Reel FX is a Dallas-based company that has seen their fair share of the commercial animation world. In the last two decades, they have lent their digital magic to a multitude of projects, both large and small. The company also maintains a Santa Monica location but the unassuming brick building here in North Texas houses a multitude of digital artists – ones well-versed in the field of computer animation. Founded 20 years ago, the company began doing service work and were one of the first to have the “Flame” software (their current circle logo is loosely based on that fact). Over time, their projects grew in size, as did their commercial…
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The Issue With X-Men: Days of Future Past
I got goosebumps at the end of The Wolverine just like most X-Men fans. To see some of the cast reunited is something special in Hollywood. But reality isn’t always kind. The reason the cast of the original X-Men trilogy was back was to simply make another film. Sure, every now and then we get something grand. But in this case, we get a hurried script that benefits from the building of Wolverine over five of the six X-Men films, the past versions of the X-Men characters complete with a stellar cast, and the opportunity to have the originals bring in their own fandom. It’s a trifecta that surely will…
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Hollywood Hits and The Music of John Williams with The Dallas Symphony Orchestra
The glamour and excitement of Tinseltown come alive when the DSO presents famous movie soundtracks from films like Star Wars, Jaws, Goldfinger, Silverado, Pirates of the Caribbean and more. Take your seat for the best in entertainment with music that ignites the senses in sonic splendor only heard at the Meyerson Symphony Center. But before the lights go down on the evenings of June 6-8, here’s a little glimpse of what to expect from the world-renowned Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The following text is from the essay we contributed to the playbill for this Pops concert. The Hollywood Golden era was a wondrous time in cinema history. The period between the…
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Happy Birthday to Us…Go,See,Talk Turns 5!
Yes, you read that right, the little blog that could, Texas’ own GoSeeTalk has hit the 5 year mark. But as joyous as this moment in internet history is, it’s also a bit sad. Well, more like bittersweet as this Dallas-based movie themed website is going to be changing gears, focus, and streamlining our content. You may have noticed more promo screenings since the beginning of this month. Well that’s because we’re changing it up and putting focus on what we believe is important. Reason being is that chasing news stories each day is just too ambitious for the resources and time allotted in the professional and personal lives of…
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So Long and Thanks For All the Fish!
(I write this on the eve of a special site-impacting announcement, because in light of what’s to come, we at Go, See, Talk! want you the reader to be aware of what’s ahead for us. Don’t worry, this isn’t a precursor to doom and gloom – quite the opposite in fact – but we wanted to keep all the information from being lumped into a long catch-all post that may or may not be overlooked. Again good news follows so gather around film fans. Here…we…go.) Five years. That’s a lot of time to account for. Of course, I personally only need to account for part of it; I only began…
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Of Horn & Ivory: The Odyssey Of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
For an ostensible, totally loose biopic about Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis leans rather heavily on an incredibly serendipitous allusion to The Odyssey, and more than a decade after releasing O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to boot. A story about one man’s navigations through the choppy waters of New York’s 1960’s folk music scene might be the last place anybody would expect to find references to Homer’s ancient epic; leave it to Joel and Ethan Coen to subvert expectations, then, because their film practically hinges on a synchronized collision between hoary fiction and the more recent, very real history of Van Ronk and the folk revival movement he contributed to – at least as far…
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Solomon Survives: The Modernity Of ’12 Years a Slave’
From behind the iron-barred basement windows of a faceless tenement building nestled alongside so many others that look just like it, a man frantically cries out for aid. His words echo fruitlessly, bouncing between alleyways and sidewalks as they’re smothered by the brick facade of the structures surrounding him; his pleas goes unanswered, leaving him utterly trapped, robbed of his freedom and with no means of alerting his family or his friends – hours away in Saratoga – of his plight. But he continues to make appeals to the deserted street, and as he does, the camera pans up, revealing that this heartbreaking display of hopelessness and isolation is unfolding…
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A 3D Movie In Any Other Format Would Be As Great…
“Great movies are the ones that stay great no matter where you watch them.” Seventy three characters never read so compellingly. This little nugget popped up in my Twitter feed Friday afternoon on October 4th, a direct result of the mid-afternoon jamboree that took place on the opening day for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. You may be familiar with this film by now; it’s the one where Sandra Bullock and George Clooney spin aimlessly through space for roughly ninety minutes in the long, unbroken shots that serve as Cuarón’s calling card (and have done since 2001’s Y Tu Mamá También). According to the Internet, you should probably – probably – make a…
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‘Blue Jasmine’: Empathy For The Elite
Blue Jasmine is a film about the 1% and Bernie Madoff that actually isn’t about either of these things at all; they’re elements of window dressing rather than substance, as Woody Allen’s eponymous heroine might herself declare. They only comprise the film’s backdrop, against which Allen fashions his examination of Jasmine’s shame, guilt, and inability to assume personal responsibility over her life, while also posing a fundamental question whose answer invariably shapes our response as the audience. Can we accord sympathy to a has-been member of America’s obscene wealth culture? If no, then Blue Jasmine may resemble a variation on cruel revenge fantasy, or simply play out as a colossal waste of time.…
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Lighting The Affleck Signal
Preface: I don’t really have a dog in the entire “who should play Batman next” fight, and as a general rule I don’t find rampant fan-casting to be either productive or a rewarding use of my time*. More than that, I don’t really care for the current big-screen iteration of Batman (outside of The Dark Knight, a film I enjoy but consider flawed, I think Nolan’s Bat-franchise happens to be one of the most overrated contemporary movie trilogies), and I presume that DC’s intention going forward is to rely on those films as canon when building their Justice League brand in time to counter Marvel’s Avengers pictures. And yet here…
