#amalgamated dynamics

Special effects company Studio ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics) is selling exact replicas of different maquettes they created during production of Alien Resurrection (1997), plus one neat thing related to Alien 3 (1992). It’s so awesome I had to make a masterpost about it. Here they are:

Alien Queen Head (1:3) - $3600 (video)

Alien Queen Embryo Chestburster (9" tall x 7" wide) - $400 (video)

Queen Chestburster for the Alien 3 poster - $150 (video)

Newborn Alien Design Maquette (19"tall - Weighs 6.5lbs) - $2000 (video)

Newborn Alien Face Design Maquette (6"x 5.5" x8") - $750 (video)

Newborn Alien Bust (1:1) - $4000 (video)

Swimming Alien Movement Study (17"x5.5x3") - $250 (video)

Benvenuti o bentornati sul nostro blog. Nello scorso articolo abbiamo ripreso a parlare di animazione e lo abbiamo fatto con la DreamWorks, arrivando in questo modo a parlare del loro 11° film animato ossia Madagascar. La storia parla di quattro animali dello zoo di New York: Alex, Marty, Gloria e Melman. Marty, la zebra, vorrebbe poter tornare alla natura anche solo per un giorno e l’incontro…

Benvenuti o bentornati sul nostro blog. Nello scorso articolo abbiamo ripreso a parlare di animazione e in particolar modo della DreamWorks, portando all’attenzione uno dei film più strani di questo studio ossia Shark Tale. Oscar è un pesce pulitore che lavora in un autolavaggio per balene e sogna di diventare qualcuno di famoso. Un giorno il suo capo gli ordina di restituirgli un grosso debito…

Pictured at top: Tom Woodruff,  Jr., Donelle Dadigan, Alec Gillis

The Hollywood Museum: Overview

In case you’re not familiar with The Hollywood Museum, it is located in the former Max Factor building on Highland Avenue in Hollywood, which also houses Mel’s Drive in (conveniently joined by a short corridor, so you can grab a burger after viewing the exhibits). Befitting the building’s legacy, the museum’s ground floor emphasizes Hollywood glamour (makeup and wardrobe), but there is also room for science-fiction and fantasy material – everything from Harry Potter to Vampira.

Currently, among the pink Christmas trees dotting the lobby, there is a display case housing the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Downstairs is the Dungeon. Upstairs are the special exhibits.

The Hollywood Museum: 30 Years of Makeup, Monsters & Magic

30 Years of Make-Up, Monsters, and Magic occupies the entire second floor gallery, which is filled with Aliens, Predators, Pennywise the Clown from IT, Annabelle the Doll from The Conjuring films, and mutants from X-Men: First Class, and Jakoby the Orc from the Netflix film Bright. Throbbing music pulses through the air, lending an aura of tension – you may feel as if you really have wandered into a dangerous den of monsters.

Most of the truly eye-catching pieces are encased in a glass display marked “Camera Ready,” indicating that these are finished works, good enough to withstand closeup scrutiny from the motion picture camera – or the human eye. This should not be underestimated: special effects are often built to survive the shoot and not much more; materials such as foam rubber are not very durable. Having these otherworldly creations in a form worthy of a gallery showing is remarkable, presenting them not as mere technical achievements or movie props but rather as artworks in their own right.

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The Alien and Predator figures are probably the most iconic ones on view, but for us the most impressive was the giant “bug” from Starship Toopers, looming large as life and separated from the public only by a velvet rope, like a movie star waiting for fans to come and take a selfie. Starship Troopers was an early example of using computer-generated imagery to depict large swarms of creatures, but this full-size creature reminds us that physical effects have a tactile verisimilitude difficult to duplicate in the virtual realm.

Other displays are less about aesthetic appreciation than education. Video clips illustrate work in progress and finished effects. Succinct descriptions explain the techniques used to create lifelike appearances from inanimate materials: painting glass eyes, punching hair in masks, painting foam rubber “skin” to simulate the translucent appearance of real flesh. Even knowledgeable laymen may learn a thing a two, such as that the process of make a life-cast (a mold duplicating an actor’s features) no longer relies on old-fashioned alginate but on more modern substances that dry faster, so that the subject no longer has to sit so long waiting for the muck encasing his face to dry and be cut off.

