20 Things That Suck About Indiana Jones 4

Posted by Matt Butrovich | May. 30, 2008 12:26PM PST | 2947 views | 3 comments

FILED UNDER: Features, Opinion. Movies.

Like every self-respecting geek, I went and saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this past week, and while I had prepared myself for a disappointing outcome, I left the theater more confused and conflicted than anything else. It isn't bad, but at the same it isn't very good. It's Indiana Jones, but at the same time it isn't. That's not to say the movie doesn't do some things well, but every time the movie takes one step in the right direction, it takes two steps back. So what did the movie do wrong? See for yourself:

Just a quick note: There are obviously spoilers in this list, so if you haven't seen the film, consider yourself warned.

1. The gopher

I have to get this one out of the way first, because it's the first thing that will likely piss people off about the film. When the movie opened with a shot of a CG gopher, I actually heard someone in the theater say "God damn you George Lucas!" It wasn't Jar-Jar, but it was bad. It's a sign of how little faith I have in Lucas anymore when I almost expected the gopher to start dancing to Kenny Loggins music a la Caddyshack, marking my cue to exit and give up on the film altogether. Little did I know that the CG rodent was only the beginning of Indy 4's problems.

Read on for more reasons that Indy 4 sucks.

Read More (Source: InfoAddict Original)

Tags harrison ford, spielberg, lucasfilm, indiana jones, george lucas, ilm

ILM Discusses the Creation of CGI Iron Man

Posted by Chris Jensen | May. 01, 2008 07:17AM PST | 155 views | 0 comments

FILED UNDER: News. Movies.

Industrial Light & Magic has a track-record of upping the ante for the visual effects community, never content to rest on their laurels in a never-ending quest to splash the screen with the best visual tricks possible. Their latest effort, Iron Man, appears to continue that evolution, something covered in a good C|Net article that goes inside the Lucas empire.

But it all comes back to Iron Man's suit--a technical marvel that allows him to fly, shoot missiles, be impervious to many conventional forms of attack, and more. To watch video from the film, you see that the suit has no end of little flaps and compartments that all seem to operate independently and which are all essential to giving the Iron Man character his fully teched-out superhero flavor.

The problem was, according to ILM visual effects supervisor Ben Snow, that the traditional options for creating a suit like Iron Man's--either making it fully CGI or making it a fully real-life, physical, or "practical," suit--weren't going to work for this film.

"The suit has to do a lot more than just a suit of armor can do," Snow said when I visited ILM recently.

Read More (Source: C|Net)

Tags sfx, ilm, george lucas, iron man