Teh News:
Mickey, and our ridiculous copyright laws, turn 80
Lasseter on the Animation Oscar
War Monkeys just has to be Awesome
Teh Reviews:
True Blood
21
House
Inland Empire
Something else… 
An Episode on The HardDrive is Worth Two in the Cloud [1:07:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadTen Things i hate about You, the Series
Avatar – Turns out James Cameron is a fucking champ in real life..
Then its onto reviews with:
Justin recently wrote one of the best posts on this here site about dudes who get it… Although this isn’t film related, today I’m equally inspired by The Guardian Newspaper . The first newspaper in the world to offer full articles in their RSS feed.
Dear ABC, Fairfax, News.com.au etc… I now suck in all ‘print’ knowledge purely via RSS, and only to feeds with full articles. Sadly this means i really don’t know what the hell is happening in the world outside of Tech News, Mac News, Film News, and LolCats. Thanks to The Guardian, i realise we’re still at war, which is a shame, and that there’s been a spot of bother with the economy lately.
Thanks Guardian, for realising it is 2008.
Thanks for your patience.
I only just heard that Stan Winston died a couple of days ago, which is a bit sad.
You might not know the name, especially if you’re not a scifi film geek, but you’ve definitely seen the work. Even really CG-heavy films need a practical special effect every now and then, and Stan was the go-to guy when it came to your horrible monster, especially its horribly monstrous head - he built Predator, Terminator, the aliens in Aliens, the dinos in Jurassic and loads more. Memorable, iconic stuff! He generally didn’t do the design work, but he made it work on-screen, which is just as important. Where would we be if Predator didn’t have the creepy, spidery mandibles?
“Living in some kind of wonderland where there’s no such thing as AVP:Requiem”, I hear you say. Maybe so, but you’re missing the point. Deliberately, by the sounds of it. Why do you have to be so difficult?
There’s a story about fellow practical effects pioneer Phil Tippett working on Jurassic Park. Apparently, when looking at CG dino footage, Spielberg turned to him and said “I think you’re out of a job.” and Tippett replied “I think you mean I’m extinct”. It’s probably apocryphal, but Tippett started out as a stop-motion animator, and whether he said it or not he certainly knew it – he moved into CG animation and directing (well, trying to direct… ).
It’s kinda cool that Stan, although he had a brief flirtation with CG, always found work doing the practical stuff. Rumour is that he was doing more of the dino heads on Jurassic Park 4. I’m sure that whoever they replace him with will do a bang-up job, but when I see Jurassic Park 4, I’ll be thinking of Stan.
“Jurassic Park 4 can go get fucked”, you say? Well, I can’t say I approve of your language, but… finally you’re making some sense. Thanks.
I’ll go and watch Predator and think of Stan instead.
UPDATE: Kudos! Charlie’s Angels director McG has declared his intention to dedicate Terminator 4 to Stan.