Make-Up, Monsters, and Magic celebrates the 30th anniversary of Amalgamated Dynamics, founded by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr., whose credits stretch back to Tremors and include such titles as The Santa Claus, Spider-Man, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Logan. The shared an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for Death Becomes Her. They executed the effects for Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, and the two Alien Vs. Predator films (a title card in the display case credits their work on the “Alien franchise,” coyly eliding the fact that they did not work on the first film, whose Alien was designed and created by the late Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger). They famously saw most of their work on the 2011 remake-prequel of The Thing replaced by CGI work, then turned lemons into lemonade by creating their own film, Harbinger Down (2013) to showcase the kind of physical effects that had been abandoned in the previous film. Their most recent release is The Predator, and the are currently working on several projects, including the upcoming Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

With a filmography this long, it is impossible for 30 Years of Make-Up, Monsters, and Magic to squeeze in everything; nevertheless, the exhibit does a fine job of hitting the highlights, featuring some of the company’s most spectacular and famous creations. As if all this were not enough, the exhibit includes examples of effects and makeup that inspired Amalgamated Dynamics, such as one of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion models from the classic fantasy film 7th Voyage of Sinbad. It’s a perfect opportunity to see classic and contemporary creatures rubbing shoulders. The exhibit will continue through December 15.

Photos from the opening night reception courtesy of the Hollywood Museum

The Hollywood Museum: 20th Century Superhero Legends

The third floor gallery houses several perennial exhibits (Harry Potter, etc), along with the new 20th Century Superhero Legends: Dedicated to Fight Evil, which opened on November 14. This is an expanded version of the Batman ’66 exhibit, which launched in January, featuring props, costumes, and figures from the campy 1960s television show. 20th Century Superhero Legends adds Wonder Woman and Superman to the mix, in the form of life-size figures of Linda Carter from the 1970s television show and of Christopher Reeve from the 1978 film Superman: The Movie, along with display cases of merchandise.

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  The Batman ’66 exhibits are more elaborately detailed, offering the Batmobile and the Batcycle in a recreation of the Batcave and the “Bat Poles” that Dick and Bruce used to descend from the study in Wayne Manor to the Caped Crusader’s lair. There are costumed likenesses of Batman, Robin, Batgirl, along with a rogue’s gallery of their most famous adversaries: Catwoman, the Riddler, the Penguin, the Joker, and King Tut.

20th Century Superhero Legends is a fun trip down memory lane, to a bygone era when costumed crime-fighters were simple and even goofy – basically, naive comic characters brought to life in live-action with little concern for realism or troubling psychological overtones. Definitely a nice place to visit, even if only to provide a contrast with the current slate of hyper-charged big-screen superheroes. The exhibit runs through December 30.

The Hollywood Museum: The Dungeon

Descend to the Dungeon

No trip to the Hollywood Museum would be complete without descending into the Dungeon of Doom. Housed in the basement, this year-round exhibition features the prison set from Silence of the Lambs, including Hannibal Lecter’s cell, plus a collection of horror movie memorabilia titled “Monsters, Mummies, and Mayhem,” which includes miniature models of the original King Kong and life-sized figures Frankenstein, Vampira, Jason Voorhees, along with costumes, props, posters, and photographs.

There have been several additions and alterations since our last visit in 2014. You can no longer enter the padded cell down the hall from Lecter’s room. There are now costumes from The Walking Dead, Van Helsing, and Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A poster and props from The Scorpion King have been added to the Mummy display. A coffin from True Blood is on view. A guillotine from Quills (not really a horror film) holds a severed head. More withered bodies are stuffed in the small back room (where heard an audio track discussing the work of producer-director William Castle, known for his gimmicky horror films in the 1950s and 1960s).

One odd change was on the wall of photos depicting dozens of actors who played the roll of Dracula onscreen. Four years ago, we spotted a shot of Christopher Lee in Dracula, Prince of Darkness misidentified as Frank Langella in Dracula. Checking to see whether the mistake had been corrected, we saw the shot of Lee had been replaced – with a shot of him in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, still identified as Frank Langella in Dracula! At the front desk we were told that a correct photo was at the printer, soon to be delivered and put up on the wall.

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Photo mishap aside, the Dungeon offers a shadowy gallery of horrors in a setting perfectly suited to house them. The atmosphere is definitely that of haunted house attraction; though there are neither actors nor jump-scares, you may suffer a shiver or two while perusing the cadaverous figures lurking in the darkness. The recent additions keep the exhibit up to date with current trends while not eclipsing the classic horror icons. The result is a bit like a miniature history of horror, with monsters from different decades comfortably rubbing shoulders, The Scorpion King side by side with Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb. It may be a nightmare for some but definitely a dream come true for others.

The Hollywood Museum: Conclusion

Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera

All three of the above exhibits are available for a single price of admission during regular business hours. 30 Years of Make-Up, Monsters, and Magic is definitely the star attraction, but 20th Century Superhero Legends: Fight Against Evil has its own campy charm. The Dungeon – with its Monsters, Mummies, and Mayhem – is worth a visit entirely on its own. When there are two great exhibits upstairs, there is no justification for a self-respecting horror fan not to attend.

