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The day the special effect died.
There are two kinds of special effects in movies; the ones that attract no attention at all and the ones that just do that. The first category is there to make what you see on screen believable, and because it succeeds in generating a realistic image it attracts no attention at all. We believe what we see on screen for something real because the effect is done in a proper way and what is on screen doesn't break any scientific laws or falls out of place with the rest of what is on screen. A good example of this is the ping pong ball in Forest Gump; There was no ping pong ball. Only the one that was added in post-production. Most people don't know that and never realize it.
Looking back at: Batman - The Animated Series
These past few months I've been catching up on some of my childhood by watching the entire series of "Batman: The Animated Series" as well as its successor "The New Batman Adventures". Having watched a fair share of episodes back in the day (the early 90's) it occurred to me that this was regarded as one of the best cartoons ever produced for television. So I thought it would be nice to go back and see if it still holds up.
Now when this series first aired 17/18 years ago I was 14/15 myself and saw an episode once a week as it was part of the Saturday morning cartoon selection. It's quite clear how this cartoon stands out from the crowd, as it is quite different from the rest, something I noticed back then already. There's a sense of realism as the cops and villains both use guns instead of the lasers we got in shows like G.I. Joe, Marshall Bravestarr and Transformers, there's little place for humor and most of the stories told have a tragic side to them, the cartoon is very dark and most of it takes place during the night. Thematically the show uses plot devices like police corruption, child abuse, schizophrenia, mob wars and such. Not the most easily digested material, especially for children. Batman was a cartoon that was aimed for a more mature audience yet was aired here in The Netherlands between Eek The Cat and The Animaniacs or cartoons similar to those.
Failured to launch
In Machete by Robert Rodriguez Steven Seagal and Danny Trejo faceoff one on one for the third time now. Seeing them together in the trailer made me realize one thing; that the tables have turned. Trejo now stars while he has been a busy supporting character for over more than 20 years while Seagal is only playing a supporting character when he normally is the subject of his movies. The contrast between Trejo and Seagal is like black and white in terms of their career. Trejo has a regular career of steadily climbing the ladders of success in Hollywood. Starting out small and now having top-billing in a theatrical movie. Seagal on the other hand had a career that was launched. A big time producer saw his skills and decided this was the new action hero and gave him the role of Nico Toscani in Above The Law (a.k.a. Nico). From day one Seagal's name was above the movie titles he starred in.
Now Seagal is kind of unique as he really was a nobody before this first movie and had absolutely no other screen credits but he isn't the only one to have a career that was launched. But he was one of the few who actually succeeded to have success and maintain on top. Most of the time when a movie-career is launched for somebody it's a person who has been famous in another profession like sports, music or acting in a TV-show.
Here are a few examples of careers that were launched with great exposure but which failed to take off.
Best Picture? We don't think so!
"Avatar" has crushed a couple of records set by "Titanic", but there is one record it can't crush: the amount of Academy Awards it is going to take home. Simply because "Titanic" has won more Oscars than "Avatar" is nominated for. This fact made me realize that "Titanic" has won 11 Oscars while the public opinion about the movie is now not as praising as one might expect about a movie that won so many Oscars. On the IMDB it scores a mere 7.3, which is kind of low considering this was the best picture of 1997. Well at least according to the Academy. But it isn't even in the top 250, so apparently the Academy and the general public differ on what was the best movie from 1997. The highest ranked movie from that year is "L.A. Confidential" scoring an 8.4 and currently holding the #63 spot in the IMDB Top 250. It was nominated for a Best Picture award but lost out to "Titanic".
This made me curious and so I took the Best Picture winners from the last 20 years and compared them to their rating on IMDB as well as their fellow nominees from that year. I also noted the movies that are on the Top 250, yet weren't nomatinated at all. Now of course the rating on the IMDB isn't 100% airtight, but almost every movie does have a rating that seems to do it justice in my opinion. Most of the distortions only appear when movies are just released and fanboys and girls go wild on hitting the #10 rating.
So let's take a look on how we, the general movie going audience, have varying opinions on what is the best movie compared to what the Academy thinks.
The movie career of 2Pac
It has been 13 years since the death of the then only 25 year old Tupac "2Pac" Shakur. Now when people hear the name 2Pac, they immediately associate it with Hip-Hop, which is very logical of course. 2Pac was one of the faces of the Gangster Rap that emerged in the late 80's and early 90's, but 2Pac was also one of the first rappers who starred in motion pictures. At the same time 2Pac started starring in movies the only other big names in rap starting out in movies were Ice-T and Ice Cube. Those three paved the way for people like DMX, Ja Rule, Snoop Dog, Ludacris, Eminem and in a way even Will Smith although he was doing just fine in his own sitcom at the time.
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