Indieopolis:Reports from the Front Part 32
by Lola Bianca
The 2002 IFP/west Spirit nominations are out, and it's an interesting group, with Michael Cuesta's teen drama L.I.E. leading the pack (6), followed closely by Hedwig and Memento (5 each). Things Behind the Sun, Waking Life, In the Bedroom, Anniversary Party, The Believer, Donnie Darko, Ghost World, and Deep End also appear in multiple categories. The suspense ends March 23rd, with cult auteur John Waters emceeing for the 2nd year in a row.

Former Shooting Gallery execs are springing up all over. Paul Speaker has been named Prez and COO of Madstone Films, where his job will be to seek out distribution opportunities for emerging filmmakers. Meanwhile, Eamonn Bowles has formed a distribution company of his own, Magnolia Pictures. For their first outing, Magnolia is partnering with ContentFilm (another newbie founded by John Schmidt of October and producer Edward R. Pressman) for the domestic release of their first acquisition, Larry Fessenden's Wendigo (a spirit out of Ojibwa mythology). A horror-thriller set in upstate NY, Wendigo sounds like a thinking person's Blair Witch. It is skedded to open in mid-February. Magnolia has also acquired the Cannes-preemed Israeli hit Late Marriage, directed by Dover Koshashvili, and NPR personality Harry Shearer's mockumentary debut Teddy Bears' Picnic. (Check out the entry at www.upcomingfilms.com for an amusing description of what the Shearer film is NOT based on!) Bowles' company is also set to program the 1st ever Tribeca Film Fest in May. And Magnolia opens its inaugural theater Jan 11 in Dallas, with 5 screens, 4 dedicated to specialty films and one reserved for even more special fare, like Kieslowski's Decalogue!

Meanwhile, help is on the way for the indie filmgoer! Landmark Theaters, which just opened the Sunshine, the first NYC theater to offer specialty releases in megaplex comfort, is currently renovating a theater in Westwood along the same lines. Landmark is a big supporter of indie film and is even open to self-distribution, as long as they and the filmmaker share a passion for the work.

Memento remains the big indie success story of '01, raking in a cool $25 mill and making Chris Nolan a star helmer. In a few short years Nolan has gone from a microbudget noname first feature Following to Insomnia, a remake of the 1997 Norwegian film starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Now it looks like he is going to direct a movie for Castle Rock on Howard Hughes starring Jim Carrey! Another Hughes project in the works is a New Liner to be helmed by Michael Mann, starring Leo DiCaprio. (Others who have been interested in projects about the billionaire playboy-recluse include Warren Beatty and Nick Cage.)

And Swiss filmmaker Marc Forster (Everything Put Together and Monster's Ball) is getting some serious recognition as he inks to direct the Peter Pan movie Never Land for Miramax.

Meanwhile, the most successful indiekind of them all, Steven Soderbergh is remaking Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film Solaris, based on a Polish scifi novel by Stanislaw Lem. Soderbergh describes it as a cross between 2001 and Last Tango in Paris. James Cameron is producing with George Clooney to star. Solaris may be the first picture made under a deal with USA Films in which Soderbergh and indie comrades-in-arms David Fincher, Alexander Payne, Spike Jonze, and Sam Mendes will own the negatives of their work.

And Sundance is a big winner again this year, receiving what is considered a large chunk from the $19 mill in grant monies the NEA is handing out - $110,000 for its feature film and House of Docs programs. Many smaller fests around the country also received much-needed infusions, including the IFP/west, which has been awarded $10,000 for the LA Film Fest. Speaking of Sundance, it's that time again. If you're interested in keeping up with the Sundancers, check out www.sundanceonlineresourcecenter (SORC), which just launched this month. -Talk to me! indieopolis@hotmail.com.




