Dr. Zaius Has a Smoke, Cornelius Gets a Haircut, and More 'Planet of the Apes' Home Movies

From iwatchstuff, Last year's Rise of the Planet of the Apes marked the long-running franchise's move into CGI effects over practical chimp makeup, and that was nice for Andy Serkis, who is largely basing his career on the fact that hopefully no one else will put on a spandex jumper and pretend to be a revolutionary monkey that still cares for James Franco. But at the same time, we lost something. We lost the human touch that only comes from hairy latex hunks being carefully glued to a guy's face. And we also lost the home movies of an orangutan-headed man lounging around a beach, sipping a Mai Tai from beneath a straw hat.

Thankfully, Roddy McDowall's got enough of that to last us for a while. The actor brought his 8mm camera around the production of the original Planet of the Apes and got all kinds of footage of the film's groundbreaking makeup application. He also got a bunch of shots of apes sitting around having a smoke--JUST LIKE THEY DO NOW.

It's Happening, "Jurassic Park" About to Become Reality

From worstpreviews, A team of South Korean and Russian scientists have teamed up to try to clone a wooly mammoth, which has been extinct for 4,000 - 10,000 years, by using cells discovered from mammoths found in Siberia.

Controversial South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, who managed to produce the world's first cloned dog (Snuppy), as well as a cat, a cow, a pig and a wolf, is involved in the project.

The biggest challenge will be to find usable mammoth cells from undamaged nuclei to transplant into an Indian elephant. "This will be a really tough job, but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals," said researcher Hwang In-Sung.

Encyclopedia Britannica to stop printing books

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- After 244 years, Encyclopedia Britannica will cease production of its iconic multi-volume book sets.

Britannica usually prints a new set of the tomes every two years, but 2010's 32-volume set will be its last. Instead, the company will focus solely on its digital encyclopedia and education tools.

The news is sure to sadden champions of the printed word, but Britannica president Jorge Cauz said the move is a natural part of his company's evolution.

"Everyone will want to call this the end of an era, and I understand that," Cauz says. "But there's no sad moment for us. I think outsiders are more nostalgic about the books than I am."

In truth, Cauz says, the death knell sounded long ago. Though the name "Britannica" calls the print sets to mind, Cauz says they represent less than 1% of the company's total sales.

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State(s) of the Art

I just got the Blu-rays of Beowulf and Tintin (and Sin City, but that's another, related discussion). The results are interesting.

In full HD, Beowulf suffers. The movie's definitely beginning to date. At the time, I applauded Zemeckis for going ahead and doing it even though the technology was still in its infancy: it reminded me of every other time that Hollywood's jumped onto a train that's not quite moving yet (including the early color-tinted films of the 1920s and 1930s, the "sound" films that didn't have full soundtracks, animated features that "cheated" by using photographic backgrounds, Tron, etc.) I stand by that: I still think I was right, and it's still a great movie that couldn't have been done any other way. Zemeckis himself makes some interesting points in the Q&A on the disc: he contends that motion-capture/CGI movies like his are comparable to graphic novels, in that they find a middle-ground between photographic reality (which he argues, persuasively, simply "doesn't work" for graphic-novel subject matter) and traditional cell-animation, which he argues is too "cartoony" for the dense, dramatic subject matter in question. Watching Beowulf five years later, though, the seams really show. The character animation suffers, because the faces are just too stiff to adequately convey the actors' underlying expressions and emotions. (Jolie comes closest, but I think that's because her features are so exaggerated to begin with, and her actual face is so expensively, flawlessly smooth and line-free).

Tintin, however, looks absolutely glorious. Peter Jackson's Weta Digital (the creators of Gollum) did their usual amazing job of just inventing a new system from scratch, and the results are better than Zemeckis' in absolutely every way. But there's an aesthetic difference, too: It's not just that the heads are caricatures (as in the Hergé drawings); it's Spielberg. It's just a vastly superior movie from a directing standpoint: the art design is far less garish and obvious; the timing and camera moves are more lyrical and serve the story more effectively; the entire project comes off as much less video-game-y and much more cinematic, and I think that's because of creative differences rather than digital advancements (although the digital advancements are obvious).

Anyway, I don't believe in the "uncanny valley" and I eagerly await the next stages in this amazing evolutionary process.

