That’s no slouch of a milestone and almost tops the one DreamWorks Animation reached a few years ago when it unseated Pixar as the all-time box office champ when it comes to CGI features. The “Shrek” film franchise, alone, has made $3.5 billion worldwide, and you can tally another $1.9 billion from the three “Madagascar” movies and $1.2 billion from just two “Kung Fu Panda” pictures.

We’ll get to the review of “The Croods” in a minute, and where Intel fits into all of this a bit later, but first the “but.” While the talented folks at DreamWorks Animation have succeeded in getting the civilized world to side with a giant green ogre and cross fingers for lost, misfit zoo animals and root for a fat and lazy panda, none of the studio’s features can hold a computer-drawn candle to the stories that make Pixar movies magical. Oh, they’re funny and exciting, all right — many times even more so than what the rival puts out under the Disney banner. But what Pixar’s movies have that those from DreamWorks and the other big studios seem to lack are heart and smarts — the stuff that makes a film endearing and everlasting, and makes the sentimental cry. Call me soft if you must, but nine of Pixar’s baker’s dozen have caused me soggy eyeballs. When Sully reunites with Boo at the end of “Monsters, Inc.” I bawled like a baby. The tender and wordless montage in “Up?” Serious Kleenex time. And don’t even get me started on the second-to-last scene in “Toy Story 3.” DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” came close to activating my waterworks. I’m a sucker for injured mythical creatures.

With “The Croods” (rated PG), a prehistoric comedy adventure that follows the supposed last surviving family of their era, tears of laughter are sought much more than the other kind. Yeah, there’s a father-daughter bonding moment at the end (spoiler alert!), but 97 1/2 of the movie’s 98 minutes are devoted to slapstick and 3-D eye candy. Thank goodness for the eye candy.

In this “Flintstones” meets “Avatar” (apologies to Hanna-Barbera and James Cameron), belly laughs are at a premium. I counted two: the scenes when the Croods are introduced to fire and footwear by Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a more advanced human who after a meet-cute charms Eep (Emma Stone), the bored, rebellious daughter of Grug (a miscast Nicolas Cage). The brutish patriarch believes there’s danger in anything new, Guy included. Grug’s cautious ways have kept the family alive, but as Eep says, this isn’t living, it’s just not dying.

After an earthquake destroys their cave, Eep gets her wish to see the world, or at least the part that gets them to safer ground as the Earth begins to shift. Wish I could say that getting there is half the fun. Wit doesn’t exactly ooze from the thin story and even thinner characters that lack originality. The littlest Crood, Sandy, is the spitting image of Darla, the dentist’s daughter in Pixar’s “Finding Nemo.” Gran, voiced by Cloris Leachman, is the same crabby-sassy old mother-in-law seen in movies from “National Lampoon’s Vacation” to “The Grown-Ups.” Thunk (“The Office’s” Clark Duke) is the idiot son who does yield a laugh when he teaches his new pet to roll over, unfortunately, over a cliff.

Where this Stone Age picture rocks is in the graphics, and no Pixar movie comes close in this department. The other-worldly plant life is a feast for the 3-D glasses-enhanced eyes. So is the non-stop parade of Seuss-on-acid creatures (piranha-owls, mousephants and turkeyfish, really?). The billowing smoke and blanketing clouds that dramatically bring this otherwise middling movie to a close are flat-out arresting.

Helping DreamWorks Animation and its latest movie look good is Intel, a strategic partner of the studio since 2009′s “Monsters vs. Aliens.” Intel provides high-performance desktop workstations and server blades powered by the company’s latest multi-core processors. Cloud computing also is a critical component to the studio providing a robust, scalable infrastructure for rendering multiple CG films in production. In fact, “The Croods,” comprised of over 400 million data files, relied on Intel processing power to provide 12 percent of the film’s cloud computing needs.

Clearly, Intel was pivotal to DreamWorks Animation challenging the technical status quo with “The Croods.” Maybe with the snail-centered comedy ”Turbo,” due out this summer, the studio will advance the genre of computer animation in other ways.

2 1/2 Stars (out of 5)

Here’s Max:

Since I first started playing video games, it has solely been on a console, but with modern technology, the way I play video games is changing. Last month I built my own gaming computer, equipped with a ASUS GTX660 GPU and an Intel Core i7-3770K CPU. I installed a plethora of PC games, including personal favorite “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” and I’m blown away. The powerful 660 always maintains 60 frames per second on COD, and on “Team Fortress 2,” I get 300 frames per second. There are many debates on why PC gaming is better or worse than console gaming, and now having seen what a PC can do, my original opinion and partiality of the PlayStation 3 has drastically changed.

Now a convert, I offer my reasons why PC gaming is superior to that on a console:
• Consoles play games with 20-30fps, a PC with 60+ fps.
• Consoles have 1280×720 and even sometimes sub-HD resolutions, but PCs have 1920×1200 and 2560×1600.
• PCs have better graphics (lighting, textures, etc.).
• Consoles don’t have anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.
• With a console, you cannot mod the game.
• With consoles, you cannot play multiplayer with more than 16 players, but with PCs, you can play with 50 or more players.
• With PCs, you have a dedicated server, but with consoles you do not. Consoles use peer-to-peer only and that is very bad because if someone lags then everybody lags.
• There are tons of exclusives on PC gaming including “StarCraft II” and “DayZ Standalone.”
• If you like RTS and MMORPGS games, then PC gaming is your only choice.

All in all, the debate of whether PC gaming is superior over console play will be a constant battle, but for this gamer, at least, I’ve seen the light. Thanks to an amazing GPU and CPU, console gaming is game over.

