How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon, Meet Toothless. He looks like a cross between a panther, an axolotl and a bat with his gleaming skin and muscular frame. He’s a silvery black dragon – a “Night Fury” dragon.

He might be an intimidating 8m-plus long with a 10m wingspan. But he’s ever so elegant in the air. Until that is, young Viking Hiccup nets him. Toothless is convinced he’s about to be finished off by the warrior while Hiccup fears the dragon might fry or eat him.

But instead Hiccup offers him a fish to eat. The resulting look of surprise on Toothless’ face is a magic moment, his bright green eyes blinking in appreciation.

Toothless changes from savage beast to loveable pet in a moment, and it’s all in his expression.

Five years ago, this scene might have only been possible on film, as in Dreamworks’ animated 3D movie How to Train Your Dragon. But now you can see it for real, in the flesh, courtesy of technological developments which have led to the creation of amazingly lifelike animatronic robot dragons.

Last year New Zealand got to see the arena spectacular Walking With Dinosaurs. This time, Global Creatures, the company that created the dinosaurs, has partnered with Dreamworks to bring their hit film How to Train Your Dragon to life.

Dreamworks head Jeffrey Katzenberg sees the technology as a new frontier in entertainment.

“With each of our movie properties, they have opportunities to live beyond the movie theatre. And I think each in their own way has lent itself to new experiences …

“We’ve had Shrek and Kung Fu Panda go to Broadway, and the penguins from Madagascar go to TV. When we saw Walking With Dinosaurs a couple of years ago, it seemed like that was just a natural fit and would be a phenomenal extension with what we were doing with Dragons on film.”

It’s a huge investment, and something of a gamble for the company, as this very colourful live show is taking on several firsts.

It’s the first-time animatronic flying robot puppets have been created on this scale. It’s also the first time such a big a projection screen – 21 times the size of a standard cinema screen and stretching between wall and floor – has been used in an indoor arena show.

In a world where 3D movies have become the norm, it’s blending all sorts of entertainment forms, including acrobatics, puppetry, film and music, in order to dazzle an audience.

The scale of the project is enormous, with more than 600 people involved in the show’s creation.

There are nearly 30 dinosaurs on set of varying sizes (including seven that can fly), five animatronic robots, and an array of puppet suits. The flying dragons weigh about as much as an elephant. They’re joined by a cast of 24 actors, some of whom ride on Toothless as he flies. Each dragon is operated by three or four people.

The show’s director, Englishman Nigel Jamieson, says the show tops the Olympic and Commonwealth Games opening ceremonies he’s worked on before.

“To manage to meld this level of spectacle and technology in with a story, I think it’s one of the most challenging things I’ve done.

The Illusionist

The Illusionist, Ecossais”’illusionniste film was nominated for an Oscar. The film – which was made by a team of animators in Edinburgh and Dundee – was nominated for Best Animated Film. Director Sylvain Chomet set up a studio in the Scottish capital after visiting his film festival seven years ago.

“Le”Illusionist, which was described as a” representation of fairy tale “of Scotland, faces Toy Story 3 and How To Train Your Dragon. The winner will be announced in Los Angeles on February 27.

Mr. Chomet, a native of Paris, has already been nominated for an Oscar in 2003 for Belleville Rendez-vous. “Le”Illusionist, which had its premiere at the Festival last year’s Edinburgh film is about a magician who travels to Edinburgh from Paris.

It was inspired by the French director’s travel around Scotland.

“Le”Illusionist (the animated 2010/2011, not 2006 a live-action).” Sylvain Chomet instantly became the toast of the animation world after the publication of his beloved 2003 film, The Triplets of Belleville The film was enthusiastically received by critics and was eventually nominated for Best Animated Film; it is not surprising that fans of animation have waited impatiently for monitoring Chomet. Unfortunately “Le”Illusionniste is simply not capable of living up to the almost insane hype has been building since the first several film festivals 2010.”
“Le”Illusionist is a marvel of animation director Sylvain Chomet, Triplets of Belleville which earned him two Oscar nominations.

The film was created from a script by Jacques Tati, and traces the story of a father daughter type of relationship / between a magician and middle-aged teenager who moves into his life.

The story begins in Paris. Flawless illusions notwithstanding, our skilled magician has a poorly fitted suit and a single poster; elements that suggest its glory days are behind him. It’s the late ’50s, and we look at sharing the stage with rock bands in rooms that are empty after the mop-top pop princes complete whole. It takes all sober in stride, rarely changing his expression serious.

A drunken joy Scotsman commits Mr. Tatischeff – real surname of Jacques Tati – and gets him to travel in a pub in Scotland to make a show.

The pub is in a remote fishing village, and it Tatischeff meeting the girl, who is employed as a housekeeper. Fortunately she washes and irons all ‘illusionist”shirts. He noted his terrible, tattered shoes and replaces them with a pair of beautiful red Mary Janes. Fascinated by his new hero and the true believer can magically follows the girl secretly in Edinburgh.

There, Mr. Tatischeff is surprised, but apparently not shocked to see he was followed. He and the girl is in the same household together, he works his magic, and she keeps the house. It also shows him in the windows, just the kind of beautiful shoes and clothes adult, she believes. He works and budgets to buy what she wants, and we watch her slowly blossom into a sophisticated young woman.

