Dec 17

Spoiler Filled Stills From Iron Man 2: What’s Happening To Tony?

Posted in: Movies, Today's Chili, top, video

Last night the first ever trailer for Iron Man 2 was released, and it is jam-packed with spoilery goodies. Here’s a shot-by-shot break down of what we noticed.

Uh oh, Pepper looks pissed. And Tony looks alone. What happened to all his friends?

Garry Shandling makes his big debut as Senator Stern, so Tony mocks him, naturally.

See Tony is alone. Empty chairs. Empty soul. It’s lonely at the top.

But wait, it’s Rhodey, he’s back…and he looks pissed. And who’s that to Rhodey’s left? It’s Sam Rockwell, as Justin Hammer. Did they walk in together? And where did Pepper go? Where’s Happy?

Same sexual chemistry between Pepper and Tony, check. But then again I think RDJ is so charming he could have chemistry with a lamp post… lucky lamp post.

Iron Man is America, and a rock star. And look in the background — it’s the Iron Man dancers, thus proving the slutty Halloween rule to be true: any outfit can be made whorish.

These gloves could very well be the best little party favors ever. Please hand these out at Comic Con!

Whiplash is obsessed. See? See? He has newspaper clippings. And newspaper clipping are to stalkers what glasses are to shy mousy girls with a hot girl dying to get out inside: stereotypical. But let’s assume that since he’s spent so much time cataloguing the family story, that this grudge may go way, way back. Since he’s had time to make a scrap book.

Who hit Tony?

The garage is all cleaned up and stocked with new rich guy toys. Bruce Wayne who?

What is happening to Tony’s neck?

Yikes it’s spreading. Tony is literally turning into an Iron Man. Also, he could be turning into a human computer, which has happened in the Iron Man comics before.

More Justin Hammer, and in perfect timing with Whiplash’s “shark” comment.

Nick Fury just wants to get motherfucking Tony onto the motherfucking team.

More Iron Man-ettes. I suspect this may be a banner year for the cosplay fans.

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff in her Black Widow “business casual” attire.

War Machine prototype!

Is the Black Widow working for Rhodey? Is that her in the background?

Black Widow in her ass kicking attire, is she beating up Happy? I bet Jon Favreau just loved that.

Whiplash finally shows us what his lightsaber whips can do — which is break Tony’s car.

Which he does.

I’m still not sold on the Whiplash outfit, but it does look pretty bad ass from behind.

Uh oh — will Tony be Whiplashed in half, or will the bad guy just show off some more? Answer: Show off.

Whiplash has nasty metal mouth.

What is this flying contraption? It looks like it’s shooting at Iron Man? Multiple Mecha suits?

A first look at War Machine, and Tony’s new suit, with a triangle chest plate. Is this due to the metal veins? Also the background is filled with power suits, almost like an Armor War…

War Machine and Tony fight other mechas and you get a faceful of War Machines shoulder gun, and Tony’s fully reconstructed suit, Mark VI. Very nice. So who thinks they are filming the Armor Wars story?

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Dec 14

What We Still Need on Blu-ray (And What Should Never Go HD)

Posted in: blu-ray, content, feature, Movies, Today's Chili, top

Some movies seems made specifically for Blu-ray’s abilities. Some just don’t get anything out of hi-def. So why is Hollywood so completely unable to tell the difference between the two? Let’s pull it together, studios. For all our sakes.

Take a look at your Blu-ray library for a minute. See anything missing? If not, you’re not looking hard enough. Because for every high-def release of The Proposal that Hollywood shoves out the door, a Raiders of the Lost Ark stays on the shelf. Right now, whether it’s a rights issue or a matter of strategic timing, a team of highly qualified artists and technicians are putting the finishing touches on Cheaper By the Dozen 2‘s Blu-ray release instead of dreaming up interactive features for Alien.

That’s just scratching the surface. Right now on Amazon you can buy a 20th Century Fox Blu-ray bundle of three genuinely funny comedies—Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space and Young Frankenstein—that have nothing in common other than being completely unnecessary to watch in high-def. You know what three movies Fox hasn’t put on Blu-ray at all? A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

This shouldn’t be so hard, Hollywood. Whatever problems you’re working through right now, get it figured out. You’ve only got like 2.5 more years before broadband puts the whole Blu-ray concept completely out of business. To help get you started, here’s a list of 20 movies we need right now, and 10 that you should pass on altogether, before you waste any more time.

