Why Watch? The short that gave birth to CGI animation at Sony. In the early 2000s, the studio decided to test its ability to put together a completely CGI animated film, and the result/challenge was The ChubbChubbs! – a goofy animated story about a night club janitor on an alien planet that is called to the higher task of saving his people from a roving band of monsters (after he’s warned by Jar Jar Binks that they’re coming). It’s funny in a ridiculous, under-dog sort of way, and it represents the first movement into territory that’s now a decade old for the company. For more historical context, this won the Oscar in 2003 after seeing theaters…in front of Men in Black. What does it cost? Just 5 minutes of your time. Check out The ChubbChubbs! for yourself:

Why Watch? A thrilling WWII dogfight on a low budget. Writer/Director Nick Ryan‘s glorious short film is proof that with the right artistic eye, some effects equipment and a hell of a lot of time, you can create something truly jaw-dropping for a price that will drop that jaw even lower. And you can even do it with a great story and rock solid acting. Starring Toby Kebbell (RockNRolla), this short tells the story of a fighter pilot who chases down a Nazi ace who shot down his friend. Part revenge story, part morality play, it’s beauty injected with adrenaline and Spitfire fuel. Eat your heart out, Howard Hughes. Nick Ryan has a promising career waiting for him. What does it cost? Just 10 minutes of your time. Check out The German for yourself:

A couple weeks ago a spy photo from the set of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel made the Internet rounds. It contained what appeared to be Michael Shannon wearing what appeared to be a motion capture suit. If that was the case, then that would mean General Zod, the Evil Kryptonian General that Shannon is playing in the film, would have a completely computer generated outfit akin to the super suits in the recent, awful looking Green Lantern. Okay, so your opinion may vary, but I thought that the effects in Green Lantern looked horrible. Depending on whether you agree with me or not, a recent interview that Shannon did with MovieFone could either make you weep or make you cheer. It turns out that yes, that was Michael Shannon in that photo, and yes, the General Zod costume will be created using CG. When asked about the motion capture suit Shannon said, “ … it’s funny because when I met with Zack we were talking about it before it started and he mentioned that there was going to be a lot of CGI, or whatever. I said, ‘Just don’t make me wear one of those silly suits.’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah, don’t worry, I know exactly what you’re talking about.’” It turns out that Zack Snyder is a liar. Shannon is wearing the suit. However, even though Shannon was forced to wear a silly suit because of Snyder’s lies, he assures everyone that fans will be happy with how [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

In theory, CGI should never break your suspension of disbelief (unless you’re watching a Syfy Original or Birdemic, in which case it was never there in the first place).  In practice, budgets get tight, time gets short, and even mega-blockbusters like Lords of the Rings or Harry Potter will have a couple of crappy looking scenes. But sometimes movies that don’t even really need much CGI will toss it in for a short sequence, whether it’s just to show off,  save money, or even to mask Bill the microphone guy’s fuck up. Inevitably, though, at least one of those scenes ends up looking like the production company outsourced the job to someone’s Nintendo 64. When big budget movies have bargain basement special effects, everyone wins. And by “everyone,” I mean “no one,” and by “wins,” I mean “is paying attention to the movie anymore because they’re too busy laughing.” I’ve taken the liberty of considering this part 1 of a multi-part series, because I know that this is an endless well from which I can perpetually draw. In related news, I am lazy and uncreative.

Why Watch? Technology is getting cheaper by the minute. The long, Kurzweilian talk about technology aside, there’s a major news story that makes this short timely. It involves the scrapping of The Lone Ranger due to its inflated budget. It’s a blockbuster, sure, but studios are now realizing that effects work is being innovated by many, and the cost of shots is coming down. To that end, here’s a Coke commercial from The Purchase Brothers who utilize that inexpensive CGI pedigree better than most. It’s a stunning use of popular imagery that Neill Blomkamp and Andy Warhol would both be proud of. Is it an ad? Yes, but it also tells a story, and it’s the best kind of bizarre. What does it cost? Just 1 minute of your time. Check out Coke Babies for yourself:

One of the great challenges of telling a story about apes is that you either have to have thousands of well-trained apes for the project, or you need superior technology to bring human actors to simian life through motion capture. Really, you have to do all that without making it look silly, so it’s fortunate that WETA has had so much experience in the past few years bringing mo-cap to the heights it’s at today. This quick, informative featurette shows off WETA’s talents alongside the blinding brilliance of Andy Serkis (with side-by-side video of his performance and what it would become) and seeks to shed a bit of light on where the tech is at this point, and how they utilized the emotions of a human to build Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It’s still unclear how they’ll conquer us considering we’ve got guns and tanks, and they have sticks, but this featurette is still very, very cool.

If you tried, you could probably find a bigger Evil Dead fan than me. It might take a little bit, but you could. I mean, I’ve got my three T-Shirts, my Necronomicon copies of the movies on DVD in addition to several other versions, including Blu-ray transfers, I’ve got my toys, books, comics, and video games too. So while I’ll never claim to be the biggest Evil Dead fan, I can say I’m a pretty big one. For years I’ve waited on a continuation to the story. I remember my first experiencing watching the original movie at a sleepover. It was Steve’s house, but he fell asleep early after playing too much Command & Conquer. Only me and Matt were awake and he, no joke, got a boner from the tree rape scene. There was always something off about Matt. But it wasn’t long after that I found the second. I remember Army of Darkness in theaters. Everything Bruce Campbell wrote or said about the franchise, I ate up. Waiting to hear about Evil Dead 4. When talk turned to a remake instead of a continuation, I was upset but hopeful. Maybe Campbell would be in it. Maybe they would cast Seann William Scott and that wouldn’t be all that bad, would it? Now we have firm news that the Evil Dead reboot is moving forward – time to praise the lord? Hardly. What we know sucks and here’s why.

Why Watch? Because it’s children blowing shit up. Some may think that special effects need to be mind-blowing. After all, they keep getting better and better, and they’re meant to show us something amazing with every new innovation. Sure, giant effects can be magical, but sometimes it’s a lot better when they aim solely to be insanely fun. There’s nothing ground-breaking here, but the combination of playful CGI, violence that seems drawn from a children’s book, and a group of underage badasses makes this music video something special. What does it cost? Just 3 minutes of your time. Check out The Greeks for yourself:

Last year, I had the honor of traveling down to New Orleans, piling in a van, heading to a secluded warehouse and talking to an alien. I also spoke with the first human member of an elite group of interstellar heroes, a director who has more energy than anyone at his age has a right to, and I got a glimpse into a world beyond our own. So before comic book purists protest the insanely small number listed in the headline, these are the Green Lanterns hanging up on a wall somewhere in New Orleans – character design sketches to fill out the alien landscape of those who bravely, selflessly, and fearlessly patrol the universe. Some were born from the comic books, others from the minds of the production team. Some will be featured heavily, others will be hanging out (valiantly) in the background. We’ll be bringing Green Lantern set visit coverage to you all week, but to get things started, we figured it would be a good idea to do a round of introductions. Some you already know, and some you haven’t yet had the pleasure, so we wanted to make it official. Green Lanterns, meet the world. The world, meet the Green Lanterns.

The Green Lantern movie has an uphill battle from the start. Why? Because it’s not starring Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, or anyone remotely near that level of recognition to the average viewer. The first question many may ask when hearing there is a Green Lantern movie is “Why?” The second is probably “What?” or possibly “Who?” I’m willing to give The Green Lantern the benefit of the doubt and not just because I have a huge man-crush on Ryan Reynolds. Well okay, yeah, mostly because of that. And so far, much of what we’ve seen looks pretty good. The trailer was fun. And the costume is… Well… Uh…

Here’s a fun April Fool’s Day prank you can pull (that will be even more effective now that it’s not April Fool’s Day). Take this four-second-long clip that showcases an ape from Rise of the Planet of the Apes (and, yes, I know I called it a monkey in the headline, and I know they’re vastly different species), and tell your friend that it’s a real ape filmed in a zoo. I’d bet money that a solid amount of people would buy that it’s real. That solid amount will probably let loose some pant juices because of it. That’s how scary WETA is. Take a look at this CGI, and think in the back of your mind about the original films and the apes from Tim Burton’s go at it.

