Star Trek hitting DVD, Blu-ray, and... USB

The real collectors' version of the new Star Trek movie might not be some multi-disc Blu-ray release. It might not even be high-def. British media shopping site Play.com has posted a limited edition Star Trek USB drive.

Each drive is a 4 gigabyte USB stick nestled inside a "Delta Shield" (the signature Star Trek logo). The movie takes up 1 gigabyte, giving you another 3GB to load up with, say, other Star Trek movies.

Inglourious Planet

Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-killing extravaganza Inglourious Basterds is hitting theaters this Friday, Eli Roth has been on the public appearance trail. Specifically, Mr. Roth hit up New York geek fixture Forbidden Planet, one of the city's foremost comic book stores and one of my main nerd haunts.

The face behind Sgt. Donny Donowitz and the mind behind the Hostel movies signed and gave away posters to the various geeks who stood in line outside the comic book store in the 90-degree heat of the afternoon. He was very friendly, and I managed to get a few words with him at the signing. He said the film, while complex and requiring multiple viewings (he was there to sell the movie, after all), wouldn't have any moral ambiguity. Just good, old-fashioned Nazi busting with Quentin Tarantino's usual panache for ultraviolence.

Inglourious Basterds hits theaters on the 21st, and is not for kids. Just so you know.

— Will Greenwald

Move every sig: real movie-star autographs

There are three types of celebrity autographs: Sports autographs, convention autographs, and fake autographs. Sports autographs are signed balls, mitts, trading cards, and other memorabilia that bear the signature of a professional athlete. Convention autographs are signed memorabilia at comic book, sci-fi, and other enthusiast conventions by guests, usually actors of science fiction shows. Fake autographs are ones you purchase off dubious web sites or from hole-in-the-wall tchotchke stores in strip malls that have a big name like Al Pacino along with a photo from a movie like Scarface, and are completely bogus.

If you see the person sign it at a convention or a ball game, you can be pretty certain it's a real autograph. Unfortunately, getting autographs from Hollywood headlines is a bit more difficult. You can't really be sure a celebrity autograph you've bought is authentic, or if you dropped cash on a worthless scrap of paper. Double-unfortunately, even if a big star shows up at a convention, you can't be certain you'll be able to get a signature; the bigger the name, the longer the lines, the less chance you'll get to the front to get your poster/DVD/comic book signed.

MIT's Second Skin: Mocap system for $1,000

It's easy to write off movie special effects as "computer generated," and leave it at that. Take film, run it through a computer, and effects happen! Of course, the actual production of these effects is much more complex than simply feeding video through a magic box.

Motion capture, or "Mocapping," is one of the ways special effects artists make their movie magic. It records body movement and translates it into computer data so it can be used when modeling and animating effects. It's used to produce realistic, fluid animation, especially when animating a humanoid subject, like a robot or a monster.

Typically, motion capture systems use cameras to record movement. The cameras usually use markers, like a reflective object or a glowing light, as points for building a skeletal animation. As each marker moves, the camera picks up that movement and a computer translates that movement into a 3D space. The whole set-up can be very expensive, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Researchers at MIT have developed a new mocap system called Second Skin, which can cost a fraction of the price of a conventional, camera-driven capture system. Instead of a camera picking up light from the subject, Second Skin works in reverse. Projectors flash pulses of infrared light, which tiny light detectors on a subject's clothing pick up and use to determine their location relative in the room.

"Variations," "Soloist": classical is popular

In one of those nice instances of serendipity, classical music — specifically, Beethoven — is the foundation of a new play and a new film.

On Broadway is Moisés Kaufman's 33 Variations. The play was first seen in 2007 in Washington, D.C., and then last year in La Jolla, California. But this is its big coming-out — especially since the star is Jane Fonda, making her first Broadway appearance in 46 years. She portrays a musicologist trying to determine Beethoven's reasons for composing 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli. Parallel to her character's struggles with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), we see Beethoven, played by Zach Grenier, raging against his own failing health.

Both Fonda and Grenier are excellent, and they're well supported by Colin Hanks (Tom's son, in his Broadway debut) and Samantha Mathis. There's a remarkable scene in which Grenier demonstrates the intricacies of Beethoven's work — and visually, the scene is reminiscent of Tom Hulce's Mozart finishing the Requiem on his deathbed in Amadeus. Indeed, 33 Variations could lend itself to a similarly stirring film treatment. But for now, you can only see it on Broadway — and only until May 24, because this is a limited run.

Waxing rhapsodic on Maurice Jarre

You may have read that film composer Maurice Jarre died last Saturday at the age of 84. Among his many accomplishments, Jarre won the Oscar for Best Score for three David Lean landmarks: Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago (with its distinctive "Lara's Theme"), and A Passage to India. (Note: Although new DVD editions of Lawrence and India were released last year, only India is available on Blu-ray Disc — where the music does indeed shine. See review.)

But I'm not here to talk about Jarre's work per se. I'm here to alert you to Verlyn Klinkenborg's remarkable "Editorial Appreciation" that appeared on Tuesday in The New York Times. I'm not going to reprint the whole thing here. After all, let's help keep the Times alive, folks! So if you want the full Appreciation and the paper's Jarre obituary, click on those links. I must, however, quote Verlyn's final paragraph:

"I cannot assess the professional significance of his movie music. But then, I don’t need to. All I have to do is listen to how one score of his after another opens a forgotten door in my life. We sit in the movies, and though we hear the music of the films we’re watching, we do not seem to be listening to it. Only later do we realize that it has saturated us."

