August 13, 2017
Adam Savage Goes Incognito in the ‘Alien: Covenant’ Spacesuit at Comic-Con — Watch
He isn’t busting myths anymore, but Adam Savage remains a busy guy. His latest “Tested” segment finds the former “Mythbusters” host wearing an actual spacesuit from “Alien: Covenant” around San Diego Comic-Con — not that most of the people there realize it’s him. Watch the video below.
Savage first examines the spacesuit in depth, from the Reebok logo on the magnetic boots and the GoPro camera that was actually used to shoot footage in the film to the working screens on the wrist and the “pièce de résistance” that is the helmet. “This is one of the most beautiful space helmets I’ve ever seen, for real or for fiction,” Savage says of the elaborate headgear.
Read More: Adam Savage Tours Peter Jackson’s Prop Collection In New ‘Tested’ Video
The real fun starts when he puts the suit on, a lengthy process that eventually finds him roaming through SDCC; somehow, several people correctly guess his identity despite the giant, metallic-green helmet covering his face. Savage says it’s the most comfortable spacesuit he’s ever worn, so know that the many, many people who die in “Alien: Covenant” were at least comfortable.
Source: IndieWire film
August 13, 2017
‘Annabelle: Creation’ Leads Another Weekend of Plummeting Box Office
The good news: the Top Ten grosses dropped a bit over one third from the same weekend last year with a total of $97 million. That’s compared to last weekend, which was down more than half.
The bad news: despite a profitable showing for producer James Wan’s horror prequel “Annabelle: Creation” (Warner Bros.), August could wind up with the worst ticket sales in decades. Year-to-date grosses, which have been keeping pace with 2016 most of the year, are now over four per cent lower. The summer results will be much further down from last year, with the month likely to be off something like 40 per cent.
While this could be an aberration with an autumn rebound just ahead, it comes in the face of disconcerting news that “Wolf Warrior 2,” a Chinese-made period sequel, has grossed $681 million on its home turf. China has produced its own hits before, but lately has struggled with home product. If local audiences are increasingly happy with their own movies, it cuts into a huge market that has nourished Hollywood pictures (only a handful make the cut and not all thrive, despite the efforts studios make to cater to that audience). Hollywood’s focus on the foreign market has contributed to its own domestic decline.
“Annabelle: Creation” stands high among recent similar horror films, though historically not close to any records. Last summer’s “The Conjuring 2,” opening in June, managed a $41 million opening (against more competition from two other openers that topped $20 million). The first “Annabelle” did better in 2014, but as a followup “Creation” is credible and a clear positive on a weekend without much to cheer.
The two other openers were mediocre or worse. Open Road’s animated “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature” in third place opened to less than half the initial go-round in January 2014. But it soared against family drama “The Glass Castle” (Lionsgate), the memoir adaptation starring Woody Harrelson and Brie Larson that crashed and burned with under $5 million in ninth place — around the same as “The Light Between Oceans.” But Disney released that during the Labor Day weekend dead zone.
Positive news: “Dunkirk” is holding strong at #2, with only a 33 per cent drop. At $153 million so far, it increasingly looks like its domestic haul will approach $200 million.

“Spider-Man: Homecoming”
The only other holdover in the Top Ten, which is also gaining due to lesser competition, is “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” which dropped only 31 per cent to get to a surprising $306 million. That makes it the third (and final) summer 2017 release to top $300 million domestic. That’s down from four the previous two years along with a decrease in movies topping $400 million.
The one 2017 film to pass that magic mark: “Wonder Woman.”
Falling off the Top Ten its second wide weekend, Kathryn Bigelow’s disappointing “Detroit” (Annapurna) fell 58 per cent to only $3 million and will fall short of $20 million.
