The Screengrab : world of warcraft

CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Plastic surgery is a good metaphor for CGI (a.k.a. "computer-generated imagery"): it works best when you’re least aware of it, adding value without calling attention to its glaring, unnatural fakery. A little and you’re marveling at the natural, age-appropriate sexiness of Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, wondering “did she or didn’t she?” with regard to nips, tucks and nose jobs. Too much, and you’re recoiling in horror at that freakish Cat Lady lady, gasping in shock over missing noses and airbag lips, or wondering why Nicole Kidman keeps wearing that creepy Nicole Kidman mask.

Hollywood has developed an unhealthy addiction to both plastic surgery and CGI, preferring the obviously fake to the convincingly real, whether in the form of grotesquely disproportionate rock-hard breasticles or pixilated atrocities like Speed Racer, the cinematic equivalent of watching other people's birthday brats play video games at Chuck E. Cheese for an endless 135 minutes.

Did Jar-Jar Binks teach us nothing? Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer a little special in my special effects: cinematic images that make me go, “Oh my God, how’d they do that?” rather than, “Dude, that reminds me of this awesome World of Warcraft battle I just posted on YouTube!”

If you’re one of the CGI addicted who think all non-pixelated movie effects are inherently “cheesy,” consider the following clips an intervention as we here at the Screengrab present five examples of amazing movie moments that had (almost) nothing to do with computer-generated imagery.

Just about any Buster Keaton movie

See that car falling apart while Buster Keaton is driving it? See the front of that house falling and nearly crushing him? See that bridge collapsing with the train on it? All that shit actually happened in real life, not in post-production!

The Road Warrior

Why are high speed car chases with actual cars (and trucks and motorcycles and gyrocopters) better than computerized car action? Gee, I don’t know...maybe the same reason sex with an actual human being is better than internet porn?

The Thing (1982)

Sure, the shape-shifting alien action in John Carpenter’s The Thing may look as fake and unbelievable as CGI...but the viscous, tactile ooze has an icky, organic quality that's very hard to duplicate in the shiny world of greenscreen ones and zeroes.

Altered States

CGI scenes all tend to have a similar look, not unlike the legions of aging Hollywood starlets sporting “trout pout” and Spitting Image puppet faces after one too many visits to the neighborhood Botox dispensary. Directors and special effects coordinators forced to get a little more creative, however, may come up with distinctive, fucked-up and memorable images like those found in this one-of-a-kind Ken Russell phantasmagoria.

Star Wars

And speaking of tactile...one word: models. The star destroyer in the opening scene of Star Wars (along with all the nooks and crannies of all the ships in 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien) were and remain more iconic and dramatic than all the CGI pod-racers, Naboo royal cruisers or Trade Federation frigates the computers at Skywalker Ranch have ever rendered.

Don’t get me wrong. CGI has achieved some amazing things: the bullet-time sequences in The Matrix, Gollum and that buck naked Angelina Jolie in Beowulf. But enough is enough, people. It’s time for Hollywood to go cold turkey.

For the betterment of all humanity...CGI Must Die.

Independent Film Festival of Boston Reviews: Song Sung Blue, Second Skin, Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Song Sung Blue: In this documentary about “Lightning & Thunder,” a husband and wife Neil Diamond/Patsy Cline tribute band, the appeal of the group’s success is attributed to the fact that, like Diamond, they and their Milwaukee fan base are “normal.” That adjective, however, may not be the first that springs to mind when viewing this quirky, moving and often harrowing depiction of the rewards and hard realities of low-level show biz dreams. Director Greg Kohs makes the most of his (sometimes uncomfortably) intimate access to his subjects’ lives, capturing a real world soap opera of triumph, tragedy, and the unexpected magnanimity of Eddie Vedder.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie: And while we’re on the subject of seemingly whimsical but ultimately depressing depictions of American eccentrics, this barely feature-length documentary follows a pair of hard-luck backwoods Sasquatch enthusiasts who invest so much of their time and self-esteem in pursuit of the titular monster that I began to wonder if the whole movie was not actually some kind of giant Blair Witchy scam. If not, then the likeable, desperate true believers depicted here by director Jay Delaney (more or less without exploitive condescension) really need a more productive hobby (but then again, as an underviewed, D-List blogger, I suppose I’m hardly one to judge)!

