Opens
March 23
California Science Center, Los Angeles
That hulking gorilla in "King Kong" and those rampaging dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" have nothing on the amazing monsters in "Bugs! in 3-D." Filmed with wide-angle lenses that can magnify subjects up to 250,000 times onscreen, "Bugs!" gets audiences up close and personal in the world of insects. Shot in a rain forest on the equatorial island of Borneo and in a studio in England for the many close-ups, this 3-D Imax film puts you at eye level with awesome creatures that look like alien beasts from deep space.
Director Mike Slee and the producers aim the 40-minute film at young people by personalizing the insects and staging their mating rituals and predatory hunts for maximum drama. However, adults also will marvel at the varied hues, body structure and evolutionary traits that only become clear when bugs get magnified to this size.
In an abandoned hut sliding into a lagoon, which the jungle is swiftly reclaiming, the camera prowls the foliage in search of startling insects magnificently camouflaged by nature to escape (not always successfully) the danger of becoming another insect's dinner. There are all kinds of beetles, ants and carnivorous crickets in addition to predators such as scorpions, spiders, frogs, lizards and millions of bats. Mostly, the film focuses on two protagonists: a butterfly and a praying mantis who, with a little poetic license, are "born on the same day" in the same rain forest. The film follows their life cycle.
Papilio undergoes her metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a Great Mormon butterfly, its wings patterned with red, black and white. Hierodula, a green mantis, is a very cool predatory male with compound eyes, molting exoskeleton and forelegs that spear his food. His assault and consumption of a poor fruit fly is equal to any attack by the CG creatures in "Jurassic Park".
Slee oversees a terrific team headed by specialist photographer Peter Parks, who designed and built new systems equipment to shoot insects in extreme close-up, and Sean Phillips, a leading 3-D cinematographer.
Composer John Lunn plays up the drama with hot jazz licks for bugs in jittery motion, strings and horns swooning in awe at a butterfly emerging from her cocoon and Hitchcockian tension for bugs waiting in ambush for their prey. Judi Dench goes for elegant simplicity in her narration of Slee and Abby Aron's script.
BUGS! IN 3-D
SK Films
Terminix presents a Principal Large Format Film productionin association with Image Quest 3-D & U.K. Film and TV Production Co.
Credits:
Director: Mike Slee
Writers: Mike Slee, Abby Aron
Producers: Phil Streather, Alexandra Ferguson
Executive producers: Simon Relph, Peter Fudakowski
Director of photography: Sean Phillips
Music: John Lunn
Systems designer, specialist photography: Peter Parks
Editor: Peter Beston
Insect researcher: Gillian Burke
Narrator: Judi Dench
Running time -- 40 minutes
No MPAA rating...
March 23
California Science Center, Los Angeles
That hulking gorilla in "King Kong" and those rampaging dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" have nothing on the amazing monsters in "Bugs! in 3-D." Filmed with wide-angle lenses that can magnify subjects up to 250,000 times onscreen, "Bugs!" gets audiences up close and personal in the world of insects. Shot in a rain forest on the equatorial island of Borneo and in a studio in England for the many close-ups, this 3-D Imax film puts you at eye level with awesome creatures that look like alien beasts from deep space.
Director Mike Slee and the producers aim the 40-minute film at young people by personalizing the insects and staging their mating rituals and predatory hunts for maximum drama. However, adults also will marvel at the varied hues, body structure and evolutionary traits that only become clear when bugs get magnified to this size.
In an abandoned hut sliding into a lagoon, which the jungle is swiftly reclaiming, the camera prowls the foliage in search of startling insects magnificently camouflaged by nature to escape (not always successfully) the danger of becoming another insect's dinner. There are all kinds of beetles, ants and carnivorous crickets in addition to predators such as scorpions, spiders, frogs, lizards and millions of bats. Mostly, the film focuses on two protagonists: a butterfly and a praying mantis who, with a little poetic license, are "born on the same day" in the same rain forest. The film follows their life cycle.
Papilio undergoes her metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a Great Mormon butterfly, its wings patterned with red, black and white. Hierodula, a green mantis, is a very cool predatory male with compound eyes, molting exoskeleton and forelegs that spear his food. His assault and consumption of a poor fruit fly is equal to any attack by the CG creatures in "Jurassic Park".
Slee oversees a terrific team headed by specialist photographer Peter Parks, who designed and built new systems equipment to shoot insects in extreme close-up, and Sean Phillips, a leading 3-D cinematographer.
Composer John Lunn plays up the drama with hot jazz licks for bugs in jittery motion, strings and horns swooning in awe at a butterfly emerging from her cocoon and Hitchcockian tension for bugs waiting in ambush for their prey. Judi Dench goes for elegant simplicity in her narration of Slee and Abby Aron's script.
BUGS! IN 3-D
SK Films
Terminix presents a Principal Large Format Film productionin association with Image Quest 3-D & U.K. Film and TV Production Co.
