Montreal, Canada – Bell announced on August 21 it will be presenting the largest-ever fundraising event for mental health in Québec. Bal des Lumières, to be held March 20, 2013, at the Bell Centre in Montréal will raise funds for the Fondation de l’Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine, the Mental Illness Foundation, and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute Foundation.

“Bal des Lumières will set a new standard for mental health fundraising in Montréal and Québec,” said George Cope, President and CEO of BCE and Bell, and Chair of the event. “I’m very pleased to be joined by some of Québec’s most distinguished business leaders in building on the progress of the Bell Let’s Talk initiative and the fight against the stigma of mental illness.”

Joining Mr. Cope as co-chairs of Bal des Lumières are Serge Godin, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board, CGI; Geoff Molson, Owner, President and Chief Executive Officer, Club de hockey Canadien, Bell Centre & evenko; and Louis Vachon, President and CEO, National Bank. These leaders of Québec industry and culture have joined to shine a spotlight on mental health and raise funds for three of Montréal’s most important mental health organizations.

“The last two years have seen major progress in highlighting mental health while breaking the stigma of mental illness,” said Mr. Godin. “Collectively we are committing to making the next leap in converting awareness of mental illness – which after all affects 1 in 5 of us – into much needed funding for these three leading organizations in Québec mental health.”

Bal des Lumières is the first external charitable gala to be held at the Bell Centre in over five years. Some 700 guests will enjoy an evening of exquisite dining and inspiring entertainment in this unique venue.

“We are very happy to make the Bell Centre available for Bal des Lumières, working together as a team to inspire hope and support the incredible work of Louis-H. Lafontaine, the Douglas and the Mental Illness Foundation,” said Mr. Molson. “This issue touches us all and there can be no better expression of the commitment of our four companies to dedication and commitment of those on the front lines of mental health care here in Québec.”

“National Bank is proud to join with Bell, CGI and the Canadiens to not only raise awareness of mental health but raise funds for those at the forefront of research and care in Québec,” said Mr. Vachon. “With mental health issues the leading cause of workplace disability, costing our economy $51 billion every year, I look forward to seeing every business leader in Québec on March 20.”

The Bell Let’s Talk mental health initiative is a $50-million charitable program based on 4 action pillars: Anti-stigma, care and access, research, and workplace best practices. To learn more about Bell Let’s Talk, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk.

Bell is honoured to be named the recipient of the 2012 Freeman Philanthropic Services Award for Outstanding Corporation for the Bell Let’s Talk mental health initiative. The prestigious international award by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) was presented to Bell in March in Vancouver.

The article Largest-ever Fundraiser for Mental Health to Be Held in Canada appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Marvel’s newest film, Captain America, released on July 22, joins the list of great movies that Marvel has produced these last two decades.  With action, and a balance of humor, sadness, and romance, director Joe Johnston delivers the goods straight to the door.

Amidst all the fun, the first 30 minutes is most memorable not for Captain America’s feats of strength but rather feats of bravery and physical weakness.  That’s right, Captain America had to start somewhere.  The effects teams came up with a unique and long process of creating “skinny Steve” Rodgers out of the buff and massive Chris Evans.

At first the plan to create a skinnier Chris Evans was to film a body double and digitally paste Evan’s head on the double’s body.  This technique was primarily used in David Fincher’s films, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button when using Brad Pitt’s head on an older man’s body.  The technique was also used in The Social Network when creating one of the Winklevoss twins.

However, when the time came for the double to re-create Evans’ movements, there was a problem.  He could not seem to mimic Evan’s body movement correctly.

“Chris moves in such a unique way; he doesn’t move like anybody else,” Johnston said. “The body double could not move like him. As hard as he tried to watch Chris and duplicate the movements, it just wasn’t the same.”

This led to a conundrum of what the crew should do to create the skinny Steve Rodgers. Apart from some, Evans liked that the body double would not be used.

“The beginning part of the movie is so crucial to get the audience invested in who Steve is, I didn’t want to share that part of the performance with another actor,” Evans said.  “I talked to Joe about it and thankfully, he agreed.”

With this bump in the road the crew had to figure out a different way to “unenhance” Evans’ body.