The Top Ten
1. Annabelle: Creation (Warner Bros.) – Cinemascore: B; Metacritic: 62; Est. budget: $15 million
$35,040,000 in 3,502 theaters; PTA (per theater average): $10,006; Cumulative: $35,040,000
2. Dunkirk (Warner Bros.) Week 4; Last weekend #2
$11,405,000 (-33%) in 3,762 theaters (+252); PTA: $3,032; Cumulative: $153,713,000
3. The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature (Open Road) – Cinemascore:; Metacritic: 38; Est. budget: $40 million
$8,935,000 in 4,003 theaters; PTA: $2,232; Cumulative: $8,934,000
4. The Dark Tower (Sony) Week 2; Last weekend #1
$7,875,000 (-59%) in 3,451 theaters (no change); PTA: $2,282; Cumulative: $34,306,000
5. The Emoji Movie (Sony) Week 3; Last weekend #3
$6,605,000 (-45%) in 3,219 theaters (-856); PTA: $2,052; Cumulative: $63,592,000
6. Girls Trip (Universal) Week 4; Last weekend #4
$6,521,000 (-43%) in 2,303 theaters (-279); PTA: $2,831; Cumulative: $97,194,000
7. Spider-Man: Homecoming (Sony) Week 6; Last weekend #6
$6,100,000 (-31%) in 2,607 theaters (-509); PTA: $2,340; Cumulative: $306,454,000
8. Kidnap (Aviron) Week 2; Last weekend #5
$5,225,000 (-48%) in 2,418 theaters (+40); PTA: $2,161; Cumulative: $19,394,000
9. The Glass Castle (Lionsgate) – Cinemascore: A-; Metacritic: 56; Est. budget: $(unknown)
$4,875,000 in 3,502 theaters; PTA: $3,337; Cumulative: $4,8765,000
10. Atomic Blonde (Focus) Week 3; Last weekend #7
$4,572,000 (-44%) in 2,093 theaters (-1,233); PTA: $2,185; Cumulative: $42,820,000
Source: IndieWire film
August 13, 2017
Luc Besson Says That Captain America Is ‘Propaganda’: ‘It’s Always Here to Show the Supremacy of America’
Luc Besson isn’t the biggest fan of superhero movies. The “Valerian” director, who’s previously said that he finds it difficult to relate to such characters, went further in a CinePop interview by calling Captain America “propaganda” that’s uniquely American — and not in a good way. Watch the full discussion below.
“What bothers me most is it’s always here to show the supremacy of America and how they are great,” he said. “I mean, which country in the world would have the guts to call a film ‘Captain Brazil’ or ‘Captain France’? I mean, no one! We would be like so ashamed and say, ‘No, no, come on, we can’t do that.’ They can. They can call it ‘Captain America’ and everybody think it’s normal. I’m not here for propaganda, I’m here to tell a story.”
Despite his problems with the genre, Besson did make a movie about a kind of superhero: “Lucy,” which stars Scarlett Johansson as a woman who develops psychic abilities and superhuman intelligence after ingesting a highly advanced drug.
Source: IndieWire film
August 13, 2017
Leonardo DiCaprio to Play His Namesake Leonardo da Vinci in Upcoming Biopic, Because Nominative Determinism Is Real
You might say that Leonardo DiCaprio was born to play Leonardo da Vinci. The actor is said to have been named for the Italian artist after his pregnant mother first felt him kick while she was looking upon a da Vinci at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery way back in 1974, and now he’ll live up to his namesake by playing him in an upcoming biopic. According to Deadline, that movie now has a home in Paramount Pictures.
The studio beat out Universal for the rights to Walter Isaacson’s creatively titled book “Leonardo da Vinci,” apparently paying seven figures in the process; said tome has yet to actually be published. Isaacson has previously authored books about Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein, among others; “Einstein: His Life and Genius” was adapted into “Genius,” starring another Oscar-winning thesp. That actor’s name? Geoffrey Rush.
Elsewhere in adaptations, DiCaprio is set to star in frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese’s take on David Grann’s book “Killers of the Flower Moon.” No one else is attached to “Leonardo da Vinci” yet. The book is scheduled for release on October 17.
Source: IndieWire film
August 13, 2017
Tom Cruise Potentially Injured While Filming ‘Mission: Impossible 6’ Stunt — Watch
Tom Cruise’s well-known habit of performing his own stunts appears to have resulted in an injury, though thankfully not a serious one. TMZ has a video of the 55-year-old actor coming up short while jumping from one building to another as part of a stunt for “Mission: Impossible 6”; after getting up, Cruise briefly collapses while attempting to walk it off. Watch the video here.
He then walks away under his own power, suggesting that whatever injury he might have sustained is mild. Cruise recently performed 64 takes of a zero-gravity plane-crash sequence for “The Mummy,” which wasn’t exactly enough to make that reboot a success; he also held on to the side of a plane for “Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation.”
