No big surprises in Oscar noms

Per usual, not too much for genre fans to get excited about. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I suppose could classify as fantasy, sort of, had the most nods this year, including Best Picture and Actor. Heath Ledger is up for Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight, but the movie failed to get any other major nominations. It is up for the usual throw-them-a-bone categories of Cinematography, Film Editing, Makeup, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing.

Wall-E did pretty good – it failed to get a Best Picture nod as many were hoping for, but it is up for Animated Film (duh,) Original Screenplay, Original Song, and several technical awards.

The Visual Effects category puts Benjamin Button up against The Dark Knight and ILM’s Iron Man.

UPDATE: StarWars.com has a full listing of all ILM and Skywalker Sound Oscar nominations, as well as BAFTA and VES nods.

Shock and Awe: The 50 best special effects

Den of Geek’s top fifty movie special effects shots is a hell of a list. It willingly embraces all eras, movies that you might not expect (Hitchcock?!?) and hell, I think I learned a thing or two. (And all the scenes have a video. That’s some serious dedication.) It probably goes without saying that A New Hope and Return of the Jedi get entries.

Plus I’ll take any excuse to lead off with Harryhausen.

They also have a list of the 24 worst special effects of all time, which includes that horrible Special Edition Jabba scene. (Which I still hold is worse than Han shooting first.)

RIP: Effects master Stan Winston

Numerous media outlets today reported the death of Stan Winston, the Oscar-winning special effects master whose work included Terminator, Jurassic Park, and Aliens. He was 62.

ILM’s Dennis Muren, who supervised Jurassic Park’s digital effects, told Variety:

“When you put (Winston’s creatures and digital effects) together, the audience was confused, and sometimes we were, too, about who had done what.

“But Stan had always said, ‘It shouldn’t be all one or all the other; it should be a combination of the two.'”

Michael Heilemann over at Binary Bonsai has a brief tribute – and a book recommendation.