Machinima (IPA: or ), a portmanteau of machine cinema or machine animation, is both a collection of associated production techniques and a film genre (film created by such production techniques). As a production technique, the term concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery (CGI) using real-time, interactive (game) 3D engines, as opposed to high-end and complex 3D animation software used by professionals. Engines from first person shooter video games are typically used. Consequently, the rendering can be done in real-time using PCs (either using the computer of the creator or the viewer), rather than with complex 3D engines using huge render farms. As a film genre, the term refers to movies created by the techniques described above. Usually, machinimas are produced using the tools (demo recording, camera angle, level editor, script editor, etc.) and resources (backgrounds, levels, characters, skins, etc.) available in a game.

Machinima is an example of emergent gameplay, a process of putting game tools to unexpected ends, and of artistic computer game modification. The real-time nature of machinima means that established techniques from traditional film-making can be reapplied in a virtual environment. As a result, production tends to be cheaper and more rapid than in keyframed CGI animation.

Although most often used to produce recordings that are later edited as in conventional film, machinima techniques have also occasionally been used for theatre. A New York improvisational comedy group called the ILL Clan voice and puppet their characters before a virtual camera to produce machinima displayed on a screen to a live audience.

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Movies Reviews

Review for Public Enemies - Go - Fresh Take on Classic Bank Robber Tale
This was a well-orchestrated movie. The bank robbery scenes were well-choreographed. The violence of the story was well-complemented by Depp's Dillinger comedic timing. A well-scripted and well-acted film. Definitely worth seeing!
Review for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D - Must Go! - Good movie
I went to see ICE AGE Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D with my 3 daugthers and we liked it a lot, it is a very interesting movie and in 3D make the movie more fun and interesting. I really encorage parents to take their kids to see the Ice Age 3D, you and the kids will live it!
Review for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - Must Go! - Perfect Family Movie
I took my two daughters (9 and 16 years old), and my niece (12 years old) and we all loved it. I was so happy to take my 9 year old to something that was funny, sweet and clever that the whole family could enjoy.

L.A. Times - Movie Reviews

A director sifts through her life in 'The Beaches of Agnès'
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700
One of the seminal filmmakers of the French New Wave, Varda stood with Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais. There is a street in the Pointe Courte neighborhood of Sète, a seaside village in Southern France, that is named for Agnès Varda, the French filmmaker who lived there in the '40s with her mother, brothers and sisters in a sailboat anchored to the quay while her father was off at war.
'The Girl Fro m Monaco' fizzles out too soon
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700
Also reviewed: Sabbir Khan's 'Kambakkht Ishq' A funny thing happens during the ostensibly fizzy French import "The Girl From Monaco": It stops being funny. And fizzy. But that's not such a bad thing since, once this lightweight romantic farce seems to realize it has nowhere particularly unique to go, it digs deeper and turns into a more darkly interesting morality tale. Director Anne Fontaine ("How I Killed My Father") smoothly manages this unforeseen tonal shift, even if her script (co-written with Benoît Graffin) doesn't lay the most thorough groundwork for the film's eventual destination.
'Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love'
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700
This documentary is an exemplary look at the African superstar's life and the fallout over his album 'Egypt.' Art that spans global divides often relies either on the loveliness of gauzy universals or the shock of gritty minutiae. Chronicling a tumultuous period in the career of an urbane internationalist, the African music superstar Youssou N'Dour, filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi tries to split the difference between these approaches in her documentary "Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love."

Movies

When We Were Kings
Michael Sragow Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:00:00 -0000
The Film File
The Hurt Locker
David Denby Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:00:00 -0000
The Film File
The Beaches of Agnès
Richard Brody Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:00:00 -0000
The Film File