An Oscar for Best Animated Feature
Digital Artists to be Rewarded


For the first time in history the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has created a category for the best animated feature and will be giving out an Oscar this coming March. As evidenced, there has been an enormous increase of interest in the highly important role of texture art in animated and special effects films.
Serena Juiwen Chang, an artist with an M.A. in computer art and B.A. in graphic design, has been racking up film and television credits as a digital and texture artist for D.A.M., a visual effects company in Santa Monica, CA. Chang, whose list of credits includes feature films Dr. Dolittle 2, Swordfish, Rollerball, Dungeons & Dragons, Little Nicky, and television credits Dawn of the Nation, VIP, and HBO’s series Point of Origin said, “The work has been exciting and educational. I am constantly learning new software programs and developing my talents. Though the hours are sometimes long and the work is extremely exacting, the reward of seeing my work on screen is worth it.”
Chang found that visual effects supervisors weren’t just looking for people with computer animation skills but were also desiring individuals who had formal art training in areas of traditional art such as drawing and painting. “Graphic design, photography, and sculpture are also beneficial because they enable the artist to visualize the spatial relations, form, and necessary realistic lighting to create naturalistic environments and images on film,” Chang stated. All of these elements combined make it possible for the artist to produce realistic cinematography from what started as a blank computer screen.
For example, in the feature film Dr. Dolittle 2, starring Eddie Murphy, actual film footage of animals is delivered to the digital artist, along with an audio tape of dialogue. The artist must first determine the camera angle, speed, length, and shutter angle for film tracking so that all images line up exactly in the compositing process.
Next any unwanted background images are eliminated from the screen and are replaced with the desired background. Modelers and animators make models of the animals’ lower faces including the nose, mouth, and chin which are constructed and manipulated to recreate realistic mouth movements that match the speaking voices of the actors. The animals’ furs are created by the texture artist who paints them on using a combination of software which integrates hand painting and photograph composition into life-like images. A morph artist adds facial expressions to give character and emotions to the animals. From there the images are sent to a compositor and editor who align all of the elements to create the final shot which is then seen on the big screen.
Team work and endurance are needed to succeed in such a demanding environment, Chang stated. Strong communication skills, high energy, and creativity are requirements of the job. While the attitude about the work is very serious, Chang said she and her colleagues always enjoy sharing the passion and responsibilities of being integral parts of the film production process. It is rewarding to see that digital art is finally receiving the respect it deserves as a true art medium. -AM



Anchorage Alaska Film Festival
by Mark Plutynski

Why would anyone want to travel to Alaska in the winter where the high is five degrees and there are about six hours of daylight - to promote a film of course! So here you are, you've made a film. You've begged, borrowed, stolen. But you've finished it, so now what? In any other profession your work would be over, but as a struggling filmmaker, your work has just begun. In order to reap some kind of benefit from your labor you might consider entering your film in a film festival. What's the point? As I discovered, visiting Anchorage, Alaska for the first annual Anchorage Alaska Film Festival this past holiday season, there is much to gain.

When I first received confirmation that my short film Mr. Funny was included in the festival schedule I was ecstatic. Although Anchorage isn't the largest festival that I applied to, it is a good sign that industry professionals had reviewed my work against other films and had found some merit to it. When I decided to travel to Alaska, I cashed in my frequent flier miles for a cheap ticket and found some relatives and friends in the region so I could stay there for free. I packed my Mr. Funny bookmarks, posters and other promotional materials and got on the plane.

When I arrived in Anchorage, it was a balmy -15 degrees. The festival director Tony Sheppard was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and drive me to the evening's screening - a schedule of short films. Although my short film, Mr. Funny, wasn't showing there that night, it was a good opportunity to meet other local filmmakers and those who had come from out of town. A couple of these out of town guests included Richard Raddon, the director of the LA Film

Festival and Ian Bricke from the Sundance Film Festival. What would be the benefit of meeting these people? The quick answer is, these are the kind of folks who can get short films like mine screened by people who might want to hire a commercial/video director, or those who might want to buy short films for a television show.

For the next three days I plastered my fliers through the local streets, placed my posters strategically around town, even appeared on the local college radio station several times. When the night of my screening came, there were close to one hundred in the theater, and my film, Mr. Funny, was very well received. In addition to meeting people who might be able to help me out with my film career, I was able to promote my name and my film, and witness the beginnings of an Alaskan winter. In addition to the contacts I made for my career, there are all sorts of friends I made from just being in the area - some who might even want to invest in a film someday.
- Mark Plutynski is a writer/director who lives in North Hollywood.



