An EPIC scene from "The Congress" (2014): A short but entirely mesmerizing drug come-down, reality dissolving scene from the film "The Congress" (2014) based on the 1971 novel "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem. All rights to the makers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc

The comments on this youtube video are actually spot on and excellent!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8314622

DonHopkins on Sept 14, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: The Future According to Stanisław Lem

I just watched The Congress -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) -- and WOW, it was excellent. Quite different from the book The Futurological Conference that it's based on: for example, it had cockroaches playing poker instead of sewer rats playing bridge. ;) But well worth watching for its unique take on the entertainment dictatorship. If you liked Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Looker, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you won't be disappointed! Something weird happens in the middle of the film, that's all I'll say...

>According to director Ari Folman, some elements of the film were inspired by the science fiction novel The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem in that similarly to Lem's Ijon Tichy, the actress is split between delusional and real mental states. Later, at the official website of the film, in an interview, Folman says that the idea to put Lem's work to film came to him during his film school. He describes how he reconsidered Lem's allegory of communist dictatorship into a more current setting, namely, the dictatorship in the entertainment business, and expresses his belief that he preserved the spirit of the book despite going far away from it.

It took longer than its length of two hours to watch, because I had to stop and rewind to replay and and freeze frames frequently. (Check out what's going on in the fish tank while she's saying "I wish you could see me animated, it's pretty sick. It's like a genius designer on a bad acid trip. Oh my god, I don't know, I look like a combination between Cinderella on heroin and an Egyptian queen on a bad hair day".)

I'm going to have to watch it many more times, because there were a lot of details to absorb -- time will tell if it's up there with Blade Runner as one of my favorite movies very loosely based on a great book.

https://culture.pl/en/article/ari-folman-on-the-genius-of-st...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15175516

DonHopkins on Sept 5, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: The sudden death and eternal life of Solaris

I really loved the movie The Congress, directed by Ari Folman, an adaptation of The Futurological Congress. Like Blade Runner's relationship to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it was a lot different than the book, but shares some deep ideas, and stands on its own as a great movie.

The scene in the USC ICT's motion capture studio was riveting, with Robin Wright playing a partly fictionalized version of herself, and Harvey Keitel playing her agent, baring their souls to the giant emotion capturing machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rNSTizOsws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30069100

DonHopkins 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Paul Debevec created the Light Stage to capture high dynamic range reflectance fields (including clean high resolution normal/bump/gloss/texture maps) of human faces. It uses hundreds polarized LED lights and cameras, plus lots of image processing, to separate the lighting effects of specular reflectance (glossy shine) from subsurface scattering (glowing skin), so you can reconstruct the 3D image and relight it under different conditions, environments, and viewing angles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Debevec

https://www.pauldebevec.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_stage

"The Light Stage With Paul Debevec" - 360 Video (captured with JauntVR panoramic camera):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujwI4dimDA

Digitizing Photorealistic Humans Inside USC's Light Stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6QJT5CXl3o

Paul Debevec: Light Fields, Light Stages, and the Future of Virtual Production:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAe2dUJxe3w

A Light Stage was featured in the 2013 film "The Congress", which is a 2013 film adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's book, "The Futurological Congress", directed by Ari Folman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress

I really love that movie and the book it was based on, which both raised some interesting issues: Like Blade Runner's relationship to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it was a lot different than the book, but shares some deep ideas, and stands on its own as a great movie.

The Congress Official Trailer (2014) Robin Wright, Jon Hamm HD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rNSTizOsws

The scan scene in the Light Stage at USC ICT's motion capture studio was emotionally riveting and technically realistic, with Robin Wright playing a partially fictionalized version of herself, with Harvey Keitel playing her agent, baring her face and soul to the sparkling panoptic all encompassing emotion capturing machine.

The Congress (2013) Scan Scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8

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