Thursday, April 26, 2012

'Bond 24' in 2014 & 'The Hobbit' 48fps issue



Columbia/Sony is trying to get back into the 2 year between James Bond films again. At the CinemaCon in Las Vegas, President of Worldwide Distribution, Rory Bruer announced that the 24th Bond film will be released in “late 2014,” which likely means late November or early December. Whether current Bond actor Daniel Craig will be back is unknown, as he does have an option to return, but the studio can always change their mind. Still, seeing that the buzz on the film is good, one speculates that if they can get back into the groove of making films as it was done in its earlier days, keeping Craig on might be better. Then again, with rumors that Judi Dench will bow out as M –with Ralph Fiennes taking over the role- there could be an opportunity to rejuvenate the franchise again for a newer generation of fans. 



Also at CinemaCon, Sony showed 10 minutes of footage from the much anticipated The Hobbit. There was some issues with it, though it was not with the content, but with the new 48 frames-per-second technology that Jackson is employing with the film.

Some reactions were:

"Here's what The Hobbit looked like to me: a hi-def version of the 1970s I, Claudius. It is drenched in a TV-like - specifically 70's era BBC - video look. People on Twitter have asked if it has that soap opera look you get from badly calibrated TVs at Best Buy, and the answer is an emphatic YES. It looked completely non-cinematic. The sets looked like sets. I've been on sets of movies on the scale of The Hobbit, and sets don't even look like sets when you're on them live... but these looked like sets. The other comparison I kept coming to, as I was watching the footage, was that it all looked like behind the scenes video. The magical illusion of cinema is stripped away completely." -- Devin Faraci, Bad Ass Digest.

"I’ll admit the footage is such a radical change from what I expected, it’s going to polarize audiences. The 3D looked great and the new 48fps drastically reduces eye strain. That’s the good news. The bad news is the 48fps is so jarring that I’m not sure casual moviegoers will enjoy it…. You no longer have motion blur. You no longer can hide stuff in the darkness… By the end of the presentation, I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the entire movie in this new 48fps format. This is definitely not what I expected to say. Ultimately, it just didn’t look cinematic and it sort of looked like HD TV.” -- Steve Weintraub, Collider.

"It was too accurate -- too clear. The contrast ratio isn't there yet -- everything looked either too bright or black" -- a projectionist to The L.A. Times.

"Motion blur was gone completely in fast-moving action scenes and dark environment. In general, 48fps has the ability to be at once crisp and smooth, subtle and bold. It is a maelstrom of contradictions when compared to the loads of filmed content I’ve seen in my life. Others started pronouncing it over immediately upon exiting, but I am not passing that judgment (or any for that matter) yet. I saw ten minutes of unfinished, un-graded, incomplete footage as a cross-section, not a full feature film. I did not see the digital seams around creatures like Gollum and the trolls, a major benefit over 24fps. The creatures had a sense of mass in the environment, which was disconcerting in a good way." -- Monty Cristo, AICN

More over at Dark Horizons

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