Thursday, July 30, 2009

THE GREAT TITANIK




Titanic. It features Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some characters (such as members of the ship's passengers and crew) are based on real historical figures. Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day framing device.

Production of the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the RMS Titanic. He envisioned the love story as a means to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy. Shooting took place at the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh - which aided Cameron in filming the real wreck – for the modern scenes, and a reconstruction of the ship was built at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. Cameron also used scale models and computer-generated imagery to recreate the sinking. Titanic became at the time the most expensive film ever made, costing approximately US$200 million with funding from Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox.[3]
HISTORYIn 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace set with a valuable blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean. Unsuccessful, they instead discover a drawing of a young woman reclining nude, wearing the Heart of the Ocean, dated the day the Titanic sank. One-hundred-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart) learns of the drawing, and contacts Lovett to inform him that she is the woman in the drawing. She and her granddaughter Elizabeth "Lizzy" Calvert (Suzy Amis) visit Lovett and his skeptical team on his salvage ship. When asked if she knew the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing for the first time that she is actually Rose DeWitt Bukater, a passenger believed to have died in the sinking.

In 1912, the upper-class 17-year-old Rose (Kate Winslet) boards the ship in Southampton, England with her fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley (Billy Zane), the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon, and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater (Frances Fisher). Both Cal and Ruth stress the importance of Rose's engagement to Cal, since the marriage will mean the eradication of the Dewitt-Bukater debts; while they have the outward appearance of being upper-class, Rose and her mother are financially broke. Distraught and frustrated by her engagement to the controlling Cal and the pressure her mother is putting on her to go through with the marriage, Rose attempts suicide by jumping from the stern. Before she leaps, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) intervenes. Initially, Cal, his friends, and the sailors, overhearing Rose's screams, believe Jack attempted to rape her. She explains Jack saved her life, hiding her suicide attempt by explaining she slipped after trying to see the propellers. Jack supports the claim, although Hockley's manservant, former Pinkerton agent Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), is unconvinced. Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as she thanks him for his corroboration, and he shares stories of his adventures traveling and sketching. Their bond deepens when they leave a stuffy first-class formal dinner of the rapport-building wealthy for a much livelier gathering of Irish dance, music and ale in third-class.

Cal is informed by Lovejoy of Rose's partying in steerage and, during breakfast the following morning, flips the table in rage as he angrily forbids her to meet Jack again. However, after witnessing a woman encouraging her seven-year-old daughter to behave like a "proper lady" at tea, Rose defies him and her mother, asking Jack to sketch her nude and wearing only the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal. Afterwards, the two playfully run away from Lovejoy, going below deck to the ship's cargo hold. They enter William Carter's Renault and proceed to make love, before moving to the ship's forward well deck. Rose decides when they arrive in New York, she will leave the ship with Jack. They then witness the ship's fatal collision with an iceberg. After overhearing the ship's lookouts discussing how serious the collision is, Rose tells Jack they should warn her mother and Cal. Meanwhile, Cal discovers Rose's nude drawing and her taunting note in his safe, so he frames Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean by having Lovejoy plant it in Jack's pocket. Upon learning Cal intends to leave Jack to die below deck, Rose runs away from him and her mother to rescue him from imprisonment in the master-at-arms's office.

Jack and Rose return to the top deck. Cal and Jack, though enemies, both want Rose safe, so they persuade her to board a lifeboat by Cal telling her that he had an arrangement with a man working the boats, and that he and Jack would get off safely. After Rose is on the boat and out of earshot, Cal admits that there was an arrangement, but he would not use it to help Jack. After realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose jumps back on the ship and reunites with him in the ship's first-class staircase. Infuriated, Cal takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose down the decks and into the flooded first-class dining saloon. When Cal runs out of ammunition, he realizes he left the Heart of the Ocean in Rose's overcoat. Cal abandons Lovejoy and returns to the boat deck, where he boards Collapsible A by pretending to look after an abandoned child, as the officer he had previously bribed into letting him onto a lifeboat throws the money in his face. When Jack and Rose return to the top deck, the lifeboats have gone, and they are washed into the freezing Atlantic waters once the ship sinks. Jack and Rose manage to grab hold of a carved oak panel, which can only support one person. Jack suffers from severe hypothermia, and dies in Rose's arms. Rose is rescued when Fifth Officer Harold Lowe returns with Lifeboat 14 with five other survivors.

