So here is my take on the latest installment in the Harry Potter movie franchise, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This is the fifth film (in total, seven will be made) and the book is the longest in the entire series, which is a bit odd since the movie is the shortest so far. Well, let’s get started!

Harry Potter’s fifth movie begins with a bang, when Dementors (monsters that consume your soul) attack him and his muggle-cousin (a muggle is a non-magical human being) Dudley Dursley. Harry uses his skills in magic to fight off the evil dementors, but is quickly confronted by the Ministry of Magic who are now putting him on trial for performing magic in front of muggle. Luckely, Harry Potter is released of all charges against him and continues with his fifth year at Hogwarts. And since another year equals yet another Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, since former ones have died, turned into warewolves and other crazy stuff. This time their new Dark Arts teacher is a woman from the Ministry of Magic (who many fear to be deeply corrupted in the denial of the return of Voldemort, Harry’s arch-nemesis) called Dolores Umbridge. She strives to make the school a more controlled and strict place, which causes problems both for Harry and his friends, all this while Harry’s struggeling to keep out the dark thoughts of Voldemort, that appearantly has invaded his mind. I won’t go into further details of the story, as I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone who has read the book. I feared that the story of this fifth book might be hard to pull off in such a short period of time, but I must say I think the writers of the screenplay have done a fantastic job tying together all the plot points while still not making any scenes feel too hurried or too slow. I enjoyed the whole movie from beginning to end, and it’s story-wise the best and most emotional movie so far in the franchise.

Another thing that’s often brought up in “kids’ movies” like this is the subject of acting. It’s hard to rely almost only on three young actors for the entire movie (even if they are now 17, 18 and 19 years old they all look the same age) but they do all do a great job in portraying their characters. And it’s really a lot better than the previous movies, in which I thought the acting was actually pretty damn good. And there’s as always a lot of famous adult actors too, such as Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman and Alan Rickman (Hans Gruber in Die Hard!) as the potion teacher Snape. Ralph Fiennes (without a nose) is stunning as Voldemort, and fits perfectly in the role against both Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry Potter and Michael Gambon’s Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts school.

So what about the visual effects? In all movies so far the visual fx have always been fantastic and this one is by no means an exception. While the beginning half of the movie isn’t very action-packed the final half including the amazing end battle is nothing short of breathtaking absolute, pure, entertainment. It would be pretty awesome to see this movie in the United States or in the United Kingdom where the end battle is all in glorious Imax 3d!

The sound design is great, and no effects sound out of place, which I assume is pretty much the perfect verdict (as all Visual FX guys say, they feel that they’ve done a great job when no-one notices their work. The music, done by Anthony Hopper, is great and one track that plays during the first appearance of the Order of the Phoenix. I think it’s just as classic as the original Harry Potter score (even if this track is way shorter) and it would be great to have in the inevitable final movie credits score (that always play classic scores from all the movies, listen to the credits sequence of Star Wars Episode 3 for a great example). One brave thing the sound and music guys did was that they during the final showdown of the movie removed ALL the music and play the sequence just on visual effects, cinematography and sound design.

Overall, I think it’s a great movie that shouldn’t be missed by any fan of the books or the previous movies. Despite the fact that I think it’s superbly paced for a movie this length based on a very big book, I still feel some story elements are edited or skipped too fast. This is of course to prevent a four-hour movie, but in my personal opinion it would be interesting to see some smaller plot elements explored more throughfully. It would be cool to hint at some future things that happen in the later books and movies, but I guess you can’t have anything. Still, I think it’s a great acted and put-together movie that fits all ages (well, maybe except some smaller children).

Verdict: 9 out of 10

Make sure to check out the website later today/early tomorrow for my review on The Simpsons: The Movie which I’m going to see with some friends at the premiere later today!

