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Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jan 22 by Karl F. Cohen
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Spiderman and love interest (Tom Holland and Zendaya) from 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021). photo: courtesy Marvel/i>
20 Million Risked Omicron to See Spider-Man
Ever since the pandemic brought movie going to a halt, Hollywood has been consumed with fear of the demise of the mega blockbuster industry. With the arrival of “No Way Home”, the new Spider-Man film, which 20 million people in North American risked the new Omicron variant to see on its opening night, there is hope for the future—if a film is colossal and exciting enough.
“No Way Home” took in an estimated $253 million over the weekend of December 17th, according to Comscore. That means about 20 million tickets were sold. Indeed, it was the highest opening-weekend in the 19-year history of the eight-film, live-action Spider-Man franchise. It was also the third highest weekend EVER in Hollywood records, behind “Avengers: Endgame”, with $357 million, and “Avengers: Infinity War” with $258 million.
“No Way Home”’s big weekend gross is impressive, but the film will need more weekends to break even. The film probably cost Sony and Disney at least $200 million to make, plus there was enormously expensive marketing campaign. Will Covid 19 could ruins the film’s success?
Unfortunately, the weekend was not good news for other big productions. Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley”, a lavish noir thriller with an all-star cast, opened in 2,145 North American theaters. It bombed and it probably cost Disney about $60 million to make.
Also, let’s hope that December 17-20th didn’t turn out to be a super-spreader disaster.
Scene from Erick Oh’s new film 'Namoo'. photo: courtesy E. Oh/i>
Oh’s New Namoo Explores Life and VR
Erick Oh’s new Oscar contender is “Namoo”, Korean for tree, and the tree symbolically captures the beautiful and heartbreaking moments of his life. Oh created last year’s Oscar nominated “Opera”. He is from Korea and has worked at Pixar.
His new film is more personal and intimate than his last work. Oh was inspired to make “Namoo” while grieving the loss of his grandfather, and used his life as its centerpiece.
“I went on a journey to ask questions,” Oh told me. “I asked questions. Of course, I document my thoughts and provide a room for the audience to probe it and think about themselves too. That being said, I think I discovered a lot about who I am while making this film.”
The film shows the passage of time with changing color to represent the passing seasons. Oh says, “The tree is a symbol of your self-motivation that drives you internally, or it could be your unconsciousness with the tree and the guy interacting with each other. Sometimes tree gives stuff to him or takes away stuff or reveals something that he has forgotten. Sometimes he does something to the tree. That’s who we are. We keep talking or battling with our inner self and constantly making different decisions. That’s what makes life at the end of the day and who you are.”
“It forms in a heart shape when you meet the love of your life. Sometimes there’s a huge hole in the middle that probably represents those moments of emptiness. And then sometimes it goes super distorted, and it feels like everything’s falling apart. But after so many versions of your tree, you find a balance.”
Oh also commented that animating in virtual space and in real time with the Oculus headset was a new experience for him. Once he got up to speed, it saved him a lot of time. It took him a while to learn the “uninterrupted, 360-degree narrative flow of VR” but, fortunately, he had six experts to assist him.
The project began as a virtual reality experience created using the VR tool Quill, “which made transferring to a short much easier using the same animated workflow. One of the many reasons I was able to do VR was Quill software,” he said. “This enables artists to get into virtual space to draw and paint very intuitively. All the layers were done in Quill.” Indeed, the modeling, rigging, animating, shading, lighting are merged into one program
While the VR experience consisted of watching the tree grow in front of you, the short naturally contained a narrative flow that escalated with tension. “Thanks to Quill, the painterly, 2D-look was convincingly achievable in CG.”
Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 04:16 PM