continue to go badly:
Sony, specifically PS3
Iraq, tied to it the current US administration
next gen DVD formats (HD-DVD and blu-ray)
Yahoo
Microsoft
GM, Ford and Chrysler
continue to do well:
Google
Apple
Toyota
It probably is a sign of age that these days I can look at a site like arkinetia and like all I see, while pretty women are kind of a yawn lately.
Looking at these houses it seems that Modernism was not just a ‘phase’. It seems to come back, and it makes allot of sense. The iPod could have been done by Dieter Rahms. Kinda. The ideas behind modern design and architecture are still valid. For a while ‘mordern’ was also ‘hip’. People accepted it’s easthetics and repeting it’s symbols, whithout needing to get behind the underlying ideas. Of course this kind of ‘hollow reign’ never lasts.
When modernism comes back now, then I hope that it does for the reason that more people are ready for the underlying view of human life. Not because rectangular is the new black. Time will tell.
When the PS3 came out there was allot of media frenzy about the huge ebay prices.
Three days before christmas neither Wii nor PS3 are possible ot find in stores. But @ eBay you can buy them. Just watched a PS3/20GB go for 530 US$ and a Wii for 450US$. The problem for Sony is that the actual retail prices compare differently: 80% markup for the Wii and 6% for the Ps3. Looks like people don’t want the PS3 that bad. Which is really bad: At a whopping 500/600 pricetag and with a considerable install base of the Xbox 360 Sony needs to build some momentum. Sofar they fail to accomplish that. It might become a negative chicken/egg thing: with a not so promising install base game developer might avoid to take the risk of a PS3 development that would use the power of the Cell chip. Innovative ideas might be aimed and tested at the PS2. A known development environment and huge install base. Maybe somebody will make a wii like add on to create similar controllers for it. PS3 has not much going for it, except it’s looks and the fact that it’s the most affordable Bluray player.
007 title sequences YouTube, but better than nothing.
Usually VFX companies have a hard time telling the world about their work. Either they keep their ‘secrets close to their chest’ or they simply lack the skills to communicate well. Lately a certain diss-interest of the public can be added to the list: The fact that something is not real in a movie is not worth mentioning anymore. The bar is much, much higher now. And -of course- ILM in Pirates2 reached it big time with Davy Jones. Their site about the fx is surprisingly good, informative and fun.
While looking at the blogs that link to the ILM page I found this 80’s TV piece
at Visual FX blog.
I had no idea that Lasseter / Disney did try to make “Where the wild things are”.
so true, just had not heard the term before. ‘linkbait’.
The ASC has an interesting article about the DI workflow used on “The departed”. It is interesting, yet not surprising, that Michael Ballhaus watches HD dailies and is happy with them. Only a few short years ago it seemed a sacrileg to abandon film dailies.
Interestingly there has not been any technological breakthrough since then. HD is still 1920×1080. But people probably know now better how to do these things, and creatives are more comfortable with a digital aspect, since their final product will be created digitally anyway in the DI suite.
As for the rest of the “Departed” workflow it might have made sense at the time to procede as described at each step. But after a cursory read I am left with the feeling that the movie bounceds in and out of lots of formats in the process. I have not seen it, but it looked good from what I heard. Ballhaus’ movies usually do.