Top

John Hughes Filmography

March 20, 2012 by · Comments Off on John Hughes Filmography 

John Hughes Filmography, John Wilden Hughes, Jr. (February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He directed and/or scripted some of the most successful films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon’s Vacation, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Beethoven, Uncle Buck, Career Opportunities, 101 Dalmatians, Home Alone, and its sequels, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Home Alone 3.
Hughes was born in Lansing, Michigan, to a mother who volunteered in charity work and John Hughes, Sr., who worked in sales. He spent the first twelve years of his life in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Hughes described himself as “kind of quiet” as a kid.

“I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly girls and old people. There weren’t any boys my age, so I spent a lot of time by myself, imagining things. And every time we would get established somewhere, we would move. Life just started to get good in seventh grade, and then we moved to Chicago. I ended up in a really big high school, and I didn’t know anybody. But then The Beatles came along (and) changed my whole life. And then Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home came out and really changed me. Thursday I was one person, and Friday I was another. My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on.”
In 1963, Hughes’s family moved to Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where Hughes’s father found work selling roofing materials. It was there that Hughes attended Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois, the school that would provide inspiration for the films that would make his reputation in later years.

After dropping out of Arizona State University, Hughes began selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. Hughes used his jokes to get an entry-level job at Needham, Harper & Steers as an advertising copywriter in Chicago in 1970 and later in 1974 at Leo Burnett Worldwide. During this time, he created what became the famous Edge “Credit Card Shaving Test” ad campaign.

Hughes’s work on the Virginia Slims account frequently took him to the Philip Morris headquarters in New York City. This gave him the opportunity to hang around the offices of the National Lampoon Magazine. Hughes subsequently penned a story, inspired by his family trips as a child, that was to become his calling card and entry onto the staff of the magazine. That piece, “Vacation ’58”, later became the basis for the film Vacation. Among his other contributions to the Lampoon, the April Fool’s Day stories “My Penis” and “My Vagina” gave an early indication of Hughes’s ear for the particular rhythm of teen speak, as well as the various indignities of teen life in general.

His first credited screenplay, Class Reunion, was written while still on staff at the magazine. The resulting film became the second disastrous attempt by the flagship to duplicate the runaway success of Animal House. It was Hughes’s next screenplay for the imprint, National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), however, that would prove to be a major hit, putting the Lampoon back on the map.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Book

March 1, 2012 by · Comments Off on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Book 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Book, Of all of the books made into films last year, the one you had the greatest likelihood of actually reading was the late Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which could be spotted in the hands of commuters on public transit with a level of permeation not witnessed since “The Da Vinci Code.”

One can never be sure why a certain work gains public interest to the level of phenomenon, and this is an especially unique case considering the book is exceedingly Swedish, taking place in the country and tapping heavily into native politics, yet still managing to find a huge international audience.

The reason might very well be that the premise, despite presented in an unfamiliar way, has a core story with simple appeal: Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist framed for libel by a powerful adversary, is sentenced to prison. He’s then unexpectedly recruited by Henrik Vanger, head of a family-run industrial company, to solve the decades-old murder of Vanger’s niece that took place under circumstances amounting to a locked room mystery. A standard serial killer subplot gradually comes to light as Blomkvist gets in way over his head.

The story would be entirely unoriginal were it not for the titular dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a mentally unstable (so the courts say) hacker extraordinaire with a violent streak and a seething, deep-rooted hatred of anyone who inflicts violence on women.

Initially hired to look into Blomkvist, he soon enlists her to help him with his investigation, and the two form an unconventional but effective team as their bizarre relationship develops alongside the narrative.

The prose is dispassionate, the events depicted as coldly as the wintery setting, and that definitely has a distancing effect on the reader. The story never really gains a pace quick enough to justify the immensely slow set-up, and the payoff isn’t exactly shocking so much as a matter-of-fact revelation. Reading the novel, though, it’s easy to see the appeal it might have to David Fincher, and while not fully gripping as a stand alone work it certainly creates a desire to see the story realized onscreen.

In that respect the film absolutely delivers. Rooney Mara especially is an electrifying Salander, fully realizing all the potential for the character that always existed on the page but never quite satisfies in Larsson’s writing. Fincher as well proves himself suited to the material, creating a three hour film that never feels slow.