Rose is taken by the RMS Carpathia to New York, where she gives her name as Rose Dawson (adopting Jack's surname, leading everyone to believe Rose DeWitt Bukater died on the Titanic). She also sees Cal for the last time on Carpathia's deck, looking for her (she explains he later married, then committed suicide following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, after he lost everything). Having completed her story, the elderly Rose goes to the stern of Lovett's ship. After she steps onto the railing, it is revealed she still has the Heart of the Ocean in her possession. She drops the diamond into the water, sending it to join the remains of the most important event of her life. The film ends with a shot of Rose in bed. Around her are pictures of her doing everything she said she would do with Jack throughout her life.[7] The final shot of the film is where the young Rose is reunited with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the Titanic, surrounded and applauded by those who perished on the ship, as they kiss passionately.
The film was originally to be released on July 2, 1997, but post-production delays pushed back the film's release to December 19, 1997. After this news broke, the news media believed that Titanic would fail and take Fox and Paramount with it. Upon release however, the film turned out to be an enormous critical and commercial success, winning eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.[4] It became the highest-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide total of over $1.8 billion[5] (it is the sixth-highest grossing in North America once adjusted for

so what r u thinking?


How does Spider-Man 3 follow on the heels of its predecessor, which was widely considered the best superhero movie ever? For starters, you pick up the loose threads from that movie, then add some key elements of the Spidey comic-book mythos (including fan-favorite villain Venom), the black costume, and the characters of Gwen Stacy and her police-captain father. In the beginning, things have never looked better for Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire): He's doing well in school; his alter ego, Spider-Man, is loved and respected around New York City. And his girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), has just taken a starring role in a Broadway musical. But nothing good can last for Spidey. Mary Jane's career quickly goes downhill; she's bothered by Peter's attractive new classmate, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard); and the new Daily Bugle photographer, Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), is trying to steal his thunder. Enter a new villain, the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), who can transform his body into various forms and shapes of sand and who may be connected to Peter's past in an unexpected way. There's also the son of an old villain, Harry Osborne (James Franco), who unmasked Spidey in the previous movie and still has revenge on his mind. And a new black costume seems to boost Spidey's powers, but transforms mild-mannered Peter into a mean and obnoxious boor (Maguire has some fun here).

If that sounds like a lot to pack into one 140-minute movie, it is. While director Sam Raimi keeps things flowing, assisted on the screenplay by his brother Ivan and Alvin Sargent, there's a little too much going on, and it's inevitable that one of the villains (there are three or four, depending on how you count) gets significantly short-changed. Still, the cast is excellent, the effects are fantastic, and the action is fast and furious. Even if Spider-Man 3 isn't the match of Spider-Man 2, it's a worthy addition to the megamill

REALIZE THAT THING



MATRIX

Computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson leads a secret life as a hacker under the alias "Neo", and wishes to learn the answer to the question, "What is the Matrix?" Cryptic messages appearing on his computer monitor and encounters with three sinister agents lead him to a group led by the mysterious Morpheus, a man who offers him the chance to learn the truth about the Matrix. Neo accepts by swallowing an offered red pill, and subsequently finds himself naked in a liquid-filled pod, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. The connections are severed, and he is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar. Neo's neglected physical body is restored, and Morpheus explains the situation.

Morpheus informs Neo that the year is not 1999, but estimated to be closer to 2199, and that humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines created in the early 21st century. The sky is covered by thick black clouds created by the humans in an attempt to cut off the machines' supply of solar power. The machines responded by using human beings as their energy source in conjunction with nuclear fusion, later growing countless people in pods and harvesting their bioelectrical energy and body heat. The world which Neo has inhabited since birth is the Matrix, an illusory simulated reality construct of the world as it was in 1999 developed by the machines to keep the human population docile in their captivity. Morpheus and his crew are a group of free humans who "unplug" others from the Matrix and recruit them to their resistance against the machines. Within the Matrix, they are able to use their understanding of its nature to bend the laws of physics within the simulation, giving them superhuman abilities. Morpheus believes that Neo is "the One", a man prophesied to end the war through his limitless control over the Matrix.

Neo is trained to become a member of the group. A socket in the back of Neo's skull, formerly used to connect him to the Matrix, allows knowledge to be uploaded directly into his mind. In this way, he learns numerous martial arts disciplines, and demonstrates his kung fu skills by sparring with Morpheus in a virtual reality "construct" environment similar to the Matrix, impressing the crew with his speed. Further training introduces Neo to the key dangers in the Matrix itself. Injuries suffered there are reflected in the real world; if he is killed in the Matrix, his physical body will also die. He is warned of the presence of Agents, fast and powerful sentient computer programs with the ability to take over the virtual body of anyone still directly connected to the Matrix, whose purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats to the simulation. Morpheus is confident that once Neo fully understands his own abilities as "the One", they will be no match for him.

