Crossroads

When Dorothy first sets out on that yellow brick road, she does so with a nimble bounce in her step and an irrepressible smile on her face. Never minding the fact that she's been credited with manslaughter and had her life (and the life of her pet) threatened by a green-faced hag, she skips to the infectious singing of hundreds of Munchkins, comfortable with the simplicity of her instructions to merely "follow the yellow brick road", which appears fairly straight forward -- at least as painted on the wall of the soundstage at MGM.

One dissolve later, and she finds herself standing at a crossroads, wracked with indecision. Her journey -- though still musically bright and vibrantly Technicolored -- is only going to get more challenging, more frightening, and darker before it gets lighter. No doubt she'd love to just keep walking back-and-forth along the sunny, nonthreatening stretch of road she already knows; Avoid the dark forest, the poisonous poppy field, the witch's castle...

She'll never get home... but at least that early stretch of road ain't so bad...

But she'll never get home... but at least she's never far from the safety of Munchkinland...

But she'll never get home... but at least she has Toto to keep her company...

But she'll never get home.

Early Oscar predictions - Part 5

Today's post is a short one, just looking at some of the possibilities in Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup & Hairstyling. Next week we'll finish up the early predictions with a look at the aural craft categories.

Sunday Top Ten - Pre-CG special effects films

All aspects of filmmaking evolve over time, but none so conspicuously as visual effects. The advancements made even over the last few years continue to amaze audiences. But for all the wonderful possibilities these technical achievements have opened up to filmmakers, I sometimes find myself yearning for a simpler time. Computer-generated images may make for convincing and exciting special effects, but am I alone in feeling that the digitization of this art has somewhat diminished the "specialness" of those effects? When you see a spaceship being blown up on screen today, you know how it was done; CGI. When you see a lifelike ape play the lead role in a movie today, you know how it was done; CGI. Wouldn't it be grand to watch a movie nowadays and legitimately wonder, "how did they do that?"

There was a time when you could, and the effects, though widely considered dated by today's standards, are still truly special in my eyes. For my money, these are the ten best pre-CG special effect showcases.

Sunday Top Ten - Wizard of Oz quotes

Next to Casablanca, I might call The Wizard of Oz the most quotable movie ever. It still perplexes me how its wonderful and memorable screenplay didn't earn Oscar recognition. Well, it doesn't have to work too hard for Awards Prognosticator recognition. For a film I can quote pretty much verbatim, it was no problem finding at least ten lines to fill this list. The hard part was deciding which ones to leave off!

Sunday Top Ten: Awesome movie deaths

I almost found it a little disturbing how much fun I had putting together this particular list, but if there's any time and place where one can take morbid delight in overly elaborate and exotic deaths, it's the movies! I had lots of bizarre bucket-kickings to choose from, more than this list could include, but if I had to choose only ten that would make me say, “Now that's the way to go!”, these would be them:

(Needless to day, here be a few spoilers.)