Michelle Monaghan, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan, Henry Cavill, Angela Bassett, and Alec Baldwin co-star in the untitled “Mission: Impossible 6.” Despite not having a name, it does have a release date: July 27, 2018.
Source: IndieWire film
August 13, 2017
How to Create a Long Exposure Video Effect in After Effects
Pulling off long exposure photos is relatively easy, but doing so with video is another story.
One of the first still camera “tricks” you learn as a photographer is how to create light trails using long exposures. All you do is crank up your shutter speed to five or six seconds (or whatever works), adjust your aperture accordingly, and boom, you’ve got some nice light trails streaking all along some random freeway. But can you achieve the same effect with video? Totally, but you’ll need to head into post to do it.
Photographer/cinematographer Dan Marker-Moore, known for his iconic time-slices, created a video for Toyota that employs this interesting long exposure video effect, and in the tutorial below, he shows you how he did it using nothing more than standard Adobe After Effects tools—no plug-ins required.
And here is the completed ad for Toyota so you can see the effect in real-time:
Source: NoFilmSchool
August 12, 2017
Watch: A List Stephen King’s Favorite Horror Films
What kinds of scary movies does the King of Horror watch?
Stephen King is a maniac. He has not only written hundreds of published works, making him one of the most prolific writers of all time, but he has managed to scare the bejesus out of his readers for well over 40 years with his dark and twisted contemporary horror/sci-fi/fantasy works. But he’s not only renowned in the literary world. He has made an indelible mark in the film industry with 64 of his novels and short stories being adapted into some of the most iconic horror films in history, including Carrie and The Shining. (Fun fact: The Shawshank Redemption was adapted from his 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.)
It makes you wonder what kinds of scary movies catches the attention of such a well-respected and aptly nicknamed author like the King of Horror. Well, Fandor has put together a list of a bunch of his favorite spooky flicks in the video below:
Source: NoFilmSchool
August 11, 2017
Weekly Rewind: Fitbit deals, a fat-burning wearable, a mind-controlled game
In the tech world, a lot happens in a week. So much news goes on that it’s almost impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of it. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of the top tech stories from this week.
The post Weekly Rewind: Fitbit deals, a fat-burning wearable, a mind-controlled game appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital Trends VR
August 11, 2017
Streamline Motion Graphics, VFX, and VR with MAXON Cinema 4D
With MAXON Cinema 4D, you can produce high-end motion graphics.
The next generation of MAXON’s professional 3D application delivers both great tools and enhancements artists can put to use immediately and provides a peek into the foundations for the future. Scheduled to ship in September of 2017, Cinema 4D R19 includes new features to streamline motion graphics, VFX, and VR content creation workflows.
Powerful developments have been made to viewport performance, a new Sound Effector has been added, and additional features for Voronoi Fracturing have been introduced to the MoGraph toolset. The release also includes a new Spherical Camera, the integration of AMD’s ProRender technology, and more.
It’s designed to serve individual artists as well as large studio environments.
Designed to serve individual artists as well as large studio environments, Release 19 offers a fast, easy, stable, and streamlined workflow to meet today’s challenges in the content creation markets—especially general design, motion graphics, VFX, VR/AR, and all types of visualization.
Source: NoFilmSchool
August 11, 2017
How Many Movies Did ‘Game of Thrones’ Rip Off in its Most Epic Battle Yet?
Here’s a drinking game that Tyrion Lannister could get behind.
[Caution: Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4 below.]
As one of our top in-house, self-diagnosed Game of Thrones addicts, I have to admit that I had been a little disappointed by the pace of Season 7. For the first time, I found my mind wandering during heavily expository episodes. That is, until…the battle. Showrunners call it “The Loot Train Battle,” but that doesn’t nearly describe just how extraordinary it was.
We’ve already covered how the incredible battle was created, but just why was it so darned satisfying?
One of our favorite video essayists, Nerdwriter, makes a strong case that it’s because almost every scene within the battle would have been comfortingly familiar to any respectable geek. In his latest work, Nerdwriter lives up to his name by proving with cinematic evidence that almost every scene within this battle was plucked from another movie—and some of the sources may surprise you.
Source: NoFilmSchool