Latest news with #ChrisMiller
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The Directors of ‘Project Hail Mary' Explain Why the Movie Is a PC, Not a Mac
Making movies is all about compromises. This actor is unavailable, so you cast someone else. That location is too expensive, so let's build a set. This shot is impossible, so let's think of something better. At every step, the big, huge mechanism of filmmaking is always a work in progress. But on Project Hail Mary, directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord tried to embrace a new philosophy. 'What's great about this movie is there are so many things that make it harder to make,' Miller said in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con. 'All of the zero G, all of the centrifugal gravity, the characters have to have a wall between them because their atmospheres are different. Everything that a regular movie would be like, 'Oh, we can change that,' we were like, 'Anything that makes it harder we're not going to change.' We're going to stay true to it, and then that difficulty is what makes it interesting and makes it special.' His co-director, Phil Lord, put it another way. 'We kept saying, with respect, this movie is not a Mac, it's a PC,' he said, to much laughter. 'The movie is a machine, the ship is a machine; it can be beautiful, it just can't be pretty.' It is true that almost everything about Project Hail Mary makes it seem incredibly difficult to make. Most of the movie is set on a spaceship. That spaceship meets an alien race represented by a creature made out of stone that doesn't speak English. Changing the setting or the character could've still conveyed the overall idea of the story, but it wouldn't be the story author Andy Weir wrote in his novel. So everything had to be right. So how did Lord and Miller bring that rock creature, nicknamed Rocky, to life? 'We called our friend Neil Scanlan at the Lucasfilm creature shop, and we tackled it together,' Miller said. 'We built a practical creature that was puppeteered by an amazing puppeteer named James Ortiz and a team of five, which we called the Rocketeers, and it was amazing having Rocky there on set every day so that we could have a real interaction and shoot the whole thing practically. Ultimately, it's going to end up being a beautiful blend of creature puppetry and animation, and he comes alive in a way that you would die for this character.' Sounds like it's beautiful, but maybe not pretty, just like a PC. Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, opens in theaters on March 20. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘They all looked the same, they all dressed the same': the betrayal of the Smurfs' communist roots
Smurfs, a new Paramount Pictures CGI-spectacle directed by Chris Miller, has received an all-round critical panning and faltered at the box office. But it does a serviceable job reminding viewers of the utter strangeness of the three-apples-tall characters originally conceived of by Belgian comic artist Pierre 'Peyo' Culliford in 1958. In the film, James Corden voices No Name Smurf, who experiences existential angst because unlike the other inhabitants of Smurf Village – Brainy, Grouchy, Hefty etc – he does not 'have his own thing', a skill or character trait that makes him stand out. This special trait is eventually identified as 'magic' and No Name is pressed – by a serenading Rihanna-voiced Smurfette – to realise his inner USP and 'don't let anyone ever say you are not anyone' and accept that 'you were born great'. An identity crisis might be a relatively novel experience for the motormouthed British actor, but it is certainly a first in the 67-year history of Peyo's blue cosmos. In fact, it may be a contradiction in terms: to be a good Smurf, in the proto-communist vision of the original comics, was to never elevate your own personality above the collective. Of Smurf Village's original 100 inhabitants, says French sociologist and Smurfologist Antoine Buéno, 'About 90% were totally indistinguishable. They all looked the same, they were all dressed the same.' While some Smurfs were identified by name, he says, this was usually through a skill that is related to how he (all of the original Smurfs were male) is useful to the community. 'The Smurfian society is an archetypal corporatist society, meaning that each Smurf that is identified represents a social function.' In Miller's latest reboot of the franchise, unleashing your true inner self is presented as the key to overcoming a problem – in Peyo's original book, it is the root of all evil. 'In the comics, each time a Smurf tries to be an individual, it creates a catastrophe,' Buéno says. For instance, in the second book of the original series, 1965's Le Schtroumpfissime (King Smurf), the inhabitants of the village hold a vote for an interim leader in the absence of Papa Smurf, but democracy does not become them. One nameless Smurf realises he can play the system by making promises he can't keep to each of his potential voters, and wins. But once elected, he rules as an autocrat, installing an oppressive regime marshalled by Hefty Smurf and forcing the other Smurfs to build him a palace. The book was translated into Dutch as De Smurführer. 'All bad comes from individuality, which is also linked with private property', says Buéno. 'Each time private property is claimed in the village, it ruins the whole balance of the society.' The 2011 book in which Buéno explored the hidden ideological underpinnings of Peyo's fictional world, Le Petit Livre Bleu: Analyse Critique et Politique de la Société des Schtroumpfs, triggered a bitter backlash from true blue fans, and is wilfully polemical in the way it spells out political allusions that the comics never make explicit. The revolutionary connotations of the Phrygian caps (red for Papa, white for all the rest) are plausible, the identification of bearded Papa Smurf as Marx and bespectacled Brainy as Trotsky perhaps less so. The search for messages hidden in the books may even have distracted from how genuinely original an exercise in storytelling the Smurfs were on the surface: a series of tales with 100 protagonists, of whom most look exactly the same, in which heroism lies in collective action. Speaking more than a decade after the publication of his Little Blue Book, Buéno sounds more balanced in his assessment. 'My theory was always that Peyo was not into politics at all', he says. 'But his genius was in creating a utopia that drew from our joint political history and coming up with images that spoke to everyone.' Using Smurf Village as an example of working socialism did not just die with the new reboot, it was washed out of the Smurfverse after Peyo sold the rights to his creation in the 1970s. 'For me, what we witnessed in the Smurfs is a perfect demonstration of Guy Debord's analysis of capitalism', says Buéno. 'Capitalism's strength lies in never frontally destroying its enemies, but taking them in and digesting them.'