Everybody's a Loser in No Man's Land
by Lola Bianca
No Man's Land is the No Exit of war movies. Trapped in a trench between the lines during the 1993 Bosnian conflict, a Bosnian soldier and a Serbian soldier play out a sad, funny, deadly waiting game. Of course, there's the matter of that other fellow, the one with the "bouncing mine" boobytrapped beneath his prostrate form, trying desperately not to sneeze or mess his pants. More than the horror, this movie is about the discomfort, the indignity, the utter waste of war.

These men are ordinary to the point of ineptitude, and totally unsuited to be warriors- sucking on their precious cigarettes, parading in their underwear, arguing about which side started the war anyway (not surprisingly, whoever is holding the gun at any given moment wins the argument). One moment they hate each other on principle; the next they see the value of cooperating; the next they actually forget they're enemies; and then suddenly they're like little boys kicking each other in the shins again.

It's very, very funny. The action is funny. The dialogue is funny. It's smartly written, directed and acted. There is a refreshing simplicity to the set-up. And just when you've had enough of being trapped in a trench with these 3 pathetic losers (and they are losers on the most cosmic scale), the UN forces show up, taking it to a whole new comic (and cosmic) dimension. And then the media gets involved, so that the story builds into a powerful metaphor for the absurdity of war and for a world that conspires, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, to turn a blind eye rather than admit to its own powerlessness. This is a complex, unsparing, unsentimental and devastatingly on-target black comedy. And filmmaker Danis Tanovic has done it all with wit instead of blood and gore.



Brotherhood of the Wolf
Le Pacte Des Loups
by Gil Benzeevi
There is a mysterious carnivorous creature brutally killing men, women and children in the French countryside and nobody seems to be able to stop or catch it in the epic action horror drama Brotherhood of the Wolf. This is no ordinary wild animal but one with what seems to be supernatural strength, ferocity and brains.
To calm down the public, the King sends a renowned scientist Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) and his blood Iroquois Indian brother Mani (Mark Dacascos) to bring the beast down.
Little do they know what danger awaits them as they embark on their journey. And believe me, you wouldn't want to be caught snoozing on this job. The survival rate is very low and that's on a good day.
As Fronsac immerses himself into conquering the beast he discovers there is more to the story than just a wild creature going on a rampage. Nonetheless in all this commotion, Fronsac doesn't have a problem finding time to frolic with the babes. And who can blame him when he has such beauties as Monica Bellucci and Emilie Dequenne to play and have fun with.
Director Christophe Gans gives you action, romance and mystery all in one package filled with exciting images and sounds meant to stimulate the senses.
Brotherhood of the Wolf is not for the faint of heart. It can be shocking with all its explicit gore but if you can handle it then you will find lots of hidden pleasures in this film.
Based on a well-known French legend and set in 1765 France, this film combines graphic violence, martial arts and romance in a riveting and dynamic way.
If you are looking for something a bit different from the norm that can entertain you as well as give you a few jolts then Brotherhood of the Wolf is for you. 4 Stars





Brotherhood of the Wolf
another viewpoint
by David Rolfe
This may be the most ambitious film project ever undertaken by man or beast. It is a historical period piece, a love story, a supernatural tale (with pagan overtones), a mystery, a political thriller (supporters of Louis XV may take offence!), a martial arts adventure. It will make you happy, it will make you sad, it will (unless you are a taxidermist) make you vomit. Clocking in at 2 hours 22 minutes, it seemed a good deal longer.