Most appreciated is a change to the ending that both makes complete sense and is far cleverer than the original conclusion. That Larsson missed the opportunity is a bit surprising, and while the book certainly deserves credit for laying much of the groundwork, the American film is, with its incredible cast, direction and excising of unnecessary material, the definitive version of the tale. Hopefully Fincher will return to adapt the next two books as well; he’s certainly proven he’s the man for the job.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

March 1, 2012 by · Comments Off on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, “With the changing topology of fluids, we used XMesh to make our animation process much less painful,” explains Kirby Miller, effects supervisor, Blur. “XMesh was tapped to cache fluid meshes in 3DS Max. To create those fluids we built particles in RealFlow, brought them into 3ds Max and did the meshing in Frost, which gave us tremendous detail and lent to the photo-real look of the black fluid.”

Thinkbox Software recently released XMesh, the company’s geometry caching system for 3DS Max. The product became a commercial application based on the request of Blur’s artists for a geometry caching solution for Frost. The technology had been under development at Thinkbox for several years and Blur put it to use immediately as a pipeline tool for simplifying the process of creating complex effects – like fluids – with constantly changing topology.

XMesh caching also works on a render farm, so instead of saving on one machine, Blur was able to tap 20-100 machines at a time to make geometry caching move very quickly.

“There were a lot of advantages to using XMesh,” continued Miller. “Because XMesh handles any geometry, it actually replaces five other types of caching we were using in the past – making the job of our scene assembler much simpler. Instead of having to learn Point Caches, Transform Caches, RealFlow Caches, Particle Caches from Particle Flow and Thinking Particle Caches – the assemblers only had to learn XMesh-and it’s really easy to work with.”

Blur also used XMesh to exchange files back and forth with Spatial Harmonics Group, a vendor they used on the project, and also to interchange data and project files from Softimage to 3DS Max.

“XMesh is great and has been major for Blur. We’ve wanted to get a changing topology cache for years. It’s a pipeline tool that makes life so much easier for this type of effects work.”

Frost is also a fully integrated tool within Blur’s pipeline. “Aside from meshing fluids, you can mesh particles, put geometry instances on particles, mesh standard particle systems as fluids – and on a lot of projects where we have battles and things and might need a little blood squirt, it’s a lot easier to create in particles doing the mesh in Frost and having the whole project stay within 3DS Max.”

Daniel Craig Date Of Birth

March 1, 2012 by · Comments Off on Daniel Craig Date Of Birth 

Daniel Craig Date Of Birth, Daniel Wroughton Craig (born 2 March 1968) is an English actor best known for playing British secret agent James Bond in a 2006 reboot of the film series which began in 1962.

Born and raised in Cheshire, Craig is an alumnus of the National Youth Theatre and graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and began his career on stage. His early on screen appearances were in the films Elizabeth, The Power of One and A Kid in King Arthur’s Court, and on Sharpe’s Eagle and Zorro in television. Appearances in the British films Love Is the Devil, The Trench and Some Voices attracted industry attention, leading to roles in bigger productions such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Road to Perdition, Layer Cake and Munich.

Craig achieved international fame when chosen as the sixth actor to play the role of Bond, replacing Pierce Brosnan. His debut in Casino Royale was highly acclaimed and earnt him a BAFTA award nomination, with the film becoming the highest grossing in the series to date. Quantum of Solace followed two years later, with the third film Skyfall set for release in 2012, having been delayed due to MGM’s financial troubles.

Craig is married to actress Rachel Weisz, his second wife. He has a daughter Ella by his first wife, Fiona Loudon. In 2006 he joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Since taking the role of Bond, Craig has continued to appear in other films, most recently starring in the English-language adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

December 20, 2011 by · Comments Off on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 

The Girl With The Dragon TattooThe Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Given its dominance on international bestseller lists and at the box office over the past few years, you’d think we’d know what The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy is all about by now.

Sure, we know Stieg Larsson’s story of a girl sleuth with a giant chip on her shoulder zapped something in the zeitgeist. Those who have read the books, seen the recent Swedish films, or perused premature critiques will also know the basic plot: A disgraced magazine editor is hired to investigate an old, unsolved murder.

Over the course of his inquiry, he forms an unlikely friendship and allegiance with a mysterious woman with a large, reptilian tattoo. Together, they unravel the case, but there is always more to these stories than meets the eye.

The subject matter is generic thriller pap: rich heirs, debauched sex, fet**h-laden violence. Even the female perspective isn’t original. So what nerve did Larsson prick with the character of Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo?

David Fincher seems to rub the right spot in his English-language take on the Scandinavian phenomenon, because he scratches at the scab of revenge, the very base, but altogether human, urge for punishment.

Next Page »

Bottom