Stan Winston Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Make-up, animatronics and effects legend Stan Winston passed away on Sunday at the too-young age of 62. In memoriam, Cinematical humbly presents this list of the man's most enduring achievements.

Some of my most treasured movie memories -- childhood and otherwise -- are courtesy of Stan Winston. What impressed me about this list as I was making it was that Winston specialized in realizing the imaginations of our greatest filmmakers -- directors like Burton, Spielberg, Cameron. Winston was a genius himself, of course, but he also facilitated genius, and that's just as important. Those guys owe him so much.

He had many accomplishments beyond the ones I've listed. That's what the comment thread is for.


1. Jurassic Park's Dinosaurs.

It's hard to describe the impression Jurassic Park made back in 1993. I was 9 years old, which was just old enough to be properly amazed. This was the new generation of popular cinema: perfect, lifelike wonders on the screen as if it were the most natural thing on the planet. Earlier technicians did a lot with simple puppetry, stop-motion and miniatures, but now all bets were off, and all barriers seemed lifted. Once you accepted the scientific goofiness of the film's premise, no further suspension of disbelief was necessary. Winston opened the gates to a whole new cinematic playground.

A number of sources are reporting that pioneering make-up, special effects, and animatronics wizard Stan Winston has died at age 62 -- far too soon. No word yet on cause of death.

The word "legend" gets tossed around a lot when famous people die, but Stan Winston is a legend. He brought to life the Terminator, Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, Predator, Edward Scissorhands, and the Penguin, just to name a few. Even now, when one would think the advent of CGI would have started to make him obsolete, his practical effects genius got him work on movies like Iron Man and the forthcoming Terminator Salvation. I guess it was inevitable that in the age of computers, Winston would go from creating wonders to perfecting them. But Iron Man owes a great deal to him. He kept Tony Stark from looking silly in that metal suit.

Far from being obsolete, Stan Winston is irreplaceable. Movie lovers will never forget him.

There's a funny moment about twenty minutes into Skinwalkers, when a balding protagonist, played by Elias Koteas, has to explain what's going on to a confused Rhona Mitra. "We're called Skinwalkers," he says. "You would call us werewolves." Oh, thanks. That clears it up. It turns out that Mitra's character is more or less the only non-wolf character in the entire film. She's caught in the middle of an idealogical war between opposing clans of werewolves, some of whom believe that being a werewolf is a bad thing and want an out, and those on the other side who believe being a wolf is fun and have formed themselves into a motorcycle gang of marauding lycanthropes. There's a nice little moment when a pistol-packing granny throws down against the gang when they ride into town looking for trouble, but I'm already stretching to be nice. The good moments are actually few and far between. Only Stan Winston completists or late-to-the-party casting agents wanting a good look at Mitra in action will find much on offer here.

The entire premise of a war between reluctant and self-righteous monsters has already been done (and better) by the X-Men series, which is the obvious inspiration here. There's even a blatant rip-off in the form of a 'boy cure,' which was the plot-engine in the third X-Men film. (To be totally fair, Skinwalkers could have been written long before that film, for all I know.) The boy in this film, played by Matthew Knight, has some kind of special, rare blood that can turn werewolves back into men, or something like that, so he was long ago spirited away to a small town to live with his in-the-dark mother, played by Mitra, all the while secretly protected by good wolves who never let anyone know they're even wolves at all. At night, these good wolves strap themselves into harnesses so that when the moon is full and they wolf-out (thanks to the drama coach in Teen Wolf for that phrase) they won't cause damage. Every night, from sundown to sunup, they howl and thrash, harmlessly.

Instead of relishing the sun, a whole bunch of people headed to Fangoria's "Weekend of Horrors" to ring in July at the Crowne Plaza Meadowlands in Secaucus, New Jersey. One attendee called Dread Central with this little bit of news: Stephen King's Insomnia will hit the big screen, helmed by Rob Schmidt. The director says he is taking on the job for the super-passionate reason: "mainly because King was such a big fan of Wrong Turn." This project is just the latest in the seemingly unending King adaptations in the works -- from his novella The Mist, to the longer tale of Black House.

Insomnia deals with Ralph Roberts -- a man struggling with insomnia since his wife died. He keeps waking up earlier and sleeping less. He takes walks in this time and starts to notice some weird things going on in his town of Derry. "He sees colored ribbons streaming from people's heads. He witnesses two strange little men wandering the city under cover of night. He begins to suspect that these visions are something more than hallucinations brought about by sleep deprivation." Along with his friend, a widow named Lois, they get "enmeshed in events of cosmic significance." This should be an interesting endeavor as the book is pretty huge, but Schmidt says that he'll tackle the size by focusing on the strange town itself. Furthermore, since both Ralph and Lois start off older in the book and get younger, the director will cast two thirty-somethings for the roles, and have Stan Winston age and de-age them. I can't help but wonder if the director will tap Eliza Dushku yet again. While she is a little young yet -- mid-twenties -- she not only starred in Wrong Turn, but also in Schmidt's upcoming flick The Alphabet Killer, which I posted about in December.

Odds and ends from Friday/Saturday:

• Make-up maven Stan Winston and his production company are now gearing up for their latest: Producing the horror mystery The Deaths of Ian. Pic, which will star Mike Vogel and be directed by Dario Di Piana, has a sort of Groundhog Day feel to it. Well, that's if you replace the silliness of Bill Murray with the scariness of Stan Winston, of course. Story will tell of an all American guy who is murdered, only to wake up again and find that, with each new day, comes a new kind of death.
• Now that the Dane Cook laffer Good Luck Chuck is finally on its way into production courtesy of Lionsgate, Variety reports that Jessica Alba has snagged the lead female role and will star opposite everyone's favorite comedian. Dane Cook and Jessica Alba? In love? Seems like the perfect match -- ya know, if either of them were actually good at acting. Pic will revolve around a serial dater who feels comfortable in the role of next-to-last-boyfriend-before-soulmate. However, when he actually falls in love with one of the girls (Alba), he must do everything to keep her from leaving him for a future husband.
• Since it's the weekend, I figured I would end things off with a funny, yet awfully moronic clip from YouTube. In it, some amateur actors dress up as some of your favorite superheroes to re-create the famous homo-erotic volleyball scene from Top Gun. Seeing as everyone has been obsessed with the notion that Superman may or may not be gay as of late, why not take the topic to a new level and really have fun with it? Enjoy the weekend folks!