Movie Chronicles

Neill Blomkamp to Direct Halo Movie August 9th, 2006

The Halo motion pic­ture will be helmed by Neill Blomkamp, mak­ing his fea­ture film debut. Blomkamp is widely regarded as one of the most inno­v­a­tive and orig­i­nal artists cur­rently work­ing in short films and com­mer­cial adver­tis­ing. — Xbox​.com

So who is this Neill Blomkamp I hear you say. Well his IMDB pro­file doesn’t reveal too much (IMDB). But given some fur­ther inspec­tion we can find some truly stun­ning pieces that he is respon­si­ble for:

A native of South Africa, Blomkamp directed the acclaimed 2005 short film, Alive in Joburg, that depicted a future in which extrater­res­tri­als have become refugees. Last year, Blomkamp also received three Clio Awards and a Visual Effects Soci­ety Award for his tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial Citroen-Alive with Tech­nol­ogy. See videos below

It is plain to see this man has an eye for orig­i­nal­ity and has almost per­fect exe­cu­tion. Now all he needs do is trans­fer his tal­ents to the world of motion pic­tures. My only con­cerns are his inex­pe­ri­ence in coax­ing and enthus­ing the best out of actors and a pos­si­ble lack of lead­er­ship skills that a make a good direc­tor leg­endary. Though I am sure he will do just fine and with Peter Jack­son and Weta behind him I can think of no one bet­ter to guide him through this tran­si­tion. If his early work is any­thing to go by the Halo movie WILL be per­fect. Let’s all cross our fin­gers; another great step has been taken.

His per­sonal biog­ra­phy can be found here:
http://​www​.spyen​ter​tain​ment​.com/​d​i​r​e​c​t​o​r​_​0​3​.​h​tml
A new breed of direc­tor, Neill Blomkamp has har­nessed the pow­ers of tech­nol­ogy, art and cre­ativ­ity to bring the world imagery never before pos­si­ble. Gar­ner­ing his excep­tional CG skills in an intel­li­gent and spe­cific man­ner, his forte is cre­at­ing pure photo-real visu­al­iza­tions of con­cepts that not only can’t be pho­tographed, but exists only in his imagination.

Rec­og­niz­ing that film­mak­ing is as organic as it is arti­fi­cial; Neill has merged the two seam­lessly, mak­ing a hybrid which feels unex­pect­edly authen­tic. He enjoys cre­at­ing atmos­phere in a spot where the con­cept is not only unique, but slightly bizarre.

From our forums:
I think choos­ing a direc­tor like Blomkamp is an excel­lent deci­sion which has given this film the best pos­si­ble chance of being the first truly worth­while video game adap­ta­tion. After watch­ing those shorts I’m very impressed with his nat­u­ral­is­tic direct­ing style, the way every­thing seems to give off the appear­ance on of an almost documentary-like raw­ness. This rough­ness and mix­ture of the real and the fan­tas­ti­cal I think is nec­es­sary to keep the Halo movie’s story from turn­ing into a bloated Star Wars-esque space opera, much like Halo 2’s did. What made the orig­i­nal Halo’s world so fas­ci­nat­ing to explore was the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the famil­iar within an alien envi­ron­ment, the way that the Halo both felt sim­i­lar to Earth and at the same time com­pletely for­eign, and I’m hop­ing Neill can recap­ture this atmos­phere. With him on board I’m now gen­uinely look­ing for­ward to watch­ing how this film devel­ops. — Legion

Alive in Joburg

An ear­lier piece of work that has made its way around the inter­net is this lit­tle gem:
Tetra Vaal

And for those won­der­ing what the Cit­roen ad looks like, it’s the one that makes us wish Trans­form­ers will be this good. We can only hope.

Cit­roen ad part 2:

Here is another short by him enti­tled “Yellow”.