That should strike a chord deep inside you, whether your predilection is for music that's contrapuntal or punk.

— Ken Richardson

Natasha Richardson: A Class Act

By now, you’ve heard about the sudden death of actress Natasha Richardson. I wrote about her and husband Liam Neeson’s home theater for the January ’09 issue (“A Class Act”; see story), and I wanted to share a few thoughts about her:

The first time I met Natasha, we’d barely said hello before she grabbed my arm and, smiling, leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “Pretend you’ve known me for 15 years and we’re best friends.” With that, she led me into the next room — and up to a group of strangers — for some impromptu playacting. If anybody else had made that request, I would have immediately headed for the hills. But there was something so infectious about the impish way she let me in on her little joke that it was impossible to say no.

Natasha was, without a doubt, the most charming and gracious person I’ve ever met. Her heart-melting smile and brilliant, inquisitive eyes could make you feel like your every word was sheer genius, even when you knew you were spouting nothing but drivel.

And you couldn’t help but envy her marriage to Liam Neeson. Their radically dissimilar backgrounds would seem to have allowed for little common ground, and yet they couldn’t have been more perfectly matched. The life they created for themselves on their upstate New York farm was a seemingly effortless extension of their extraordinary relationship.

So, to suddenly lose Natasha is devastating. I’ve encountered very few people who had her ability to relish every moment she was given. She first appears in “A Class Act” entering “briskly” from outside, and her energy did seem boundless, much of it selflessly devoted to the comfort of her husband, family, friends, and guests.

It was exactly because other people were so important to her that she wanted a big, inviting home theater. And rather than just hand the job off to a designer, she involved herself in every step of the planning and execution. (One of her requirements, she told me with a girlish laugh, was that every screening begin with the THX trailer. “You know,” she said, sweeping her arms upward with a flourish, “the one with that tremendous ‘whoosh!’”) Once the theater was done, she was thrilled with how it turned out and loved to show it off to everybody who entered that room.

It’s impossible for me to believe that someone that undeniably present and engaged — that alive — could suddenly be gone forever. I feel immeasurably lucky for having had the opportunity to know her.

— Michael Gaughn

Everyone at Sound & Vision is deeply saddened by this terrible loss, and we would like to send our condolences to the Richardson and Neeson families.

"April Showers" brings 4K digital filmmaking

Indie filmmaking is becoming more and more high-tech. This is evidenced in April Showers, one of the very first feature-length motion pictures to be filmed entirely in 4K digital photography.

April Showers is a account of a school shooting, based upon the events in Columbine, CO, on April 20, 1999. Though it was written and directed by Andrew Robinson, a survivor of the Columbine shootings, it isn't a re-creation of the events. Instead, according to Robinson, it's a fictional, more generalized story intended to resonate more deeply outside of the context of the Columbine shootings. I spoke with Robinson earlier today about the film and the ideas behind it.

"I didn't want the audience to sit down and go, 'Oh, this is the Columbine story,' and divorce themselves from the fact that school violence affects us all, whether it's a school shooting or a bullying or someone bringing a gun to school but not getting the chance to discharge it," Robinson says. "No school is ever identified. It's a high school in Everywhere, USA."

The film was recorded on a Dalsa Origin II camera, a digital video camera that records 4K video (4096 x 2048) at 24 frames per second. With the exception of a few short news camera sequences shot at 1080i, the entire movie was filmed in 4K.

"Coraline," yes. 3-D, no.

I haven't had much use for 3-D. But with the advent of RealD — and since I am, after all, the entertainment editor of this magazine — I figured it was high time for me to check out the latest state of the 3-D art. And what better film to do it with than Henry Selick's latest creation in stop-motion animation?

So I went to my local googolplex, donned a pair of 3-D glasses, and waited to be dazzled. And waited. And waited. But all I got was . . . a headache.

Well, no, not a super-huge migraine. But having to wear the special glasses over my regular glasses, and feeling oddly compelled to watch the movie more intensely because, after all, it was in three dimensions, I did end up feeling some eye strain and some temple strain by the end.

And I certainly wasn't dazzled by the 3-D effects. They were basically fine, and occasionally they were even remarkable. But were they necessary? No. After all, why should we be focusing on 3-D effects when we should really be focusing on the movie?

Coraline may not be the masterpiece that Selick made with The Nightmare Before Christmas (in 2-D, thank you), but it's a wondrous story nevertheless, with brilliant art direction. I repeat: Story. Art Direction. There's simply no need to add 3-D to those ingredients.

Maybe James Cameron's Avatar will blow me away. And hey, I do hope that all of you taking your kids tonight to see Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience will have a blast. But does anyone really think that 3-D itself will be the new savior of the theatrical movie industry? I just don't see it. "Be careful what you wish for," indeed.

— Ken Richardson

Hey, guys, Valentine's Day is nearly upon us!

And here's something the ladies will love: the just-released Limited Edition Gift Set of The Notebook (Warner), director Nick Cassavetes's 2004 adaptation of Nicholas Sparks's 1996 romantic-novel bestseller.

For those not in know — which is to say, most guys (especially consumer-electronics guys) — The Notebook is one of those multi-hankie movies of doomed/redeemed love. Released to solid box-office returns, it has since become a classic tearjearker on home video — "and a good one," says Roger Ebert.

He's right. The star-crossed lovers (Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling) are well cast, and they're supported by a fine bunch: Gena Rowlands, James Garner, Joan Allen, and Sam Shepard.

But what does this Limited Edition have that makes it such a great gift?