WETA Digital uses Linux+KDE

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Movies | 0 Comments 

I spent this afternoon watching almost all the extra contents of DVD 3 and 4 of the extended edition of the The Two Towers. One of the documentaries shows how Gollum was designed and transformed into a computer generated creature. During the video they show several shots of the computers used by the 3D artists at WETA (the company who took care of all the effects in the trilogy) and to my surprise, they all seem to use the KDE desktop environment which is, in my opinion, the most flexible and powerful environment for Linux (and the one I have been using non-stop since version 1.0 ) I managed to capture some screens of those computers so that you can believe me:

shot 1(this one requires a bit of imagination)
shot 2
shot 3
shot 4
shot 5
shot 6

You can tell it is KDE because of the big 'K' on the bottom left corner of the screen (as in the Windows "Start" button) and because the big colourful icons in the desktop bar. This is hopefully a good exampe that Linux is not anymore for hobbyists and geeks and that we're getting close to world domination, mwahahahahahaha!!!

The Abyss

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Movies | 0 Comments 

Some time ago I bought a copy of the double disk edition of The Abyss. The movie tells the story of a group of deep sea divers, working for a petrol company, that end up in a mission to find what cause an American nuclear submarine to sink. But things are not quite what they seem and they'll soon realize that something else is happening down there...

I really liked the movie, specially because of its claustrophobic feeling since most of it happens underwater. Acting is also quite good and the effects, well, sometimes they look a bit dated but they're good if you think that the movie was made in 1989. The special edition pack comes with two DVDs and a director's cut edition with over 40 minutes of additional footage (for a total of 2h and 43 minutes), kind of like what the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies have done recently It had been ages since I last watched it but I can say that the extended edition added to the movie, specially in the end, when we get to know more about why those "creatures" are going to do what they are going to do... (I'm trying not to give too many spoilers )

You could give it a try, it's a good one