Brotherhood of the Wolf is set in 1765 in the mountainous regions of a rural French province. The movie opens as a lovely maiden alone in the woods attempts to flee from an unseen beast. This sets the mood of what we're up against. Shortly thereafter, there arrives a pair of mysterious strangers who confront an unruly crowd of villagers as they are doing violence to a girl and an old man. This introduces the good guys, who are proficient in martial arts and ready to stand up for the weak and helpless. The situation and characters thus being in place, we now get into the essential plot. The newcomers are Fronsac, who is in the employ of King Louis XV, and his faithful Indian sidekick Tonto- excuse me, I mean
'd4Mani'. News of attacks against women and children has reached the capital, and the King is concerned. ("It's about time," the locals are reasonably telling each other. "What do we pay taxes for?") Of course, Fronsac will become much more than a mere observer of the subsequent events.
With such a rich film, it's hard to know exactly what to say. The cinematography is lush, the characters are strong, the production values are high. But when all is said and done, I was left cold. The film started well, and I became interested in the region, the history, the characters. But as time wore on, there were too many twists and turns for me continue to care about the characters or their fates. One gets the sense that the first half, with its character development and clever dialogue, is nothing more than a setup for a huge brawl.
The bottom line is, if you attend Brotherhood of the Wolf, you'll probably find something to like. But you may not find the film in its entirety worth viewing. Brotherhood of the Wolf is in French with English subtitles. It is rated "R" for some nudity, adult situations, and much graphic violence. This is strong stuff, not cartoonish, and definitely not appropriate for kiddies.




Kandahar Expos
by Maryam Habibian
The movie Kandahar opens with the following words and image:
"Afghanistan during the solar eclipse. In the sky, the moon forbids the sun to be seen. On earth, the burkah forbids woman's face to be seen. Nafas uncovers her face momentarily. Her blue eyes and earrings show in the light that shines through the tiny holes in her burkah"
Nafas (Niloufar Pazira) is a Canadian journalist who has come to Iran to find a way to get to Kandahar, because she has received news of her sister, who threatens to commit suicide during the coming solar eclipse. The eclipse is just 10 days away. Of course, Nafas is in a hurry to get to her sister, but speed is not possible because she has to travel by four-legged beast rather than by car.
Nafas has been away long enough to be shocked by the changes she finds. She can't get used to the burkah and keeps uncovering her face. Nor can she get used to the extortionate black market rates she must pay to reach Kandahar. She documents her journey on a tape recorder. Her comments (usually in English) are mostly about poverty and the oppression of women. At one point she goes to see a doctor in a village. He is African-American. He cannot speak directly to his female patients but has to communicate with them through a third party, in Nafas' case a street boy who is acting as her guide. The doctor can only examine her through a hole in a curtain.
This is a film that has no beginning and no ending. There is the journey. And there are various surreal elements scattered amidst the misery and deprivation. Kandahar was made before Sept. 11th. Obviously, it was director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's intent to expose the situation of women in Afghanistan. The burkah is shown in colorful and exquisite materials, an ironic juxtaposition to the fact that the average person in the region is dying of hunger. Since that time, of course, so much has been written about the Taliban regime and its cruel symbol the burkah that what we see here may not come as a complete shock anymore. But the movie is still worth seeing. Makhmalbaf is a great filmmaker and a great humanitarian, exploring the line between documentary and narrative, bringing poetry, power, and insight to whatever subject he touches.



Gosford Park
Iconoclast Resurgens
by Dr. Jim
On occasion, in the 30-odd years Robert Altman's taken to make his 30-odd films, the notion of a cinematic art articulating intelligent images at least as furiously as it sells franchised fast food and action figures has seemed idiosyncratic, even Quixotic. Altman went so far as to exile himself, periodically, both from USA, Inc and le consortium imperiale d'Hollywood (aka MacSho-Biz), and if trifles like Secret Honor, Third and Oak or Vincent and Theo continued to offer insight-with-integrity, they nevertheless went largely very largely1unseen.
But the '90s saw a resurgence of popularity for this greatest of post-Godardian, post-modern American cinema masters, when films like The Player, Short Cuts and Cookie's Fortune renewed his contact with both the plebeian US masses and their patrician banker-masters. More to the point, Altman himself seemed to be maturing into a place previously occupied by hold-out auteurs like Kurosawa and Kubrick, where the short-sighted ignorance of fools just didn't matter.
And now, with Gosford Park, the master fires a salvo announcing that the next millennium is his as well.
Altman himself has described the film as a cross between Agatha Christie and Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir's 1939 masterpiece about contemporary aristocratic manners), and it certainly lives up to that. Altman's sensibilities, like those of Lean or Kubrick, were forged in the fires of a world of richly undeserved privilege, and there may never have been a sharper scalpel to reveal such tumorous cancers.
As usual, Altman assembles a spectacularly brilliant ensemble, consisting of a good chunk of the greatest actor-Brits currently pursuing the practice
'd1Mirren, Smith, Watson, Bates, Jacobi, Dance, Gambon
'd1and tosses in a couple of top notch younger folk
'd1Kelly Macdonald, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillippe
'd1and mixes it all with superb cinematography, sound and editing, and voila! A masterpiece.
Altman plunges us into his worlds with giddying gusto, overloading your info-dump circuits at first but rewarding repeated viewings terrifically. He waltzes us upstairs and down, not releasing us until all the characters have had the chance to reveal their deepest secrets. And he just as lovingly provides a lingering farewell, allowing each character ample opportunity to prove once again that they are who they are
'd1no more, no less
'd1and they always will be. Which is, after all, the real mystery, of Gosford Park, of class relationships, of film, of existence.
Because what's left after all the attitude, after the petty triumph and crippling humiliation, after the brutal exploitation and the insinuating, soul-killing snobbery, is life, its loss and its gains, its beauties and embarrassments, its fragile glory and its heartbreaking strength. And the movie-maker, making another deal, moving on to the next picture.
Don't miss this one.




