Australia, Wonder Woman, Watchmen Motion Comic on DVD/Blu-ray for March 3
AUSTRALIA, WATCHMEN MOTION COMIC, WONDER WOMAN and BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA hit Blu-ray and DVD on March 3, along with the DVD releases of SPONGEBOB VS. THE BIG ONE and volumes of CHOWDER and THE SMURFS.
AUSTRALIA on DVD and Blu-ray
Venture down under into an epic and romantic action-adventure set in a country on the brink of war when AUSTRALIA debuts on Blu-ray and DVD March 3 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Ent. with vfx by Animal Logic, Photon VFX, Complete Post, Digital Pictures Iloura, Evil Eye Pictures, Framestore, Fuel VFX, Hydraulx, The LaB Syndney, Lola Visual Effects and Rising Sun Pictures.
Filmed on-location in the vast outback, AUSTRALIA marks Baz Luhrmann's third collaboration with Nicole Kidman and is the first feature film produced as part of a planned trilogy of epic works. The film also represents the work of his wife and creative partner, double Oscar-winning costume designer Catherine Martin (MOULIN ROUGE!, ROMEO + JULIET). Featuring performances from many Aussie natives, the film also stars David Wenham (THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING), Jack Thompson (MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL), Bryan Brown (ALONG CAME POLLY) and young Aboriginal Brandon Walters in his feature film debut.
Set in Australia on the brink of World War II, Lady Sarah Ashley, an English Aristocrat (Kidman), travels to the faraway continent where she has inherited a cattle ranch, owned by her late husband. When Australian cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn local known as The Drover (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor. When tragedy strikes and Lady Sarah becomes unofficial guardian to a "half-caste" boy, the unlikely couple must come to terms with a prejudiced society, dishonorable business associates and the impending arrival of the Japanese.
Luhrmann tapped Rising Sun Pictures, based in Sydney and Adelaide, to create more than 150 shots for the film, including animating the cattle for the drove sequences using the facility's in-house crowd system, Posse.
CG Supervisor Carsten Kolve says that when Rising Sun started on the project 18 months ago, it evaluated all the crowd system options and stuck with Posse.
"We basically decided the amount of work that it takes to integrate it into our pipeline might as well be spent investing into our own infrastructure and bringing that up to speed and then not having to deal with issues like high license costs," he explains.
Posse also was already tied into Venom, Rising Sun's in-house 3D infrastructure. Venom's ability to let visual effects artists create geometry as late as the render phase provided the kind of flexibility the project required, Kolve adds.
"We're dealing with just skeletons most of the time directly in Maya and then, when it comes to render time, we would actually bind the skeleton with the geometry applied the shader and render the complete individual cow or many of them on demand, which made the whole rendering process very efficient," he says.
Blu-ray Special Features Include:
-- Australia: The people, the history, the location featurette
-- Deleted Scenes
-- Behind-the-Scenes: Photography, Production Design, Costume Design, Locations, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, Music, Visual Effects
DVD Special Features Include:
-- Deleted Scene: What about the drove?
-- Deleted Scene: Angry staff serve dinner
BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA on DVD and Blu-ray
A pampered pooch gets caught up in a "ruff"-and-tumble comedy adventure in BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA, available on DVD and Blu-ray on March 3, 2009 from Walt Disney Studios Home Ent. When a diamond-clad, bootie-wearing Beverly Hills beauty gets lost on a Mexican vacation, she proves that good things really do come in small packages. The film's vfx was by Tippett Studio, Cinesite, Image Engine Design, K.N.B. Effects Group, Kerner Optical, Proof, Realscan 3D and Svengali Visual Effects.
AUSTRALIA on DVD and Blu-ray
Venture down under into an epic and romantic action-adventure set in a country on the brink of war when AUSTRALIA debuts on Blu-ray and DVD March 3 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Ent. with vfx by Animal Logic, Photon VFX, Complete Post, Digital Pictures Iloura, Evil Eye Pictures, Framestore, Fuel VFX, Hydraulx, The LaB Syndney, Lola Visual Effects and Rising Sun Pictures.
Filmed on-location in the vast outback, AUSTRALIA marks Baz Luhrmann's third collaboration with Nicole Kidman and is the first feature film produced as part of a planned trilogy of epic works. The film also represents the work of his wife and creative partner, double Oscar-winning costume designer Catherine Martin (MOULIN ROUGE!, ROMEO + JULIET). Featuring performances from many Aussie natives, the film also stars David Wenham (THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING), Jack Thompson (MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL), Bryan Brown (ALONG CAME POLLY) and young Aboriginal Brandon Walters in his feature film debut.
Set in Australia on the brink of World War II, Lady Sarah Ashley, an English Aristocrat (Kidman), travels to the faraway continent where she has inherited a cattle ranch, owned by her late husband. When Australian cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn local known as The Drover (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor. When tragedy strikes and Lady Sarah becomes unofficial guardian to a "half-caste" boy, the unlikely couple must come to terms with a prejudiced society, dishonorable business associates and the impending arrival of the Japanese.
Luhrmann tapped Rising Sun Pictures, based in Sydney and Adelaide, to create more than 150 shots for the film, including animating the cattle for the drove sequences using the facility's in-house crowd system, Posse.
CG Supervisor Carsten Kolve says that when Rising Sun started on the project 18 months ago, it evaluated all the crowd system options and stuck with Posse.
"We basically decided the amount of work that it takes to integrate it into our pipeline might as well be spent investing into our own infrastructure and bringing that up to speed and then not having to deal with issues like high license costs," he explains.
Posse also was already tied into Venom, Rising Sun's in-house 3D infrastructure. Venom's ability to let visual effects artists create geometry as late as the render phase provided the kind of flexibility the project required, Kolve adds.
"We're dealing with just skeletons most of the time directly in Maya and then, when it comes to render time, we would actually bind the skeleton with the geometry applied the shader and render the complete individual cow or many of them on demand, which made the whole rendering process very efficient," he says.
Blu-ray Special Features Include:
-- Australia: The people, the history, the location featurette
-- Deleted Scenes
-- Behind-the-Scenes: Photography, Production Design, Costume Design, Locations, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, Music, Visual Effects
DVD Special Features Include:
-- Deleted Scene: What about the drove?
-- Deleted Scene: Angry staff serve dinner
BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA on DVD and Blu-ray
A pampered pooch gets caught up in a "ruff"-and-tumble comedy adventure in BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA, available on DVD and Blu-ray on March 3, 2009 from Walt Disney Studios Home Ent. When a diamond-clad, bootie-wearing Beverly Hills beauty gets lost on a Mexican vacation, she proves that good things really do come in small packages. The film's vfx was by Tippett Studio, Cinesite, Image Engine Design, K.N.B. Effects Group, Kerner Optical, Proof, Realscan 3D and Svengali Visual Effects.
Printer-friendly version
Post new comment