Edit: Bobby also sends me this link to another of his movies, “Temp­bot”:
http://​www​.trans​bud​dha​.com/​m​e​d​i​a​H​o​l​d​e​r​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​1​301

EDIT: More Adverts for you:

Nike:

Gatorade:

Music Videos

Live on Release “Let’s Go” (accord­ing to IMDB, this song is shit)

Bif Naked “Tango Shoes” (this is like a poor tank girl rip off in a song about Tango Shoes)

A new Writer for Halo Adaptation July 17th, 2006

News has been short of late. With Microsoft’s attempts to force this into cin­e­mas as fast as humanly pos­si­ble they must surely be dis­ap­pointed at the rate the sched­ule is pro­gress­ing. Or maybe they have re-evaluated and re-calculated the pro­duc­tion times of both game and movie and may now opt for a release that is not simul­ta­ne­ous, or even within the same year. *shrug*

How­ever, it seems Movies Online has a brief update con­cern­ing the sta­tus of the script. They cat­e­gor­i­cally state that Alex Gar­land, the acclaimed British writer, is no longer pro­vid­ing the drafts for the adap­ta­tion, but D.B. Weiss is instead on his sec­ond. How good is he? What has he writ­ten before? Who knows, his IMDB page is blank. Let’s hope he is not a patsy to the whims and wills of the mega­corps. And that may be true if he did indeed only com­plete the game on Easy! 1Up also has a fea­ture here: 1Up and of course the full inter­view is here Game­Set­Watch

Some other news you may have come across recently are the rumours that Den­zel Wash­ing­ton is to be cast as Mas­ter Chief. Orig­i­nat­ing from Dark Hori­zons, to quote: “Halo: Lat­est rumours have Den­zel Wash­ing­ton as the favourite for Mas­ter Chief.” That is all. This is noth­ing but rumour and likely entirely unsub­stan­ti­ated. I’d per­son­ally see him as a Sarge. Fol­low­ing this inter­net flurry there was a quick and brief rebut­tal which appeared on AICN stat­ing: “Mas­ter Chief will not be remov­ing his hel­met at any point dur­ing the film. (…) Can you see Den­zel Wash­ing­ton sign­ing up for a film where he won’t be seen at any point?”

Peace Out.

New Weta Workshop Concept Art May 31st, 2006

“Plug insert options on EVA 2″ — By Stephen Crowe — Copy­right Weta Workshop

“Line draw­ing show­ing the pro­file of EVA 2″
By Greg Broad­more — Copy­right Weta Work­shop
This is a close up of an image pre­vi­ously seen within a unit 2 pro­file shot.

Some encouragement from Boston May 29th, 2006

Noth­ing new to see, just more con­fir­ma­tion that every­thing is still being worked upon behind the scenes, as announced at the Animé Boston 2006 expo:

“ADV also made sev­eral con­fir­ma­tions dur­ing the panel. The biggest and most excit­ing of them all was that the Live Action Evan­ge­lion Movie is con­firmed and is going through pre-production.” -Krazy Gamers

Thanks Camarokris

Matt Greenfield at Tekkoshocon April 28th, 2006

I watched this video of a panel from Tekkoshocon, and I’m sur­prised to say that the word on the Live Action Evan­ge­lion Project seems pretty good. I’ve had severe hes­i­ta­tions, and have on more than one occa­sion acted as a sort of har­bin­ger of doom in regards to the project, con­vinced that there is no way in hell that the project would amount in any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance or worth. Based upon some of what is being said by Green­field, I’m start­ing to think dif­fer­ently. His state­ments about how the project is cur­rently pro­gress­ing are actu­ally quite impres­sive, and make me some­what at ease to know that at the very least, some amaz­ing tal­ent will go into real­iz­ing this project. I’m still skep­ti­cal as to whether or not the pro­duc­tion can or will cap­ture the same essence of what Anno expressed through Evan­ge­lion a decade ago. Nev­er­the­less, it seems like some­thing to keep an eye on in the com­ing months more than ever, as Green­field ulti­mately states that a direc­tor will most likely be signed on by the end of the year. Very excit­ing times appear to be ahead in the Live Action Evan­ge­lion Project.

