TIGAER-DESIGN.COM_.v5 – Digital Art by Christian Hecker

I can vividly remember the old Harryhausen monster movies. When i was a child they always were really entertaining. You don’t see all the crappy special effects. You almost admire them. “Oh you mean that movie where he fights the skeletons!”. Yes. That’s one of them. It was cool. Especially when you’re a boy.

Now when you grow up you realize that the movies are not that good. They have not lost their charme… but the entertaining part went into oblivion somehow. It’s a funny development when you realize how expectations rise with the time.

Now then you’re even older and you learn to love the old movies again. Not for what they are but for what they want to be. And they can be very entertaining again.

So much for the past. In todays age we have completely new possibilities to reinvent then worlds from yesterday. One movie that tries to do that it ‘Clash of the Titans’. I will not go into detail about the story since everyone surely knows it. Humans revolt against the gods. And the gods try to teach them another lesson of who’s the boss. Now this movie has some really high class actors on its payroll. Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and everybodys darling newcommer Sam Worthington. I still like Mr. Worthington. Even if i would love to see a movie with him having longer hair than the Marine look from Terminator Salvation. Nonetheless he, along with the others, give a good act. Certainly not the best but the movie doesn’t actually require that.

The movie, of course, has some nice eyecatchers. Beautiful Matte Painting animations. Great, nicely detailed monsters. Especially the Medusa looks great. I wished that part in the movie would have been a bit more psychological. Instead it’s a whole big fight. They could have really gotten into some great animation work when there were conversations. Maybe how Medusa tries to seduce one of the warriors to look at her. Unfortunately there is nothing. Another chance wasted to show how far digital acting has gone so far. Nonetheless the Medusa part was my favourite. The finale with the supermonster rising from the sea was quite an eyecatcher too. Really good work on that. I enjoyed the speed and camera work in that sequence.

Beside all the eyecandy the movie, from my pov, fails to build a solid connection to our main characters. I don’t know exactly what it is but i have had no character in that movie i could really connect to. I guess they could have invested a bit more time into Sam Worthingtons character. Generally a bit more psychology stuff would have been great. On the other hand this movie is not ‘Gladiator’.

Much like the old classic movie this one is entertaining. I would say it doesn’t want to be more. So if you want some cool action, nice animation work and some fantasy for your day off… then grab it and have some fun.

7.1/10 from me.

Clash Of The Titans on IMDb

Now there is a Pixar movie every year as well as a competitor… usually from Dreamworks. Pixar, so far, always made it when it came to awards and winning people’s hearts. The last 10 yrs a lot of animation studios came up and i can see a lot of competition coming. Trying to throw Pixar off its throne. However… this Dreamworks movie clearly is one that can hold up to the Pixar quality.

You probably already know what’s going on in the movie. A young boy, growing up in a dragon hunting viking village finds out why the dragons always were so aggressive soon after he found a friend in one. He helps that wounded dragon to sort of heal up and they both become friends and try to solve all the violence that is going on between the dragons and the humans. Of course there are a few other things going on too but i don’t want to go into too much detail. I myself have 5 pet birds and the movie manages it to build a connection to everyone who has or had a pet. How you try to nurture it. How you try to learn what it needs and what makes it happy. Until, in the end, you have some sort of friendship going on. The story builds on those experiences and it works great. The dragon, how it behaves and how great it’s animated… it’s very cute and yet manages it to convey some danger.

The technical aspect in general works great in this movie. The overall look is partially a big minimalistic but that’s the style nowadays i guess. Pixar had the same in ‘UP’. The character design and models is great. There are different kinds of dragons and all of the designs have a specialty and something lovely on them. You know that there went some time and love into them.

I watched this film in 2d. Actually it’s made for 3d. Sometimes it felt a big weird. You can kind of see when a 3d movie got 2d’fied. Some goes for the other way. Nontheless the camera work is rather nice. Especially the flight scenes really give you a sense of speed. They show how much fun it must be to ride that dragon. How the characters trust each other and have to trust each other to do something like that at all.

I had a lot of fun and would say that this is my fav animated movie for this year. I never was a ‘Toy Story’ fan and Pixars third movie doesn’t tickle me at all to be honest. But that’s just my opinion.