Why Watch? Because this short is a display of CGI visuals (the comparison’s to 9 are unavoidable) and story. A voodoo doll wakes up to find himself in danger of being stabbed with a pin through the heart while his fellow dolls wait for their destruction. He must escape and take down the voodoo Priest before everyone dies. But since we’re dealing with voodoo, is it really just a doll? The amount of tension this short creates in less than four minutes is astounding, and should be a lesson to any filmmakers out there trying to build drama or make rag-based action. What Will It Cost? Just 4 minutes of your time. Does it get better any better than that? Check out Sebastian’s Voodoo for yourself:

While I’ve talked about shitty CGI before, and countless others across the world of media have as well, there’s always time to take a few minutes and remind the world that CGI can often suck monster donkey balls. I’m not just talking in a made for TV SyFy kind of way either. Or a TV show stretching itself a little too thin. Or The Asylum. I mean, sometimes CGI does make sense. It saves actual shooting time. If done correctly, you may even save some money. It can definitely let smaller films do bigger things. A practical Sharktopus would never be able to run around and populate a shitty movie. A CGI one can, and does. Horribly. But I’ll give it a grab. Mainly my gripe today is big movies. Or movies with a budget. Movies that can take the time to use practical effects. Or pay for better CGI. Or just make smarter decisions because there are theoretically a lot of savvy and experienced people on board. I guess that means I’m still pretty naive when True Grit, the disappointing film that somehow garnered 10 Academy Award Nominations (Oscar loves some Coen shaft), takes the road most traveled by throwing in a few dozen CGI rattlesnakes that look like digital, wet spaghetti.

It was the banner that no one understood at Comic Con 2010. Amidst the massive advertisements for Scott Pilgrim and RED was a building-sized image for Skyline – a movie that no one had ever heard of before. The reason for that lack of knowledge was simple. The film was an independent feature built under the radar and far under the normal budget of a film of its kind. Now with Universal distributing it, the press was on to make Skyline a household name. Greg and Colin Strause have directed an indie that doesn’t see a lot of people talking to each other about life and love in the middle class or how difficult it is to be a 20-something. They’ve made an alien invasion movie with over 1,000 effects shots, and they’ve done it without the help (or hindrance) of a studio. The Brothers Strause were gracious enough to speak with me about this new world of independent filmmaking, the problems with the studio system, and the need to shake things up.

Gareth Edwards is a funny man. You might not know that just from seeing his feature film debut Monsters. You also might not know it from the things he had to do to get the film made. Edwards speaks with the casual tone of a seasoned pro, and after seeing heads on spikes, making his actors eat ants, and making a CGI-heavy film with almost no money, he might just be a few years ahead of his own resume. I got the chance to speak with Edwards, whose film comes out Friday October 29th, and we spoke about the advice he has for aspiring filmmakers, the challenges of shooting in South America and why the worst day of his life happened during production.

Deep in the heart of the Norwegian woods, there’s a giant menace standing tall against the landscape. That menace is power lines, and the people hate the power lines. However, they’re completely necessary to keep the trolls at bay. Troll Hunter is a found-footage style faux-doc that sees a crew of young teenagers (whose names matter about as much as their characters) heading out into the dangerous woods to track down the guy on the government dole who manages the troll population in secret. Hans reluctantly takes them into his world, and soon, they’re running for their lives and praying that the UV lamps on the top of his truck still have some battery life left in case they need to turn a 20-story baddie to stone.

Dear Mr. Sylvester Stallone, Long time fan, first time letter writer. I recently had the pleasure of watching your film, The Expendables, in theaters. Congratulations on an impressive opening weekend, virtually guaranteeing the green light to proceed with a sequel. I welcome another entry into this celebration of action heroes, past and present. Brutal action fun is missing from theaters these days and The Expendables looks to be the cure, much as Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti was the cure for the disease of crime.

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard any movement, but 3D and Ang Lee might have this one close to the greenlight.

One of the most well-respected actors in history is about to be resurrected in magical audio-vision.

So it turns out that Alice in Wonderland isn’t that wonderful. If you need some actual wonder in your life, check out these 12 films and put on a record by the Oneders.