Free Republic

Unlike some of my friends on the Right, I understand the criticism of Kevin McCarthy’s decision to give Tucker Carlson exclusive access to the footage of January 6. Partisans can manipulate video, especially 41,000 hours of it, and even Tucker presumably wouldn’t disagree that he’s a partisan. It’s easy to slice up video to serve the narrative you prefer, to enhance and manipulate it, and to add dramatic flourishes to increase its emotional impact. And we can understand that by discovering what the January 6 committee did with the video, which appears to include all of the above. I missed...

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen Born: Los Angeles 29th June 1920 Died: London 7th May 2013. The Harryhausen family regret to announce the death of Ray Harryhausen, Visual Effects pioneer and stop-motion model animator. He was a multi-award winner which includes a special Oscar and BAFTA. Ray’s influence on today’s film makers was enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and the UK’s own Nick Park have cited Harryhausen as being the man whose work inspired their own creations. Harryhausen’s fascination with animated models began when he first saw Willis O’Brien’s creations in KING KONG with...

Let's start out with the recognition of perhaps the WORST special effect ever seen in a movie was the flaming paper plate on a line passing itself off as a flying saucer in "Plan Nine From Outer Space." However, I recently saw a movie that might have had a special effect just as lame. It was "Knights of the Round Table," starring Robert Taylor as Lancelot. Anyway, Lancelot, along with King Arthur and some allies were at a meeting at Stonehenge. The bad guys (Modred) suddenly decided to attack the Arthur crew. So Lancelot saves the day by pushing one...

H/T to Hardocp....************EXCERPT********** Greatest Troll Ever? I know people like to toss around terms like "epic" and "troll" all the time but this is definitely epic trolling!

An Absurdly Cool Behind-The-Scenes Look At The Jurassic Park Dinosaur Puppets The late great Stan Winston was one of the undisputed masters of cinematic effects. With his team of make-up artists and puppeteers, Winston gave such films as Aliens and Predator an otherworldly sheen that's been seared into the collective memory of moviegoers for decades. And on the Stan Winston School's YouTube account, there are tons of behind-the-scenes reels of the dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park films. Behold amazing footage of the velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus hanging out casually with their human puppet masters.

Rare Star Trek Photos Show Green Orion Slavegirls Like You’ve Never Seen Them The original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage," included a lot more of the scenes where Vina is turned into a green Orion slavegirl who dances for Captain Pike — but they were cut because they were too saucy for prime time television. Now, some rare Trek behind-the-scenes pictures include a brand new look at the unshown parts of Vina's dance sequence. Including a part where the poor slavegirl gets whipped. Turns out being an Orion slavegirl isn't all dancing and quoting poetry. Tom Redlaw, aka Bird of...

WRAL's VIDEO: Scott Mason tells the story behind an old wrecked train in the woods of Jackson County.

Presenting to you, this weekend, from pcottraux and rzenjikj at stout: From “King Kong” (1933) By Pcottraux (a.k.a Philip) A publicity still from “King Kong.” “King Kong” is one of my personal favorite movies, and unquestionably one of the greatest American films. It was a pioneering breakthrough in film special effects technology, as well as one of the most technically influential movies ever made. “Aliens” and “Jurassic Park” are its grandchildren.However, since its original premiere in 1933, the movie itself has taken many forms. Five years after its release, “Kong” began to fall under the scissors of the editors. For...

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Arthur Widmer, who developed some of the most widely used special effects technology in films and earned an Academy Award last year for lifetime achievement, has died. He was 92. Widmer died of cancer on May 28, his publicist Jane Ayer told the Los Angeles Times for a story published Sunday.

“Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” is full of visions of the dark, soaring New York cityscape, dogfights in the sky and the majestic Himalayan mountains. But what was the movie set like for the actors? A whole lotta blue. That’s because “Sky Captain,” despite its grandiose appearance, was filmed entirely against a blue screen with digital effects filled in. Though real actors star in it, almost everything else is fake. Think “Roger Rabbit” in reverse. While computer generated imagery has for years been a large presence in movies, “Sky Captain” is the first major motion picture made entirely...

The Matrix Makers One year, two sequels—and a revolution in moviemaking. An exclusive look behind the scenes of 2003’s hottest flicks Jan. 6 issue — The Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank, Calif., is frenetic on most days, but on a Thursday in early November it was really humming. The company’s box-office Bigfoot for 2002, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” was set to open in eight days, and nearly every division of the studio was working furiously to get it ready. Until 2:30 p.m. That’s when everything stopped. For the next half hour, the boy wizard had to...

<p>WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- In a sparse, sunlit loft, programmer Stephen Regelous quietly works alone every day to the hum of his laptop. But what he's really doing is leading the masses.</p> <p>Regelous created Massive, the special-effects program behind the colossal battles in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Using Massive, the Oscar-winning Weta Digital team pulled off anticipated scenes for the latest installment, The Two Towers -- such as the battle at Helm's Deep -- by digitally generating smart crowds to supplement the live action.</p>

Hollywood adopting Linux Rendering, cheap and fast By Egan Orion: Wednesday 24 July 2002, 06:09 BIG MEDIA COMPANIES have a well-deserved reputation for being deeply clueless about information technology. Studio executives view it as a necessary evil, albeit useful for padding byzantine accounting in order to pay their actors and investors as little as possible. But the smaller studios producing the computer animation wizardry driving many popular movies are more sophisticated. They are moving to Linux on x86 platforms, and are realizing both lower costs and higher performance. Thus Cnet is reporting that Industrial Light and Magic(ILM), the operation responsible...