8.7/10 from me today.

How To Train Your Dragon on IMDb

I would say most people only go to the movies to watch all the big blockbusters with tons of explosions, action and dumb stupid storylines. (Transformers for example) And that’s ok i guess. Because for all the money they spend it’s only fair to have a fun nobrainer time. From time to time i would suggest though to watch a good drama. To see good actors, a good story and (most important) some heart. Basically something that widens the horizon you live with. Now ‘Crazy Heart’ surely is one of these movies. And it has all the positive attributes i mentioned above.

Since Jeff Bridges won the oscar for his performance in that movie i guess everyone kind of heard what the movie is about. Mr. Bridges plays an old country singer/songwriter who has his big days behind him and sees no light at the end of the tunnel. He’s depressed and aimless when suddenly a young woman steps into his life and gets him to change his way of life and brings back the luck to him. We see Mr. Bridges’ character struggling with himself. And he plays it all so great. You would almost think that there’s some autobiography element about himself in his performance. I don’t know anything about his private life but i guess he got his share of experiences that influenced his performance in this movie. Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays the young lady and mother that gets our main guy back on track, does a very believable job too. There is a lot of heart and pain in her character and the performance really shows it. There is also a Colin Farrell in this movie. He’s playing a young country singer who learned all he knows from Bridges’ character. Somehow in their past they split up and it marked the downfall of our main guy. Eventually they come together again and manage to clear up all the differences. Farrell really does a good job too. He IS a good actor… with amazing eyebrows! ;p

Overall i can only suggest this movie to every Jeff Bridges fan. I’m a fan of his since ‘Starman’ and ‘Tron’. The movie has a lot of heart and the music is great too. And i’m, by no means, a country music fan! Mr. Bridges also sings these songs himself. Which makes it even more special.

Go check it out. It’s a great one!

8.0/10 from me.

Crazy Heart on IMDb

Ever since the picture learned to move we remember our wars best in movies. May it be “All quiet on the western front”, “Paths of glory” or “Saving private ryan”. Just to name a few. All of them intense. All of them show the brutality of war. All of them show what war can do with an ordinary person. How it takes your life and makes it something you aren’t even able to explain to other people sometimes. People who haven’t experienced war.

Now this movie falls right into that line of movies. It’s a very smart movie too. In this movie we follow three soldiers stationed in Iraq. They are a special bomb squad and called in whenever there is something suspicious found anywhere in Baghdad. Kathryn Bigelow amazingly accomplishes it to create a suspense in these scenes when they are working on the bombs. The camera work is just great. It’s always an open movie. By that i mean that i never knew what will happen. Will the bomb go off. Will they make it. Will one of these guys be dead by the end of the movie. The plot was nicely unpredictable and i loved that. While we follow our main guys through their last 30 days of duty we can also get a glimpse at how it must be to live there. How dangerous it all is. How thin that ‘peace’ there actually is. It’s a world very hard to understand for our main characters. And not just for them. I couldn’t imagine to live there too. Always living in fear. On the other hand i guess to learn to process all the bad and sad circumstances there.

Jeremy Renner is our main character in this movie. I always liked him. I even had sympathies for his evil character in SWAT. I really loved the part he plays in this movie. You can understand the problems he’s having living in this war environment world but still having his head at home. Where he’s having tons of problems too. It’s almost like he’s fleeing into war. To not have to deal with all these nonsense normal life things. The other characters are played nicely too. Especially Brian Geraghty, who also did a remarkably job in “Jarhead” (very underrated movie from my POV), is doing nice work here too. It’s a similar role but nonetheless. I like to see him on the screen. We also have guest performances from people like Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes or David Morse. I love all these guys.

From a technical standpoint i would say that this movie is a perfect movie. It’s a very dry movie. And by that i don’t mean story wise or suspense wise. I mean that it’s a movie placed in a desert environment. And the movie is able to bring over that feel. The hotness. Dust everywhere. There is also almost no music in that movie. It must be one of the most quiet war movies i have ever seen. Because of that the sound fx really kick into gear and work so great. The explosions and the environment. It just works.

