Bryan Bishop | Vox

Movie Ticketing Site Fandango Buys Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster

2019-03-06T05:12:10-05:00

Continuing its push to control every facet of the way people discover and experience movies, ticketing site Fandango announced today that it has purchased both the movie critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and the discovery app Flixster.

Fandango picked up the sites from Warner Bros. Entertainment, which in turn will now have a minority ownership stake in Fandango. (Lest it seem like Rotten Tomatoes is finally breaking free of the yoke of perceived conflicts of interest, it should be pointed out that Fandango is owned by NBCUniversal, meaning everybody’s still staying within the larger Hollywood family.)

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

‘The Martian’ Review: Ridley Scott Puts the Science Back in Sci-Fi

2019-03-06T05:41:36-05:00

Ever since 1977, when a little movie called “Star Wars” caught the public’s attention, the space opera has been the go-to subgenre for mainstream movie sci-fi. There’s room for other takes, like Duncan Jones’ 2006 cult hit “Moon” or this year’s excellent “Ex Machina,” but those are usually tiny films that play at the edges. When it comes to big studios and big budgets, it’s all about action and sweeping melodrama (with a little futuristic dystopia thrown in from time to time) — with little to no time for philosophical ponderings or scientific details.

Now here we are, 38 years later, with a new “Star Wars” on the way, and it looks like that wheel is going to just keep on turning. But sneaking in right before that cultural explosion is another type of science fiction film, one that’s been slowly building its own unique brand of hype: Ridley Scott’s “The Martian.” Based on the best-selling book by Andy Weir, it’s a mainstream attempt to go in the exact opposite direction and tell a story about the power of science and technological ingenuity — one that tries to glamorize the creative thinking and determination of astronauts, astrophysicists and the mad geniuses at NASA and JPL.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Inside Industrial Light & Magic’s Secret ‘Star Wars’ VR Lab

2019-03-06T05:30:52-05:00

I’m on Industrial Light & Magic’s motion capture stage, standing inside what they call “the cave.” It’s not much to look at: Two big screens angled at 90 degrees, awash in a smeary blur of images. But put on a pair of modified 3-D glasses, and bam — it’s the Holodeck, and I’m on Tatooine standing face to face with one of the most famous robots in movie history. I walk around C-3PO, crouching one moment, then jumping the next. The mo-cap performer across the room raises his hand, and the CG Threepio waves. It’s exhilarating and immersive, and it’s all happening in real time.

The cave is a place for filmmakers to test out worlds that don’t exist yet, and for ILM to demo and build augmented reality experiences for its recently unveiled skunkworks division, ILMxLab. The lab is a developmental playground for any and all kind of interactive or immersive experience. Virtual reality, AR, theme park attractions; it’s all up for grabs, uniting decades of visual effects expertise, computer wizardry, and Lucasfilm’s own creative team into a self-contained entertainment studio of the future.

The goal isn’t to just create what people will be trying out on their Oculus Rift next year. It’s to come up with the interconnected virtual experiences we’ll be having 10 years from now. And you’d better believe they’re starting with “Star Wars.”

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.