Good luck!

Oblivion is an interesting example. The gorgeous sky house was largely 'in camera' so to what extent is it VFX? Maybe it should be nominated for cinematography, and if it won, would make it back-to-back wins for DP Claudio Miranda (following up from Life of Pi).

Is there anyone who thinks Hermione would be romantically interested in Ron? At all? Maybe if the only two men left on earth were Harry's uncle and Ron, and Ron had a month's supply of Zolpidem, and a vibrating wand.

In the movies (I've never read the books), Ron was nothing more than the expendable sidekick for the hero. I kept waiting for his valiant sacrifice. Ron was plain to Hermione's perkiness, dim to Hermione's intelligence, damp and moody to Hermione's sassiness. It might have made sense in the books, but casted the way the movies were, their romantic involvement was unbelievable. Not that Harry and Ginevra had much chemistry either.

Jeff Goldblum has just reported to the White House that Ison's orbital trajectory has deflected and it's now heading right towards New York. Isonomegasharkopussnadoasteriod

Harry Potter 1 in preparation for the WAYDM marathon. T'was a'right s'pose. Discount LOTR. All the hero's journey tropes slapped together. By the numbers. Lose the parents. Check. Chosen one. Check. Whacky buddies. Check.

Yes, longer takes and a steadier camera and fewer elements on screen. Kubrick's cinematic grammar would have been ideal. Shaky-cam, trigger-happy editing, and Bay's 'fucking the frame' destroy the 3D experience. You'd think film-makers would have worked this out by now. And it's not like Cuarón adapted his style for 3D - long takes is what he's known for anyway, so it might have just been a fortunate coincidence.

The Matrix trilogy, with its ultra slow-mo bullet-time action sequences would have been suitable for 3D.

Now showing on the Sydney Morning Herald TV site...

http://www.smh.com.au/tv/Movies/2010-Mo … 12254.html

I've now seen all the Hobbit 1 extras, and the video blogs / trailers for the upcoming Hobbit 2, and to be honest, there's no indication these prequels will improve.

1. The move away from models and prosthetics to CG has allowed endless consequence-less action sequences that are shot/edited too fast for the audience to enjoy, especially in 3D. Having it PG13 and with indestructible characters doesn't help. Just looks and feels cartoony.

2. There's too many dwarves, and most have no personality or individual skills. It's a movie limitation that you have an upper limit on the number of characters the audience can have empathy for, especially if 50% of the movie is chasing/action/fighting scenes. In addition, half the dwarves don't even look like dwarves. Killi and Filli look like rangers. And at least two of the dwarves look retarded. Only Balin and Thorin stand out.

3. The humour doesn't work. At all. We get it - dwarves aren't well behaved at dinner.

4. Martin Freeman - wanted to like him, but he's too whiny. All he does is bitch. The emotional beats with Thorin were forced. And Bilbo is bland e.g. he expressed no wonder at seeing Rivendell the first time. Why does he suddenly want to help the dwarves with their quest at the end of AUJ - it was a pay-off with no set-up, as was the Thorin reconciliation. In LOTR, as Frodo became possessed, Sean Astin carried the emotional weight of the quest. There is no equivalent character here.

5. I get the sense Peter Jackson now has too much money and time and an sense of infallibility and he's lost his ability to generate interesting new ideas. This has happened to Lucas and Ridley Scott and no doubt other directors what have been showered with accolades.

Star Wars Down Under - An Aussie Star Wars fan film

Guess I gotta get round to finally watching these things

I can imagine that in 10 years time there'll be a program that lets you play Star Wars with what elements you like from what versions. There'll be a menu and you can select which opening scrawl, which audio track, what special edition scenes (if any), what fan edit additions or subtractions, matte lines fixed or not, models or CGI Battle of Yavin, new Kenobi wail from the BR box set, what colour lightsabers, etc. The combinations and permutations will be infinite. Everyone can have their own customized version of Star Wars.

At least if Hobbit 2 & 3 are bland/lame, we'll have the superb extras to look forward to.

I'm surprised how 'honest' these behind-the-scenes are - very rare for tentpoles so soon after they're released. Ian McKellen is shown spitting the dummy at least twice, the production crew are shown resistant to Peter Jackson's hare-drawn sled idea (is he becoming Lucas?) , the actors who played goblins are shown disappointed at being replaced by digital goblins, the actors are shown workshopping the script in the council of Eldrond scene, the AD is shown impatient with Christopher Lee's endless stories, etc.