Movies.suck

Well, folks, this is the end of an era. Actually, it's the end of several eras. I'll start with Stan Winston.


STAN WINSTON (1946-2008)
Yes, Stan Winston was extremely well known and recognized for basically breathing life into classics such as the Terminator movies, Jurassic Park, Alien, Predator, Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns. I'm going to talk about some of his lesser-known fare (most of which I would not have known about until now without wikipedia). His first major work was for a TV movie called "Gargoyles", which I found out from YouTube has a scene dubbed one of the worst in movie history. "Worst Sexual Intervention Involving a Gargoyle". Yeah. But the thing won an Emmy, so I guess it must have been, like, the least shitty movie in a list of shitty 70's TV movies. And it had good makeup effects.

Surprisingly, he hasn't done any work for Star Wars except for one thing; the Star Wars Holiday Special. Now, if you are any sort of fan of Star Wars, I'm sure you've heard of this infamous wretch, but there's nothing like seeing it first-hand, which I have. The only possible way I can describe it is thusly: a drug-addled trip to Kashyyyk, the Wookiee home planet, which looks less like the lush jungle planet we saw in Episode III and more like Hunter S. Thompson's living room. But, again, aside from the bizarre looking baby Wookiee, Winston did his job fairly well.

The last one I'm going to mention is Pumpkinhead. This was Winston's directorial debut, and from what I can tell, it was not half bad. It doesn't look half good, but it did win him the Best First Time Director at the Paris Film Festival and it spawned 3 sequels, titled "Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings", "Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes", and "Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud". I'd like to think the climax of the last one involved a deadly game of Family Feud.

There's a lot more I could say about Stan Winston. Like I said, the man was a pioneer in the field of practical special effects and practically a legend in his own right. Yeah, he made some questionable career choices, but you've got to break a few eggs before you can make an omelet.

The next era that has come to an end is that of Movies.com.

MOVIES.COM
While not quite as ground-breaking or innovative as Stan Winston, this was still my go-to website for most movie news. However, it was recently bought out by Fandango and has essentially become Fandango.com. I'm not kidding, it's a carbon copy save for a little movie news bar on the side that I haven't seen updated since the website relaunched. Seriously, why not just make one fucking website? If I wanted to buy movie tickets, I would go to Fandango or, more likely, movietickets.com. When I want watered-down, yet mostly informative, news about the goings-on of Hollywood, I go to movies.com. But not anymore. Now, I have to rely on Ain't It Cool News. Admittedly, it's got a lot of good stuff and the reporters are very thorough, but there's a lot of bullshit you've got to wade through to get to the meat and bones.

Well, that's about all I've got for this post. Hopefully, I'll do one tonight, as well.

Until next time, stay safe and remember, everything happens for a reason.