Slideshow: 26-Image Gallery For ‘Push’ With Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning

BrianTT — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:42:07 -0700

This 26-image slideshow contains the official press images for “Push,” which was directed by Paul McGuigan and features Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou. The Summit Pictures release opens on Friday, February 6th, 2009.

Interestingly, Dakota Fanning has recently been the subject of rumors surrounding her audition for “New Moon,” another film produced by Summit, who had their biggest hit to date last year with “Twilight,” starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Until then, there’s “Push”.

Synopsis: “A riveting action-thriller, Push burrows deep into the deadly world of psychic espionage where artificially enhanced paranormal operatives have the ability to move objects with their minds, see the future, create new realities and kill without ever touching their victims. Against this setting, a young man and a teenage girl take on a clandestine agency in a race against time that will determine the future of civilization.

The Division, a shadowy government agency, is genetically transforming citizens into an army of psychic warriors—and brutally disposing of those unwilling to participate. Nick Gant (Chris Evans), a second-generation telekinetic or “mover,” has been in hiding since the Division murdered his father more than a decade earlier. He has found sanctuary in densely populated Hong Kong—the last safe place on earth for fugitive psychics like him—but only if he can keep his gift a secret.

Nick is forced out of hiding when Cassie Holmes (Dakota Fanning), a 13-year-old clairvoyant or “watcher,” seeks his help in finding Kira, (Camilla Belle), an escaped “pusher” who may hold the key to ending the Division’s program. Pushers possess the most dangerous of all psychic powers: the ability to influence others’ actions by implanting thoughts in their minds. But Cassie’s presence soon attracts the attention of the Division’s human bloodhounds, forcing Nick and Cassie to flee for their lives.

With the help of a team of rogue psychics, the unlikely duo traverses the seedy underbelly of the city, trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities as they search for Kira. But they find themselves square in the crosshairs of Division Agent Henry Carver (Djimon Hounsou), a pusher who will stop at nothing to keep them from achieving their goal.”

You can click “Next” and “Previous” to scan through this slideshow or jump directly to individual photos with the captioned links below. Photos 1-9 are screenshots courtesy of Summit Pictures; Photos 10-14 are credited to Hirotake Okazaki; Photos 15-26 are credited to John P. Johsnon. All rights reserved.

Push_01: Chris Evans.
Push_02: Xiao Lu Li.
Push_03: Chi Kwan Fung and Jacky Heung.
Push_04: Dakota Fanning.
Push_05: Dakota Fanning.
Push_06: Dakota Fanning.
Push_07: Djimon Hounsou.
Push_08: Ming-Na, Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis, and Nate Mooney.
Push_09: Chris Evans.
Push_10: Corey Stoll, Camilla Belle and Scott Michael Campbell.
Push_11: Cliff Curtis.
Push_12: Director Paul McGuigan, Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans.
Push_13: Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning.
Push_14: Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning.
Push_15: Dakota Fanning.
Push_16: Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle and Nate Mooney.
Push_17: Djimon Hounsou and Camilla Belle.
Push_18: Chris Evans and Camilla Belle.
Push_19: Hal Yamanouchi.
Push_20: Director Paul McGuigan on the set.
Push_21: Camilla Belle.
Push_22: Djimon Hounsou.
Push_23: Camilla Belle.
Push_24: Djimon Hounsou, Camilla Belle and Chris Evans.
Push_25: Camilla Belle, Chris Evans and Djimon Hounsou.
Push_26: Chris Evans.

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

‘TMNT’ Director Kevin Munroe Envisions R-Rated CGI

HollywoodChicago.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:56:04 -0600

CHICAGO – “CGI is getting hampered by being defined as a ‘kiddie’ medium,” said “TMNT” writer/director Kevin Munroe in an interview with Adam Fendelman.

Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael in “TMNT,” which opened on March 23.
Photo courtesy of Imagi and Warner Bros.
Rather than solely because their kids lugged them to the movies, he envisions adults also flocking to engage the high-tech, highly immersive medium for themselves.

