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INTEREST: Akira Toriyama Draws Son Goku For Stephen Chow's Journey to the West Film


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the-antihero



Joined: 17 Aug 2010
Posts: 726
PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:35 pm Reply with quote
Honestly, this looks weird. Horrible CGI, cheesy action. Not interested.

Then again, CGI has never looked good. 90's Turtles (first movie) look more real than Bay Turtles and Predator looks fudging real and it's a dude in a costume and Alien was a lot more convincing.
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aidenkruez



Joined: 09 May 2007
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 10:02 pm Reply with quote
Already watched this movie on netflix. I really thought Stephen Chow did an excellent job with the movie. There are also a few hilarious twists in the movie such as how Sanzang obtained the sutra to defeat Sun Wukong.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:41 pm Reply with quote
the-antihero wrote:
Then again, CGI has never looked good. 90's Turtles (first movie) look more real than Bay Turtles and Predator looks fudging real and it's a dude in a costume and Alien was a lot more convincing.


It depends on what the CGI is used for. If it's an all-CGI production, as is Pixar stuff or ReBoot, it works. If it's used well and subtly, like crowd scenes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame it works too. In all of those cases, the art is highly stylized, whereas in stuff like The Polar Express, the Uncanny Valley comes into full effect.

Photorealistic CGI is at its best when it's used to animate something mechanical. The stories themselves might have much to want for, but the Transformers characters in the recent mvies look very, very nice.
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Looneygamemaster



Joined: 21 Jan 2012
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:46 pm Reply with quote
The movie's pretty much a live-action cartoon, so its CGI isn't just non-intrusive, it's fitting.

I thought it was a fun movie myself.
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the-antihero



Joined: 17 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:05 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:


It depends on what the CGI is used for. If it's an all-CGI production, as is Pixar stuff or ReBoot, it works. If it's used well and subtly, like crowd scenes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame it works too. In all of those cases, the art is highly stylized, whereas in stuff like The Polar Express, the Uncanny Valley comes into full effect.

Photorealistic CGI is at its best when it's used to animate something mechanical. The stories themselves might have much to want for, but the Transformers characters in the recent mvies look very, very nice.


1- The stuff you mentioned before paragraph 2 are all CARTOONS.

2- 'Bayformers characters look nice'? Please! They look junkyards having sex. Even the Junkions would consider them ugly.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:09 am Reply with quote
Well, that's all a matter of opinion. Certainly, the films brought in a ton of box office revenue (until Age of Extinction anyway).

Also, what's wrong with cartoons?
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:14 am Reply with quote
Think Stephen Chow started to go downhill when his movies turned into CONSTANTLY goofy CGI effects--
Shaolin Soccer had just a few low-tech ones, and it didn't interfere with the goofiness, but CJ7 was too caught up in the FX, and Kung Fu Hustle was just a mindless shambles.

(But I still say there's only one director who could do a true live-action Ranma 1/2...Or Dragon Ball either, for that matter. Very Happy )
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:15 am Reply with quote
Andy and Larry Wachowski? No wait, that's two.
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the-antihero



Joined: 17 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:23 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Well, that's all a matter of opinion. Certainly, the films brought in a ton of box office revenue (until Age of Extinction anyway).

Also, what's wrong with cartoons?


Honestly, I don't know how to respond to you. I'm talking about CGI used as special effects in live-action films.

Also, pretty much every summer blockbuster nowadays brings in a ton of revenue, good or bad, making your point rather moot, and it also tells me something about you since you're using revenue as a means to represent the quality of a film.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 3:20 am Reply with quote
Hey, my avatar is of a character from a movie animated using Adobe Flash.

You also didn't make it clear that you meant CGI in a live-action film. The phrase "CGI has never looked good" could be interpreted to be a blanket statement about all CGI (and it doesn't even have to be 3-D CGI; stuff like the witches in Madoka are 2-D CGI), which I have heard many times from animation purists, whose grudge extends even to Pixar.

In addition, summer popcorn flicks don't always earn a lot of money. Less than half of all movies a studio produces ends in a loss. Mr. Peabody & Sherman cost DreamWorks $60 million. The Lone Ranger cost Disney $80 million. Peter Jackson's King Kong barely broke even. And those are just the high-profile ones.

Also, that movies full of CGI special effects often bring in a lot of money means that they're popular. Whether or not something is popular or not is an objective statement and has weight in a discussion, whereas if something is good or bad is a subjective statement and has no purpose, as opinions inherently cannot be wrong.
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mdo7



Joined: 23 May 2007
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Location: Katy, Texas, USA
PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 11:04 am Reply with quote
@the-antihero: Not all CGI look horrible. I'll agreed the one from Stephen Chow look subpar. But you can't just jump to conclusion that all CGIs look lame.

Also, if you don't like the CGI Hollywood are coming out, there are foreign films that do a better job doing convincing CGI (even photo realistic one) then Hollywood.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 9:15 pm Reply with quote
BTW, this isn't the first Journey to the West film Chow's been involved in. He did a couple in the early 90s. But he starred in those, I think.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 10:29 pm Reply with quote
Well I enjoyed Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, so hopefully this will make it's way here.
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HeeroTX



Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 2046
Location: Austin, TX
PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 11:37 pm Reply with quote
This is out on DVD from someone. I rented it from RedBox. I loved Shaolin Soccer and really liked Kung Fu Hustle, but this was pretty subpar. The plot is really a mess and the characters are all pretty "meh". The best ones are really minor characters that you don't get much time with.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 11:00 am Reply with quote
Is it that a lot of these Chinese/Hong Kong are intentionally meant to be cheesy or is that many people think that they are so bad that they're unintentionally cheesy?
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