"This is just an image dump of marvel approved stills and screenshots of my work on the film. I'll do a proper post soon - this is a fraction of the work - But I had the distinct pleasure of working with Cantina Creative, leading the design of the glass screens for the Helicarier in the Avengers. I also led the design and animation of the all new and upgraded Mark VII Hud...

Included are some partial explanations of how the HUD diagnostic functions
Variations of it in 'all clear' mode, and a 'battle mode', after the suit has suffered damage and new windows have popped up to show depleted weapon stores and hazardous environmentals and general.

The flight menu was designed with input from an A-10 Fighter Pilot. I like to keep my stuff accurate.

I start all designs on paper so I included some ideas for the dock icons. In the final icons, the more detailed versions show system status based on the way they animate."

Lots of lovely detail in the work on all the fictional UI in the Avengers - looking forward to it being unpacked.

If you're going to do an April Fool, this is how. (Those special features are pretty good, though).

"I went forward with this theme; what if movies we were all familiar with were made a different slice of time? Who would be in it? Who would direct it?" These are marvellous, not just for the art, but for the casting and direction calls. Friedkin's "Terminator"; Peckinpah's "Wolverine"; John Ford's "Drive" starring James Dean. Perfect.

"Alien is a great example of the importance of seeing movies on big screen.  For any director reliant on frequent long-takes, compositions naturally become less didactic: greater scope in field-of-vision grants greater freedom to the explorative viewer’s eye.  For a filmmaker like Scott, compositions are so enlarged that it is as if the audience is looking at the film through a microscope." Cracking article on Alien over at MUBI.

" I think Zemeckis and Gale knew all the timely accoutrements signifying "the present" in Back To The Future would inevitably look like 1985 within just a couple of years; in fact, they were banking on it. Zemeckis and Gale were trying to create an archetypical representation of 1985 just like they did for 1955, with its soda fountains, social repression, and subjugated black people. In this way, Back To The Future only gets better the further we get from the '80s. Everything that defines Marty McFly—how he walks, talks, acts, and dresses—acts as instantly recognizable shorthand for the year he comes from." This is great.

"At this moment of awards-giving and back-patting, however, we can all agree to love movies again, for a little while, because we're living within a mirage that exists for only about six or eight weeks around the end of each year. Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. But the truth is that we'll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it's hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood's tombstone: "We don't tell stories anymore."" This is good, and sad.

"Nolan’s cities are iconless places. The Hong Kong sequence in The Dark Knight omits the harbour, the HSBC and Bank of China buildings, and that city’s famous apartment buildings, instead focussing on vertiginous aerial view of the masses of anonymous buildings in Central. Cobb and Mal’s ideal city four dreams deep in Inception is an infinity of curtain walled downtown, ordinary in the extreme and all the more unsettling because of it. In any case it will be interesting to see where Nolan takes Gotham city in its third outing, likely deeper into the fantastic generic." Interesting take on Christopher Nolan's nowhere-cities. Worth also noting that whilst Cobb and Ariadne build cities, Arthur's dreams tend towards interzones - airports and hotels. There's something on the Interzone and its relationship to that film to be said, too.

Lovely interview with Danny Trejo about many of his roles. If you like movies, totally worth a read. He's really quite a guy.

Six-panel comics truncating movies in their entirety. Although the Zombieland one won, I love the American Psycho one.

Ooh, this is interesting: reviews of screenplays circulating around Hollywood; well-written, incisive thoughts on the writing process, and some great links (from time to time).

"Zoom in on that spot there." Blade Runner has a lot to answer for; notably, this.

Vast, detailed CHUD article on an older treatment Cameron wrote for Avatar, which does sound more interesting than the version we got; sadly, it also sounds very sprawling - there's even more world-building going on. Still, some elements cut from it - notably, Hegner - seem like a real shame to have lost.

Photoshoot for Empire; actors pose in pastiches of scenes for which they are famous. But with the emphasis on looking hot. Some are weak, but Christian Bale and his fireaxe, and Jodie Foster/Anthony Hopkins, are great.

"Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they're so utilitarian by nature - really they're just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are 'sold' to viewers, movie magic is close at hand."

"The camera itself will trap Harry, leaving him all the more vulnerable because he is alone." But of course. A wonderful opening to a wonderful, wonderful film; still, perhaps, my favourite film, and one so rooted in editing and film-making. The camera, constantly trapping Caul, boxing him in, is worth paying attention to, and this short description of the opening captures its predatory nature.

