Due to the vehement requests of my faithful reader, I have decided to make a more concerted effort to try to write more often. I went to a baseball game last night. Nothing big, just a small time farm league team, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself nonetheless. Most of the scoring was done before I got there, and no runs were scored until the game winner, which I will talk about momentarily. It was run listening to my friend heckle the opposing team, and perhaps more amusing was watching his girlfriend turn her head in embarrassment and shame while he shouted nonsensical rantings at the top of his lungs. I would have to say one of the best parts of the night was purchasing the "All Star", which is simply a huge wiener with the works. Man that wiener was messy, I got more on my face than I did in my mouth. But it was all worth it, those succulent juices kept my stomach full for the rest of the evening. Anywho, the game went into extra innings with the score tied 2-2. Then, in the bottom of the 11th, one of the dudes on our team cranked one over the center-field fence. Talk about drama and excitement.
But now on to what I really wanted to talk about, how computer animation and CGI is ruining film. Now I am a huge fan of new technology and the fascinating new things that can be done with computers in this day in age. My problem is how over-reliant many filmmakers are becoming on these new technologies. Case in point: the new Star Wars. I don't know if anything in those films other than the human actors and actresses were real. It looked like the third film was shot entirely in front of a blue-screen. Nothing looked remotely real. In my opinion, the reason the original films were so sweet was because they went to the effort to painstakingly hand craft everything, from the models to the uniforms to the makeup for the aliens creatures. It looked real because it was real. Not real aliens, but real people in real makeup. If there were such things as aliens, that is what they would have looked like.
I can't pretend like I am not a fan of Toy Story, The Incredibles, or Monster's, Inc., but these films are not attempting to tell the story of real-life people or occurrences. I Am Legend would have been a much more enjoyable film had the director attempted to use real actors in modern make-up to imitate the infected population. And don't even get me started on Beowulf! Using new computer technology for things that are impossible to create in real life is fine. Even using it to make life easier for filmmakers does not bother me one bit. But let's not get lazy folks! Forgetting that humans can be pretty good at turning a regular human being into a wookie, a stormtrooper, or a human infected with some ungodly disease leads to over-reliance on something that does not do justice to the people paying money to watch your films.
