[ShaneP]

War for the win.

Serkis is invited up with the Weta folks, grabs the Oscar out of their hands, and yells into the mic, "I'm the king of the world!"...cut to commercial.

[TylerMirage]

Serkis is invited up with the Weta folks, grabs the Oscar out of their hands, and yells into the mic, "I'm the king of the world!"...cut to commercial.

After all, according to Serkis, everything comes from the actor.

[ShaneP]

Serkis is invited up with the Weta folks, grabs the Oscar out of their hands, and yells into the mic, "I'm the king of the world!"...cut to commercial.

After all, according to Serkis, everything comes from the actor.

[The Cynic]

Glad KONG got a nom, sorta surprised DUNKIRK and SHAPE OF WATER missed the cut...not because I thought they should have but kinda expected the Fx Branch of the Academy to toss in a wild card...Actually really shocked DUNKIRK wasn't nominated..FYI-At the Bake-Off Weta said they key-framed 95% of Ceasar.only used Serkis as a reference..Mighty impressive work regardless...Academy for some reason hasn't rewarded APES so far...will they this year?

[ShaneP]

Yeah it doesn't surprise me they key-framed Apes that much. That's the way it has been for every last one of Serkis' projects with them yet considering the amount of press he's garnered you would think he was the actor and sole animator all by himself.
It's really a joke. Just one more glaring example of the marginalization of the vfx artists by the media and the film industry.

[ninja turtle]

Congrats to all.
Apes could take it, but remember that weta was awarded last year for similar work in The jungle book(king louie).

[vfx fan]

I've been thinking that the fact two ape movies were nominated this year, they could cancel each other out and BLADE RUNNER 2049 could take it. Though I don't mind either BLADE RUNNER or APES taking it...but I do think BR '49 was the better movie.

[Kmart]

Finally saw BR, and while I wasn't terribly impressed with the movie (understatement), I also wasn't impressed with all of the effects work. The model shots seemed to be deliberately from the wrong angle, looking down and blowing the scale on low-level street flyovers. And the spectacle was undercut by the lack of color. Rachel was pretty close to right, though.

And I liked that I guessed the kid's ID right away, and that felt helped the end of the movie feel right, even if nothing else did.

[ShaneP]

Ridley complained recently while doing press for All the Money in the World(probably revolved to talk about something else other than Spacey)that BR2049 suffered because it was too long.

Wrong Ridley. It suffered because it was made at all. There are some sequels you will just never win at making. This is not Star Wars where numerous sequels followed the original, the first one three years after the original.

Blade Runner never felt episodic in any way. Harrison was better in this than in The Force Awakens though. At least he seemed awake for this one.

Blade Runner: The Ford Awakened.

[Kmart]

You're right about Ford ... there was at least 15 seconds (and I'm not being facetious) after he was in the villain's lair where his silence and expression spoke volumes, it was like he had shucked off the persona acting shtick completely and was really in the moment.

[TylerMirage]

I've been thinking that the fact two ape movies were nominated this year, they could cancel each other out and BLADE RUNNER 2049 could take it. Though I don't mind either BLADE RUNNER or APES taking it...but I do think BR '49 was the better movie.

Hmm. I didn't even make the connection that 2/5 of the nominees are for them giant monkees. It could either way: they cancel each other out or the Academy notices that 40% of the nominees are digital apes, so there must be something to them, and give it to one of them.

Finally saw BR, and while I wasn't terribly impressed with the movie (understatement), I also wasn't impressed with all of the effects work. The model shots seemed to be deliberately from the wrong angle, looking down and blowing the scale on low-level street flyovers. And the spectacle was undercut by the lack of color. Rachel was pretty close to right, though.

Interesting to hear that. I have it rented on iTunes, so I'm planning on watching it in the coming weeks - I'll keep my eye out for those model shots.

Plus, I'm genuinely interested in watching it because I'm kind of going in fresh and objective. The original BR was never a big thing for me. I watched it probably 5-10 years ago for the first and only time. Haven't seen it since and, to be frank, I barely remember much about it. My recollection of it to friends when it comes up in conversation is usually summarized as "The 1982 sci-fi classic directed by Ridley Scott with some outstanding miniatures, matte paintings and, uh... Harrison Ford is a grumpy cop and...Rutger Hauer is crying in the rain...and there's voiceover narration, I think?" As you can tell, it really stuck with me.

[Kmart]

I saw the original a week or so after it came out in the mostly glorious summer of 82, and I don't think I knew what to make of it, except that I liked it and thought Ford brought a lot of nuance. I probably watched it five or six times on vid BEFORE the Criterion laserdisc came out, so I can't imagine the number of times I've seen it since then, though only once more (for the director's cut) in a theater.

I think it spoke to me because it was pensive in a summer that seemed very explosive, what with FIREFOX and KHAN and POLTERGEIST (though I think I skipped that and THE THING) and TRON and my guilty pleasure of that spring, WRONG IS RIGHT (which seems less farcical and more real with every passing decade.)

[ShaneP]

I saw the original a week or so after it came out in the mostly glorious summer of 82, and I don't think I knew what to make of it, except that I liked it and thought Ford brought a lot of nuance. I probably watched it five or six times on vid BEFORE the Criterion laserdisc came out, so I can't imagine the number of times I've seen it since then, though only once more (for the director's cut) in a theater.