The group enters the Matrix and takes Neo to meet the Oracle, the woman who has predicted the eventual emergence of the One. She tells Neo that he has "the gift" of manipulating the Matrix, but that he is waiting for something, possibly his next life. From her comments, Neo deduces that he is not the One. She adds that Morpheus believes in Neo so blindly that he will sacrifice his life to save him. Returning to the hacked telephone line which serves as a safe "exit" from the Matrix, the group is ambushed by Agents and SWAT teams. Agent Smith corners Neo but Morpheus pins him down and gives everyone the order to get out. Morpheus and Smith speak briefly before Smith bats Morpheus off him with a single punch. Morpheus stands up to Smith and fights his hardest, but is eventually defeated. They later learn that they were betrayed by the crew-member Cypher, who preferred his old life in ignorance of the real world's hardships and therefore made a deal with the Agents to give them Morpheus in exchange for a permanent return to the Matrix. Cypher is defeated but not before his betrayal leads to the deaths of all crew-members except Neo, Trinity, Tank, and Morpheus, who is imprisoned in a government building within the Matrix. The Agents attempt to gain information from him regarding access codes to the mainframe of Zion, the unplugged humans’ subterranean refuge in the real world. Neo and Trinity return to the Matrix and storm the building to rescue their leader. Neo becomes more confident and familiar with manipulating the Matrix, ultimately dodging bullets fired at him by an Agent. Morpheus and Trinity use a subway station telephone to exit the Matrix, but before Neo can leave, he is ambushed by Agent Smith. He stands his ground and eventually defeats Smith, but flees when the Agent possesses another body.

As Neo runs through the city toward another telephone exit, he is pursued by the Agents while "Sentinel" machines converge on the Nebuchadnezzar's position in the real world. Neo reaches an exit, but he is ambushed by Agent Smith and shot dead. In the real world, Trinity whispers to Neo that she was told by the Oracle that she would fall in love with "the One", implying that this is Neo. She refuses to accept his death and kisses him. Neo's heart beats again, and within the Matrix, Neo revives; the Agents shoot at him, but he raises his palm and stops their bullets in mid-air. Neo is able to perceive the Matrix as the streaming lines of green code it really is. Agent Smith makes a final attempt to kill him, but his punches are effortlessly blocked, and Neo destroys him. The other two Agents flee, and Neo returns to the real world in time for the ship's EMP weapon to destroy the Sentinels that had already breached the craft's hull. A short epilogue shows Neo back in the Matrix, making a telephone call promising that he will demonstrate to the people imprisoned in the Matrix that "anything is possible". He hangs up the phone and flies into the sky.

Visual effects

The film is known for popularizing the use of a visual effect known as "bullet time", which allows the viewer to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed.

One proposed technique for creating these effects involved propelling a high speed camera along a fixed track with a rocket to capture the action as it occurred. However, this was discarded as unfeasible, because not only was the destruction of the camera in the attempt all but inevitable, but the camera would also be almost impossible to control at such speeds. Instead, the method used was a technically expanded version of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography, in which a large number of cameras are placed around an object and triggered nearly simultaneously. Each camera is a still-picture camera, and not a motion picture camera, and it contributes just one frame to the video sequence. When the sequence of shots is viewed as in a movie, the viewer sees what are in effect two-dimensional "slices" of a three-dimensional moment. Watching such a "time slice" movie is akin to the real-life experience of walking around a statue to see how it looks from different angles. The positioning of the still cameras can be varied along any desired smooth curve to produce a smooth looking camera motion in the finished clip, and the timing of each camera's firing may be delayed slightly, so that a motion scene can be executed (albeit over a very short period of movie time).

Some scenes in The Matrix feature the "time-slice" effect with completely frozen characters and objects. Film interpolation techniques improved the fluidity of the apparent "camera motion". The effect was further expanded upon by the Wachowski brothers and the visual effects supervisor John Gaeta so as to create "bullet time", which incorporates temporal motion, so that rather than being totally frozen the scene progresses in slow and variable motion. Engineers at Manex Visual Effects pioneered 3-D visualization planning methods to move beyond mechanically fixed views towards more complicated camera paths and flexibly moving interest points. There is also an improved fluidity through the use of non-linear interpolation, digital compositing, and the introduction of computer generated "virtual" scenery. The movie was rendered on a FreeBSD cluster farm.[8]

The objective of the bullet time shots in The Matrix was to creatively illustrate "mind over matter" type events as captured by a "virtual camera". However, the original technical approach was physically bound to pre-determined perspectives, and the resulting effect only suggests the capabilities of a true virtual camera.

The evolution of photogrametric and image-based computer-generated background approaches in The Matrix's bullet time shots set the stage for later innovations unveiled in the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Virtual Cinematography (CGI-rendered characters, locations, and events) and the high-definition "Universal Capture" process completely replaced the use of still camera arrays, thus more closely realizing the "virtual camera".