Hey everyone, been a bit over a week since I last wrote here, so I figured I’m going to write and keep you up-to-date with what I’ve been doing the last week in terms of my new film “16″, gaming, movies and books (or at least, only one book, but I guess you can figure out which one ;))

So, what’s up with “16″. The end of July is approaching at increasing speed, and no word about where it is yet. Well, I’ve been working like a complete mental the last couple of weeks and two days ago, I finally completed all of the sound and the grading (this is the process when I change brightness, contrast, shift colours around and much more, all to create a better looking film with more atmosphere) for the movie. This was a very big step in finishing the movie. All the dialouge has been re-recorded and is now mixed in along with the sound effects (one fun fact is that NONE of the original sound is retained in the final version). Me and Johannes re-recorded every single line of dialouge and I’ve been spending lots of time on the countryside recording sound effects. And it’s a LOT of sound, that’s clear. In total, I recorded over 500 different sounds strecthing from running on a sandy road to opening a kitchen cupboard. So, it’s by far been the most intense movie-making experience I have EVER been involved in. I’ve learned a lot of things for my next project, but more details on that as well as the usual sentimental talk will be posted once “16″ is released to the world! So, what remains? Well, there are four or five effects shots remaining in the entire film (adding some film to a television and changing the brightness beyond usual in some scenes). The logos in front of the movie have been put in, and I’ve finished the logo for the movie (it will be revealed in a future news post closer to the release date). Most of the music mixing remains, but this won’t take more than four or five days probably. Then I just have to slap on some subtitles (the movie is still in English, but to make sure you hear everything it’s always great with a small pointer). So, I guess it’s time to reveal how long the movie is. The length of it is probably the main reason why it has taken so long in post-production. It clocks in at almost 29 minutes, making it 3 times as long as “Showoff”, which was my longest movie before I made this one. So save yourself an afternoon or evening when it’s released. I’m also looking into alternate web hosts for the movie at the moment. Currently, I have no problem uploading it here on the website, but since the movie is so much longer the filesizes will be larger as well. I don’t want my website bandwith to fail on me (it probably won’t, though), but as I said, any help is welcome. Since there’s less than a week left of July, I very much doubt the movie will be released so soon, but I can pretty much promise it’s going to come out at least before school begins (which is somewhere around the 20th of August). As I’ve said earlier, there’s not much to do left, but still some things remain, and I don’t want to rush out a movie which I’m not entirely satisfied with.

Game time! So, what have I been playing while “16″ has been rendering in the background (HDV grading and effects takes up a lot of computing power). Well, I got “The Darkness” for Playstation 3 yesterday, and so far I really enjoy it. The story is great (I constantly find myself thinking about how good/cool this could be if it was turned into a movie), the voice acting is really above and beyond what I’ve become used to before. The graphics are amazing! I’m usually not that much of a graphics freak (although I find good graphics extremely cool, I still think gameplay’s way more important) but it’s fun to see what can be done with today’s technology. I also downloaded the Geometry Wars clone “Super Stardust HD” from the Playstation 3 online marketplace, and it’s great! I always found Geometry Wars to be a lot of fun (even if I find it very difficult to keep up with all the action on the screen, it’s fun and mind-blowing). It’s a bit hard to explain in further details, but basically, you steer your spaceship with the left stick and shoot with the right stick. Well, if you have a PS3, I’d recommend you to buy it (it’s only 7$ or something like that). I’ve also played Command & Conquer 3 pretty much with Nils B. We set up a LAN system at home with two computers, and despite the constantly failing Wifi internet, it was really fun to play. The only problem was that I’m not really the greatest strategy god of all time. This pretty much means I focus entirely on building a cool looking base, which after ten minutes of gameplay, gets brutally destroyed. Well, I hadn’t really played a single strategy video game before this one, so I guess I can partly blame it on that. I havn’t really been playing a lot of games this summer, because of various things such as filmmaking, being with friends, relaxing in the beautiful weather (which there unfortunantly has been a lack of lately). When I get around to redesigning the crew page, I’ll be sure to put in various Playstation and Xbox online usernames, so you can play against both me and some of the other crew members. I’ve got to rewrite the equipment page too some day, it’s getting a bit dated, seeing as I wrote it almost a year ago.