Lord of the Rings Pipe-Weed Indeed
By Dr. Jim
The sins of J.R.R. Tolkien are vast: a sensibility hovering between treacly whimsy and gooey sentimentalism; a leadenly Germanic prose style; a mawkishly amateur narrative unable to resist smugly diving into every self-indulgence; a racist, patriarchal chauvinism falling somewhere south of Rudyard Kipling
'd1and, most of all, the creation of an irresistibly page-burning adventure so absorbing that grade point averages seismically dipped when the counter-culture college crowd discovered the saga, and named an entire generation of frisbee-catching, neckerchief-wearing dogs "Frodo."
On the surface, Peter Jackson would seem to be precisely the right prescription to transform this material into cinema. The New Zealander brings a trenchantly subversive sense of humor to his work, including two of the best post-Romero splatterpunk gorefests (Bad Taste and Dead Alive), and a snorting good art-house hit (Heavenly Creatures). Hopes about his Lord of the Rings were high with good reason.
Until the Burger King campaign started. That should have been some kind of clue. In Jackson's hands, The Lord of the Rings becomes not a quest to establish The Authority of True Goodness and end The Power of Evil so much as a Disney ride that starts in Fantasyland, veers into the Haunted Mansion and ends up in Hulk Hogan Village selling diet soda and french fries.
The scary stuff is the most effective. Even Tolkien would be happy with the Black Riders, the Evil Sauron, the slimy Gollum, the fiery Balrog. The most sustained piece in the film, only hinted at in the books, is the creation of the Orc army, with Christopher Lee for all the world like a daemonic bin Laden mining into hell after an Al Qaeda of subhumans with the worst dentistry in upper, lower and middle earth.
The cast is largely excellent
'd1all right, Elijah Wood is no Ian Holm, but who is? Jackson gets great work out of his masters
'd1artists like Holm, Lee, Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett. He gets strong effort from his yeomen
'd1people like Viggo Mortensen, Hugo Weaving and Sean Bean. The younger hobbits are pretty folk, and if they flirt, they also bear their burdens, more or less. (Someone needs to tell Mr. Jackson, however, that actors the caliber of Holm and Blanchett don't need Jim Carrey Mask animation to make their points.)
What's wrong about the film, though, is that it's ultimately an action adventure, and if the fights look like battle-bots, or the Giant Krusher body-slamming the Nasty Beefhead to the mat, well, more than the desecration of another sixties icon is going on here. Synth it all together
'd1the tv-spawned sportainment, the good-evil dichotomy, the madman enemies, the grotty mugging, the CGI-bottled world
'd1and what you have is another attempt to create the ultimate postmodern marriage of commerce and art-for-the-m-asses [sic], in short, the culture of a new world order. Welcome to the New Millennium, the Next Age, where they'd love you to believe that the evil old ring, their "precious" ring, has been destroyed. Yes, it was . . . their precious . . . precious . . .





Revenge of the Gipper by Dr. Jim


Somewhere between the surfeit of college bowls clustered around the first of the month and the great Stupor-Bowl itself, around which the end of the month clusters, in the darkest days of darkest January, should you have any further need (addict that you know you are) to make contact with football, don't forget the hours that Hollywood has devoted to the sport.

Both Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton included significant (and very funny, each in his own inimitable way) football sequences in their silent comedies, The Freshman (Lloyd, 1925) and College (Keaton, 1927). Of course, both were home-grown red-blooded American lads by birth. Charlie Chaplin, American by choice (though never formalized into the ranks of citizenry) and hailing originally from the Streets of Old Londontown, probably never understood the rules of the game, and therefore never saw the humor in it; thus it never appears in his films (but don't miss any of his various skating or boxing riffs).

Knute Rockne - All American (1940) biopics the famous half-time-speech-giving coach, personated with tinseltown heart and tongue by Pat O'Brien, but of course everyone remembers it for the future 40th Prez-himself dying young and exhorting said coach to "Tell the boys to win one for the Gipper."

Hey, what is it about football and death? Brian's Song details the touching relationship between erstwhile Chicago Bears Gale Sayers and doomed Brian Piccolo, the first interracial roomies in the team's history. Go for the 1971 classic version in this case, and you'll learn why James Caan and Billy Dee Williams became stars.

Warren Beatty also wedlocked the idea of death with the sport to great effect in his 1978 fantasy Heaven Can Wait. Check out the training sessions (especially the looks on the faces of the real players when told to hit the star as hard as they can) as well as the grand superbowl night game finale. Jack Warden, playing Beatty's devoted personal trainer, gives the poignant performance of the decade.

Or, hey, maybe is it football and race? Denzel Washington did the great coach routine to excellent effect in last year's story of color-line breakage and hard-nose scrimmaging, Remember the Titans. Black/white relations also figure in Oliver Stone's loud Any Given Sunday (1999), with Al Pacino as the wise old White Father coachman doin' his best for the sport in spite of ballbustin' team owner Cameron Diaz and egotistical (read uppity) star player Jamie Foxx.

(Parenthetical Note: The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football isn't just an accurate descrip-tion of some as-pects of the contemporary zeitgeist's women-hating backlash. It's also the title of an excellent 1994 book "subtitle: Sexism and the American Culture of Sports" by star athlete Mariah Burton Nelson, and anyone with half-an-ounce of conscience trying to survive through the current ignorance-bedizened Dark Ages owes it to their sisters, their daughters, their mothers and themselves to read this book. You remember reading? It's kinda like novelizations, but better.)

Most folk's choice for best pro-football movie yet to have been birthed by the Dream Factory is North Dallas Forty (1979), with a young(ish) Nick Nolte gasping, snorting, grunting and wheezing as he tries to survive the life, crunched as he is between ruthlessly exploiting owners, ruthlessly violent opposing team players, ruthlessly jealous fellow team players, ruthlessly air-headed friends, ruthlessly unforgiving fans and ruthlessly drug pushing medicos. It's hard not to cheer for him when he finally refuses to catch that last pass of the pigskin.
Semi-Tough (1977) pairs Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson as teammates and buddies vying for the affection of team owner's daughter Jill Clayburgh. The satire here is sharp, and you've also got Lotte Lenya, one of the great stage icons of the last century, to stare in awe at with this one.

Personally, of Reynolds' footballing efforts, I prefer a movie he did in 1974 called The Longest Yard. Burt Reynolds plays a former pro-QB serving a little time who organizes his fellow incarceratees into a team to play against a team made up of guards. Bernadette Peters tags along for the fun, and the film won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (musical/comedy) that year.

Gene Hackman does the old white man coach honors in last year's The Replacements, about wannabes (aka scabs) taking their shot to exploit the opportunity and overcome the loss of the season due to a players' strike. This one fumbled at the kick-off, in part because no one with real man-smarts flexing itself between their ears could take seriously the idea of Keanu Reeves making the cut for the team. Fact is, of course, that the movie makers (including Mr. Reeves), know that and, being in on the joke, bring that part of the film off very nicely, thank you.