Check out his amazing piece of work. I highly recommend it. It’s my pick for the best film oscar this year.

8.5/10 from me today.

The Hurt Locker on IMDb

Recently i had the chance to finally see it. It’s one of these Sci-Fi movies that make you go ‘WOW’. The movie was made for 5 million dollars. And what a movie it is. It lives without to jump to tons of locations. Without superexpensive VFX. And it works great!

Storywise it’s about a man trapped on the moon, in a station/control center, watching over some mineral collectors. Huge machines crawling the moon surface. If there’s something wrong then it’s his job to look and fix it. He’s also trapped in a 3yr contract. A long time. The only other being he can talk to is Gerty. The concept of Gerty is similar to HAL 9000 from Kubricks 2001. It’s there to help and to make living a bit easier. Our lovely main guy has still 2 weeks to go when some weird things start to happen…

Sam Rockwell is one of the actors i really really love. He can do so much. A wide wide artistic arsenal. And that’s what he’s showing off in this movie. He’s basically the only person we see. It takes him almost no time and you connect to the character he’s playing. You feel for him and you hope for him to end the last 2 weeks without complications. He’s able to get across the isolation and what it does to you so amazingly well. When the things start to happen you can read the confusion in his face. You don’t actually need any words. He’s carrying the movie. And he’s doing it so good.

VFX wise there aren’t many scenes. But the ones we see are done nicely. Nothing that blows you away but good and absolutely believable.

The only disappointing thing was the too fast ending. The last two minutes so to say. The off comments when we look down to planet earth. I guess i would have chosen to deliver the infos via written text instead of spoken messages. But that’s two minutes of a 90 minute movie.

This movie gets a 8.0/10 from me.

Moon on IMDb

This is a movie i wanted to see on the big screen when it was in theaters. Unfortunately a nasty flu crossed my plans. However. I read a lot of reviews and almost every review had a bad tone. So i had no big expectations when i had the chance to watch it. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing to have. Because i somehow like this movie!

Alright alright. This movie has a lot of flaws. Indeed. But you will get a pretty solid action packed movie when you’re able to overlook them. It’s fun to watch. Even if it’s not what you would expect this sequel to be. It’s not the actual continuation of the series i had in mind when i heard of a 4th terminator movie.

Storywise it’s war. The machines have risen and try to search and destroy the last human being to get the control over the planet. What we see of earth is pretty depressing. A giant desert and destroyed cities. John Connor is a grown man now and leader of a resistance cell near Los Angeles. Christian Bale does play the John Conner in a solid way. Exactly how you would expect him to play Connor. Now he is not directly the focus of the story in this movie. It’s more focused on Marcus Wright, played by Sam Worthington. He’s a machine who doesn’t know he’s a machine. He still feels and thinks like a human. Worthington plays his part really good. Reading his face you never know what exactly he’s up to. Now with him being in Avatar, a leading role too, it’s really nice to see someone new stepping up. I already like to see more of him. Eventually Marcus Wright and John Connor meet up and have to work together. That leads us to some very interesting places.

The VFX are really cool and nicely executed. Not much more to say here. It’s pure fun to watch the destruction and action sequences unfold. I think ILM did a nice job there.

It’s a good fun movie. Check it out if you’re bored!

This movie gets a 7.5/10 from me.

Terminator: Salvation on IMDb

Now, finally, i made the movie to grace my eyes with its sheer beauty. It was a torture to get good seats in our imax here. And i wanted good seats for it! Almost desperately. That’s the movie freak in me.

Alright, the movie. Well, what i can i say. It met my expectations… but didn’t blow them away. When it comes to the story then it’s feeling a bit rushed. Even for its 160 minutes playtime. I would have wished myself to see earth. As a contrast to what we’re seeing in the movie and why the humans are so desperately trying to get those minerals. All that backstory is missing. All we know is that there’s this big company who wants these minerals… at all costs. The rest of the story suits just fine. I didn’t want to see a movie with a deeper meaning. I wanted entertainment and great visuals. And that’s something i witnessed on quite a few movie websites the past weeks. Most of them ‘literally’ hate the movie. Gave it a bad rating and such. Of course it’s not a breakthrough starwars (1977) but man… it’s a good movie. It got speed, tons of eyecatchers, nice characters and a somewhat good story. That’s three more than 2012 for example. Some people get lost in their expectations and lose sight of what something, no matter what it is, actually wants to be.

