Trek movie that will be out in May. I have to say that the fan-boy juices are flowing now (that seems disgusting). I like the look of most of the scenes that were in the trailer. My one concern is that the bridge of the Enterprise is too bright. It's even brighter than the bridge from Star Trek V, which I always hated for some reason.

"Kirk" and "Spock" (Quinto's younger version and Nimoy's older version) are cool. Zoe Saldana's "Uhura" is hotter than hot and she and "Kirk" get it on pretty quickly. And Simon Pegg and Karl Urban as "Scotty" and "Bones" respectively have two funny lines. Pegg's always a hoot.

One of my favorite things about this movie is seeing "Captain Christopher Pike" as young and vital rather than confined to a beeping box on wheels. Bruce Greenwood seems to have the gravitas to pull it off.

The ship is beefier and has more detail than the show's featureless model. The visual fx are much better than even the recent TNG movies. I like the new look of the transporter beam and the warp-speed effect is cool, as well.

All in all I am looking forward to this movie. It may even be one that I venture out to the theater for. It will certainly go in my DVD library.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Hallowindow early

For the past two years I have been following the Halloween work of Mark Gervais, an animator from Calgary, Alberta in the Great White North. Since 2007 Gervais has been creating what he calls Hallowindows. The interesting thing is that he rear-projects movies that he created in Illustrator, Flash, and After Effects, in the front window of his house. He runs the movie, which is usually about two minutes long, in a loop throughout the trick-or-treating. You can also buy a DVD compilation that has the first two (official) Hallowindows, along with four themed pieces like spiders, ghosts, etc. The original was apparently so inspiring that one of the directors of Total Drama Island created his own Hallowindow featuring characters from TDI entitled "Total Drama Halloween".

So being the insane person that I am I decided during this Halloween to do my own version of a Hallowindow for next Halloween. Wow that's early, right? Well not if you knew how big a procrastinator I am (see my grandiose plans to do political cartoons). The only real difference outside of the fact that mine will suck, is that I intend to do a haunted yard to go along with the window. At the very least it ought to be fun to try.

Props go to ColdHardFlash.com for the two stories on Gervais' work.

FYI: As far as the political cartoons go, I am out of that business, at least until my mood swings back that way. My guy lost and I am currently sucking sour grapes.

Below are the three Hallowindows. The first two are Gervais' separate movies. The third movie is the compilation video of the DVD that you can buy. Finally, we have Mark Thorton's TDI send-up.