20 Movies That Should Be on Blu-ray

And 10 That Really Shouldn’t

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Dec 12

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Blu-ray Liveblog Now

Posted in: blu-ray, live, LiveBlog, Movies, Today's Chili, top

The Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince Blu-ray Liveblog starts now.

11:50: Ten minutes left until the star (Daniel Radcliffe) and the director (David Yates) pop up and start talking about the movie while watching the movie.

11:51: If you’re using the PlayStation 3, you should make sure you’ve got the correct audio output to hear the audio stream. Otherwise, like myself last time, you’ll hear nothing.

11:53: If you miss this, it’ll be on BD-Live in a few weeks, says the British announcer.

11:53: I just figured out that they’re doing this livecast at 12 noon instead of 6PM Pacific because kids in the UK need to watch this too. Otherwise, it’d be 2 in the morning.

11:55: There’s a weird bug right now with two audio streams being overlayed simultaneously. One announcement and one…announcement.

11:56: Oh and if you need to get in, here’s the invite.

12:00: Two voices talking simultaneously is more annoying than you’d imagine.

12:02: It’s about to start in a minute.

12:02: Before we start, I gotta say this was probably in the top half of the Harry Potter movies, for me. The only problems I had with it was the fact that it looked like the whole movie had a power outage. And, that it didn’t follow the book as closely as other movies.

12:03: It’s starting.

12:04: I’m having audio difficulties and had to restart the movie.

12:05: It would be nice to go through one of these screenings without technical problems. You’d think the PS3 would be the most stable platform, but I guess not. And now it’s having trouble loading the BD-Live.

12:06: Millions of kids around the world are logging into BD-Live right now apparently. Hey kids, get off my (virtual) lawn.

12:06: I’m back in! Daniel is talking about Harry Potter and how he differs from the character.

12:07: To answer a person who asked a question about if Dan learned anything from Harry Potter, he says yes.

12:10: His favorite movie is #5. He likes shooting and watching that one.

12:10: The director says he doesn’t have a favorite.

12:12: Oh wait, the director couldn’t make it—this is someone else.

12:12: Harry Potter is there though.

12:13: Daniel is saying the director is great, and can see the whole film while shooting an individual scene.

12:13: Here’s a little hint of how Dumbledore is gay: he was treasuring a knitting magazine (with JK, the author, on the cover).

12:15: Someone asked what other movies he wants to try and get into, and Dan says he wants to concentrate on finishing the last two movies, and then maybe go back to the stage in London or NY.

12:17: Now a question about Alan Rickman. How did Dan feel about hearing Alan Rickman speak, in the first movie? Answer: probably terrified.

12:19: It’s too bad the director isn’t here, because I would very much ask him why the movie is shot during a power outage…in a black hole. Seriously, I couldn’t see anything.

12:20: Q: Is Helena Bonham Carter as cool as she looks?

12:20: A: Yes. Also she is mad. And she pulls off that wig well, and she is hilarious.

12:23: Someone just asked him about what bands he likes. It’d be better if they focused on, you know, what’s going on in the movie, but I guess that’s the kind of question we’re going to get today.

12:24: Q: Is Emma Watson as beautiful in person as she is in the movies?

12:24: A: “Yes!!” That Dan.

12:25: And now they’re singing the praises of Blu-ray, and saying the interactive experience of Blu-ray is “mindblowing.”

12:25: This is the first time they’ve actually seen one of the Harry Potter movies on Blu-ray, apparently.

12:27: What Blu-rays would you want directors’ Q&A of? Post in the comments.

12:27: Q: “What’s your favorite special effects sequence in this film?”

12:27: A: The island near the end of the movie, with the cabin and all the monsters in the water.

12:28: A: Dan’s favorite is the dragon chase in #4.

12:30: Q: “If you had the ability to use an invisibility cloak, what would you do?”

12:30: A: Dan says robbing banks. He did not say sneaking a peek of Emma Watson.

12:32: Q: “Are you or the others going to be Twittering soon?”

12:32: A: Dan says no. He says he likes Twitter, but he feels he’d be inundated.

12:35: Dan’s talking about sports.

12:36: For the most part, the audio stream is a lot more stable than it was during the Terminator live event.

12:38: What’s the next step in these? Video streaming of them in a corner? That might be pretty fun.

12:39: Dan says he was in the right place at the right time to get the part of Harry.