I think it spoke to me because it was pensive in a summer that seemed very explosive, what with FIREFOX and KHAN and POLTERGEIST (though I think I skipped that and THE THING) and TRON and my guilty pleasure of that spring, WRONG IS RIGHT (which seems less farcical and more real with every passing decade.)

You forgot E.T. Kevin! I loved that movie. Made me cry. Something tells me it made you cry too....but crying in pain.

That Summer and entire year was amazing. I'll add Conan The Barbarian to that list as well. Poltergeist scared the crap out of me....especially that evil clown doll. And The Thing...I couldn't even make it all the way through that. My Mom's friend used to have HBO and she would tape all of these movies on Betamax and give them to us.

I would sneak the R rated ones. My parents didn't exactly try and hide them or ground me if I watched them though. They usually just gave me a little lecture about them.

Damn I watched a ton of those HBO movies as a kid. Lynch's The Elephant Man was another but from another year.

Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke That was hilarious. What can I say? My parents were toking, smoking hippies.

[Kmart]

I didn't see ET till late spring 1983 (it was still in a first-run situation in San Jose at that point.) I cried, but I felt bad about crying, thinking if you just turned the damn music off, I'd be realizing this movie doesn't work at all without it.

I've only ever watched ET once since, and I found that by turning the volume off, it turned off my emotional response completely. Same thing might be true for MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, but I don't want to find out the truth if that's the case, cuz I'm GOOD with crying when Bronson dies in that one.

Don't think I saw CONAN or THE THING till VHS, though I wish I'd caught it in the theater. same for BLUE THUNDER, though maybe that was 83, not 82. I did manage to miss MEGAFORCE, and give myself props for that call.

I'm thinking I might have seen BLADE RUNNER a second time in the theater, because I seem to remember catching ROAD WARRIOR for a second time at the Pruneyard theaters in Campbell, and I KNOW that there was a ROAD WARRIOR / BLADE RUNNER double bill there briefly in late summer 82. I was without a car for about a year, and if I missed the last bus home from work I had a 7 mile walk, which took me right past that theater (and passed Tower Records, so I'd spend quadruple the bus fare when I'd stop in there), so that is pretty accurate I think. Am also thinking a BR/RW double bill might have been better than the ALIENS/FLY and ALIENS/TERMINATOR ones I remember from a few years later as being pretty incredible.

Lot to like about that era, once you get over all the damn smoke on the sets.

[ShaneP]

Don't think I saw CONAN or THE THING till VHS, though I wish I'd caught it in the theater. same for BLUE THUNDER, though maybe that was 83, not 82. I did manage to miss MEGAFORCE, and give myself props for that call.

I'm thinking I might have seen BLADE RUNNER a second time in the theater, because I seem to remember catching ROAD WARRIOR for a second time at the Pruneyard theaters in Campbell, and I KNOW that there was a ROAD WARRIOR / BLADE RUNNER double bill there briefly in late summer 82. I was without a car for about a year, and if I missed the last bus home from work I had a 7 mile walk, which took me right past that theater (and passed Tower Records, so I'd spend quadruple the bus fare when I'd stop in there), so that is pretty accurate I think. Am also thinking a BR/RW double bill might have been better than the ALIENS/FLY and ALIENS/TERMINATOR ones I remember from a few years later as being pretty incredible.

Lot to like about that era, once you get over all the damn smoke on the sets.

Damn I forgot Road Warrior. Always liked that one more than Mad Max. I think Blue Thunder was 83. I remember I used to watch it and Airwolf episodes over and over. Megaforce had a cool poster Marvel comics always ran in the months leading up to its release but the movie was terrible. One more that might not be one of your favorites but one I loved at the time was The Dark Crystal. I ran out of the theater when the Skeksis fired that laser at the little peaceful muppet in chains and melted his face.
Serious question but I wonder if anyone didn't wear masks for all of those Trumbull smoked up sets?

[Kmart]

It's kind of sad, but I have privately always wondered whether Dave Stewart's early death was attributable to being on all those smoked up model shoots.

I started thinking that way when noticing how many folks from DUNE had died within a few years of that wrapping, and after reading about how they were indiscriminately burning tires for atmosphere throughout the long shoot. Good thing Kyle McLachan and Everett McGill are health nuts (McGill hollowed out a bottle of empty shampoo and stuffed a t-shirt in it and breathed through that between takes on DUNE - supposedly the t-shirt would turn black in no time each day.)

As much as I thought McLachlan was a bad casting choice on DUNE -- 'the black hole that sucks down everything and everyone around it' is the way I usual describe his pre-HIDDEN and pre-TWIN PEAKS lack of charisma -- and that I personally would have done a better job (while looking almost just like him back then, too, to the point that I was more than once able to cut a flipped-neg pic of him off the cover of MAKING OF DUNE and fool everyone into thinking it was me!), I would not have wanted the job given the environment. As a longtime smoker (two decades of multipack/day unfiltereds before I quit), I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have even survived the film, let alone the interim since.
(image in question is bottom of this cover here)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q ... 6547464766

[ShaneP]

Damn, you sound like my Grandpa. He smoked Camel studs his whole life.

Tires burning for the smoke....that is nuts. I was next going to ask you following the Trumbull smoked sets what sources they used to get the smoke but....now I'm reluctant to ask.

[Kmart]

vaporized some element to create atmosphere. Just the word vaporize is enough to scare me. I keep thinking it was diesel fuel or something like that.

[TylerMirage]

Congratulations to the Blade Runner 2049 team!

[ShaneP]

I will say Deakins win was well deserved. 'Bout time too!