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January 31, 2006
Best Visual Effects Oscar Nominations
for the 78th Academy Awards...
Achievement in visual effects:
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (Buena Vista)
Dean Wright, Bill Westenhofer, Jim Berney and Scott Farrar
“King Kong” (Universal)
Joe Letteri, Brian Van’t Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor
“War of the Worlds” (Paramount and DreamWorks)
Dennis Muren, Pablo Helman, Randy Dutra and Daniel Sudick
my thoughts on this soon... ok, so as a shock to me Episode III did not make the short list, but this is a good thing. The amount of work in EPIII is jaw dropping and it looked amazing, but I thought it would be another ILM show because I knew War of the Worlds would make it in there as well. Anyhow, it it's going to be beast vs beast vs alien, and this year was a tough decision from the long list, there were so many great films for vfx, seamless and grand spectacles.
If it's seamless overall War of the Worlds should get it, but Kong's vfx shot count and the accomplishment of King Kong (the silverback gorilla) by itself deserves the gold, let alone the numerous other visual effect sequences, but not all of it was seamless by far... same can be said for Narnia, there was some good work and some rough work. Aslan the Lion looked damn fine indeed, but the look of the beavers was a bit dodgy, even though the animation was grrreat! The work Weta Workshop did was fantastic, but overall It did well in the box office but I don't see it winning the golden man, I can't say Kong vs WotW are 2 vfx films from different worlds both achievments in their own right but it's gotta be KONG!
check out the complete list of nominees...
Posted by dschnee at January 31, 2006 08:13 AM
Comments
I hate to say it..well, not really..but Narnia had alot of sub-par work throughout. The fact that it made the top 3, is, well, WEAK ! And please, the Lion looked cool, but it was in service to a kiddy version of LTR which almost put me to sleep. The academy can go to Constantine's HELL for all I care...and they should, then they might catch a glimpse of some truly worthy visual FX ! No bias here. All in good fun..BUT COME ON !!!
Posted by: Ari Rubenstein at January 31, 2006 10:13 AM
Agreed, we are currently working on a sequence that places rightfuly, justly, and for shits and giggles put the entire academy of motion pictures arts and sciences board of governors straight into constantine's version of hell, granted most of the images used for the board of governors act throw up a better performance than keanu reeves... ;)
we need you back for this one Ari!
Posted by: davids at January 31, 2006 05:49 PM
This is why the Visual Effects Society has an annual awards show that has so much more depth! BTW, I'm starting to vote, and there are some sweet nominees!
Best sequence, best vfx in a commercial, best matte painting, best cg creature, etc, etc.
Posted by: Aruna at February 2, 2006 11:54 AM