12:43: Unfortunately the two people answering questions, Dan and the other guy, don’t know any technical stuff. It’s too bad the director couldn’t show up.

12:44: Q: Has anyone ever challenged you to a Harry Potter trivia match?

12:44: A: Yes, and I’ve lost every time.

12:48: I’m leaving out the questions about him playing Quidditch and other silly dialogue, btw.

12:54: To answer my own question, I would really love to hear Michael Bay give a commentary on Transformers 2. I’d like to hear his thoughts behind why he wanted to do the CG a certain way, or if he left that all up to the CG folks.

12:57: Q: Besides acting, do you want to get into another part of the film business?

12:57: A: I’d love to direct, but it’s a long way off.

12:59: And now, a peepee break.

1:06: We’re back.

1:06: They’re talking about how an actor on screen now playing Marcus Belby was killed, stabbed, while protecting his brother.

1:10: It would be nicer if you could submit questions directly from your Blu-ray player as well. That would make it more of an all-in-one experience, without having to have a phone or a computer in front of you.

1:15: On another note, BD-Live kind of forms the basis of community watching, in a sense. Right now you can watch with directors and hear them talk, but if you can go in the direction of the Netflix community watch on Xbox Live, you can get communal viewings with your friends as well. That would be pretty interesting, being able to watch the same movie, synced, with a buddy across the country.

1:21: Someone asked if they could get Ricky Gervais into the movies.

1:34: Slight spoiler for #7: They’ll be playing themselves in that one scene.

1:41: They’re talking about the acting process, and the audition process and so forth. Nothing that interesting.

1:43: Q: Do you find it hard working around green screens and CG?

1:44: A: Not really. I don’t have to spend a lot of time in front of a green screen. I only have to do about three days in front of a green screen at a time. In the first film I did a month in front of a screen for Quidditch and that was mind numbing.

1:52: Looks like the audio stream just cut out.

1:53: It’s back.

2:00: I’d also like to hear JJ Abrams talk about Star Trek too. That would be one interesting live commentary.

2:01: I think they’re doing another peepee break now.

2:10: Now the audio is just cutting in and out like mad.

2:29: Oh wow has it been 20 minutes since I typed something. How long is this movie?

2:34: The audio is finicky again, and the movie’s about to end.

2:42: Movie’s over, and they’re saying their thanks for watching.

2:42: Thanks for reading! (Maybe we should stick with Sci Fi movies from now on.)

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Dec 08

Does CGI Ruin Movies?

Posted in: Movies, Star Wars, Today's Chili, top

Today’s big budget movies have the technology to create worlds and characters unlike anything we’ve ever seen before… but is that really a good thing? What if CGI just distracts from all the important things about moviemaking?

Wired magazine’s recent story about the making of Avatar contained the following passage:

Cameron is trying to show me something with a laser pointer. He queues up a scene towards the end of Avatar and freezes the frame on an image of a large crowd of Na’vi. He uses the pointer to draw attention to an ornate headdress composed of hundreds of tiny beads. The onscreen image is amazingly crisp, and the headdress appears utterly real. Each bead was designed by a digital artist, Cameron says, so it would look handmade. “Every leaf, every blade of grass in this world was created,” he says, and his laser pointer streaks across the screen, alighting on so many things I can’t follow its path.

When I read that, I thought to myself, that’s everything that’s wrong with CGI movies. I’m always torn when it comes to live action movies that rely so heavily on CGI’d surroundings and special effects: On the one hand, it’s amazing what can be done with the technology, but on the other, it’s depressing seeing what has been done with it, as well. CGI has become the atom bomb of movie special effects: Yes, we have the technology to “fix” everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should use it.

In many ways, the argument against the overuse of CGI is like critic Douglas Wolk’s complaint against autotune in modern pop music:

And now, the smallest errors are vanishing, too. The gift that modern digital technology has given pop music is the ability to fix every nagging inconsistency in a recording, note by note and beat by beat. If you hear a contemporary mainstream rock record, you’re almost certainly hearing something that has been digitally nipped and tucked and buffed until it shines.

The little inconsistencies in musicians’ performances aren’t just glitches, though: They’re exactly what we respond to as listeners — the part that feels like “style,” or even like “rock.” The exciting part of guitar-bass-drum-voice music is the alchemy of specific musicians playing with each other, and the way those musicians’ idiosyncratic senses of timing and articulation and emphasis relate to each other. That’s where the rhythmic force of rock ‘n’ roll comes from; that’s also why a great band can replace one of its members with someone who’s technically a more skillful musician, only to discover that their instrumental chemistry isn’t there anymore.

Watching movies where CGI has created entire worlds like Pandora – or The Lord of The Rings‘ Middle Earth or anywhere in the three Star Wars prequels, for that matter – and what you’re seeing may be technically impressive and the work of hundreds of artists up and down the moviemaking food chain, but none of it entirely convinces; there’s a distance that we, as viewers, instinctively pick up on because what we’re watching is so fake that it can’t even convincingly fake verisimilitude. It doesn’t matter how many how many hours or computer modeling programs have been spent to create “lifelike” scenery or surroundings, it will always lack the element of chaos, the potential for mistakes, that makes it something we can believe (and lose ourselves) in. Moviemakers today can try and distract us from that missing piece – with occasionally unintentional results; how many times do we watch something and think that it’s impressive or “must have taken a lot of work,” and not notice that we’re being taken even further out of the story in order to do so – but there hasn’t been any CGI-centric creation that has managed to replace it, yet.

More worryingly, CGI has given free rein to the worst, most-OCD elements of moviemakers’ imaginations. Whereas, before, worldbuilding would have meant coming up with the strongest stories and performances in order to pull audiences in, now both of those seem to often take backseats to the spectacle of the spectacle itself (Think of this summer’s Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, which didn’t appear to make sense, or again, the Star Wars prequels, where Lucas as a director was clearly more in love with the technology responsible for the worlds he was building than the actors and dialogue he was populating them with). That James Cameron has created languages, flora and fauna and hundreds of elements for Avatar‘s Pandora that we may not even really see in the finished product is, at once, both an impressive and incredibly frustrating feat: Good for him for being so dedicated, but without a good story, it’ll be the most expensive window dressing for a store that no-one wants to shop at.

As technology has become more and more adept at literally translating someone’s imagination into a finished product, so, it seems, has the focus of filmmaking become using that technology: Pushing it to create new things, replace reality as closely as possible and take out all of the confusion, disarray and accidents of the real world. But in doing so, actually imagining things seems to have become diminished, both in terms of the creators – because flights of fancy soon become weighed down by translating them into something that computers can understand and model in visually “believable” terms – and in terms of the audience, who now get imaginary worlds presented to them in as close to photo-realistic terms as possible, but missing any genuine life. What we’re left with, then, are movies overpowered by themselves, making everything more “perfect,” more sterile and more lifeless than what we’ve seen before, no matter what our eyes may tell us.

Of course, I’m writing this before seeing Avatar, so maybe I’m wrong; maybe Cameron has spent enough time on the story, perhaps all the actors involved do wonderful work, and all of the work that’s gone into the CGI has created everything we’ve been promised: an immersive, believable new world unlike everything we’ve ever seen before. But everytime I think of Cameron boasting to the Wired journalist about the CGI-creation of blades of grass – because, obviously, real grass isn’t good enough sometimes – I worry that it’ll just be more of the same old empty razzle-dazzle.

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Dec 03

Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them

Posted in: film, Movies, Software, Today's Chili, top

What do The Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible 3, Mr & Mrs Smith, Children of Men, and Agent Cody Banks 2 have in common? Absurd, futuristic, and totally fake software interfaces, designed in part by one man: Mark Coleran.

Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus. Here’s a gallery of some of the most famous interfaces; see how many you recognize.

Coleran’s UIs are a mix of proudly retro and boldly new, mingling compact pixel art, wireframes and the solid, militaristic reds, blues and blacks of software from the 80s with touch-free gesture systems and overelaborate visualizations. It’s the kind of stuff you take for granted in action and sci-fi films, but rounded up in one place, it’s a strangely impressive, almost cohesive view of the future of software, as designed by someone with no constraints. [Mark Coleran via Metafilter]

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Nov 25

How-to: get music, videos, and photos off your iPod or iPhone

Posted in: Apple, Features, iPhone, ipod, iPod Nano, ipod touch, IpodTouch, itunes, Movies, Music, Photos, pictures, Today's Chili, videos

To think, it’s been over five years since we last tackled how to get music off your iPod, as opposed to the other way around. Back then, the classic model had only recently added the infamous click wheel (while still rocking the monochrome screen, mind you), iPod nano was still called the mini, and viewing photos was a brand new feature worthy of having its own line. It’s time to take another look at how to transfer media of all sorts — audio, video, and pictures — from a variety of iPods and iPhones back to your Windows or Mac OS X machine.