Steampunks chew on more than dinner for the filming of "Vintage Tomorrows." Photo: Byrd McDonald

To the uninitiated like me, the steampunk movement could be discounted as just a new fashion style – a Victorian-inspired blend of science fiction and shabby chic influenced by Goth and punk with a hint of nerd.

Upon closer inspection, that is, once you bat away the brown peacock feather tickling you off the steampunk’s bejeweled top hat, you realize that your description is dead on, but very narrow-focused, if not narrow-minded.

Thanks to “Vintage Tomorrows,” a new documentary that debuts this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, more commoners will be exposed to this eccentric group that has a lot to say.  Which begs the question: What is Intel, a company not known for being eccentric, hanging out with folks who wear feathers, goggles, gears, leather and lace? And not just hanging, but sitting down at a dinner party to engage in heavy conversation about the past, present and mostly the future?

One of the project’s drivers answers that question before his first toast over fine wine: “I am here so that I can build a better future so that we can build better technologies for people,” explains Brian David Johnson, Intel’s futurist. Yep, that’s his actual title. Johnson, whose first name being an anagram of “brain” is probably no coincidence, says that steampunks can help us shape our tomorrow. The further the film explains who and what these people are, the more audiences will understand Johnson’s motives. If Johnson was looking for that “a-ha moment,” however, it’s not evident from this near-hour of otherwise compelling filmmaking.

“Vintage Tomorrows,” an extension of Johnson’s cerebral, thought-provoking “The Tomorrow Project,” offers a solid overview of a subculture that bends philosopher George Santayana’s maxim, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Steampunks do remember the past, dating back to the days of Queen Victoria, and they don’t feel condemned doing so if history is repeated in an individualistic, humanistic, imaginary way, be it fashion, literature, games, music, swagger, what have you.

The film covers all of this, and while the 30,000-foot view is good from an introduction-to-steampunk purpose, straying from the topmost topic of technology makes one wonder whether Johnson succeeded in “doing something that’s quite important” at the soiree. I guess time will tell whether all the chit-chat over what steampunks wear, read and design will shape what Intel and the tech industry come up with in the future. That’s not to say the moments in which the documentary circumvents the main topic aren’t fascinating. How can a discussion among retro-futurists not be?

Author Cherie Priest, one of the more droll steampunks featured in the film, said that her community “isn’t trying to return to the Victorian era.” It’s more that they long to weave sentiments, philosophies and the knocking down of barriers of a time when the social strata changed in terms of cultural norms, values, morality and lifestyle. Evident that steampunks are serious, but not excessively so like so many humorless subculturists, Priest shared that a personal reason for not wanting to travel back in Victorian time is her fancy for such modern conveniences as deodorant, soap and WiFi.

The documentary is produced and directed by Byrd McDonald, who explored a different subculture in 2006 with “Haunters,” a film about the macabre who are into homemade haunted houses. His latest about a group that also likes to dress up, albeit with far fewer skeletal adornments, scores high on the 5 W’s aspect of steampunk. The “who” is well covered by interesting dinner guests, cultural historian James Carrott among them, in addition to oddballs not sitting at the banquet table, like Priest and steampunk “post-colonialist” Jaymee Goh. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t tell if we’re seeing the real deal or whether Goh’s salty ‘tude is for shock value. Her take on the modern cellphone: “I mean, look how f***ing tiny the buttons are. This is aggravating!” She’s right, and as much as I appreciate comic relief, the woman seems out of place in the parade of refined intellectuals who make the argument that technology should have a more human feel.

We’re told that within the steampunk movement is a rebellion of the tech world’s efforts over the past half-century to boil down technology into “one magical box.” Tech companies don’t get that configurability is seductive to humans, we’re told. One steampunk would like to know there’s an actual person on the other side of the device “making decisions that we can question or override or at least be in dialogue with.” Another makes an interesting point that the business model of contemporary technology is often to make modifications illegal.

A gem of a comment is made near the end. It’s quintessential steampunk that no doubt left Intel’s futurist and dinner host more intrigued than chagrined. Here it is: Even if steampunks win the war against the tech industry, there will never be a perfect device. The reason for this, we’re told, is each of us is constantly changing and what meets our needs today won’t tomorrow.

One nit with all this, however, is despite all the coolness oozing from the documentary’s pores, the audience gets a one-sided view from a subculture that, at least based on who’s talking, is well off. Clearly, it takes money to live as a steampunk. Any claims to relations with the beatnik and hippie movements of the ’50s and ’60s, need to be weighed against the fact that those predecessors didn’t require a fat wallet. A true hippie might say, “I love things that are beautiful,” but they wouldn’t complete the sentence with “and beautifully made, functional and ornamental.” Those words are in “Vintage Tomorrows,” and they’re stated to represent all steampunks. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if the goal is to learn what kind of tomorrow humans will want for the future, let’s hope Intel and its brothers listen to more than just those who have the desire and means to wear top hats adorned with gadgets and gizmos. 4 of 5 Stars.

will.i.am's directorial debut calls for the Ultrabook to do some stunt work in the rain.

will.i.am being Intel’s director of innovation probably helped get Ultrabook cast in his latest music video, but the “in” didn’t equate to pampered treatment as the Intel system gets rained on for more than half the song. “This is Love,” featuring Dutch singer Eva Simons, is will.i.am’s new dance floor single off the American star’s upcoming solo album, #willpower, on Interscope Records. Set in London and marking will.i.am’s directorial debut, the video uses an Ultrabook as a working prop with simulated images. Word from the crew is that the Ultrabook powered through the shoot despite the soggy elements, but its current condition is unknown. No doubt something for a future episode of “E! Behind the Scenes.” What do you think of the music video or Ultrabook’s stunt work?