“In this small step with the [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles], you start to show that there’s a broader audience for it than just kids – when it’s done right,” Munroe said. “I’d love to be in the position where eventually we’d have an R-rated CGI horror or fantasy film.”

In the meantime, the experience for Munroe was an evolutionary process that he views as a glimpse into the next generation of film. He landed the Warner Bros. project from Turtles creator Peter Laird through aggressive tenacity.

“While working on a separate project with Imagi, I heard they were getting the rights to the Turtles,” Munroe said.

He continued: “I just kept on bugging them. I would send them e-mails in the middle of the night to keep pestering them. After I had a meeting with Peter, he signed my Turtles comic issue No. 1 from 1985: ‘Dear Kevin: Make a good movie or else…’”

Giving justice today to a brand that achieved cult status with its comic books required going overseas.

Art director Simon Murton (left), writer/director Kevin Munroe (middle) and environment and color design artist Steve Jung analyze storyboards for “TMNT”.
Photo courtesy of Imagi and Warner Bros.
In the process of removing the actors from the actual spotlight and merely using their voices, Munroe had to staff a gargantuan team of animation artists to artificially bring characters alive in a manner that’s reminiscent of real life.

The film’s makers decided to create and then bridge their own digital divide. While some computer artwork was done in California, the majority was done in an entirely different time zone, on an entirely different continent with people of an entirely different culture.

Munroe found his wealth of talent in Hong Kong. Until the artists learned to understand “Kevinspeak,” though, he recalls early confusion in response to his direction.

American words such as “cool,” for example, were misinterpreted there to mean the temperature rather than his stamp of approval. As such, the Hong Kong artists were given a crash course in Americanisms.

“For one of the warehouse scenes, I wanted to have wooden palettes in the background,” Munroe said, who speaks in a lot of slang. “Instead, they kept sending me pictures of people with their mouths open.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar provides the voice for April O’Neil in “TMNT”.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
Beyond the language barrier, traversing the long road that has added $71.3 million in the film’s worldwide piggy bank required massive technology demands.

The last time the sewer-dwelling bipeds captured audiences in 1990, its makers couldn’t have remotely conceived of today’s advances. The 2007 incarnation faced an entirely brave new world.

Munroe used a fat T-3 pipe, which flies data at speeds up to 44 Mbps, to communicate back and forth between his two hubs.

Rendering is done one frame at a time, and for “TMNT,” Munroe was sent 24 two-megabyte files for every second of film. A fight scene in a garden, which comprised just one of the film’s 91 minutes, took one year to complete.

Even an enormously high-tech film with a production budget of $34 million feels the sting of modern-day failure.

Splinter and Leonardo in “TMNT”.
Photo courtesy of Imagi and Warner Bros.
“Just as we were getting into the crunch of the movie, there was an earthquake in Taiwan right after Christmas,” Munroe said. “We had hundreds of thousands if not millions of images coming over, and when the earthquake happened, our T-3 got cut out. We actually had people flying in from Hong Kong with hard drives on their laps. They were delivering the film by hand.”

The computer-modeled magic for the film, which came alive through researchers developing musculature and details such as skin translucency, doesn’t necessitate the enterprise-level equipment you might expect. Munroe added: “At the core of it, we just had a bunch of regular PCs.”

The project worked in a Linux environment using software such as Maya and RenderMan.

“We designed full-on muscle systems for the Turtles because they’re essentially wearing nothing but a sash and a half-shell,” Munroe said in the film’s production notes. “We also gave them unique characteristics. For example, on Raphael, he actually has veins that pop out whenever he flexes and Michelangelo has freckles.”

For help with all the minutiae, Munroe enlisted veteran art director and concept illustrator Simon Murton whose work ranges from “I, Robot” to “The Matrix Revolutions”.

Patrick Stewart provides the voice for Winters in “TMNT”.
Photo by Peter Winterstellar and courtesy of Warner Bros.
Voice work went to Patrick Stewart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kevin Smith, Laurence Fishburne, Ziyi Zhang and Chris Evans. Mako was announced as the voice of Splinter the day before he died. By then, he had finished the majority of his acting.

A “pseudopod” in 1989’s “The Abyss” marked CGI’s foray into the industry.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com