The characters in the movie are divided in typical good and bad parts. The characters are also not particularly deep. But our actors try to make the best of it and i think they succeed. Sigourney Weaver for example plays a smaller part but still managed to make her appearance memorable. The bad guys really are bad guys and you soon learn to hate them for their short-sightedness. The transition Sam Worthington’s character makes is well translated too. Well it all can be done better and so it is here. But again… for what the movie wants to be… it’s doing its job fine. So much for the live action characters. But i guess the same goes for the digital characters. Even though i think they couldn’t have been done better. That includes the acting.

The VFX… well, what to say here. They’re pretty much amazing. For me it’s not the ultimate breakthrough and everything… but what they really did was to push current technologies to the limits. With success! The planet looks like a place i would love to explore. The animals, the plant life and the whole environment feels very real and detailed. Especially the 3D effect does a lot of magic there. It’s the quiet and slow scenes that make the world come to life. It’s like you’re right there, in the middle of everything. Nice experience.

Ultimately this movie represents the perfect so called ‘popcorn movie’. It’s pure entertainment. And with the already open discussion of more movies… i’m sure we will see even more fantastic places of pandora. And hopefully some backstory to why the humans are so desperate for that mineral.

This movie gets a 8.2/10 for me.

Avatar on IMDb

Alright. Another world destruction porn from the director who graced our screens with movies like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 10.000bc. Mr. Roland Emmerich. Mr. apocalypse.

For me, to be honest, there was no other reason to see the movie than the VFX. I didn’t care for the story at all and went to see the movie without any expectations. It turned out that i made a wise decision in doing so. A lot of story parts and the whole structure strongly reminded me on Independence Day. Independence Day was one of the first movies i really waited for back then. I tried to catch every tv report of it and couldn’t wait to see it. I saw it the day it was released and it wasn’t able to hold up on the expectations i had. Sure it was a fun ride but overall… flat. I hoped for a more global movie. Not just focussed in the united states. So much for the past…

Now 2012 does a few things better than ID4 did. It shows a little bit more on a global scale. It’s not totally focussed on the united states. Scientifically… well you shouldn’t even use that word in context with the movie. The acting was flat too. What makes me come to the conclusion that this director will never be able to do a movie with heart and soul. Roland Emmerich is a technical director. There are so many high class actors in that movie that aren’t pushed enough. They could have given that movie so much more than they actually did. John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson. Man… what a cast! Every single one of them was so far away from what they are able to do! Well… Woody Harrelson, playing the weirdo, was doing what he basically always does. So his performance for that particular role was the best in the whole movie. I love him in such roles. But all the others… flat. The Day After Tomorrow had a liiittle bit heart in it. The relationship between father and son. What the father does to rescue his son. There was, for me, an easy way to connect with our heroes. And it was played better by the actors. No idea why. But in 2012 i never got connected to one of the characters. “Of course they’ll make it!” They always do. It’s more guessing who of the unneccessary characters dies. You somehow can tell right away. and you wait for it to happen. And when it happens you think “finally!”.

Alright, enough ranting. Now to the fun part. The VFX. They are good. You really can’t complain and you totally see where all the budget went. The part where they escape from L.A. is literally breathtaking. A rollercoaster ride. When everything falls apart and the earth cracks open… it’s fun to see. So rich of detail. Makes me want to have the renderfarms these guys had to do these fx. Unfortunately you get so bombarded with eyecandy that you soon start to think “oh yes, another explosion…” or “i know what’ll happen… the plane crashes… what else…”. It’s not boring but very predictable. Too predictable.

And that’s what ruins the movie for me. No surprises. You always know what will happen. And then it happens…

A suggestion… check out Emmerichs “Moon 44”. I dug this out a while ago and really enjoyed it. I grew up with that movie and its design and style. It’s outdated but storywise much better than 2012.

