Mike Lowrey

So I tune into Showtime Beyond on Sunday morning and there's this CGI animated movie on. It's similar in style to "Final Fantasy: TSW", ie. it's environment is post-apocalyptic, futuristic, and alien. It has giant, no scratch that, HUGE robots.

It's called simply "Ark", and checking the credits it was made in 2003. I've searched the internet including the IMDb and there is no listing for it. Anybody familiar with this film? Does it have sa different (japanese) name or something? I didn't see any Japanese names in the credits. Feature ran in 4:3, but the credits ran in 2.35:1.

Wouldn't mind having this on DVD if it's available.

Maxflier

I never heard of it before,but it sounds interesting.

Mike Lowrey

Let me tell you all more about it. Well, obviously because it's called Ark is because these huge robots were actually self-sustained cities inside and the robot as such was the vessel they used to move their whole civilization. What the deal was that there was an oppressive civilization controlling another. The whole movie kinda reminded me of Chronicles of Riddick. Had that kind of sci-fi look to it.

Anybody seen this? And why isn't it listed on IMDb?

Mike Lowrey

No one has any info on this film?

On a side note, I found another CG movie on STARZ this morning called Kaena: The Prophecy, but it has a IMDb entry and a DVD.

Maxflier

Did you watch Kaena?If so,how was it?
The DVD caught my eye at Target but i had never heard of it before then so i was afraid to blind buy it,but i just joined Netflix so i may rent it if it is decent.

canaryfarmer

Some info here:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0000249/board/nest/11036459

Mike Lowrey

Thanks canaryfarmer. That's the only info I've seen on it. How did you find it? I did a Google search for it and couldn't find anything remotely related.

Mike Lowrey

I caught a little bit of it. The animation is heavy into the liquid look. Lots of liquid textures and animation.

There's also another CG movie coming out soon called Delgo that reminds me of a sci-fi version of SHREK.

canaryfarmer

Went to the Showtime site, did a search for Ark, saw James Woods did a voice, went to his IMDb page. I'm a freakin' Gil Grissom!

Mike Lowrey

Ahh yes...Yeah, James Woods did do a voice. Should've remembered that.

Mike Lowrey

For anyone interested, Ark is playing again on Showtime Beyond this Friday 11:25am ET.

I'm gonna check it out to see if it's worth buying later whenever it comes out. The CG was kinda cross between Square Soft's Final Fantasy and Mainframe's Shadow Raiders. Environments were pretty realistic, but the humans were a bit fake looking.

Mike Lowrey

Well, tried to watch this film again Friday morning and just couldn't get through it. Story was very thin and boring, although there was a pretty good action scene between some 'Mech battledroids of somesort.

And the funny thing is that the animation, other than these 'Mechs and the over-all environment, was very cheap looking. Very little detail on the human figures. Very smooth looking textures.

So I popped in one of my War Planets: Shadow Raiders DVDs and was suprised that CG animation from this '98/'99 series was actually BETTER than this film from 2003. The textures on everything in that series is very detailed. I'd have liked to see what Mainframe could have done with realistic human figures. (The most humanistic figures from that series was the Rock people from Planet Rock, and they had very complex textures on them as you could imagine being that they resemble marble stone.) But this Digital Rim production for Ark was just dreadful. The faces weren't bad (no where near Final Fantasy qualilty) but the bodies were just terrible with no ripple textures or realistic movements. They appeared motion captured or perhaps just key animated, but the movements just seemed very CG-ish.

So if this movie ever comes out on DVD, the only way I'd get it is if it were real cheap, like in the $15 range.