The final plan was to digitally shrink Evans’ muscles, jaw line and body to look like the 90-pound Rodgers.  This worked but left the digital effects team with a problem.  After shrinking the body, it left empty space in the background that Evan’s body previously covered.

To fix the problem, the crew had to shoot using green screens and superimpose the background into the picture to cover the empty space.  This turned out to work well but became a long and trying process.  Taking up some of the production time and all of post-production, the effects team had to alter about 250 shots to create “skinny Steve.”  However, sometimes the artists would catch a break in scenes when Evans’ was laying or sitting down because the head replacement became possible.

Captain America: The First Avenger pulled in a lot of attention in the time leading up to its release: Joe Johnston did not disappoint.  With a movie pulling off difficult special effects as well as keeping the characters and the story in mind, Captain America blew audiences away.

Many movies get carried away with special effects but Captain America, even with the overwhelming amount of effects, stayed true to what really makes a movie great, the story and the characters.

Image Courtsey of   http://www.facebook.com/CaptainAmericaMovie

The article Chris Evans’ Body – A Digital Conundrum appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Looking at Real Steel’s trailer is kind of like watching snip-its of the old show Battle Bots, if the robots were a 100 feet high and could box.  You could say it’s an expensive movie about Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

Richard Matheson, writer of the book I Am Legend had inspired the movie with his book named Steel.  The most recent trailer summarizes a story of a down on his luck, ex-boxer and father who tries to do right by his son.  The goal is to find a robot to fight in the ring.  The father and son find a small beat up one in a junkyard late at night. Of course, the robot can understand the kid and they both form a bond.

If I wanted to see a movie about a kid befriend a giant robot , I would watch Iron Giant.  It basically has the same story, a single minimum wage mother who tries to make ends meet for her son.  Her son finds a giant robot and makes friends with it.  So far, there is not a lot going for the movie except giant fighting robots.

There are a lot of reasons why this movie puts me off.  One: I already mentioned, is that it is the same as Iron Giant but it does not seem as heart- wrenching nor as sophisticated.  Two: the robots are remote controlled. So high stakes will be hard to create.  The only high stake in this movie is the father needing money to raise his son.

So why would an audience care about a 100-foot-tall robot who can understand a kid, without making it like Iron Giant, or even Bicentennial Man?   Of course, they will really have to develop the robot’s character in order for that to happen.  But looking at the first trailer, it just seems to only focus on robots fighting.  The only way for this movie to actually make us care, is to develop the characters in a way that we sympathize with them.

Another movie this is going to be like is Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe but with robots.  Cinderella Man is about a down on his luck boxer/father and puts himself back in the ring for his family.  Essentially, what Real Steel is going for.

I know I might be unfair to this movie.  I did not really give it a chance.  It fustrating when a $85 million budget is used to create this movie.  I mean it’s not the pinnacle of originality here.  Give that $80 million to a good cause or a better movie, because I do not see this movie making a profit.  Even if it does make a profit, the movie has been done long before this comes out in October.

One poitive thing about the production is that they have boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson as an adviser for the fight scenes.  Sugar Ray is an amazing boxer, even proclaimed as the best boxer whom ever fought.  I have no doubt that he will do a good job helping the crew choreograph bold fight scenes.

An interesting fact about the production is that Danny Elfman composes the score.  With him behind the music, I think the score will be great for the film and be one of the better parts of the movie.  Danny Elfman, has scored films like: Good Will Hunting, Mars Attacks!, and Spider-Man.

Hugh Jackman takes the star role of the father in the film. His supporting cast is made up of many actors from the show Lost, such as Evangeline Lilly and Kevin Durand.  These are all pretty seasoned actors but I am more excited to see eleven-year-old Dakota Goyo act.  Goyo has such a natural talent for acting that it will be fun to see what he does in this movie as Hugh Jackman’s son.

Overall, this movie is not the most original film out there.  We will have to wait and see if the movie will turn out well.  It’s really up in the air.  With Sugar Ray behind the scenes putting some flare into the fighting, with Danny Elfman creating the score, and with Goyo acting I think it will be fun to watch but it does not really make me feel like I’m going spend my $10 on it when I could spend it on other better and more original movie.

I mean Transformers 3 just came out, how many fighting robot movies is Hollywood going to make?

The article Real Steel: Will It Pack A Punch? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.