What there havn’t been a lack of though, is movies! I’ve watched a TON of movies the last week. I went to my local video store and picked up some older classics in the budget bin and it’s been a real blast watching these. To name a few films I recently watched “The Right Stuff” (which was good, although I felt it could be trimmed down half an hour or so), “Domestic Disturbance” (Vince Vaughn actually works as a serial killer!), “Payback” (Mel Gibson as the ultimate badass) and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (which I thought was probably one of the most funny movies I have ever seen :D). I’ve also watched some mediocre films, wohoo! “Firewall” with Harrison Ford wasn’t that good. It all got a bit cheesy when he hacked the most advanced security system using only an iPod and a scanning machine. It still didn’t want to make me see “Indy IV” any less. I seriously can’t wait until it premieres in May next year. I’ve also rewatched some older James Bond films, including “The Man with the Golden Gun” and “From Russia with Love”. Both great movies that still hold up good today, even if some of the gadgets are a bit dated, and some stuff horribly bad and cheesy, such as the scene in “The Man with the Golden Gun” when Britt Ekland (yeah, a swede) activates a ruthless killing laser with her ass, nearly decapitating Roger Moore! On the good side, Christoffer Lee is good as “Scaramanga”, Bond’s main enemy in this movie.

Of course, I also watched “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, but I won’t tell you what I thought about it here. I will write a seperate review later today (or early tomorrow, depending on the way you look at it). But, being on the subject of Harry Potter, I also read the final book (yeah, I read a book!) of the franchise, called “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Now, I know better than writing any spoilers or plot details here, since some people would probably get a bit upset (i.e. they’d go mental). Anyway, I absolutely loved the book, and it’s a great end to one of the franchises I have most remembered (I never finished reading “The Lord of the Rings” books, because frankly, I thought they were boring. The movies rock though ) and even if the book begins kinda slow, believe me, it quickly gets more and more exciting for every page from there.

I believe that’s all I have to say for now, and it turned out to be quite a lot. So, stay tuned tomorrow for my review on “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”! I will see the Simpsons Movie on Friday, and hopefully I’ll be able to post a review of it later that evening. Also, stay tuned for more news from “16″. Work continues!

Take care everybody!

Hey everyone, I’ve been working like crazy last week on “16″. It’s going pretty good so far, but still some things remains to be finished. I pretty much completed the sound mix for the movie two days ago, and since then I’ve been working on getting the music, titles, credits and finalizing the grading. If you, for whatever reason want to see what the project currently looks like with all the sound mixing in place, click here.

Yeah, I’m mental

Hey, I havn’t got very long time to write at the moment, going to the countryside (yet again). I have continued to work on “16″ on my laptop. We have now recorded every sound for the movie, save a few which I’ll record this upcoming week. Almost all of the ADR work is done, I just have to re-record my own dialouge. Some scenes are almost completely done. I’ll try to finish the sound work on the whole movie this weekend and the next upcoming week. After that there are three orfour shots in the movie that needs simple effects added to them. So it’s going on track at the moment!

I’ll be back again in Malmö at the end of next week and will post another update on how things are going then! Take care everyone, and enjoy the summer!

I’ve been waiting for the first live-action Tranformers movie for quite some time now, and I was lucky to see it just a few hours ago. I was really hyped for this movie, with Michael Bay directing and Steven Spielberg being the executive producer. What could possibly go wrong? Note that as always, I’ll try not to post any spoilers, but you might want to wait until after you’ve seen the movie to read this review (if you’re allergic to spoilers, that is).

