Irish Pipers - Fourth of July 2010

An Irish piper band "rehydrating" at FInnegan's during the 2010 Fourth of July parade in downtown Novato playing "Dawn of the Day". Apologies for the crappy quality but my iphone couldn't handle all of the awesomeness.

Rango Movie Trailer

Based on an original idea by Verbinski, Rango is scripted by The Aviator scribe John Logan. Johnny Depp stars as an Hawaiian-shirt-wearing “chameleon with an identity crisis.” Previous information has stated that Rango is ”a oddly charismatic household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self.” The movie co-stars Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant as The Spirit of the West.

But the most interesting thing about this new project is that Industrial Light & Magic will be doing the animation using “cutting edge techniques” that Verbinski has said, “will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny’s performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature.” Basically it sounds like Verbinski has gone the way of Robert Zemeckis. Uh... that didn't work out too well for us at IMD.

Toy Story 3 Easter Eggs

Pixar loves to hide Easter eggs in their films, little references to movies and characters from the animation studio’s past and future. two years ago we put together a compilation of WALL-E easter eggs, and last year we published a listing of easter eggs in Up, so we decided to do the same thing for Pixar’s latest film, Toy Story 3. We’ve found over 60 easter eggs and bits of fun trivia, our most extensive easter egg feature to date!

If you haven’t seen the film, be warned that this article references and scenes from the film which may be considered spoilers. I’ve tried to keep plot details out of this or vague. All of the screenshots were compiled through trailers, commercials and the batch of clips that Pixar has released to promote the movie (I’m sure there are many more easter eggs hidden in the 80% of the movie not online). Enjoy!

First Look: The Characters of Rango

Last week, Paramount Pictures released a teaser trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski’s computer animated feature film Rango.Well actually, the teaser trailer wasn’t really a trailer at all — it was actually a video announcement piece for the website - RangoMovie.com. The website featured the same open road location seen in the announcement piece, with not much else.

On Wednesday, the site was updated with a few objects - the orange windup fish seen in the announcement piece, a small plastic palm tree, an old radio that plays music, a large toad, a mole, and a guitar. All the objects are interactive. If you touch the radio, music plays. If you toach the sleeping toad he complains, if you play the guitar enough, an Owl will come out and play a song for you. So here is your sneak preview at the characters for Rango.

A real movie trailer is expected to premiere later this month.

Based on an original idea by Verbinski, Rango is scripted by The Aviator scribe John Logan. Johnny Depp stars as an “chameleon with an identity crisis.” PRevious information has stated that Rango is “a oddly charismatic household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self.” The movie co-stars Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant as The Spirit of the West.

But the most interesting thing about this new project is that Industrial Light & Magic will be doing the animation using “cutting edge techniques” that Verbinski has said, “will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny’s performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature.” Basically it sounds like Verbinski has gone the way of Robert Zemeckis.

Rango it set to hit theaters on March 18th 2011.

Google Command Line

Google Command Line: "Ever wanted to upload a folder full of photos to Picasa from a command prompt? We did, a lot, last summer. It made us want to say:

$ google picasa create --title 'My album' ~/Photos/vacation/*.jpg

So we wrote a program to do that, and a whole lot more.

GoogleCL is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.

For example:

$ google blogger post --blog 'My blog' --tags 'python, googlecl, development' my_post.html
$ google calendar add 'Lunch with Jason tomorrow at noon'
$ google docs edit --title 'Shopping list' --editor vim

GoogleCL is a pure Python application that uses the Python gdata libraries to make Google Data API calls from the command line."

A Conversation with Dennis Muren

A Conversation with Dennis Muren:

The A List Series presents conversations with Authors, Artists, Athletes Adventurers, Academics and Anarchists Star Wars, Wall-E and Human Nature: The Unconventional Mind of a Special Effects Genius A Conversation with Dennis Muren Interviewed by Joan Ryan Wednesday, June 16  7:30pm $15.00 General Admission, $12.00 Students/Seniors Buy tickets or call 415.383.9600 Dennis Muren has nine Oscars on his mantle, winning Best Achievement in Visual Effects for such movies as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., and Jurassic Park. He is the first visual effects artist to be honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His work takes our breath away. But his  genius is less about technology and more about the art of observation. Muren’s stunning, other-worldly creations come from a very earthly understanding of storytelling and human nature. He is the Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, and he is currently finishing a book on “Inspiration & Observation’’ for computer artists. Joan Ryan is an award-winning journalist and author. Her most recent book is “The Water Giver: The Story of a Mother, a Son and Their Second Chance,’’ a memoir published by Simon & Schuster in 2009.  Ryan was a pioneer in sports journalism, becoming one of the first female sports columnists in the country. She then went on to writing op-ed columns and city columns for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her first book, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters’’ (1995, Doubleday) was a controversial, ground-breaking expose that Sports Illustrated named one of the “Top 100 Sports Books of All Time.’’ The A List Series presents conversations with Authors, Artists, Athletes, Adventurers, Academics and Anarchists.

MARS!

Great short film by Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham. Umm…drill, baby, drill?

MARS! from Joe Bichard on Vimeo.