Talking about longshots, hey didja like Sean Astin, the kid playing Samwise Gamgee, chubby loser-hobbit with a heart of gold, in Lord of the Rings? Well, you just might love Sean Astin playing the title role in Rudy, the story of a chubby loser-freshman with a heart of gold who really wants to make the Notre Dame team, and will do anything to earn his crack at it'd1even listen to laundry expert Charles S. Dutton. This one, according to Hollywood, is "true," which as you all know means there wasn't a breath of reality anywhere on the lot, and the only reality on the screen is that sticky sentimental kind that's supposed to make your heart melt and fool you into thinking, gosh, you know, your dreams might come true someday, too.

And who knows? In a world where Phoenix can come from behind to snatch the title from the very teeth of the Yankees despite the threatening barkings of Hizzoner Rudolfo Giuliani and the fighting spirit of the NYC Sports Fan-atics, who knows what might happen?
- Dr. James C. Lundstrom is Dean of Academics at Columbia College Hollywood.





An Oscar for Best Animated Feature
Digital Artists to be Rewarded

For the first time in history the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has created a category for the best animated feature and will be giving out an Oscar this coming March. As evidenced, there has been an enormous increase of interest in the highly important role of texture art in animated and special effects films.

Serena Juiwen Chang, an artist with an M.A. in computer art and B.A. in graphic design, has been racking up film and television credits as a digital and texture artist for D.A.M., a visual effects company in Santa Monica, CA. Chang, whose list of credits includes feature films Dr. Dolittle 2, Swordfish, Rollerball, Dungeons & Dragons, Little Nicky, and television credits Dawn of the Nation, VIP, and HBO's series Point of Origin said, "The work has been exciting and educational. I am constantly learning new software programs and developing my talents. Though the hours are sometimes long and the work is extremely exacting, the reward of seeing my work on screen is worth it."

Chang found that visual effects supervisors weren't just looking for people with computer animation skills but were also desiring individuals who had formal art training in areas of traditional art such as drawing and painting. "Graphic design, photography, and sculpture are also beneficial because they enable the artist to visualize the spatial relations, form, and necessary realistic lighting to create naturalistic environments and images on film," Chang stated. All of these elements combined make it possible for the artist to produce realistic cinematography from what started as a blank computer screen.

For example, in the feature film Dr. Dolittle 2, starring Eddie Murphy, actual film footage of animals is delivered to the digital artist, along with an audio tape of dialogue. The artist must first determine the camera angle, speed, length, and shutter angle for film tracking so that all images line up exactly in the compositing process.

Next any unwanted background images are eliminated from the screen and are replaced with the desired background. Modelers and animators make models of the animals' lower faces including the nose, mouth, and chin which are constructed and manipulated to recreate realistic mouth movements that match the speaking voices of the actors. The animals' furs are created by the texture artist who paints them on using a combination of software which integrates hand painting and photograph composition into life-like images. A morph artist adds facial expressions to give character and emotions to the animals. From there the images are sent to a compositor and editor who align all of the elements to create the final shot which is then seen on the big screen.

Team work and endurance are needed to succeed in such a demanding environment, Chang stated. Strong communication skills, high energy, and creativity are requirements of the job. While the attitude about the work is very serious, Chang said she and her colleagues always enjoy sharing the passion and responsibilities of being integral parts of the film production process. It is rewarding to see that digital art is finally receiving the respect it deserves as a true art medium. -AM


Zingers!

ALI

'd2Not exciting at all, for a man who really was! Kudos to Will Smith, it was not his fault.
'd3
-Miss P
"Good acting by Will Smith and Jon Voight. Not a good film on Ali's life. Didn't carry out a lot of plot. Good fight scenes between Ali and Liston, Terrell and George Forman, but not enough of Ali and Joe Frazier, who never recognized him as Ali, but as Cassius Clay."
-Smokin' Joe F.
AMELIE

'd2Sweet and charming, could have been a bit more heartfelt
- wonderful special effects thrown in.
'd3
-Marion Siwek

'd2Just don't get so busy reading the subtitles that you forget to watch Audrey Tautou
- she's adorable!
'd3
-Lime
A BEAUTIFUL MIND

