Oscar 2013 - VFX

As in the other years I start with the VFX, not that I have any specific reason, but again it's the only category (up to the present moment) where I've seen all the nominations. Even that after all it doesn't really matter who wins (the Oscar season is just a reason to watch some decent movies), what we have here could be probably split in 1 favorite, 2 average chances nominations, and 2 outsiders. Let's see quickly who is who, until my current cold teleports me to bed (talking about effects ...)

"The Avengers" is as it's probably known a story with a bunch a super-heroes, one piece super-villain (a bit lame the balance of forces to be honest) and many many visual effects if we're at this part ... I repeat myself saying that I'm still not impressed by this genre, but we had a bit of variation though from the classic story (the one with "very bad mentally deranged evil guy"+"good guy with life issues.. & superpowers, that finally beats the issues.. & the bad guy"+"some damsel in more or less distress around"). A variation of something like 3 lines from a synopsis of 5 (to be critic all the way :P). What can I say, overall an entertaining action movie. And as effects is somewhere in the middle of the nominations.

About "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" I wrote already not very long ago, and I don't see any reason to repeat myself. Maybe just the part that we have a lot of the screen time taken by the battles vs. orcs and vs. goblins => a solid quantity of CGI => pretty equal chances with the above nomination here. And let's not forget about Gollum, even if his presence is relatively short. I don't know why, although some of the opinions have sense, the clip below left me a sort of bitter taste. And I'm thinking that it did it also to the make-up team (which by the way - has a nomination also, but about that maybe on another entry).

And we get to the potential expected winner here, namely "Life of Pi". Again, I've written about the movie not very long ago, so I'll summarize now what I don't remember to have said (unless my memory is not shorter than I think ..). More exactly, the tiger as many others from the boat and besides the boat are CGI. Yup, although maybe not very believable (considering how good is the result) the scenes are CGI .. well not 100%. As additional info to the clip below, what I've found out is that they used three tigers when filming, but not in the film context. Probably you wouldn't want to share a boat with a tiger, no matter if you're a young Indian actor wishing for an international breakthrough on the big screen :) ..

I also wrote about "Prometheus" sometime last summer, and not very nicely if I remember well, so I prefer not to remember much. The effects though I remember that were a good part of this movie. The chance makes that not long ago to be able to visit the H.R.Giger museum (the original "Alien" designer) and to realize how well resisted in time the concept art from the first movie, which is heavily used in the la production from last year. Unfortunately though, that's sort of a minus part for the innovative ( it already got an Oscar in '79 :) ) and I don't think that as general complexity the rest has any chance to compete with any of the titles above.

And like that we get to the last entry on the list, last alphabetically, last as effects, last generally speaking, the last: "Snow White and the Huntsman". What's to be said here ... it's probably one of the most boring movies that I've seen last year. I won't ever bother writing about unnecessary lengths, cliche lines, and a messy result for an idea that actually is relatively decent as a classic story adaptation. Not even the effects aren't enough the give some soul to this movie that looks like it bit the apple at the first frame, and the only thing that saved it from time to time, ironically, is the evil queen = the acting of Charlize Theron.

That's it for VFX. Next week, other category..