Afterward, take advantage of the convenient corridor linking the Hollywood Museum to Mel’s Drive In. Along the way, you will pass a figure of Lon Chaney in his guise as the title character in the 1925 silent black-and-white version of The Phantom of the Opera. In one of those interesting juxtapositions that characterizes the Hollywood Museum’s display, Chaney’s Phantom is standing over a poster for the 1943 color remake starring Claude Rains, reminding us that the horror genre eternally renews itself, resurrecting old characters in new forms for successive generations. The presence of up-to-date work by Amalgamated Dynamics, while horror from decades past lurks in the Dungeon, is the Museum’s most recent manifestation of this lesson.

★★★1/2 I’ve got a fondness for the monster/creature feature sub-genre of horror and science fiction. There are so many classic, old school Hollywood flicks that have iconic monsters. Everything from James Whale’s Frankenstein to Karl Freund’s The Mummy. You can consider Stephen Spielberg’s birth-of-the-summer-blockbuster Jaws a creature feature. There are even lots of solid indie movies to have produced iconic, horrific creatures, such as the recent Mickey Keating alien film Pod, 90s fare like The Relic and Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic (though studio interference butchered the latter). And for all its faults, 1990’s underground creature flick Tremors is an entertaining addition to the pack. With a memorable VHS cover I remember wanting to see this movie as a kid. I eventually caught it, still too young for horror, on television late at night. While there’s a great deal of humour and campy movie making, there’s still a super creepy aspect to this one. Despite some almost slapstick style acting and cheese Tremors still manages to attain a level of ’90s horror glory, as it ekes out a few laughs, also giving us a nice dose of creature action with a few fun special effects along the way. By no means is it classic, but it is an enjoyable bit of horror wrapped up a science fiction comedy. In the tiny town Perfection at the edge of the desert, two handymen, Earl Bass (Fred Ward) and Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon), are at their wits’ end. They’ve decided to up and get out of there, to try and make lives for themselves somewhere else. Except that when they’re headed out Earl and Valentine find a man named Edgar up stuck in a tower. In fact, Edgar’s dead. He stayed up there for days and dehydrated. Really? Well turns out, a woman named Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter) is in town studying seismology. There have been some serious, strange readings in the ground around Perfection lately. Big, hungry, and terrifying worms seem to be living underneath Perfection. And now they’re coming up to grab anything they can get their slimy mouths on. But when the ground isn’t safe, where do you go? That’s the biggest appeal of Tremors in terms of its horror. We feel a fear of anything that can come from the air or underneath us, whether in water or under the ground. Because it’s something inescapable. It’s bad enough if you’re in water, as anything can get you, there’s really nowhere to hide you’d have to just keep on swimming. Until you make it to land. But it’s scarier on land. You either have to climb, die, or fight. So that’s what Earl, Valentine and the rest of the crew find themselves up against. And in a small desert town like Perfection there are even a more limited number of options of where to go than might normally be found. A lot of the tension the screenplay builds up is simply through that isolation. The few residents are forced to do anything they can possibly think of to try and fight these creatures. If you really want to get deep, the tremors represent the influence and pressure of the outside world. Valentine and Earl are on their way out of Perfection, off to the big city. However, they don’t even make it past the town limits before something pulls them back in. The tremors are an outside influence trying to infiltrate the town. Earl and Valentine realize this, their small town way of life threatened, and they’re pulled back in to defend themselves. Underneath the horror and all the comedy, Tremors is about those who realize they’re more at home, safer with those they’ve known in their little tight knit groups than branching out into a bigger place where they don’t know anyone, where anybody, or anything, can be lurking right below the surface. Ultimately, it’s an agoraphobic film, and if you see it in that light then the film can really take on a different light, making the horror more fun. On top of all that, the Graboid creatures were created by Amalgamated Dynamics (they’ve done a bunch of other stuff from the recent Harbinger Down which they did independently to other bigger films like Death Becomes Her and David Fincher’s Panic Room). Even if you simply take Tremors for what it is, at a base level, the horror and the effects are still a lot of fun. There are some genuinely nasty bits of effects, especially once some of the Graboids start to get shot/blown up.

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Porcherie del Mese: Ottobre

Sì, lo so, sono in ritardo di qualche giorno. Questo mese faccio slittare un po’ tutto, perché non ho avuto molto tempo per organizzare il riepilogone dei film che dovete evitare a ogni costo. Però ormai è esattamente un anno (tanti auguri, Porcherie) che ho adottato il metodo di non scrivere più recensioni negative e di relegare a un unico post i prodotti meritevoli del marchio d’infamia creato…