Animated gifs made of three frames of film. Not all are safe for work, though none are obscene. You might love it; it might make you feel a bit ill.

"You've already received more letters from me than any living relative of mine has received to date. Truly, hope all is well with you and high school isn't as painful as I portray it. Believe in yourself. Think about the future once a day and keep doing what you're doing. Because I'm impressed. My regards to the family. Don't let a day pass without a kind thought about them." For many years, Alison Fields was penpals with John Hughes. This is a lovely story.

Initial trailer for Tron Legacy (previously, the horrendous TR2N); somewhat excited just to see the lightcycles back in action, and very beautiful to see a trailer with so little overblown music in it. Still, what's the potential for this to go horribly wrong?

"So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF." This review is, essentially, amazing, and has elevated ROTF to a must-see for me.

"ART & COPY reveals the stories behind and the personal odysseys of some of the most influential advertising visionaries of our time and their campaigns, including Lee Clow (Apple Computer 1984, and today’s iPod); Dan Wieden (“Just Do It”); Phyllis K. Robinson (who invented the “me generation” with Clairol); Hal Riney (who helped President Reagan get re-elected); and George Lois (who saved MTV and launched Tommy Hilfiger overnight). Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, HYPE!, SCRATCH), ART & COPY captures the creative energy and passion behind the iconic campaigns that have had a profound impact on American culture." Sounds good - Scratch was excellent.

"Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context--make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large--and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve." Fantastic: transcripts of a series of lectures about the biology of B-Movie monsters; funny, accurate, informative.

Arcade Fire + looking like it's on 16mm + looking like somebody loved it, rather than they just loved CGI = oh wow, this could be quite exciting, even if it ends up being a bit weird.

Jones annotates his screengrabs from the James Coburn classic; lovely to see it all captured so well, even if I'd disagree that the plot is a thing of "gossamer" - it's a _tiny_ bit thicker, surely?

Jones has now seen "The President's Analyst" which is, by anyone's standards, a remarkable movie. Especially the bit in the cornfield. And the ending. Anyhow, he's screengrabbed loads of it on Flickr because it's just beautiful.

These are lovely. The more I think about this, the more I like his Die Hard poster.

I love Jeff Bridges as a photographer, and his pictures from the Iron Man set are no exception.

"Mathematically speaking, “Napoleon Dynamite” is a very significant problem for the Netflix Prize. Amazingly, Bertoni has deduced that this single movie is causing 15 percent of his remaining error rate; or to put it another way, if Bertoni could anticipate whether you’d like “Napoleon Dynamite” as accurately as he can for other movies, this feat alone would bring him 15 percent of the way to winning the $1 million prize."

"The point in pointing out these numbers, since we’re throwing out analogies to films and videogame innovation, is that it seems that no matter how well a movie is interpreted as “innovative” by a reviewer, the truest mark of success lies in its ability to inure itself with the consumer." No. Commercial success is just one kind of success, and films like Eraserhead have had a far greater impact on young filmmakers than any amount of box-office smashes. The real rarities are films such as the Godfather or Citizen Kane, which manage to be box-office smashes and innovative masterpiece.

Oh jesus it's a Watchmen videogame and it's been converted... into a free-roaming beat-em-up. Rorschach in Streets of Rage 3D. Shoot me now.

"Director Ridley Scott will helm the bizarre big screen adaptation of popular boardgame Monopoly... According to the Hollywood Reporter, Ridley will give the Monopoly movie a futuristic edge akin to his 1982 epic Blade Runner... The unlikely subject matter is just one in a line of Hasbro games to get big screen makeovers as part of an exclusive pairing with Universal Studios... Transformers filmmaker Michael Bay is producing a Ouija Board feature, while a film version of beloved classic Battleship is also in development." I know what "development" means, but still, this is the craziest games-to-film news I've seen for quite some time. Hollywood is strange.

Some really beautiful in-house design from Criterion here.

"Alternate movie posters about film brand integration." Beautiful, typographically speaking, and definitely honest.

"There’s a lot of great technology imagery... Here’s a sampling of stills depicting the awesomeness:" Beautiful. (If I had to have a favourite film, it would still be The Conversation).

"What that means, though, is that when you’re looking at game writing in that way, you’re trying to fix a busted carburetor with an oil gauge and a cheese grater." Some sensible analysis; such a shame we need to write things like this.

Rather liked these adverts for BloodBuster.

Awesome, awesome T-shirts. Want a Weyland-Yutani one. And a Tyrrell Corp one.

Some useful financial stats on gaming