Visual Effects Oscar Noms 2016 Mash-up

It was a good year.

Been watching some Star Trek on and off over the winter, both Original and Next Gen, and I've been pondering special effects. I really love the old school stuff with psychedelic clouds on the view screen, primitive video effects for forcefields and energy aliens, cool make-up, that awesome model ships circling alien planets. You can still feel the theater-aspect of the productions so the few special effects have this cool camp feel.

Coming from TOS (1967-69) to NextGen (1987) really was an amazing leap. It made me appreciate CGI again - that's the Enterprise I grew up with and it looked great, I had to double-check the date to believe it was only 1987. That episode where they Cesarian-section that space whale they killed would have been impossible with models or optical-video effects.

Mad Max wins! Ex Machina had style. I would watch all the action clips from Revenant (and any long shots featuring characters dwarfed by nature). I have a soft-spot for hard SF in outer space - but it is so rarely good. The clips from Star Wars look like my dream TV show in my youth or a SW role-play session brought to life.