Sure! Awesome Socks Are Awesome Socks.

12. If I acknowledge that Ark is a brilliant masterpiece that massively advances what the series is capable of, can I prefer Genesis anyway?

16. Better than Morbius? Best solo one, sure, but...

22. Revelation? Not as good as Vengeance and flops at the end, but not embarrassing.

6-2. Can I agree that it technically accomplishes that but still prefer Let's Kill Hitler and Wedding of River Song for actually being fun?

8-2. What if I liked the idea of Kill the Moon but not the execution?

Just seeing if there are mitigating factors to at least reduce the sentencing down from eternity.

Edge of Destruction is better than The Daleks

The Rescue is better than The Dalek Invasion of Earth

The Gunfighters is better than The Celestial Toymaker

Power of the Daleks is better than everything, ever.

Enemy of the World is better than Web of Fear

The Mind Robber is better than The...

Man, Clara is a terrible liar.

Reblog if you utterly and without hesitation support gay rights

It’ll mean a lot to my friend, who’s having a tough time with bullies lately.

Practical F/X vs. CGI in Willow

I finally caught up with the 1988 George Lucas / Ron Howard fantasy yarn Willow, and it's a blast. Not quite a classic, but spectacular, imaginative, thrilling, and charming in a way few blockbusters are.

The highlight for me - besides Val Kilmer's delightful rogue The Mad Martigan - is a battle sequence in a castle, where Martigan is basically taking on a few dozen villains on his own using a variety of tricks and tactics while Willow is busy trying to get his sorcery to work. There's a lot of other elements at play here - the villainous Princess Sorsha trying to figure out if she loves or hates Martigan, sorceress Raziel is stuck in a goat form, and trolls have encased all the inhabitants of the castle into stone and are still lurking around somewhere. It's a terrific scene as it is, but then Willow, trying to ward off a troll, accidentally turns it into a gigantic two-headed dragon known as the Eborsisk. And it's fantastic.

Later on, there's a scene widely praised at the time where Willow turns Raziel from a goat into an ostrich, a turtle, a tiger, and finally her own form in turn. It was the first CGI Morph in film, and led directly to The Abyss, which led to T2, which led to Jurassic Park, until now, when studios spend $250 million to make over-budgeted cartoons with live actors pasted in here and there.

Which got me thinking on the CGI vs. Practical Effects debate, since this is a nice example of the same effect being done both ways. Thinking about it, I think in both cases it was the right call.

The troll-to-dragon transformation is done with a combination of go-motion (an advanced version of stop-motion developed by Phil Tippett for the Hoth battle in The Empire Strikes Back) and animatronics. The effect is choppy and ugly, and the result is unsettling and creepy. It looks wrong, something that should not be.

It also necessitates cutting back to Willow's reaction shot. That's one of the things that makes the scene so good, really - Warwick Davis's look of "What the hell did I just do?" elevates both the horror and humor of the scene.

By contrast, the CGI morphing is smooth and fluid. It's no more or less realistic, but we're talking about magic here, so realism isn't exactly the goal. But this scene isn't Willow accidentally turning one monster into another, much more horrific monster; it's about Raziel becoming her own form again, and about the beauty and wonder of magic. It also allows the scene to take place in longer takes, but we don't especially need Willow's reaction until Raziel is herself.

Reversing the effects wouldn't have worked as well for the story - the smooth transformation would have looked like just a cool effect with the troll-to-dragon rather than horrifying (CGI can do a great many things well, but creepy just is not one of them), and Raziel's wouldn't have had the same sense of wonder and beauty with the grotesque look of go-motion. (The AT-ATs or ED-209 are exactly the sort of thing Go-Motion is good at)

Unfortunately, go-motion has largely gone extinct in the CGI era, as it's thought to be less "realistic", though I'm somewhat unconvinced given how cartoonish the effects look in mega-budget films like Days of Future Past (a phenomenal movie, by the way) or Amazing Spider-Man 2 (not a phenomenal film). Like makeup effects, bladders, models, matte paintings, and even celluloid film itself, go-motion is the older, harder method, but there are stories told better. Sometimes, like King Arthur in Excalibur, storytellers should charge into battle using the Old Ways.

On the other hand, sometimes you want a T-1000 to wreck up the place, and gotta bring in the computers.

Practical and digital are both tools, both with their function and form in stories. I hope going into the future, film makers remember the old methods and use them, and that cynical, f/x savvy viewers remember what beautiful things can be done with the new methods and don't dismiss them out of hand. (myself included)

Please, reblog! IIt’s called self defense. Apart from having here, in the US, one of the highest cases of homicide and rape in the world and high rate of GBV, think about how this could help your mother or sister

Gotta be honest, Columbus’s undeniable dickery aside, I see 200-year-old monument destroyed and my entire feeling is

Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs is a stop-motion cartoon from Wes Anderson about how dogs are man's best friend. The film nearly reviews itself from th...

Wherein I review Wes Anderson’s ridiculously charming Isle of Dogs, and reluctantly examine the question of cultural appropriation I’m so not properly handled to discuss.

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

Who are the Anti-Stratfordians?

People who think Shakespeare wasn’t actually Shakespeare, but that ‘Shakespeare’ was a secret pseudonym for someone more important and better educated, like the Earl of Oxford. 

See also: imbeciles.