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Team America: World Police, the new action-adventure puppet satire by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, tackles the issue of America's role in the war on terror, albeit in ways U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft probably never imagined possible.
Parker and Stone were camped out at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles last weekend, welcoming their film into the world, while doing the necessary spin control over the latest eruption of controversy surrounding the film. This time it was a letter Sean Penn sent to newspapers editors around America, criticizing the filmmakers.
Penn is a character in Team America, one of a gaggle of self-important celebrities (is there any other kind?) who emerge as the film's bad guys. These unwitting agitprops team up with North Korea's Elvis-loving, opera-composing, nuclear-warhead-wi elding dictator Kim Jong Il to resist Team America's best efforts to save Earth from terrorists brandishing weapons of mass destruction contained in smart-looking suitcases.
At a recent press conference in Toronto last month, Dustin Hoffman observed that director David O. Russell actually liked actors, which was different enough from the other directors he had worked with that he thought to mention it. Team America may be the ultimate act of director's revenge against obsessive, perfectioni
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Black Jack was only an obscure OVA (Original Video Animation) on VHS, before the domestic anime fans were given Black Jack: The Movie, a 90-minute DVD release from Manga in 2001. That hooked a lot of people on this super surgeon for hire, but it took three years for the original series to make its way to DVD.
That’s a long time for those of us who wanted to know more about this medical miracle worker, a creation of Osamu Tezuka, the “pioneer of anime” who gave us Metropolis and Astroboy.
Central Park Media released the first six, 50-minute episodes on three DVDs, starting with Infection in February, and pared down the stories to one per DVD beginning with episode seven.
In this eighth episode of the original series, Parasite, Black Jack is called on to help a young boy who has been infected with a plant seed, sending sprouts through every visible orifice in his body.
Meanwhile, back at the boy’s hometown, a wild-eyed, drunk old man protects a 4,500-year-old sentient tree from being destroyed by a road crew.
The two stories crash together, and, of course, only Black Jack can save the lives that need to be saved.
This was a different type of story than those in previous Black Jack episodes (in the seventh episode, our doctor was smack dab in a war zone). Parasite is almost a child’s tale, except told in a
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French animation and digital special effects studios are taking the celluloid world by storm.
Their talent has transformed France into an animation powerhouse, making it the European leader in TV anime and propelling it into the ranks of the world top three along with industry greats, the US and Japan. Computer-aided images pop up everywhere, from television to computer screen-savers and handphones.
After building a reputation with ground-breaking shows such as Inspector Gadget, Tintin (right) and the first Lucky Luke film, France's animation business has become the country's best-selling TV programme genre.
The hugely popular Totally Spies kids series is now airing in over 100 countries.
It's the same story for the country's special effects studios, whose 3D computer graphics and digital skills are behind many audiovisual successes from Hollywood movies, TV mini-series and even TV advertisements.
French studios have created many of the fantastically lifelike creatures that starred in landmark series such as A Species Odyssey (Odyssee de l'Espece).
This 2002 series about man's ape-like ancestors out-performed the BBC's Walking With Cavemen.
French studios are also participating in a new major co-production, Rise Of The Homo Sapiens, the sequel to Species Odyssey. The co-production between French, Canadia
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Pandromeda, Inc. announces the release of the MojoWorld 3 family of products, the leading procedural world generation solution for 3D artists. MojoWorld was used in the blockbuster summer movie “The Day After Tomorrow” and is a favorite tool of movie effects companies. New MojoWorld 3 Standard and MojoWorld 3 Professional incorporate over sixty new features and enhancements.
MojoWorld's unique procedural world generation engine instantly creates an entire spherical planet with unlimited detail, complete with sky, sun, moon, stars and water, all of which you can immediately modify, transform and animate. Point your camera in any direction and from any location and render a scene in almost infinite detail, thanks to the fractal technology underlying MojoWorld.
“Everyone has their favorite tool, but digital production designers need flexible, extensible tools that work well together and support almost any level of complexity in output,” said Ken Musgrave, CEO of Pandromeda, Inc. “As an end-of-workflow environment, MojoWorld can host pre-created 3D objects and blend 2D images either directly into the planet surface as heightmaps or stage them like 3D objects, for final rendering in a complete world. You can take total programmatic control over the procedural landscape and export them to your favorite renderer. MojoWorld bot
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Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., announced today it has begun shipping the latest version of its award-winning professional 3D modeling, animation and rendering software package, 3ds max(R) 7 software. This major release delivers significant advancements and optimizations to its core features that will greatly enhance the workflow for 3D artists and designers in film, television, games, and visualization. With by far the 3D industry's largest installed base of over 280,000 registered customers, many of whom are joining Discreet's subscription-based program, Discreet 3ds max 7 software continues to deliver one of the most productive 3D animation software solutions to artists and designers in all markets.
Discreet customers testing early 3ds max 7 beta software versions are united in reporting that it is the most stable and high performance version that Discreet has ever delivered. The many new features, major gains in productivity and impressive stability will undoubtedly assist in streamlining art production in today's ever-changing world of computer animation and graphics technology. 3ds max software is racking up huge successes across the professional 3D markets together with widespread demand from the educational community -- providing 3ds max software training for tomorrow's 3D animation artists.
"There isn't a
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