Paul's Brain Trust - Once In A Lifetime Blade Runner Opportunity

Please read this.

I reckon that the greatest film of 2007 was Blade Runner: The Final Cut. It was also the best DVD set of last year - easily. And the Alien Quadrilogy boxset might still be the best DVD boxset on the market at all.

None of these things could have existed without Paul Prischman. He was a producer, or worked on the production team, on these and many more DVDs to treasure.

I remember the first e-mail I ever received from Paul, completely out of the blue. Just making conversation about something I had posted here. He was just a film fan, reading around - like me, and quite like you too.

The conversation went on through more e-mails and telephone calls. It didn't take long at all for me to realise how thoroughly decent Paul is, how knowledgeable, enthusiastic, interesting and, most importantly, I feel, how nice. As yet, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Paul face to face, but I would like to call him a friend. He's definitely been a good friend to film ick.

Some good friends of Paul's have now set up a charity called Paul's Brain Trust. Why have they done this? Because Paul has been diagnosed with "particularly aggressive" cancer in his brain. Because, while Paul does have medical insurance, it won't cover everything. And because they love him.

I dare say you've probably loved his work - on the DVDs I mentioned above, or on the discs for Monster House, Spider-Man 2, or countless others. Please, then, check out the Brain trust page. Just click on over and see what they're up to. You'll be amazed, actually - for example: a very special screening of Blade Runner, right there alongside the lot where it was shot, with Ridley Scott attending and carrying out a Q&A... and much, much more.

Keep your eyes on the Brain trust site (and here, too) for more. Fingers crossed, we'll be able to raise some support for Paul via film ick too.

Thanks for reading.

Murray The Mayor

It seems as though Bill Murray has been cast as the wicked Mayor in Gil Kenan's adaptation of City of Ember. Variety also report that Toby Jones is in the cast, as well as Saoirse Ronan, who plays the younger version of Romola Garai's character in Atonement. Ronan is bound to be Lina Mayfleet, one of the two child leads, while Jones is likely to be Looper, a 'mysterious' thief.

The film is set to be shot in Belfast, which is an interesting choice. As the story takes place in an underground world with no natural light, I was imagining just about everything will be shot on sound stages and then I realised how big these sound stages would have to be, and I wasn't quite sure anymore. If they do shoot on location, everything will have to be shot after dark, of course.

Maybe Belfast is smoggy enough that starlight and the moon add only low levels of ambient interference? I doubt it, somehow.

Kenan did a very good job with Monster House and I'm very keen to see how he handles a totally different toolkit on his second feature. Hopefully he'll build on his promise - handled correctly (and so far, it seems it has been) a feature film of City of Ember could be a genuine family classic.

Spielberg And Jackson Each Directing Their Own Tintin Film

Here's yet another case of Robert Zemeckis being at the cutting edge of film technique and technology...

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are each directing a film in a planned trilogy of Tintin movies, with no indication yet of who will direct the third. Perhaps this deal was instrumental in The Lovely Bones landing at Dreamworks.

Now we know the next two films from each of the two directors - unless Spielberg squeezes another film in the middle somewhere. I'm quite confident Jackson's film will be the better of the two. For obvious reasons.

Apparently, a 20-minute test reel already exists, demonstrating the motion capture technology and the resulting images.

Spielberg said "Herge's characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we've seen to date with computer animated characters". Yeah, right, Steve. I don't believe a word of it. I bet they're great, really great, but what, exactly is lacking emotion or soul in, say, King Kong, Gollum, Buzz, Woody, Sully or Mike? And this old claptrap about motion capture offering more nuance and 'reality' than conventionally animated characters is starting to get very, very tiring. It simply isn't true.

Jackson said "We're making them look photorealistic; the fibers of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people - but real Herge people!"

I hope they know what they're doing. Polar Express was a warning shot over the heads of the mo-cap world, perhaps, and if Zemeckis can come a little unstuck with this tech, I don't know what hope anybody else will have. Beowulf is going to be the tester - if that works, then it can be done; if not - who knows? Monster House style caricature might be the only attainable answer, for now at least.

[EDIT: Rumours already circulating that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost would be up for the roles of the Thomson twins]

[SECOND EDIT: Rumours FINALLY confirmed. Pegg and Frost WILL be taking the roles]

Zemeckis Motions Captured At Disney

Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey are setting up a motion capture division at Disney. Because motion capture trades in CG imagery so heavily, people are assuming this new faction will in some way be tied to Pixar but of course, that's not looking to be the case at all.

Motion capture is not animation and to confuse the two is a diservice to both - though the motion capture end results do, so far, depend on a lot of finessing by animators. These days that's very often the case with live action too, of course.

Monster House represented a quantum leap on from Polar Express which, for all of it's technical flaws was a genuine benchmark. Next from Zemeckis and co is Beowulf, which again looks to take the techniques forward by a couple of long strides.

Disney are likely to have paid top dollar in brokering this deal, but I think they've done the right thing. Zemeckis and his collaborators have been at the vanguard of movie making technology for over a decade now, and my mind boggles at the new shapes he may bend cinema into over the coming decade, two, or three...