TeleChimp | TV Journalism

The recently released live action film Captain America: The First Avenger has struck a deep chord with fans of television/ movie adaptations of marvel comics storylines. .Anyone that grew up (or maybe didn’t completely grow up at all) reading Marvel Comics and claim to know their superheroes would definitely know the Captain America story well; of a gaunt youth going by the name of Steve Rogers, who was born during the great depression and lost his dad when he was a adolescent and his mother when he was in his late teens. Becoming appalled by newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers decided to try to join the Army. But, due to his frailty and bad health, he was turned down. A little later his earnest plea is heard by General Chester Phillips of the U.S. Army and young Steve Rogers is selected for a top secret US Government program called “operation rebirth” during WW-II, and is administered a Super-Soldier serum and is exposed to “vita-rays” to accelerate and alleviate the serum’s effect on his body. At the end of that experiment Captain America emerges the pinnacle of human physical perfection. He then goes on to spearhead the American onslaught against Nazi Germany.

Old school Marvel aficionados will care for the fact that “Captain America: The First Avenger” remains dedicated to the original comic book storyline; loyal almost to a fault. Everybody else will love this movie as well, particularly for the thoroughly honest way this movie has been made.

Actor Chris Evans, who plays the title character in Friday’s release of “Captain America: The First Avenger,” put on 15 lbs. of muscle to play the role.

Making the movie wasn’t as simple as one would think; the people involved with the making of the movie had to figure out how the six-foot something Evans, who they’d managed to turn into a remarkably muscled specimen, was going to fit into the role of a frail young Steve Rodgers before the experiment. It may seem that shooting the part of ‘Skinny Steve’ before Evans gained all that muscle would have been the sensible thing to do. But wait a minute; take some time out here to picture Evans prior to bulking up, think back the Fantastic Four movies where Chris Evans played The Human Torch. So now you know that even at that point, passing Evans off as a wan skinny Steve Rogers would have been a stretch and would have involved altering the storyline to make it so that Steve used to be a normal human male. We already know, from the surprising loyalty to the comic that the makers have shown for the comic book, that even mulling over that adjustment would have been sacrilege.

Initially, director Joe Johnston used the ‘body-double and head-replacement’, but that did not pan out too well as the body double could not replicate the original actor’s movement well.

The filmmakers now decided to use a technology called “shrinking”: essentially erasing portions of Chris Evan’s muscular body on screen. The filmmakers used a “shrinking” technique and computers to basically erase portions of Evans’ strong physique on screen. It involved reshaping the jaw line, shrinking the skeleton, particularly the shoulders to make them look slimmer.

The makers of the movie admit that this part was more harrowing than any of the more impressive special effects that were put in and the movie has not disappointed.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Movie studios, battling a steep decline in DVD sales, have decided the moment has finally come to get out the megaphone for video-on-demand services.

“The Video Store Just Moved In,” a $30 million advertising campaign backed by eight motion picture companies and eight cable providers, began Tuesday night during “American Idol” and will continue on television, print and online outlets for three months. The effort is the first time rival studios have come together to push consumers to rent more movies through their cable boxes.

The TV ads show two men in an empty video store talking about a better way to organize titles. They ultimately abandon the challenge and watch various movies on demand. “Rent new releases instantly — on cable, on demand,” a deep voice intones. The ads will feature new titles available on video like “The Blind Side” and “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.”

“Having a robust digital platform for the rental of movies is good for consumers and good for the industry,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, said in an interview.

For years, movie studios have expanded video-on-demand offerings with little fanfare. They worried that creating too much noise would anger powerful retail partners like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, which had a stranglehold on DVD sales. Movie rental companies like Blockbuster had just enough life left in them to cause their own brand of trouble over video-on-demand cheerleading.

But the DVD boom is now firmly in the rearview mirror and rental companies are on life support, if they still exist at all. On Tuesday, Blockbuster warned in its annual report that competition and declining sales “raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.”

In contrast, on-demand usage soared 20 percent last year. On-demand rentals are also more profitable for studios than traditional rental options. Blockbuster gives studios about 25 cents of every dollar spent on movie rentals; on-demand services deliver as much as 65 cents of every dollar to the studios.

Retailers have also grown less worried about the growing practice in Hollywood of “day and date” releases — offering new titles on demand at the same time the DVD hits the stores. Mr. Tsujihara forged the practice in 2006 and research has since shown that simultaneous video on demand does not cannibalize DVD sales. Indeed, Warner will release nearly all of its movies in this fashion this year.

Studios largely still maintain a delay of days or weeks before traditional rental companies like Blockbuster and Netflix get access to new titles.

“Improvements in technology, the instant availability of the most recent box-office hits and thousands of library titles have fundamentally changed viewing patterns,” said Derek Harrar, Comcast’s senior vice president for video and entertainment services. He added that Comcast now processed about 350 million on-demand views a month, which includes television shows. The average on-demand view averages about 20 per home per month.