Microsoft Developing A 'Universal' Speech Translator

From geekology, Seen here looking suspiciously like the lightsaber dildo I found in my roommate's sock drawer (haha -- the truth's out, Derek! NOW CLEAN YOUR CAT'S LITTERBOX) Captain Kirk fantasizes about diddling Uhuru or whatever. Aaaaaaaaand now Microsoft has some relatively functional software that can translate a person's own voice into 26 different languages so that it still sounds like you. Because that's important. I don't want to just sound like some f***ing robot while my phone is translating 'I'm pooping liquid I need to go the the hospital' when I'm traveling internationally.

"The system needs around an hour of training to develop a model able to read out any text in a person's own voice. That model is converted into one able to read out text in another language by comparing it with a stock text-to-speech model for the target language. Individual sounds used by the first model to build up words using a person's voice in his or her own language are carefully tweaked to give the new text-to-speech model a full ability to sound out phrases in the second language."

I didn't really understand any of that, but that's okay -- I do all my talking WITH MY EYES. *wink* Know what I'm saying? *wink* "I get that you're winking, but you do realize you're still talking too, right?" That...explains a lot of embarrassing situations.

The Walking Dead SPOILER THREAD

If you watched last night's episode and want to discuss it, meet me on the comments page for this post. SPOILERS.

P.S. (SPOILER-FREE PARAGRAPH): The above photographic still (from AMC's Season 2 ad campaign) is the single image that got me to watch the series. It's incredibly effective. I think the reason is that it exactly counters the only stigma the show's got: namely, that it's yet another zombie story, breaking into an overdone, glutted market. What possible reason could there be for more zombies? The above image got to me because it seems to answer the question, as powerfully and poetically as possible. There aren't any zombies in the picture; it could be happening any time, in any genre; it's just a rural cop running on a road towards a farm. There's nothing that overtly suggests a Zombie Apocalypse...and yet, AMC is saying that there is. Look again. Feel the tone, the vibe. It's the zombie apocalypse, all right...like you've never seen it before. Gave me chills, and I immediately hit Netflix and watched the first episode (and I haven't looked back).

Indiana Jones coming to Blu-Ray with "a few new surprises"

Absolutely No One Likes 'A Thousand Words'

From iwatchstuff, Joining a small, hangdog group of films that includes last year's abysmal Bucky Larson: Born To Be a Star, Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words today received the rare ignominy of receiving an outright 0% rating on RottenTomatoes. It really is as bad as it looked. And, worse yet, it has forced us to live in a world wherein, against all common sense, Norbit is by some measure the "better" Eddie Murphy movie. This is what we're leaving the children.

The Tunnel sequel and new audience funded film

From filmstalker, The makers of the horror film The Tunnel are at it again, first they are making a new audience funded film called Airlock, and secondly they're working on a sequel to The Tunnel with a film that carries a traditional funding model and won't be distributed for free.

For those of you who didn't know The Tunnel is a film that was paid for by people like you and me and then released online for free. It's still available to watch now and I do think it's a rather good film made in a very convincing way. So it's no surprise that the team are off to make another.

However it is a surprise to hear that they are going to be making a conventionally funded film, well actually is it? Considering how good The Tunnel (Filmstalker review) was it shouldn't be a surprise that they've been asked to make a film in the conventional model, for a studio with studio backing and a general release (one would suspect anyway), and I'm glad it's a sequel and not a remake.

REad full article here

[JPX] The Tunnel was one of my favorite films I watched last year - very creepy!

Box Office

From latimes, In what is certain to go down as one of the biggest box office flops of the year, the $250-million-plus "John Carter" debuted with a disappointing $30.6 million this weekend.

Instead, last weekend's No. 1 film, "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax," claimed the top spot yet again. The Universal Pictures film, an animated 3-D environmental tale for families, collected an additional $39.1 million. The movie has now grossed a robust $122 million in just 10 days of release.

Meanwhile, fanboys failed to gravitate toward Walt Disney Studios' "John Carter," a 3-D fantasy epic that has been eclipsed by bad buzz for months. But the movie starring Taylor Kitsch wasn't the only bomb at the box office this weekend. "Silent House," a thriller featuring Elizabeth Olsen, did not have an impressive debut, grossing $7 million -- but at least the movie was made for under $1 million. "A Thousand Words," an Eddie Murphy comedy that has been sitting on the shelf since 2008 and cost far more to make, brought in only a measly $6.4 million.

"John Carter," about a Civil War veteran who is transported to Mars, will likely force Disney to take a write-down, according to media analysts. Heading into the weekend, one Wall Street analyst, Evercore's Alan Gould, said the film could lose as much as $165 million.

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Skull And Bones