My rating for it is 6.8/10.

2012 on IMDb

There are a bazillion of Vietnam movies out there. Oliver Stone surely made the most rememberable ones. Platoon (1986) for example delivers a very realistic picture of what happened during that time to the individual soldier who served in the war. Well, realistic. I wasn’t there. But Stone was. And i bet he saw quite some disturbing things.

The movie “Born on the Fourth of July” from 1989 shows what a government can do to people who enlist to serve because of the love for their country. How a country is using its people. After the book from Ron Kovic who is the main character of the story in the movie. Basically it’s about a young man who just finished school and enlists for the US Marines to serve in the early stages of the Vietnam war. A few friends of him too. There are not many of them coming back. Ron probably lives through every single horror that a war comes with and tries desperately to live with it. He gets wounded and paralyzed. He tries everything to learn to walk again but he will never be able to do that again. Conditions in the hospitals were unbelievably bad. He comes home, changed from what he lived through, just to see how his loved country hates what happens in Vietnam. The soldiers as well. How must it feel to fight for your country, seeing people die for your country, and when you come home all you get is hate. No respect. No understanding. Rons world is falling appart. He meets up with old friends from school. One of them returns from Vietnam too. Ron hates all the activists and hippies that fight for peace. He doesn’t understand how these people can hate their country so much. Slowly he begins to understand his own experiences from the war and starts to sympathize with the activists. He becomes a big figure in the american anti-war fight.

There are a few scenes in the film where Tom Cruise almost looks like Charlie Sheen in Platoon. Cruise, just like Sheen a few years earlier, did a remarkable job. Cruise really made it to show the love Kovic had for his country before the war. A true patriotic. The slow change he lives through in the war and the hospital. And the complete change at home. Living with the feeling that his beloved country wasted thousands of young mens lives in a pretty much completely needless war. Oscar nomination for Cruise.

Technically it’s an Oliver Stone movie through and through. Fantastic camera work. Beautiful compositions. Great music from John Williams. Overall a movie you shouldn’t miss. It’s a movie with a message and you can learn something about history. Can’t be a wrong thing. :)

My rating for it is 7.9/10. Well deserved. =)

Born on the Fourth of July on IMDb

Today we have a movie that was on my list for ages. I always read good things about it and noticed its good reputation. Now i finally found some time to check it out.

This movie shows a very young Al Pacino in his early glorious days. The movie is about some guys who plan to rob a bank. But the execution of the plan fail quite dramatically. Now they’re trapped in this building, surrounded by a ton of cops. The movie portraits the situation that really happened in New York 1972. Now the people who work in the bank soon understand the situation together with the guys who planned to rob the bank. John Cazale and Al Pacino try to master their situation and try to keep everything under control. Soon they develop a friendly situation with their hostages and all of them try to get out of the misery they landed in. While outside hell breaks lose and tons of TV stations send the drama live on television. The police is also trying to maintain order and has a hard job to do so. Negotiations between Pacinos character and a police chief start and both are looking for a way to clean this mess up.

This is a very rough explanation of the overall story. The movie works almost completely without music. Which keeps the overall drama on very high levels. Pacinos performance, as well as the other actors, works very good. You can see the tension in his eyes and face. He’s really trying to find a way out. The overall atmosphere in the movie, the setting and location shows a perfect picture of a New York in the early 70s. We’re not talking about the upper class New York. Not manhattan. It’s a bit outside the city and therefor captures a realistic mixture of people and detail.

The camera work and technical things are also ahead of their time i would say. It’s hard to believe that it’s a movie from the 1970s. Composition, camera angles really do a fine job. Especially when it’s focussed on Pacinos character. When he’s moving around like a trapped wolf. Capturing the emotions in his face and his movements really makes the camera in this movie work stand out.

So ladies and gentlemen. If you want to make yourself a nice movie evening with a good 2h movie that makes you want to know more about what really happened in 1972… then check out this one. Beside all that i think this movie is quite a nice document for its time. A little bit of history. My recommendation!

Solid 8.1/10 for me.

Dog Day Afternoon on IMDb