Build A Dragon

Build A Dragon, The Chinese dragon has landed on U.S. store. American Eagle is sputtering. Rivalry between China and the U.S. has been simmering for many years past, as China has replaced Russia in the American scheme of things as its more powerful adversary. China has begun to project itself as an equal of the United States. China’s public outburst against the recent (“destabilizing”) US-South Korean naval exercises and the declaration of its officials on the record that China had much reason to be upset about such activities in their backyard as the U.S. UU. Maneuvers was during the Soviet regime during the Cuban missile crisis is a testimony of a changed Beijing. The Chinese government’s mouthpiece People’s Daily wrote on July 29, 2010 that Beijing was willing to work with Washington if the Americans were to accept China as the second world power and divide areas of domination.

Some of China’s recent military moves are worth taking note. Aware of the historical fact that only the most powerful maritime nations have ruled the world for centuries, China is a busy giving tooth to its navy. Work is underway on the 2400 km range DF-21 anti-ballistic missile submarine (ABSM), a weapon that promises to be game-changer Beijing in the future, naval battles, and you can decapitate the U.S. warships the region. The weapon poses the greatest threat every time the U.S. Navy as its maritime surveillance and space-based guidance systems that there interception virtually impossible.

The American naval superiority is threatened as never before. And the situation is such that over-stretched U.S. naval forces cannot compete with China, both in terms of numbers and firepower. It is a fact U.S. only and is not able to control and counter Chinese naval hegemony in Asia, Washington will need help from Japan, India, Vietnam and South Korea to do that.

1-2 July 2010, China conducted a large naval exercise in the South China Sea. The importance of this exercise from the perspective of Beijing can be gauged by the fact that it was supervised by members of the Central Military Commission General Chen Bingde and Navy Chief Wu Shengli. A fire exercise naval air followed these five days by the Chinese army in the Yellow Sea.

As part of its strategy well thought out, China has been working for decades to achieve a strategic objective to drive slowly in other countries outside the East China Sea and South China Sea and coastal seas bring under Chinese rule. Consider the following milestone events in recent Chinese history. In 1953, China issued a map, which claimed 80 percent of the South China Sea. In 1974, seized the Paracel Islands from Vietnam. In 1988, China turned to attack the Vietnamese forces Johnson Reef and took six features in the Spratly Islands. In 1994, China captured the Mischief Reef in the Philippines. Spratly and Paracel islands are far from China and within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone in neighboring Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. In March 2010, Beijing said the U.S. The Secretary of State, James B. Steinberg, that China will not tolerate “foreign interference” in its home area in the South China Sea. And Beijing has been walking his talk of backing up their political and diplomatic moves with military posture. Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and even the United States have been on the receiving end of China’s diplomacy fire.

China is aware of investing in the development of supersonic anti-ship missiles to skim a few feet above the water, something the Soviets did that led to the Americans during the Cold War. These missiles present China with an economical and effective military. The price of the cruise missile reaching half a million U.S. dollars, while a typical U.S. carrier costs more than a billion dollars. In other words, an American aircraft carrier can buy ten thousand missiles of long-range cruise. And it does not take a genius to understand that a missile or two of these can disable or sink a carrier. Therefore, China will not be a push over for the Americans despite the fact that is much poorer and its military arsenal is much lower compared with that of the United States. China can use its missile power to enforce an exclusion zone in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea, Beijing has begun to see as their exclusive preserve coast.

The Chinese are also investing in space research at a time when NASA is underfunded. China has been locked in a prolonged, intense economic rivalry with the United States to dominate the final frontier. On January 11, 2007, China successfully launched trials of its anti-satellite system and broke the American monopoly of 22 years of age in this area. Interestingly, China’s test-launch took place on a day when the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, was in New Delhi for the annual summit between India and Russia. Quite understandably, Australia, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom, and United States quickly condemned the Chinese ASAT launch.

U.S. China stole a march in a big way three years later when the April 22, 2010 U.S. Air Force placed in orbit X-37, the world’s most sophisticated robotic spacecraft. This development has left open China, and that none of this has been done for a nation so far. X-37 not only counters anti-satellite capabilities of China, but has also proved to Beijing, as the Americans are still generations ahead in terms of space technology. Dubbed as “inspector of space ‘, built by Boeing X-37 can spy satellites from other countries and even disable them. The billions of dollars reusable spacecraft, unmanned is almost identical in design and layout of the space shuttle. X-37 would allow the U.S. to mount a replacement space for the enemy to destroy a satellite in a conflict.

As if this were not enough, China has been gradual increase in competition in South America, Africa, Middle East and Central Asia. China’s game plan in Central Asia is strategically time. Afghanistan is a classic example of China’s strategy for Central Asia. Beijing has made the most of Obama’s charade of government in the declaration of an exit plan for Afghanistan. While Americans are preparing to leave Afghanistan, China is improving its involvement in Central Asia through Afghanistan. It has already pumped billions of dollars to Afghanistan for copper mining. It plans to build a transnational highway from Pakistan through Afghanistan to Central Asia. But unlike in the context of the goal of India to reach Afghanistan, including the refusal of Pakistan to give transit rights to India, China will face a problem of all-weather friend, Pakistan. China also wants to exploit some of the vast world’s untapped deposits of precious metals like gold and uranium in Afghanistan. Taking into account the latest reports from Washington that the U.S. has found mineral deposits and almost worth a billion, a finding that officials say could transform Afghanistan, China planned exploitation of minerals could not come soon enough.

It is inevitable that major world powers, the conclusion one day that China’s rise is threatening the United States alone will not be able to control the dragons, and other leading regional powers will have to join hands with the United States on this mission. The international community has been there and done that in 2007. Japan, U.S., Australia and India had gathered to explore the possibility of a strategic ring, but were aborted in 2008. The initiative of four has to be re-released. Perhaps now may be an initiative of the hex string in South Korea and Vietnam.