CNBC
22-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Chris Miller: What is China's biggest challenge to achieving chip self-sufficiency?
Chris Miller, Author of 'Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology', explains why China is still reliant on international semiconductor supply chains and hasn't been able to reach full self-sufficiency just yet.
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Smurfs' Review: Rihanna and James Corden Lead All-Star Voice Cast in a Reboot That Chooses Chaos Over Charm
It's been eight years since the last theatrical Smurfs movie, and you know what that means. A whole new crop of very young children are primed to experience their favorite animated characters on the big screen. Unfortunately, what they're getting is Paramount's new reboot featuring the sort of ridiculously overstuffed big-name cast whose names will mean absolutely nothing to them but will provide some reassurance to their adult chaperones, who would no doubt prefer to be watching the new I Know What You Did Last Summer at the adjoining multiplex theater. Not-so-imaginatively titled Smurfs, this latest incarnation represents the sort of charmless, wildly chaotic animated effort that has the unintended effect of reminding us why cutting publicly funded children's television is such a terrible idea. It's directed by Chris Miller (Puss in Boots, Shrek the Third), who also voices Grouchy Smurf. Watching the movie makes it easy to understand why he chose that character. More from The Hollywood Reporter Rise of the Machines: Inside Hollywood's AI Civil War 'Smurfs' Is a Rihanna Passion Project: "She Was Pursuing It" 'Poker Face' Boss Rian Johnson Delighted in That Finale Cliffhanger Tease: "Peacock Was a Little Nervous" The screenplay is by Pam Brady, who previously wrote such subversive animated efforts as South Park: Bigger, Long & Uncut and Team America: World Police, providing some hope that maybe this is all some big put-on. That's sadly not the case — instead, we get the sort of generic storyline in which evil wizards are once again intent on world domination, in this case by kidnapping Papa Smurf (John Goodman) in an attempt to procure a magic book that will help them achieve their ends. (At least I think that's what the story was. It seemed mostly incomprehensible to me, and asking the seven-year-old sitting nearby to explain it might have come across as creepy.) Anyway, it's up to Smurfette (voiced by Rihanna) to lead her fellow Smurfs in a mission to save their patriarch. Among them is No Name, who's suffering an identity crisis because, unlike such fellow Smurfs as Hefty Smurf (Alex Winter), Worry Smurf (Billie Lourd) and Vanity Smurf (Maya Erskine), he doesn't have a 'thing.' He's voiced by James Corden, and for those of you desperately missing Carpool Karaoke, rest assured that you get to hear Corden crooning a power ballad. Yes, this is one of those animated movies in which the characters periodically break into song, and sometimes even elaborate dance numbers. None of the songs, not even Rihanna's 'Friend of Mine,' proves particularly memorable. But there are certainly enough of them to fill the inevitable soundtrack album. The Smurfs' mission launches them into the real world, including such locations as Paris, the Australian Outback, and Munich, which only serve as unpleasant reminders of Sony's previous, misbegotten animated/live-action hybrids. The Australian section features a musical number showcasing CGI kangaroos, which even one of the characters aptly describes as 'weird.' It also serves to introduce us to the Snooterpoots — small, feathered, Minion-like creatures who will definitely be showing up at a toy store near you. Their leader, Mama Poot, is voiced by Natasha Lyonne, who uses her distinct gravelly voice to good comic effect. The Smurfs also venture into alternate universes, as if we didn't already get enough of that nonsense from the MCU. Weirdly, there's a lot of sibling stuff going on in the movie. The villains are brother evil wizards Razamel and Gargamel (both played by JP Karliak), who have serious rivalry issues. And Papa Smurf has not one but two brothers, Ken (the ever-reliable Nick Offerman) and long-lost Ron (Kurt Russell), who, needless to say, reappears by the story's end. It was telling that at a preview screening packed with young children, there was nary a laugh to be heard despite the film featuring one would-be joke after another. The sole exception was when one of the Smurfs referred to himself as 'kick-ass,' with the profanity bleeped out, which the kids found absolutely hilarious. If you look at the credits box accompanying this review, you'll see that the cast also includes such ringers as Amy Sedaris, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham and Daniel Levy, among others. Few of them make any impression whatsoever, but it's comforting to know that already overpaid stars are getting big bucks to sit in recording booths for a couple of days while reading from scripts. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse' Moves to End of June 2027
Miles Morales will be swinging into theaters a tad later than previously planned. Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse will now bow on June 25, 2027, three weeks later than its previous June 4, 2027 date. Insiders say the later date will be better for bringing in school-aged kids for summer break, as some schools would still be in session in early June. It's also seen as a more appealing date internationally. More from The Hollywood Reporter Box Office: 'Superman' Leaps Past $300M Globally, Nears $200M Domestically Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Sells Out in Imax 70MM a Year Ahead of Film's Release Box Office Milestone: 'Lilo & Stitch' Becomes First Title of 2025 to Cross $1 Billion Globally The Spider-Verse franchise is a crown jewel for Sony. 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won an Oscar for best animated feature, and earned $393.6 million globally. It is still cited today as a game-changing movie thanks to its inventive, kinetic animation style. 2023's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was a hit, earning $690.5 million globally, in a demonstration of how the franchise had only gained in popularity in the five years between installments. Beyond the Spider-Verse will arrive four years after Across the Spider-Verse ended on a cliffhanger. Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson direct from a script that franchise masterminds Phil Lord and Chris Miller wrote with David Callaham. In addition to its Spider-Verse shift, the studio also set the animated feature Buds for March 12, 2027. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Greatest Needle Drops in Film History The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best Solve the daily Crossword