So what’s the movie about? A long time ago, a war was being waged between Autobots and Decepticons. This was for control over the powerful “Allspark”, a almighty object (referred to in the movie as the “cube”, which made me think of that old 90’s thriller film :P) that brings unlimited power to whoever has it. Basically, I won’t go into very much details, but after the Allspark is found on our planet both the Autobots and the Decepticons travel here to finish the war that started so long ago. Sam Witwicky, a geeky teenager gets in the middle of this war when buying a car that turns out to be the transforming robot called “Bumblebee”. This is not purely by chance though, since Sam holds the key to the ending of the robot wars and to the survival of our species. While the story may sound very confusing, trust me, it’s very easy to understand and the movie is paced wonderfully. No scenes feel too long or too short. The story is as believable as it can be (it is after all, a science-fiction film), and I wouldn’t doubt that the United States have a hidden military base carrying warrior robots under the Hoover dam. Hehe, I’m joking of course, but I think the movie had exceptional production values and a very thought-through story and mythology.

Shia LaBeouf plays the main role of Sam Witwicky and he does so in a great way. I’m pretty sure we’ll see him in loads of new movies, because he sure has potential. For example, he plays Indiana Jones’ son in Indiana Jones 4 (which is to premiere in May next year). The only other big role in the movie is played by Megan Fox, and she plays Sam’s love interest Mikaela Banes. She’s hot…and plays her part good as well, which is always nice ;). In other smaller roles we have Tyrese Gibson (also known as “Paul Walker 2″) and Jon Voight (who plays secretary of defence John Keller). Overall, it’s a good cast, but LaBeouf really outshines the rest. Yes, even “Paul Walker 2″ (Gibson got this name because of the fact that he was in 2 Fast 2 Furious, featuring Paul Walker). Peter Cullen also reprises his role as the voice of Optimus Prime, which is very cool indeed. Bernie Mac is in a small cameo as the car salesman in the beginning, which is a fun sequence.

I thought that the music was amazing and really hightens the mood and feel of some of the great action sequences (of which there are plenty of in this film, be sure of that!) and the sound is spot-on, especially during some of the rad slowmotion sequences. The base speaker of your home cinema will definently have to work hard when this is released on DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray this christmas. The cinematography is good, and not as flashy and MTV-based as I thought it would be (see Tony Scott’s films for comparision). But the thing that everyone’s talking about is of course the amazing CGI. This movie really takes it to a whole new level with spectacular action sequences and interaction between humans and computer created creatures has never felt this real. I really tried hard to find a place where the CGI looks out-of-place (bad bluescreen, jaggy animations etc.) but to be honest I couldn’t find a single spot. This is from a visual effects standpoint almost as impressive as Star Wars Episode 3 (but still, just almost). ILM said it would take 36 hours to render a single frame of one robot! But there’s sometimes 4 or 5 robots in one shot. I don’t want to even begin to imagine the computing power that lies beneath it.

There were also a LOT of really fun moments in the film, which I thought was fantastic. Most of the scenes featuring Sam’s family are very, very funny and will leave you laughing for a while even after the scenes have ended.

If I were to complain about something, is that one of the smaller robots is a bit (to quote Johannes) like a miniature robot version of Jar-Jar Binks. It basically pops up and does some simple tasks for the Decepticons from time to time, but it has a bit too much screen time and I think the movie could have been just as good, if not better, without it. Of course, this pretty much isn’t an issue at all. I also feel that the movie could be slightly longer. That’s just probably because I want to see more robot fighting right away and I don’t want to wait for the inevitable sequel. So far, I thought this was an amazing movie, and the fact that it’s the best action movie to hit cinemas this summer I wouldn’t doubt for a second. It’s a very, very strong nine out of ten and I can find no better way to end this review than by saying: “Autobots, roll out!”

Verdict: 9 out of 10

Other Stuff: Theatrical Trailer

Hey everyone, just got my new quad-core computer today which is really nice, and runs really fast. Hopefully this will make the post-production process of “16″ easier and faster, but unfortunantly I’ve had to move the release date forward, again. It’s now (if all goes well) going to be released late July. This is because a bunch of technical difficulties I’ve had with some of the HDV files (not playing back normally, colours being screwed up etc.).

I’m going to see “Transformers” tomorrow evening, and I will post my thoughts on it either late Friday or early Saturday.

Until next time, take care!