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The last shot is out the door! The movie comes out in a little less than three weeks. I can't wait. I ended up working on the final final of the show, a huge shot, which you actually see in the first minutes when the movie comes out, which is the title card shot. I'm pretty happy with it, all in all. After Cohen came, the small crew that was still around sat down and had dinner, and conversed over how the show went, in a jovial manner. Joel, our VFX supervisor, told us some stories about his earlier formative years, as a visual effects supervisor on Wierd Science and another last minute show called Judge Dredd. Joel won an Oscar for What Dreams May Comes in 1998.

Now it's time for some relaxing R&R. Next week I'll still be on the show for a short time, tying up loose ends. Stay tuned for the next big show! Siggraph is actually coming up very shortly. Hopefully I'll meet up with some of you there!

A quick rip from MTV News about the Visual Effects in The Mummy 3. Surprisingly, VH1 credited MTV News for this, and put it up on their site anyway. Here's the link to VH1's posting. Or you can just read it in its entirety below.

LOS ANGELES — "The face is way too hot. It doesn't look like Jet Li, it looks like the guy from 'Saw.' It's not supposed to look like a mask!" "I've had problems with this before and I've told you about it. He's looking like a guy in black pig sh--. If you look at what we've got — he's the creature from the Black Lagoon!"

"The backgrounds are taking away from the reality we've established! Flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat!"

It's an oppressively hot Los Angeles day, nearly two months before "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" is released, and director Rob Cohen is holding court.

With his back turned to a group of special-effects wizards from Digital Domain, Cohen sits with roughly 25 others in a darkened theater, all eyes trained on a giant screen projecting images from the film submitted for his final approval. The sequences — around 20 in all, sometimes as short as two seconds — are played on a loop. If he thinks the shot is finalized and ready for print, he'll clap his hands and ring a bell. But not one to mince words, Cohen is letting his displeasure with some of the shots show.

And in each and every case, he's 100 percent right.

"Three times a week, I sit with the lead people, the digital men. A lot of people think that directors call up [Industrial Light and Magic] and say, 'Ya, I need a dragon that talks.' I don't know how other directors work, but with me, I'm on every pixel, every detail, all the time," Cohen tells MTV News when we join him for one such session. "And I have been doing this with them since I became the director of this movie a year ago."

To be fair, Cohen's words read harsher than they sound. Watching the process of finalizing these shots unfold, it's hard not to like the oft-derided director, who is exacting, demanding, rigid and uncompromising, but also jovial and clear about what he wants.

At various points, his desires necessitate that we watch the same one-second clip upwards of 20 times, occasionally frame by exhausting frame. To the untrained eye, the clips, which include some pretty nifty battle scenes, seem perfect as they are. Anybody who can watch one second of film and say otherwise is either lying or as obsessive about perfection as Cohen.

One shot in particular — of the Chinese terra-cotta warriors marching across the desert — has been kicked back for improvements "40 times," Cohen says. And it's not the terra-cotta warriors he has a problem with — it's the background. A background that is literally seen for one second (at the most).

"I've worked on building the layers, building the layers, building the layers, and I've seen it now for final approval several times. I don't like it," Cohen insists. "I don't like the background. I don't like the relationship of the foreground to the background. I don't like the deadness of the background. I don't feel like I'm in a photorealistic environment, and this is when the army comes above ground. That wants to be one of those moments that's absolutely undiluted by doubt. You just want to go, 'Christ! This is the terra-cotta army of Shi Huang coming above ground to go into battle!' "

Other shots — notably Jet Li's transformation scene, which includes a lot of mud effects — also fail Cohen's test, although never without specific notes on how the director thinks they could be better. ("More red. Less light! Some shrubbery in the distance!")

But for Cohen, who says he'll be working on the film this way "until they pry it out of my hands on July 13," it's an arduous process with a noble goal: make the best darn movie possible.

"Maybe many directors would have accepted some of this stuff today that I kicked back, but I can't do it. These people are dead tired. We've been working seven days a week for months. And the temptation is to go, 'Nah, it's good enough,' 'cause it's dispiriting when I kick some of these finals back, but you have to," Cohen says, a broad smile on his face. "The toughest thing about being a movie director is resisting the temptation to be a nice guy."

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" opens August 1.

The official Mummy 3 Trailer is now out, check it out on Rob Cohen's blog. Lots more vfx work, most seem final, and several little more in-depth story points.

Happy Memorial Day everyone! I hope all of you are enjoying your three day weekend while we in the trenches are finishing up The Mummy for you. If you caught Indiana Jones or Prince Caspian over the weekend you've probably seen the Mummy teaser trailer, if not, head on over to Rob Cohen's blog and check it out. Another show that Digital Domain is working on is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There's an international trailer out, in Spanish, but from what I've heard, it's pretty much identical to the trailer that is in front of Indiana Jones. From the IMDB listing, Digital Domain is one of the companies that is creating the visual effects, along with Asylum, Hydraulx, Lola, Drac Studios, and Ollin Studio.

Rob put up the teaser trailer for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor on his blog, check it out at this link! You can also hit the HD trailer at MSN Movies. In addition to the new trailer, there's a new layout that he's created. Pretty cool. I've got two shots in the trailer, the opening shot of the great wall, and a wide battle shot of the two armies. You'll be able to check the trailer in front of Prince Caspian today, and Indiana Jones internationally next week. After you see the trailer, put your comments below! Something you might see come August? We've got a bit of time before we're done, but the work is coming along beautifully. You'll definitely want to see the trailer in HD or on film. It looks promising.