Credits:
Director: Mike Slee
Writers: Mike Slee, Abby Aron
Producers: Phil Streather, Alexandra Ferguson
Executive producers: Simon Relph, Peter Fudakowski
Director of photography: Sean Phillips
Music: John Lunn
Systems designer, specialist photography: Peter Parks
Editor: Peter Beston
Insect researcher: Gillian Burke
Narrator: Judi Dench
Running time -- 40 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Opens
March 23
California Science Center, Los Angeles
That hulking gorilla in "King Kong" and those rampaging dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" have nothing on the amazing monsters in "Bugs! in 3-D." Filmed with wide-angle lenses that can magnify subjects up to 250,000 times onscreen, "Bugs!" gets audiences up close and personal in the world of insects. Shot in a rain forest on the equatorial island of Borneo and in a studio in England for the many close-ups, this 3-D Imax film puts you at eye level with awesome creatures that look like alien beasts from deep space.
Director Mike Slee and the producers aim the 40-minute film at young people by personalizing the insects and staging their mating rituals and predatory hunts for maximum drama. However, adults also will marvel at the varied hues, body structure and evolutionary traits that only become clear when bugs get magnified to this size.
In an abandoned hut sliding into a lagoon, which the jungle is swiftly reclaiming, the camera prowls the foliage in search of startling insects magnificently camouflaged by nature to escape (not always successfully) the danger of becoming another insect's dinner. There are all kinds of beetles, ants and carnivorous crickets in addition to predators such as scorpions, spiders, frogs, lizards and millions of bats. Mostly, the film focuses on two protagonists: a butterfly and a praying mantis who, with a little poetic license, are "born on the same day" in the same rain forest. The film follows their life cycle.
Papilio undergoes her metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a Great Mormon butterfly, its wings patterned with red, black and white. Hierodula, a green mantis, is a very cool predatory male with compound eyes, molting exoskeleton and forelegs that spear his food. His assault and consumption of a poor fruit fly is equal to any attack by the CG creatures in "Jurassic Park".
Slee oversees a terrific team headed by specialist photographer Peter Parks, who designed and built new systems equipment to shoot insects in extreme close-up, and Sean Phillips, a leading 3-D cinematographer.
Composer John Lunn plays up the drama with hot jazz licks for bugs in jittery motion, strings and horns swooning in awe at a butterfly emerging from her cocoon and Hitchcockian tension for bugs waiting in ambush for their prey. Judi Dench goes for elegant simplicity in her narration of Slee and Abby Aron's script.
BUGS! IN 3-D
SK Films
Terminix presents a Principal Large Format Film productionin association with Image Quest 3-D & U.K. Film and TV Production Co.
Credits:
Director: Mike Slee
Writers: Mike Slee, Abby Aron
Producers: Phil Streather, Alexandra Ferguson
Executive producers: Simon Relph, Peter Fudakowski
Director of photography: Sean Phillips
Music: John Lunn
Systems designer, specialist photography: Peter Parks
Editor: Peter Beston
Insect researcher: Gillian Burke
Narrator: Judi Dench
Running time -- 40 minutes
No MPAA rating...
March 23
California Science Center, Los Angeles
That hulking gorilla in "King Kong" and those rampaging dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" have nothing on the amazing monsters in "Bugs! in 3-D." Filmed with wide-angle lenses that can magnify subjects up to 250,000 times onscreen, "Bugs!" gets audiences up close and personal in the world of insects. Shot in a rain forest on the equatorial island of Borneo and in a studio in England for the many close-ups, this 3-D Imax film puts you at eye level with awesome creatures that look like alien beasts from deep space.
Director Mike Slee and the producers aim the 40-minute film at young people by personalizing the insects and staging their mating rituals and predatory hunts for maximum drama. However, adults also will marvel at the varied hues, body structure and evolutionary traits that only become clear when bugs get magnified to this size.
In an abandoned hut sliding into a lagoon, which the jungle is swiftly reclaiming, the camera prowls the foliage in search of startling insects magnificently camouflaged by nature to escape (not always successfully) the danger of becoming another insect's dinner. There are all kinds of beetles, ants and carnivorous crickets in addition to predators such as scorpions, spiders, frogs, lizards and millions of bats. Mostly, the film focuses on two protagonists: a butterfly and a praying mantis who, with a little poetic license, are "born on the same day" in the same rain forest. The film follows their life cycle.
Papilio undergoes her metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a Great Mormon butterfly, its wings patterned with red, black and white. Hierodula, a green mantis, is a very cool predatory male with compound eyes, molting exoskeleton and forelegs that spear his food. His assault and consumption of a poor fruit fly is equal to any attack by the CG creatures in "Jurassic Park".
Slee oversees a terrific team headed by specialist photographer Peter Parks, who designed and built new systems equipment to shoot insects in extreme close-up, and Sean Phillips, a leading 3-D cinematographer.
