Wednesday, January 5, 2011

NO, "OLIVIA WILDE IN A SKIN-TIGHT JUMPSUIT" DOES NOT COUNT AS A VISUAL EFFECT: Traditionally, the Academy Award for Visual Effects goes to a big showy blockbuster, and most of the seven finalists this year are no exception--Inception's folding cities, Iron Man 2's series of endless explosions, Tron: Legacy's impressive digital doubling/deaging of The Dude and overall visual style. Interestingly, though, this year, two commercial disappointments are nominated--Hereafter (which I didn't see, but am surprised to see on a short list in this category), and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which didn't have the most cutting-edge of effects due to its 8-bit aesthetic, but which may well beat all the other short-listers save perhaps Tron for sheer volume of effects. A somewhat surprising omission here? The Social Network, which featured pretty darn seamless and impressive effects used to double Arnie Hammer as the Winklevi.

14 comments:

  1. Joseph Finn12:04 AM

    I like to think just a little bit of the Visual Effects praise for Iron Man would be for the recreation of Walt Disney filmstrips for Stark Sr's World of Tomorrow promotions, one of my favorite parts of the movie. (And sadly, Richard Sherman gleefully tweeking his own Disneyland work in "Make Way For Tomorrow Today" did not make the Best Song shortlist.)

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  2. Joseph Finn12:04 AM

    I like to think just a little bit of the Visual Effects praise for Iron Man would be for the recreation of Walt Disney filmstrips for Stark Sr's World of Tomorrow promotions, one of my favorite parts of the movie. (And sadly, Richard Sherman gleefully tweeking his own Disneyland work in "Make Way For Tomorrow Today" did not make the Best Song shortlist.)

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  3. Dan Suitor12:39 AM

    There's no doubt in my mind that Scott Pilgrim or Inception should win, and my heart leans towards Pilgrim. Edgar Wright has always been visually inventive, but nothing- not even Tron- has come close to imparting the look and feel of video games into a movie. He successfully reconciled two distinct mediums into a holistic narrative and used perfectly-crafted visual effects to condense 1,200+ pages of story into a 112 minute movie.

    Wright used the look, feel, and sound (Pilgrim should ABSOLUTELY win the sound mixing Oscar) of video games to evoke the feeling of what it is to be young and drifting and in love and craving any sort of victory or higher purpose. And, frankly, he turned Michael Cera into a semi-believable action hero. Any movie that does that HAS to be doing something right, effects-wise.

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  4. spacewoman2:00 AM

    We could easily divide the world into people who love Scott Pilgrim and people who don't.  I'm right there on your side of the line, but I'm not sure how many of us there are, and I don't see too many voting Academy members standing with us. 

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  5. isaac_spaceman2:01 AM

    <span>We could easily divide the world into people who love Scott Pilgrim and people who don't.  I'm right there on your side of the line, but I'm not sure how many of us there are, and I don't see too many voting Academy members standing with us. </span>

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  6. Dan Suitor2:11 AM

    Figures the most effective bildungsroman in years has to carry the unfair label of "Video Game Movie", effectively blinding the Academy to its merits.

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  7. Those sequences, which are also helped along by the casting of John Slattery (basically playing Roger Sterling again) as Stark, Sr., are definitely among the best parts of the movie.

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  8. Heather K10:05 AM

    The Social Network was too seamless to get a nod.  I bet most viewers thought a pair of identical twins was cast.

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  9. gretchen12:32 PM

    I also thought it was seamless and beautifully done, but how hard can it be to double an actor?  They did it in the Parent Trap in 196something.

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  10. Joseph J. Finn12:34 PM

    Especially the nicely done scene of Tony watching outtakes as Stark Sr is devolving throughout the day of filming.

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  11. If you look at Parent Trap and other similar early doubling, rarely are the two characters shown in the same shot.  They may have conversations with one another, but it's typically designed to avoid showing them in that way--it's also splitscreening, in contrast to the facial replacement stuff they did in Social Network.

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  12. I felt the same way when The Last Starfighter got snubbed.

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  13. isaac_spaceman5:46 PM

    The most important part of the Social Network effect, though, was how Hammer made the two characters both different enough to constitute two completely distinct characters (so that you knew which was which even if they weren't both in the shot) while at the same time similar enough to be twin brothers who did everything together.  And then he did it with deft humor.  The high-tech visual effect was far less impressive, to me, than the low-tech visual effect that came about just from the acting. 

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  14. calliekl10:13 PM

    I have nothing to add, except to say that after only ever hearing his voice, never reading it, I am disappointed to find his name is Arnie, not Army. Because Army Hammer would be epic, obviously.

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