Hollywood immortality is now iron-clad.
Jan 19For the longest time, if someone wanted a dead star to appear in a movie or commercial, you went with look-alikes, or you would use a body-double whose face you would never see, but a voice immitation would be heard. In the past ten years this took a big jump forward, as computer technology allowed filmmakers to insert an actor into old footage, or to isolate an actor from old footage and insert them into a new scene. Actually, the former was around before, using optical techniques, but it was pretty limited, and spotting “the blur” of the SFX usually gave it away. But with computers, these same effects got very sophisticated, allowing Tom Hanks for example, to appear in a lot of historical footage.
Computers now allow Hollywood to do a lot of things, but replicating humans has proven hard. At the very least, you can have Fred Astaire dancing with a dust-buster or the face of Gene Kelly mapped onto three different break-dancers (again, The Blur spoils the effect somewhat – admittedly, commercials don’t have the budget for perfect clean-up passes.) At best, you can take a digital, 2D scan of an actor, and put that 3D version to work.
But the holy grail that was always just out of reach was 3D models for dead actors – they, as mentioned, are dead. You can’t sit them down for a 3D scan. And some who are near death, look their age – 3D scanning them locks them into that age (plus or minus a decade, with a little tweaking.) There has been no perfect solution to resurrecting the dead, until now.
Nay nay, Cory! Nay nay!
Jan 16I’ve taken heat from a couple of friends before, regarding my dislike of Cory Doctorow. Partly it’s a misconception that I loathe him, because the only time I talk about Cory is when he’s really pissed me off. In fact, most of the time I have no opinion of Cory, and on occasion, judging by some of his posts on BoingBoing, I’m certain he and I could have a good conversation over a beer. But then, every once and awhile, he says something so utterly stupid. Mostly about comic books, which make me doubley mad, as Doctorow and cohorts are regarded as pop culture know-it-alls, and the go-to kids for all things kitch. And it is very apparent that they are not champions of comic culture, but rather making it hip by presenting it as something it’s not.
My, “Whoa, wait, what?” streak with Cory and Co. started with thier love of the term “underwear pervert” – suggesting that classic heroes are rooted in something perverted. Actually, that was the bulk of it – I don’t care if they don’t push superhero books, or the classics. If they don’t get it, they don’t get it. And all was quiet for months… until today, when Cory was talking about the new Hannibal Lecter book.
Hannibal Rising is the origin story of Hannibal Lecter, his childhood in war-torn Lithuania his life in a Soviet orphanage, his rescue to rural France, his move to Paris, and finally, his internship at Johns Hopkins in the USA. Hannibal is basically a superhero — possessed of superhuman strength and intellect — and so this is the equivalent of the radio-active spider bite and robbery-gone-bad that turns Peter Parker into Spiderman.
Yes. Yes, Hannibal Lecter is just like Spider-man… if Spider-man was a sociopathic cannibal. Seriously. I…
Dude, “super” yes. The guy is Moriarty and Michael Myers incarnate. He is more than the average man. But he is not a hero. At all. Monster works. Villian isn’t bad either. One might liken him to a Green Goblin maybe – super smart, super insane. But Spider-man?
For fuck’s sake. I hope someone in your circle of comic writing friends gives you shit for that post.
Ghostbusters! Maybe!
Jan 15You may have read about this on any of dozens of websites, but you can check out the first website to post the whole kit and kaboodle… three days ago. But I’m not bitter. Bear in mind that it looks cool, but is proof of nothing.
Happy New Year pt.2
Jan 02I’m back as well, and like Matt the holidays went very well… then the sinus/chest cold combo hit. Had-oo-ken! Pow! I’m done for.
But that just means I have more of a chance to play with a couple of toys. Here are the nerdiest of the holiday highlights;
– Absolute DC: New Frontier. If you have haven’t picked this series up, the you should get the two TPB volumes. And if you can go just a little bit further, pick up this slipcased hardcover. The extras in it are as spectacular as the original story.
– Dead Rising. I keep missing the little side missions, but I don’t care. And the game doesn’t care. I can save or not save as many people as I want. And along the way, I get to beat the crap out of endless hordes of zombies.
– Guitar Hero. My band is called Beedwolf. We rock. Hard.
– World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I blew through this book in about 36 hours, stop and go. I still disagree with the man, that a frozen zombie isn’t a dead zombie, but the rest of the book is exactly how the zombie apocalypse plays out in my nightmares.
– An Evening with Kevin Smith: Evening Harder. It’s Kevin Smith, talking about everything and nothing. Of particular interest is finding out that yes, indeed, Jen was mad at him for telling some of their stories on the first Evening With DVD.