Second Skin: And speaking of questionable hobbies, this interesting but seriously overlong documentary by Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza utilizes geek-tastic computer graphics, talking head experts and a likeable ensemble of misfits to offer a relatively comprehensive survey course on the positive and negative societal and individual aspects of spending way, way, way too much time online playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft and Everquest. But, like a marathon session playing actual video games, the initial enjoyment factor here eventually gives way to numb-ass claustrophobia and a nagging awareness that you should probably be doing something better with your time.

(For a second opinion, be sure to check out Scott Von Doviak’s SXSW review of Second Skin.)

SXSW Review: Second Skin

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

In a way, Second Skin is the dark flipside of last year’s SXSW hit, The King of Kong. Both documentaries are about people who spend way too many hours playing videogames, but this one is a much more downbeat, dispiriting and at times tedious account. Say what you will about the denizens of the Funspot arcade in Kong, but at least none of them came to believe they were Mario or Pac-Man, and a few of them actually saw daylight on occasion.

Second Skin concerns a much newer, more sophisticated form of computer gaming, awkwardly abbreviated as MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. These are vast virtual environments populated by people from all over the world, in the form of elves, knights and various strange beasties. The most popular such games are World of Warcraft (or “WoW,” as its residents term it), Everquest and Second Life. All players start out with nothing and must gradually build up their skills, arsenal of weapons, magic spells or whatever else it takes to improve their standing in the virtual world. Most players belong to guilds, some of which consist of hundreds of members who communicate with each other through the game, sometimes meet in person and even fall in love.

That’s the happy side of Second Skin: a lot of different kinds of people play these games and aren’t swallowed alive by them. Kevin and Heather meet through the game and strike up a romance, but the strains of a long-distance relationship and incompatible lifestyles that jeopardize their love story have little to do with battling dragons or raiding caverns. The “Fort Wayne boys” hole up in a house together and play for days on end, until real-life relationships and obligations start to take precedent for some (but not all).

Then there’s Dan, a gamer who becomes so addicted he loses his job and everything he owns; his only goal is to keep the electricity on so that the game never ends. He considers suicide and eventually he ends up in a rehab center for gaming addicts, but a bad back and worse attitude make his slow climb back to reality a painful one.

Second Skin grows repetitive and numbing after a while; it could easily lose thirty minutes or so from its running time. There’s a lot of pontificating about what it says about our world that so many people would prefer to live in a virtual one. The real problem with the film probably stems from the fact that these people spend so much time in their game personas; for the most part, their actual personalities aren’t that compelling. Second Skin isn’t without interest, but in the end it’s a movie that makes you want to go outside, see the sun and get some fresh air.

Happiness: The Video Game

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:55:00 GMT

It used to be a novelty worth commenting on that someone would make a movie based on a video game. Now, of course, in the Uwe Boll era, it's commonplace to make a movie out of a video-game franchise; for that matter, we also have movies based on amusement-park rides, board games, and for all we know, the lunch special at the Warner Brothers studio cafeteria. Video games based on movies are likewise no big deal anymore; any franchise picture worth its salt has a console adaptation on the shelves often before the movie actually gets made, and in at least one instance — the upcoming Ghostbusters game — the console game actually stands in place of a movie sequel.

Unfortunately, as Karina Longworth points out at Spout.com, indie films are left almost entirely out of the equation. In a highly amusing piece, she points out the notable dearth of video game adaptations based on successful independent films — and suggests ways in which this problem might be rectified.

Her online MMORPG based on Todd Solondz's Happiness seems like a real winner, especially (given that similar games like World of Warcraft are massive time- and money-pits) since she proposes that "because true, lasting happiness can never be achieved, no one can ever win and the game goes on forever." We're likewise fond of the idea of a Gummo first-person shooter with an all-black-metal soundtrack. But the best idea by far is a racing game based on Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny where "you're the only one on the road, and when you finish the race, instead of a trophy you get an absurdly long blow job from your dead girlfriend." Someone get Prince Vince on the line — I have a feeling he'll pay for this himself.