Rolling Stone Movie Reviews

Public Enemies
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:45:58 -0700
Starring: Johnny Depp, Channing Tatum, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion... Review: Infamous bank robber John Dillinger was at the movies on the steamy July night in 1934 when FBI agents gunned him down outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre. In Michael Mann's jolting Public Enemies, sparked by a ball-of-fire Johnny Depp as Dillinger, America's most wanted man sits in a crowded theater watching Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable as a racketeer facing the electric chair with attitude — "Die like you live: all of a sudden." Hearing the line brings a smile to Dillinger's lips. Depp cannily plays the moment as an acknowledgment of how Hollywood romanticizes gangster life in contrast to the bruising reality. The gulf between the two — violence giving way to existential angst — is what gives Public Enemies its explosive kick. Rating: 3.5 Stars
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:57:34 -0700
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel Review: It's tempting to dismiss Michael Bay's long, loud and ludicrous sequel to 2007's Transformers with one word — hunkajunk. On every level this movie is as bankrupt as GM. But there is more to be said about a movie this gargantuan ($200 million spent on robot hardbodies) and galactically stupid. Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness. And, please, you don't have to remind me that the original was a colossal hit ($700 million worldwide) and the sequel will probably do just as well. I know it's popular. So is junk food, and they both poison your insides and rot your brain. But I do accept that Bay is unique. No one can top him for telling a story with such striking, shrieking incoherence. Rating: Not Rated
Cheri
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:06:45 -0700
Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer Review: As a cougar chasing a teen twink: That's a crass précis for the elegant, witty pleasures that Pfeiffer, director Stephen Frears and writer Christopher Hampton — who last collaborated on 1988's Dangerous Liaisons — carve out of this tale by the French novelist Colette. Set in Paris in the early 1900s, the film begins as retired courtesan Léa (Pfeiffer) enters into a six-year affair with Cheri (the excellent Rupert Friend), 19, the son of her colleague Charlotte (a wickedly frisky Kathy Bates). Léa and Cheri will pretend there is no such thing as love, and ultimately be scarred by it. With Pfeiffer, 50, radiating uncommon beauty, grace and feeling, Frears uncovers a fragile story's grieving heart. (Check out more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the... Rating: 3 Stars

Rotten Tomatoes: Top Movies

20% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:05:02 -0700
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch.
46% The Proposal
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:05:02 -0700
Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds exhibit plenty of chemistry, but they're let down by The Proposal’s devotion to formula.
78% The Hangover
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:05:02 -0700
With a clever script and hilarious interplay among the cast, The Hangover nails just the right tone of raunchy humor, and the non-stop laughs overshadow any flaw.

NPR Topics: Movies

Different Year, Same 'Marienbad'
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:55:00 -0400
When it came out in 1961, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad perplexed and excited audiences with its surrealistic storytelling. John Powers has a review of the film's Criterion Collection re-release.
Nowrasteh's 'Stoning': A Horror All Too True To Life
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:38:00 -0400
The harrowing climax in The Stoning of Soraya M. shows the graphic death of an innocent woman. The film's director and star say the scene — and the story — are tragically real.
Oscar Winner Karl Malden Dies At 97
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:12:00 -0400
The powerful, sensitive character actor with the twice-broken nose had stirring roles on the big screen — notably A Streetcar Named Desire — and was a hit on TV in The Streets of San Francisco. He later served as a pitchman for American Express.

NYT > Red Carpet

The Lawsuit Over Producer Credit for 'Crash' Gets Personal
SHARON WAXMAN Thu, 09 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0400
A top executive of the movie academy described one of the producing team behind the best-picture winner, "Crash," as throwing a tantrum in suing over credit for the film.
News Analysis: Los Angeles Retains Custody of Oscar
DAVID CARR Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0400
Los Angeles, a place where race is discussed rarely, saw itself in "Crash," a film where encounter and understanding are just a random fender-bender away.
'Crash' Walks Away With the Top Prize at the Oscars
DAVID M. HALBFINGER and DAVID CARR Mon, 06 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0400
In a stunning twist, the motion picture academy turned its back on "Brokeback Mountain," awarding the Oscar for best picture to "Crash."

Village Voice | Films

Agnès Varda Turns Her Life into a Beautiful Waking Dream
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500
The cinema, social theorist and sometime filmmaker Edgar Morin argued, is the model for our "mental commerce" with the world. Even awake and in the street, Morin wrote, we walk in solitary daydreams, "surrounded by a cloud of images. . . . The substance of the imaginary is mixed up with our life ...
Larrain's Tony Manero Turns Fantasies to Nightmares
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500
Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain's alarming Tony Manero—named not for its protagonist, but rather his ego-ideal, John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever—is another study of a cinema-struck, solitary daydreamer, albeit a particularly stunted member of the genus.
Depp Does John Dillinger's Life and Crimes in Public Enemies
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500
"They're all about where people come from. Nobody seems to wonder where somebody's going." So says the Depression-era bank-robber-cum-folk-hero John Dillinger upon surveying the clientele of a chic Chicago eatery in a key scene from Michael Mann's Public Enemies. And, much like its subject...

Film News from Times Online

Strawberry and Chocolate
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:05:51 -0000
Public Enemies
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:02:38 -0000
Hollywood just got younger
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:01:54 -0000
In Hollywood the recent news that Miley Cyrus is to star in a remake of The Bodyguard and that Zac Efron will headline a new version of Saturday Night Fever seems particularly poignant. For it represents a passing of sorts, an axis shift between generations. It is the tacit acknowledgement that a movie industry once built upon the solid efforts of John Travolta dramas and Kevin Costner thrillers is now utterly in thrall to the glamour and the power of the new tween superstars.

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