“'Tron' movie reverse-ages Jeff Bridges - Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer” plus 1 more |
| 'Tron' movie reverse-ages Jeff Bridges - Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer Posted: 13 Dec 2010 10:06 PM PST LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood has famously had better luck using makeup to make young actors look old -- like Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind" -- than making old actors look young. But the ability to manipulate images digitally could prove to be a fountain of youth for some. In "Tron: Legacy," which opens Friday, 61-year-old actor Jeff Bridges will play Kevin Flynn, at his natural age, and a computerized avatar called "Clu," who hasn't aged since around the time he was first created in the original "Tron" in 1982. Clu bears Bridges' face, altered to make him about 35 years old, but it's grafted onto a younger actor's body. While it may be eerie for audiences to see a new performance from a younger-looking Bridges, it was no less strange for the actor himself. "It's bizarre. It's great news for me, because now it means I can play myself at any age," Bridges said.There have been digitally created faces before, even on fully animated bodies. Think Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings" or Dobby from "Harry Potter." But no movie yet has done what The Walt Disney Co.'s "Tron: Legacy" attempts -- putting an actor's rejuvenated face on a younger body, and in 3-D no less. Inevitably, the 61-year-old-turned-35-year-old face will be compared to Bridges when he was actually 35. "With Jeff, we can go rent 'Against All Odds' or 'The Fabulous Baker Boys' or 'Starman,' " visual effects supervisor Eric Barba said. "All this makes it incredibly difficult." The filmmakers did not want Bridges' Clu looking precisely as he did in 1982. The idea was that some time had elapsed, and Clu was meant to look like Bridges in "Against All Odds," which came out two years after the original "Tron." "In our mythology, Clu was created after the events of the first film," director Joseph Kosinski said. "This is Clu 2." Computers have already been used to roll back the years. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were made a couple of decades younger in scenes from "X-Men: The Last Stand" from 2006. Head alterations have happened, too. Helena Bonham Carter had an oversized cranium as the Red Queen in this year's "Alice in Wonderland," and the late Oliver Reed's face was put on a body double after he died during the shooting of "Gladiator," released in 2000. But the triple-toe-loop of complexity in "Tron: Legacy" is a notch tougher than all that. It also goes beyond the techniques that Barba and "Tron" animation supervisor Steve Preeg pioneered on Brad Pitt in the 2008 movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," for which they shared an Oscar for visual effects. Pitt was digitally remade to look older, but he was never re-engineered to appear as the younger actor who has been seen by countless millions on celluloid. By contrast, "we know what Jeff looks like and how he acted," Barba said. "It just means that people's perceptions will vary across the board." In "Tron: Legacy," Clu was created to help Bridges' character and the other program, Tron, build a perfect virtual world, but Clu turns evil with his own dark notions of building a virtual society. To make Clu, filmmakers made a silicon mold of Bridges' face and painted it like real flesh. They took multiple photos, put them into a computer and gave him a "digital face-lift" that took out wrinkles, tightened the skin and shrunk down his nose and ears. He then performed a series of facial movements, such as raising his outer left eyebrow or lifting his cheek. Those were recorded by camera and computerized in 3-D. Finally, when Bridges acted in scenes as Clu, he wore a helmet with four tiny cameras pointed at his face. Dozens of dots on his face acted as reference points for the computer. "Sometimes I could be in my street clothes and just have this weird helmet on," Bridges said. The captured expressions are replicated on his younger-looking self. Actor John Reardon mimicked Bridges in later takes and had his face swapped out later. Making sure Bridges' computerized head matched up with Reardon's body took artistry as well as high-tech. Preeg said filmmakers took more time looking at 160 Clu shots than they did at all the other 1,400 shots in the movie. And who knows? Their hard work could help other aging actors reprise roles they never had in the first place. "I think this technology opens up really interesting opportunities for actors," Kosinski said. The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of www.messenger-inquirer.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Movie Review: The Fighter Lands Some Punches, but Can't Deliver a Knockout - Entertainment Online Posted: 09 Dec 2010 06:28 PM PST B Review in a Hurry: The story of real-life boxing underdog "Irish" Micky Ward, The Fighter is OK as a gritty indie with great performances from Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. But the all too familiar Rocky-formula keeps it from being a total KO. Good thing director David O. Russell (Three Kings) injects his signature shock and awesome humor. MORE: 2010 Holiday Movie Guide The Bigger Picture: Massachusetts, the early '90s, Micky (Wahlberg) is a boxer other up-and-comers bout to move themselves up in the rankings. He's a professional rung on the ladder to bigger and better things. Micky wants a shot at a middleweight title, but he's managed by his less than adequate his older brother, Dickie (Bale), and their mom (Melissa Leo). Back in the '80s, Dickie coulda been a contender. He even knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard. But now he's a crack-addicted felon. Mom is worse, always looking to scam cash from her son's matches with no regard for his safety. As Micky, Wahlberg is the sane guy struggling to make good despite his backstabbing working-class clan. Lately, Wahlberg's found a niche for playing the straight man to his wilder costars. Opposite Bale, the sparks fly. The rest of the cast that includes Amy Adams as Micky's girlfriend, Charlene, (a hotter, less wallflower-like Adrian) is also stellar. Director Russell has a knack for balancing many story lines at once (like in the highly underrated I Heart Huckabees), which is useful since there are quite a few subplots thrown into the ring, mostly involving Micky's extended family. And his oft-used handheld style is sensational at highlighting the neighborhood grime. Speaking of grime, a documentary film crew is following Dickie around, hoping to capture his drug habit. Underweight and looking awful, Bale's an assortment of nervous ticks and crazy glances. This can get schticky quick, but Bale makes Dickie's desperation wildly fun to watch. When Dickie jumps out of a two-story building just so he can avoid his mom, the moment is outlandish, hilarious and unexpected. It's disappointing then that in the final round, Fighter plays out like a Southie version of Rocky. The fascinating family dynamic gets pushed aside for a can-he-win-the-big-fight finish. Micky even uses the rope-a-dope strategy of winning fights. He learned it from Dickie, who we're pretty sure got it from the Italian Stallion. The 180—a Second Opinion: As funny as the film is, some of the humor can be a bit too jokey. Nearly every scene that involves Micky's mom and his chorus of nagging sisters is peppered with lines that come too close to the bada bing, fuggedaboutit variety. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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