'd2Wow! Ron Howard's direction was incredible...it created an atmosphere of schizophrenia that I was personally experiencing without knowing what was real or imagined...a very powerful and compelling journey.
'd3
-Eileen Ogle
"Zzzzzzz..."
-Bais Yackoff
Black Hawk Down
"One of the best and bloodiest war stories ever. Good acting and accurate. Perfect war story. Ranks with Apocalypse Now and Platoon."
-Smokin' Joe F.
"Relentless and brutal. Not much of a script, but a great movie.
'd3
-Bill Needle
HARRY POTTER

'd2I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed. Imagine my surprise upon finding the movie thoroughly entrancing! Not having read the book, I didn't miss anything that wasn't there!
'd3
-Phil Bergdorf

'd2Shallow characters with stupid names hunt for magic rocks.
"
-Dave Rolfe

"Rupert Grint is so naturally funny as Ron Weasley that it's hard to take your eyes off him. With just a little twist of his mouth, he's got you rooting for him. [And] Alan Rickman makes a perfect Snape. A brilliantly dark and menacing characterization, with all too little screen time.
"
-Don Grigware
HEIST

"The best thing about Heist is Hackman. I fell in love with him all over again!
"

-the Bres
Jimmy Neutron
"Fun family movie with cool-looking aliens."
-Lily Raven
JOE SOMEBODY

"Joe Somebody is for somebody...we don't know yet. Great Steven Seagal imitating by Jim Belushi."
-Bill Needle

"Cute story for young teens and single Dads.
"
-Miss P.
KATE & LEOPOLD

"A waste of money. Pass on this one. Meg's cuteness can't cure it, Hugh's handsomeness can't help it.
"
-Miss P
"Nice, pleasant romantic fantasy."

-D.T. Dunphy
K-PAX

"Kevin Spacey claims to be Prot, a space alien from planet Ko-Tex or Kao-Pec-Tate or something like that. He looks like another New York nut case, so Jeff Bridges locks him up in an asylum. Prot serenely floats through this new neighborhood with the aura of Mr. Rogers trying to play Jesus, demonstrating his spacey (ha ha!) wisdom in the form of gooey pop psych aphorisms delivered in a silky monotone that we are presumably expected to regard as profound.
"
-Dave Rolfe

"A lot of people were having spiritual
expriences. It's just a movie.
"
-RD Floyd
LANTANA

"Not only a riveting relationship drama that deals intelligently with marriage and fidelity, but also a suspenseful murder/mystery thriller. Excellent performances by Anthony LaPaglia as a cop who's having an affair, Barbara Hershey as a therapist, Geoffrey Rush as her husband, and Australian Kerry Armstrong as LaPaglia's hot-looking wife who is considering having her own affair.
"
-Phil Bergdorf
THE MAJESTIC

"What a special movie! Best one this season. Jim Carrey is a wonderful actor. Well done, and taps your emotions.
"
-Miss P
MONSTER'S BALL

"I'm tired of seeing Thornton in anemic roles for which he is praised.
"

-Voyteck Marek
MONSTERS, INC.

"Excellent! Makes you wish you were a kid again. Favorite new term of endearment:
'd4Boo!'
"
-Miss P

"A unique story idea, done by the leader of animation, makes Monsters, Inc. a very fun film for all ages.
"
-Ed Zajac
MULHOLLAND DRIVE

"I'm not sure what it means, but the fact that I care to think about it, and that the question continues to play on my mind, tells me that some subconscious part of me resonates to whatever I saw. In my book, that's a sign of a good film.
"
-Dave Rolfe
OCEAN'S 11

"Flawless! Smart, funny. Soderbergh is showcasing Oscar caliber direction. Perfect casting. A big hit!
"
-Miss P

"Entertaining and enjoyable, but it really really made me like Sexy Beast even more!
"
-Rolande in Seattle
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS

"A wonderfully silly, well-cast movie.
"

-the Bres
SHIPPING NEWS

"It rocks!
"
-the Bres

"To witness how Judi Dench disposes of her brother's ashes is alone worth the price of admission. That scene is a comic gem. I laughed myself silly for days afterwards!
"
-Don Grigware
VANILLA SKY

"Intelligent, thought provoking, well acted, well directed. This isn't your plain vanilla film.
"
-Greg Morgan
"Forget the movie, go see the band Vanilla Fudge...Wait, that makes no sense - just like the movie!"
-Bais Yackoff