Bill Desowitz's Recent Posts

PIGLET'S BIG MOVIE (Buena Vista Home Entertainment, $29.99) hits the DVD shelves July 29, 2003 featuring extra goodies such as PIGLET'S BIG BOOK OF MEMORIES (find Piglet's lost drawings) and THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PIGLET (a 3D book of memories filled with favorite "Pigletisms"). The movie provides the lovable pink fellow with his first starring role (voiced by John Fiedler in his 35th year doing the cherished role). PIGLET was directed by Francis Glebas (FANTASIA 2000's "Pomp & Circumstance"), produced by Disney Toon Studios and animated by Walt Disney Animation Japan.

This year's SIGGRAPH is expected to draw more than 25,000 computer graphics and interactive technology professionals and 200 exhibitors at the San Diego Convention Center, July 27-31, 2003. The conference (Sunday through Thursday) includes a July 28 keynote address, "Modeling the Cosmos: The Shape of the Universe," by Cambridge University astrophysicist Anthony Lasenby (8:00-9:45 am, Room 20A-C).

Paramount's LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE (with VFX by Cinesite (Europe) Ltd., Double Negative and the Moving Picture Co.) will open July 25, 2003 against Universal's SEABISCUIT (with VFX by Pixel Playground Inc., Sony Pictures Imageworks and The Orphanage).

Visual effects compositor John Scheer has joined Company 3 Los Angeles, which has stepped up its involvement in high-def TV commercials and VFX production for feature films. Prior to taking this staff position, Scheer freelanced under the name Scheer FX. His credits include spots for DirectTV (Deutsch, Los Angeles) and Miller Lite (Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago). Scheer was previously on staff at 525 Studios, where he worked on music videos for Destiny's Child, Elton John, Sisqó and Leann Rimes.

BOXX Technologies, a leading developer of XXTreme award-winning digital content creation systems for the design, entertainment and digital film industries, now offers the new NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 series of professional graphics solutions in its 3DBOXX workstations. These new professional graphics solutions make advanced high-resolution visualization accessible to more professionals in the video postproduction and broadcast markets.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 Features

Softimage's SOFTIMAGE|XSI software is being introduced to two Master of Fine Arts programs at USC's School of Cinema-Television: Interactive Media and Animation and Digital Arts. According to the university, this is to help meet industry demands for professionally educated animators and digital media creators.

With a one-two punch of his own, producer Jerry Bruckheimer ruled the weekend box office like no other producer before him, with BAD BOYS II debuting impressively at an estimated $46.7M and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL hauling in a hefty $33.2M in its sophomore turn. At least for the moment, the curse of the summer sequel has been given a respite.

Northern California-based VFX house ESC Entertainment was originally funded by Warner Bros. to handle the bulk of the work on the MATRIX trilogy, which cost more than $100 million. But now the studio has decided to expand ESC's role by having it take a lead or secondary role in all of its event films, VARIETY reports.