Jump to: Windows | OS X

How-to: get music, videos, and photos off your iPod or iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 24

VUDU updates keep rolling by integrating Wikipedia

Posted in: hdtv, Movies, streaming, Today's Chili

The VUDU web based architecture is evidently really paying off, because this makes the third VUDU update in the last month. The company tells us that since its UI is pulled from the web like any other website, it can continue to easily roll out updates. This week’s addition is a welcomed one, as we’ll no longer have to reach for our computer or handheld just to look up the details of a movie on Wikipedia. But what’s even more useful is the fact that you can browse beyond the movie’s Wikipedia entry to the actor’s pages, etc., and links are even added so you can quickly get back to actor’s list of movies available on VUDU. We haven’t been able to try this for ourselves yet, but it does sound like something we’d find useful. Of course the only thing left to add now that Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes are accounted for is IMDB, which can’t be far behind — right, VUDU? There’s one more screen cap of the new feature after the jump.

Continue reading VUDU updates keep rolling by integrating Wikipedia

VUDU updates keep rolling by integrating Wikipedia originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 19

Sony to expand PlayStation Network into Sony Online Service, sell music, books, videos

Posted in: Movies, Music, playstation, ps3, psp, reader, sony, Today's Chili, video

Sony had a big management meeting in Japan today, where the tech giant announced some extremely vague plans for what’s initially being called the Sony Online Service — a new “iTunes-like” service built on the PlayStation Network that will sell books, music, and movies. That’s really all we know for now — Sony execs didn’t set a launch date or provide any specifics — but the move’s been rumored for a while and makes total sense, considering Sony’s huge investment in running PSN and vast array of products it could tie into the service, like the Reader e-book line, the PSP, and the various Network Walkmans. Now, whether or not Sony can manage to make good on this massive potential remains to be seen — we’ve got high hopes, but this isn’t a small challenge.

Sony to expand PlayStation Network into Sony Online Service, sell music, books, videos originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 12

Xbox LIVE gets 1080p Zune Video store, Twitter, Facebook and more on November 17th (video)

Posted in: Microsoft, Movies, Music, Today's Chili, twitter, update, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, Xbox360, XboxLive, zune

Remember all those fantastic features that Microsoft promised were in the works for its Xbox 360 back at E3? Get ready folks, because they’re all arriving in five days. At an undisclosed time on November 17th, users will be able to login to Xbox LIVE and check out the totally bodacious new portals available to kill time and act social without actually combing your hair. As we’d heard, Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm (US and UK only) modules will all be featured, not to mention on-demand 1080p / 5.1-channel HD video through the Zune Video outlet. In case that’s not enough (and be honest, it’s never enough), users will also see a new “News and More” section in the “Inside Xbox” channel with streams from MSNBC, The New Yorker and Dilbert. Yeah, Dilbert. Hop on past the break for a few video demonstrations, and then get back to your Modern Warfare 2 binge before your teammates see you slacking off.

Gallery: Xbox LIVE gets 1080p Zune Video store, Twitter, Facebook and more on November 17th

Continue reading Xbox LIVE gets 1080p Zune Video store, Twitter, Facebook and more on November 17th (video)

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Xbox LIVE gets 1080p Zune Video store, Twitter, Facebook and more on November 17th (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 11

Blockbuster kiosks to offer movies on SD cards, you some candy as you checkout

Posted in: film, Movies, Today's Chili

Blockbuster’s been trying all sorts of, um, innovative things to get more foot traffic in its stores, but thanks to a dastardly invention known only as “Netflix,” that very task has proven exceptionally difficult. Now, it seems the flagging movie rental company is giving one more far-flung idea a whirl: movies on SD cards. Around six Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores will soon begin offering titles on SD cards, though the included DRM only allows customers 30 days from the purchase date to view it, and once it’s fired up, you’ve just 48 hours before it vanishes completely. Each rental will cost $1.99, and while we definitely see the benefit of renting something that you don’t have to return, we’re still skeptical that folks will be more willing to make even one trek for a card when Netflix brings it all to one’s mailbox (and PC, etc.) for just $8.99 per month.

[Via FastCompany]

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Blockbuster kiosks to offer movies on SD cards, you some candy as you checkout originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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