Fantasmical updates

As the title suggests (very vaguely), there have been some rather exciting updates on movies with fantasy elements. Pretty excited to start off with Pixar's newest animation Brave, which has released its third trailer, offering a more complete picture on the story:

As every person and their grandmother is enamoured by the story telling capabilities of Pixar, this one doesn't look to disappoint. Particularly enjoying the fact that they've picked a female leading character, riding on the wave of more and more strong heroines. I love the unique medieval Scottish setting, which reminds me of 2010's How to Train Your Dragon and the lesser known gorgeous gem The Secret of Kells. Have you realised I'm an animation nut yet?

But to get back to the Scottishness of the film at hand, love the accents (can't pull one off meself), looking forward to plenty of tartan-clad adventure, and most of all: LOOK AT THAT HAAIIIRRRR. Must be a pain/a lot of fun to animate.

Getting on to the less animated part of this post, Ang Lee's Life of Pi adaptation has me very intrigued, but at the same time reminding me of the endless list of classics that I've yet to read. I even borrowed Life of Pi once but it suffocated under a pile of books higher up on my priority list (NTS: swing by the uni library asap).

The above is a first look at the movie. And it looks freakin' AWESOME. Sure any seasoned filmmaker can get a stunning shot but I give props to Ang Lee for being able to do that while working with children and animals - the death of showbiz - at the same time. Plus he's one of the most diverse directors yet, from wuxia epics to gay cowboys to the flippin' Hulk.

Finally a 10 minute press preview of The Hobbit has everyone in a frenzy because of the jarring quality of the 48fps frame rate. For those who are confused modern movies usually use 24fps (frames per second) and The Hobbit's higher frame rate means less motion blur and added realism.

When I heard about this I got very excited as I had experienced the same thing with our new HD TV (I know, totally on par right?) and felt like the realism was too much for me. It makes the whole cinema experience more like watching it as if you were there instead of being treated to a film, a piece of art. After a little digging around I even managed to find a name for the phenomenon. Well what do you know, you learn something new every day.

For those of you who haven't seen the trailer (where have you BEEN?) here it is, even though it's not going to be released in Australia for eons until December: