And what bizarre magic it is:

Jackson has been making a lot of very interesting reports about the making of the tech-laden film, which is being rushed to completion right now. Jackson said he and his crew there will be at work on the CGI and other tech elements until just before it is shown.

For example, “The Hobbit” will be the first shown in 3-D at a high frame rate of 48 frames per second, which is a very big deal and is supposed to depict the characters more realistically.

Enjoy:

Please be seated, geeks:

Oh, just watch it:

You don’t have to ask me twice:

I really was surprised by the BBC, using this very arty and animated promo video for the upcoming Olympic Games there.

But it’s head and shoulders better than the rah-rah-agony-of-defeat ones you see in the U.S. In this case, at least, CGI is better than the real thing.

Enjoy:

And here’s the CGI-rich trailer for the second “Snow White” movie that Hollywood will be pumping out.

First there was “Snow White & the Huntsman,” which is all angsty and dark, and stars the ever-glowering Kristen Stewart as Snowie, and Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen.

This one, called “Mirror Mirror,” is funny, and stars Julia Roberts as the wise-cracking baddie, with an ingenue in the role of Ms. White.

Enjoy:

And here I thought the sulky genius of Kristen Stewart would fade away after the final two “Twilight” movies made their debut — one opens this week (yay!).

Instead, this trailer for “Snow White & the Huntsman” looks 100 percent freakier than any sparkly vampires.

The CGI special effects seem pretty awesome here, from the explosion of scary birds to the soldiers who shatter like black glass to the de-aging of the Evil Queen to the blobbish mirror-mirror-not-on-the-wall.

And not one single sign of any adorkable whistling dwarves to be found.

Oh, just watch:

You had me at lotsa.

Here’s the trailer for the upcoming movie “The Avengers.”

Just when you thought the news coverage of the upcoming Apple iPhone 5 could not get kookier, the CGI folks at Next Media Animation couldn’t stop themselves from coming up with something even nuttier.

And the Communist panda with an electrical whip is not even the oddest part.

Watch it at your own risk:

The CGI imps at Next Media Animation of Taiwan are at it again, with their unusual take on the controversy over Netflix’s recent pricing changes and its splitting of its video streaming and DVD-by-mail business (now called Qwikster).

Somehow those two businesses are portrayed as mutant Siamese twins. I have no idea why, but it works.

Enjoy:

I cannot express my delight at finally getting to appear in a CGI news video by Next Media Animation, in a segment about the CrunchFund controversy.

In it, the New York Times’ David Carr and I attack TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington with paintball guns. He is wearing a green wizard outfit.

Later, a flaming Arianna Huffington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong make an appearance.

Yes, it is that kind of video.

Enjoy:

You have to hand it to the CGI folks at Taiwan’s Next Media Animation for this depiction of Google’s $12.5 billion bid for Motorola Mobility.

It includes the search giant’s co-founders riding a pony (it’s a one-trick one); Asian handset makers jumping out of Windows (Phone); and Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Job as a lightsaber-wielding Darth Vader (the helmet looks good with the black turtleneck).

Please enjoy:

It seems the computer-generated imagery in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” convinced critics and audiences that the well-worn movie series prequel is a winner.

It grabbed $54 million at the box office over its opening weekend.

Its producer, Peter Chernin, told me that a lot more of the film than it seems — including the stunning opening scenes in the wild that look like a real-life nature special — were mostly CGI, used to prep audiences for extended scenes of the apes morphing into believable rebels.

Here is the last trailer for the movie:

Airbnb recently raised $112 million in funding, but it’s not getting off the hook quite yet for a recent incident in which a property listed on its site got trashed by renters.

The incident was, no surprise, perfect for the folks over at Next Media Animation, the CGI news outfit from Taiwan.

The online rental start-up has gotten a lot of flack for the high-profile story of a woman in San Francisco whose apartment she rented to someone using Airbnb was badly vandalized.

Here is NMA’s version:

When its computers get hacked, this time Next Media Animation might regret going too far — it always goes too far, by the way — in this CGI news animation of the tech-raiding gang, LulzSec.

I believe it might be its best ever — and, by that, I mean its most bizarre. In fact, that makes it a perfect fit for LulzSec, which seems bent on random disruption of the Internet just because it can.

Enjoy:

Yesterday, BoomTown posted some pretty amazing CGI work for “Captain America,” which managed to make a buff dude look like a sliver of a man.

But this dancing penguin thing at the end of this movie trailer for the upcoming “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”–no, really, that’s the title and it stars, of course, Jim Carrey–really looks even better.

Then again, I am a sucker for penguins with funk.

Enjoy:

Here is a really cool video from the upcoming movie, “Captain America: The First Avenger.”

There is all the action, of course, but what’s interesting is the CGI used to make the buff actor who plays Captain America look like the slight, sallow and weak man he was before he was transformed.

It’s pretty impressive, as you can see from a recent trailer:

It seems like the better movies these days are animated.

At least that’s the hope, since BoomTown is required to see them all with the Swisher boys.

Here’s a video for the latest–”Hop”–a live-action and CGI film, which is out April 1.

Enjoy:

It is saying a lot about this video that the CGI news wizards at Next Media Animation have produced a doozy.

It’s based on a report by Forbes.com, which asked the two largest pest exterminators, Orkin and Terminix, in the U.S. to pick the cities with the worst infestations of bedbugs.

Those would be New York, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus and Cincinnati.

And how NMA decided to illustrate it, well, you might look at deep-dish pizza a little differently after seeing it.

Enjoy:

Enjoy:

Charlie Sheen’s life should always be animated.

Enjoy:

Failing schools in the U.S. is not a funny topic.

But somehow the odd CGI animators over at Next Media Animation did a very good job with this take on the bracing documentary “Waiting for Superman,” using a clown to signify bad teachers.

It might seem odd, but it seems to work just fine:

Like a relentless storm, CGI and all kinds of tech doodads keep hitting Hollywood movies.

Now, it even shows up in spades in this upcoming film, “The Tempest,” with a fancy director (Julie Taymor), a fancy cast (Helen Mirren) and a fancy writer (William Shakespeare).

How many goodly creatures are there here!

That has such geek wizardry in’t!

Enjoy:

The Facebook movie is finally here, the reviews are in and–no surprise–the critics are raving.

After all, it was done by Hollywood pros director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, who have apparently transformed the appalling badly penned and very fictional book “Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal” by Ben Mezrich into some bit of cinematic art.

But that’s not BoomTown talking, so here is a rundown of five reviews by top critics, as collected by the terrific Rotten Tomaties site (you can click on the links below for the full reviews):

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times:

“Smartly written by Aaron Sorkin, directed to within an inch of its life by David Fincher and anchored by a perfectly pitched performance by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘The Social Network’ is a barn-burner of a tale that unfolds at a splendid clip.”

Owen Glelbermann, Entertainment Weekly:

“‘The Social Network’ has everything you want in a thriller for the brain: Huge doses of ego and duplicity, corporate backstabbing, and some very layered performances.”

Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal:

“This account of Facebook’s founder, and of the website’s explosive growth, quickly lifts you to a state of exhilaration, and pretty much keeps you there for two hours.”

Bob Mondello, NPR:

“‘The Social Network’ is terrific entertainment–an unlikely thriller that makes business ethics, class distinctions and intellectual-property arguments sexy.”

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News:

“Weeks after seeing it, moments from it will haunt you.”

Hauntingly sexy is simply not the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that I know or what most think of the powerful social networking site, but it seems to go on and on like that in the reviews, with every critic using the film to wax poetic about life in the digital age.

(Personally, I find all my life lessons in “The Terminator” series, but no one seems to grok my profound insight here.)

On Rotten Tomatoes, which you can see above, the movie got a 97 percent critics rating, although only an 81 percent audience vote. Still, only Ben Affleck’s “The Town” is as close.

In other words, Mark, even if it is trashing you as a person, what you represent seems to have inspired analog ecstasy and movie magic.

And for most film critics, it seems, a very happy ending.

I will be seeing “The Social Network” later today at a special screening in Silicon Valley, sponsored by Eastwick Communications, which will be followed by a panel discussion titled: “Trust, Privacy, and Ethics in the Facebook Age.”

I am the moderator, and the interviewees include M. Ryan Calo, director of the Consumer Privacy Project at Stanford Law School; Matt Cohler, one of Facebook’s earliest execs (where he remains a special advisor) and now a VC at Benchmark Capital; FutureWorks’ Brian Solis; and ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik.

Video TK, natch, although I am going more for wobbly, rather than exhilarating.

I certainly could not do much better than another genius version by Next Media Animation from Taiwan. While only in CGI, there is bathroom sex, beatings, peepholes and–say what?–a gay love triangle.

Really and truly–enjoy: