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| Little Tramp stays silent as Charlie Chaplin reborn in 3D animation Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, one of cinema's most famous characters, is to become a 3D animated competitor to Mr BeanCharlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character, a true icon of cinema, is to be reborn in the 21st century as a computer-generated 3D avatar. The absurd figure with the baggy trousers, bowler hat and cane was once the best known silhouette in the world, and is to be introduced to modern audiences in a series of short films following a multi-million-pound deal approved by the Chaplin family.Almost a hundred years since Chaplin first appeared in front of Hollywood cameras, an Indian-French collaboration has been licensed to make a series of six-minute animated episodes for cinema and TV.The silent films will be based on 70 original "shorts" that featured Chaplin as the Little Tramp. Visual gags and slapstick choreography from the films will be re-enacted by the new "stereoscopic" avatar, but some fresh material is also being written.The films will be made by DQ Entertainment, an animation and special effects firm based in the Indian city of Hyderabad, which hopes that Chaplin's tramp can compete for audiences with the animated version of Rowan Atkinson's equally hapless Mr Bean.On Friday the company concluded an €8m deal with two French media groups, Method Animation and MK2, one of France's biggest independent film companies and the owner of the international rights to the Chaplin films.Method Animation's chairman, Aton Soumache, said the Tramp would not be "a realistic portrayal but more like a puppet in an offbeat universe". "We've been working for more than a year on the graphics concept to find an original way of adapting Chaplin's world," he said. "We'll put him in modern situations, but at the same time keeping his poetic, child-like view of the world with a retro feel."The venture coincides with the opening of an exhibition on London's South Bank which celebrates Chaplin's early life in south London, where he and his stepbrother Sydney grew up in poverty before building careers in music hall. Chaplin left London for America as a 21-year-old in 1910, with Fred Karno's "speechless comedians", and was invited to join the Keystone film company in Hollywood three years later. After success as the Tramp in silent shorts, he made a series of feature films, from The Kid in 1921 to The Great Dictator in 1940, that established him as one of the most influential screen actors and directors of all time. The chairman and chief executive of DQ, Tapaas Chakravarti, said that the new Chaplin films, which are aimed at adults and children above the age of six, would be "better" than Mr Bean."It's very, very clear that to tickle people's funny bones you don't really have to talk all the time and silent movies can work."Charlie ChaplinAnimationAnimationTelevisionVanessa Thorpeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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Bob Willoughby obituary American photographer whose informal shots defined the youthful glamour of the 1950s and 1960sWith his artfully informal shots of Audrey Hepburn and Chet Baker, the American photographer Bob Willoughby, who has died of cancer aged 82, defined the youthful glamour of the 1950s. Hired by studios and record companies to make actors and musicians look good, Willoughby went beyond his brief to deliver portraits of an idealised elegance particular to its time. He captured the gamine, doe-eyed 24-year-old Hepburn reading letters on a hotel bed in 1953, and the impossibly cool Baker, the same age in the same year, seated on a folding chair in a recording studio, patiently awaiting his moment.Much sought-after by Hollywood film studios, Willoughby developed new techniques to help him take still photographs on the set, using remote-controlled devices and brackets specially made to attach his apparatus to Panavision film cameras. The films he worked on included The Man With the Golden Arm, Bonjour Tristesse, Can- Can, My Fair Lady, the original Ocean's 11, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Rosemary's Baby, Ryan's Daughter, Catch-22, Klute and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?Born in Los Angeles, Willoughby was given his first camera by his father as a present for his 12th birthday. He studied at the University of Southern California's film school and the Kann Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he was taught by the graphic designer Saul Bass, later to become famous for his work on the title sequences and posters of such films as The Man With the Golden Arm and Psycho.It was natural that, in his early twenties, Willoughby would develop an interest in photographing the young jazz musicians to be found working in such Hollywood clubs as the Haig and the Tiffany. Baker, the pianist Dave Brubeck, the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, the trumpeter Shorty Rogers and the drummer Shelly Manne were all leading lights of the west coast school, a sub-genre of jazz whose adherents reacted against the muscular extroversion of the dominant forms in favour of a wispier, more impressionistic style that seemed perfectly in tune with the blue skies and prevailing optimism of postwar California.Like his exact contemporary William Claxton, who also made extensive photographic studies of the young Baker, Willoughby used his eye and his camera to capture this mood of insouciant hedonism, but also broadened his musical scope to include such subjects as Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Billie Holiday, Odetta and the cellist Gregor Piatkowsky. His 1950 study of Miles Davis relaxing backstage at a Just Jazz concert in Los Angeles is a classic.His long friendship with Hepburn began in 1953, when he was working on the set of Roman Holiday, but his big break into Hollywood came the following year, with an invitation from Warner Brothers to photograph Judy Garland in the climactic sequence of A Star is Born, a commission that gave him his first Life magazine cover story. As well as conventional stills, he specialised in candid shots of directors, including Otto Preminger, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, Clifford Odets, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Sidney Pollack, Blake Edwards and Roman Polanski, at work with their stars. In 1972, after almost 30 years of such work, he retired and moved to southern Ireland, where he lived with his wife, their four children and his mother-in-law in a castle on Courtmacsherry Bay, County Cork. He published his own translations of early Irish poetry in a volume titled Voices of Ancient Ireland in 1981, and volumes devoted to his photographs of Hepburn, Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor appeared in Germany, Japan and elsewhere. His work was constantly on exhibition somewhere around the world, and was shown at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, the Photographers' Gallery in London and the National Museum of Photography in Bradford.Willoughby's last years were spent in Vence, in the south of France. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and by their three sons and one daughter.• Robert Hanley Willoughby, photographer, born 30 June 1927; died 18 December 2009PhotographyUnited StatesJazzRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
‘Brothers’ a touching, honest and moving film Sometimes Hollywood can surprise us with adult films based on strong writing and quite excellent performances all achieved without OTT special effects, computer enhancements and wild, violent action. breakingnews.ie |
Kiefer Sutherland roped into alleged cattle scam STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) -- Actor Kiefer Sutherland was among cattle customers roped into an alleged scam that netted more than a million dollars.... hosted.ap.org |