2014 was an entertaining year for film. Marvel experienced huge successes with Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Big Hero 6. We also saw a large influx of action/comedy films, with 22 Jump Street being the prime example of how well action and comedy can mix together. Animated movies also had a good year. […]
Douglas Trumbull, SFX Supervisor on 2001: A Space Odyssey
It began with something Stanley Kubrick once said. With 2001: A Space Odyssey, he felt he owed the audience an experience. He wanted to use Cinerama to show people what it was like to fly through space. This was ambitious for 1968, but it worked. The film has certainly stood the test of time, due […]
High Frame Rate and Why The Hobbit Films Matter
As the prequel films to the estimable The Lord of the Rings franchise, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit films already carry with them a heightened expectation of narrative quality. However, there was more to The Lord of the Rings than its epic story. Every part of the production was groundbreaking; filming all three movies at once […]
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
In my youth, I was a Tolkien acolyte. The Hobbit was always the bedtime story of choice in my house. When I got older, I read and watched all of The Lord of the Rings and became entrenched in Tolkien’s world. I took time to learn about the intricate relationships between the Valar and the […]
Should You See The Hobbit at 48 FPS?
I had the good fortune to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at the midnight premiere in 48 frames per second. So as a follow-up to Ari’s review of the 2D 24 frames per second version of the film, and to my post from earlier this year about the negative CinemaCon reaction the first screening of the footage, here is a […]
The Hobbit Scroll
As a part of Comic-Con 2012, Entertainment Weekly has just released a fascinating piece of promotional advertising for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey depicting many of the film’s important scenes. The 48 frames per second debacle aside, I have to say this scroll certainly stands to reassure the wary viewers out there that at […]
The Hobbit at 48 FPS
Update Peter Jackson has offered a short rebuttal to criticisms of the new format: “At first it’s unusual because you’ve never seen a movie like this before. It’s literally a new experience, but you know, that doesn’t last the entire experience of the film; not by any stretch, after 10 minutes or so. That’s a […]