Here are some notes in brief from the panel in regards to the project:

  • Matt Green­field says that Weta approached ADV about approach­ing Gainax to do a live action Eva movie.
  • Three “A List” direc­tors that are also fans of Evan­ge­lion approached ADV about the project, not the other way around.
  • Green­field talks about get­ting their pitch pack­age together and that “the first thing is Robin Williams talk­ing about Evan­ge­lion”, who is appar­ently a big Evan­ge­lion fan, and the appear­ance of the Mass Pro­duc­tion Eva toy in One Hour Photo is entirely his doing.
  • Celebri­ties have been inquir­ing directly to ADV about being involved in Live Action Evangelion.
  • The direc­tor to be signed will most likely be the first to have room in their schedule.
  • Green­field acknowl­edges the uncer­tainty of the final prod­uct due to the nature of film mak­ing being dri­ven by the director.
  • The slug script was writ­ten by a well known writer who has writ­ten sev­eral well known sci-fi movies. The slug script will be re-written to fit the tastes and vision of the direc­tor selected.
  • Green­field acknowl­edges that the chil­dren will most likely be age appro­pri­ate. The kids will be picked and then the adults will be cast to work well with the children.
  • Tiffany Grant asserts that Weta gets 20 times more email about Evan­ge­lion than Lord of the Rings.
  • Green­field says a direc­tor will most likely be signed by the end of the year.
  • Green­filed says they don’t want to make it for profit, but because they want to do it, and they want to do it right, and do it jus­tice in the same way that Lord of the Rings did.

Source: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4…537030524950783

CHUD interview Richard Taylor April 1st, 2006

No new news here, which is the same story every­where I am afraid. How­ever here are some signs of adap­tion integrity and Taylor’s words are encouraging:

Q: So King Kong was Peter’s dream project since he was a child. Is there a dream project you have?

Tay­lor: There are many ideas that I would love to one day bring to fruition, but I respect­fully put them on the back burner while we develop other people’s ideas. But right now prob­a­bly my great­est desire is to see Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion come to life. I’ve been work­ing on that nearly four years with ADV, the peo­ple who own the rights to the live action film. We’ve trav­eled to Japan, we’ve met the orig­i­nal cre­ators, we have done devel­op­ment work on it. I believe Evan­ge­lion, to the Asian mar­ket, could be up there with the Lord of the Rings.

Q: What is the cur­rent sta­tus of that film?

Tay­lor: I don’t hon­estly know, but that’s not to say that it won’t hap­pen. Everyone’s inten­tions is to see it hap­pen. It’s a very, very com­plex prop­erty to bring to the world cin­ema because of its incred­i­ble fol­low­ing. It has to be done, hope­fully, with great sen­si­tiv­ity and aes­thet­i­cally with utter per­fec­tion. That requires time and thought.

Has it really been four years? My how time flies. If you want to read the full arti­cle here is the link: CHUD​.com

Thanks to all those who sub­mit­ted this.

And here’s a fun age-old video inter­view with Mr. Taylor:

Peter Jackson visits Bungie February 9th, 2006

The offi­cial bungie​.net web­site has con­firmed that Mr. Jack­son, direc­tor of Lord of the Rings and King Kong, made a trip to the Bungie stu­dios to dis­cuss ideas for the movie. He also kindly posed for a photo with the entire Bungie team.

Bungie​.net — Peter Jack­son visits

Alive and well (part 3) February 9th, 2006

Well there hasn’t been much news of late and many of us still have our fin­gers crossed, oth­ers are prais­ing and remain hope­ful the movie will never see the light of day. A lot of vis­i­tors have sub­mit­ted the lat­est com­ments from Matt Green­field which have appeared at Active Animé. He stated that half of the movies’ bud­get had been raised and that three ‘top A list direc­tors’ were inline and com­pet­ing for the chance to direct. Still no idea as to when pro­duc­tion will start, mainly due to Weta Workshop’s involve­ment in the Halo movie live action adap­ta­tion which will soon commence.

« Previous Entries

Next Entries »