Now that's fightin' talk!JoshZ said:
Yeah, and Logan's Run actually won the Oscar in that category three years earlier. Have you watched that one lately?SilverWook said:
Even since I was a kid, the models in Moonraker always felt very much like models. They were never convincing to me as full-scale objects. The opening with the space shuttle on the back of the plane is especially bad. You can practically see the strings holding them up. Compare this to Star Wars (and the only reason Moonraker exists at all was to cash-in on Star Wars), and there's a world of difference. Star Wars very rarely had this problem, even with the original (pre-CGI revisionism) special effects. That's not to say that I can't enjoy Moonraker for the piece of '70s sci-fi cheese that it is, but the effects are more "quaint" than they are "good."
The cinematography category was voted on by cinematographer members; I'm pretty sure they knew who shot Skyfall.Bob Cashill said:
And yet they chose to reward a film that was largely created in post-production, where the effects guys had more to do with the look of the film than the cinematographer.Doctorossi said:
That's not quite right. The cinematographers NOMINATE the five films they want to honor, but the entire Academy membership (over 5,000 members) votes on the awards.
The on-line listings, which can be downloaded as a guide, and worksheet for voting, offer the name of the film, along with the DP, i.e. "Skyfall" Roger Deakins.
Ah- thanks!MattH. said:
Yes, they are "quaint" now. In the context of 1979, it was a different story. Audiences are far more sophisticated now, and probably more jaded as well. Star Trek TMP and The Black Hole have much more intricate FX, but they also lost out to Alien that year. I've seen some foreign Star Wars knockoffs from the same period that make Moonraker look like 2001 in the FX dept.JoshZ said:Yeah, and Logan's Run actually won the Oscar in that category three years earlier. Have you watched that one lately?
The miniature cityscapes looking like models aside, the rest of Logan's FX hold up pretty well. Funny how people thought Star Wars' holograms were more "real" than the real holograms of Michael York's head.
But that assumes that the production actually knew it was going to spend $34 million. I don't think they did. They ended up spending much more than planned in Paris and Rio for reasons that had nothing to do with what showed up on the screen (overpaying, out and out extortion, etc). For my money I think the effects in MOONRAKER are great. The minimal optical work in the space scenes especially produced some great images.
Star Wars came out two years earlier and had much more convincing model and miniature work. The spaceships in Star Wars seemed to have size and weight and physical presence, whereas the shuttles and space station in Moonraker just look like models. I see this as a common problem in Derek Meddings' work, all the way up through GoldenEye. His miniatures are certainly very detailed, but something about the way they're photographed doesn't come across right. Also, the shuttle launches in Moonraker have the same problem as You Only Live Twice, where the booster rockets produce only a small amount of smoke and are clearly illuminated from inside by light bulbs. That's a big suspension of disbelief killer.SilverWook said:
) What are bad are the bluescreen shots in the cable car fight and boat chase. I've always found the shuttle flight and space station quite effective despite obviously not being up to 2001 or Star Wars standard. The budget costs are shown on-screen with the very lavish look of the film.