Composer John Lunn plays up the drama with hot jazz licks for bugs in jittery motion, strings and horns swooning in awe at a butterfly emerging from her cocoon and Hitchcockian tension for bugs waiting in ambush for their prey. Judi Dench goes for elegant simplicity in her narration of Slee and Abby Aron's script.
BUGS! IN 3-D
SK Films
Terminix presents a Principal Large Format Film productionin association with Image Quest 3-D & U.K. Film and TV Production Co.
Credits:
Director: Mike Slee
Writers: Mike Slee, Abby Aron
Producers: Phil Streather, Alexandra Ferguson
Executive producers: Simon Relph, Peter Fudakowski
Director of photography: Sean Phillips
Music: John Lunn
Systems designer, specialist photography: Peter Parks
Editor: Peter Beston
Insect researcher: Gillian Burke
Narrator: Judi Dench
Running time -- 40 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 3/26/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It's high-risk season for the shivers and sweats at the movies. What could be scarier than sharks, witches and haunted houses?
Raging infernos of flame come to mind, but "Wildfire: Feel the Heat" -- the second large-format production from Discovery Pictures, the theatrical film division of the Discovery Channel -- is not quite the hair-raising (or hair-singeing) experience it might have been.
Opening locally at the California Science Center IMAX Theater, "Wildfire" was filmed in 1997 and first released in March at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The director is Mike Slee, an experienced English documentarian, and the subject matter should draw in crowds that won't go away disappointed.
Clocking in at the standard 40 minutes for an IMAX film, "Wildfire" puts the viewer in the middle of firefighting crews in Southern California, Oregon, Idaho and Southern Australia. There are many thrilling shots, including one underneath a helicopter with a long hose dangling, used to suck up water from any source and then soak the fire from above.
While the filmmakers make good use of the format, the approach is tinder dry. The firefighters make impressive figures in training and in action, but one really doesn't get to know any of these courageous "smokejumpers" who parachute into blazes. However, these hotshots, rapellers and lookouts have some of their observations included as sound bites.
"Wildfire" successfully imparts useful information about the nature of fire and the strategies and dangers of wild-land firefighting, with a big assist from narrator Andre Braugher.
From a crew igniting small backfires with flamethrowers, hoping to prevent larger blazes, to firemen dowsing a home with protective foam, it's the visually interesting details of this most primal of struggles that make the biggest impression -- and not so much the sweeping panoramas of flaming hillsides and apocalyptic TV footage blown up to Titanic proportions.
WILDFIRE: FEEL THE HEAT
Discovery Pictures
Director:Mike Slee
Producers:Richard Sattin, Phil Streather, Mick Kaczorowski
Executive producers:Mick Kaczorowski, Patrice Andrews
Writer:Michael Olmert
Director of photography:Rodney Taylor
Editor:Bernard Gribble
Music:Richard Fiocca
Narrator:Andre Braugher
Color/stereo
Running time -- 40 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Raging infernos of flame come to mind, but "Wildfire: Feel the Heat" -- the second large-format production from Discovery Pictures, the theatrical film division of the Discovery Channel -- is not quite the hair-raising (or hair-singeing) experience it might have been.
Opening locally at the California Science Center IMAX Theater, "Wildfire" was filmed in 1997 and first released in March at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The director is Mike Slee, an experienced English documentarian, and the subject matter should draw in crowds that won't go away disappointed.
Clocking in at the standard 40 minutes for an IMAX film, "Wildfire" puts the viewer in the middle of firefighting crews in Southern California, Oregon, Idaho and Southern Australia. There are many thrilling shots, including one underneath a helicopter with a long hose dangling, used to suck up water from any source and then soak the fire from above.
While the filmmakers make good use of the format, the approach is tinder dry. The firefighters make impressive figures in training and in action, but one really doesn't get to know any of these courageous "smokejumpers" who parachute into blazes. However, these hotshots, rapellers and lookouts have some of their observations included as sound bites.
"Wildfire" successfully imparts useful information about the nature of fire and the strategies and dangers of wild-land firefighting, with a big assist from narrator Andre Braugher.
From a crew igniting small backfires with flamethrowers, hoping to prevent larger blazes, to firemen dowsing a home with protective foam, it's the visually interesting details of this most primal of struggles that make the biggest impression -- and not so much the sweeping panoramas of flaming hillsides and apocalyptic TV footage blown up to Titanic proportions.
WILDFIRE: FEEL THE HEAT
Discovery Pictures
Director:Mike Slee
Producers:Richard Sattin, Phil Streather, Mick Kaczorowski
Executive producers:Mick Kaczorowski, Patrice Andrews
Writer:Michael Olmert
Director of photography:Rodney Taylor
Editor:Bernard Gribble
Music:Richard Fiocca
Narrator:Andre Braugher
Color/stereo
Running time -- 40 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/29/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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