Word: studio
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GOING BACK TO THE FUTURE? Tom Cruise surprised Hollywood last week with a prewedding announcement: the box-office bigwig just bought a sizable chunk of United Artists, the once venerable movie studio whose fortune seems to rise and fall with its icons...
...CHARLIE CHAPLIN When he and fellow artists start their own studio, an industry chief quips, "Lunatics have taken charge of the asylum" Low.............?....High...
early '50s MARY PICKFORD As the studio's output dwindles with the silent-film star as producer, she and surviving co-founder Chaplin agree to sell the firm Low.?................High
...Aardman Studios they make art by hand, in a form called stop-motion animation whose history stretches back to the first days of cinema. It certainly goes back to the solitary youths of many Aardmanites. Nick Park, the studio's resident genius, was one of those kids who played with clay in a corner of his Lancashire home until, like Dr. Praetorius in Bride of Frankenstein, he made those little figures come alive...
...None of this is to say that stop-motion animation is inherently noble, or that computer cartoons can't bear the imprint of one creator-can't have soul. It's in a way a matter of corporate identity for a hand-made film studio. Should Aardman go fully into 3-D? For stop-motion specialists, is CGI a hare-brained scheme, like the ones Wallace is always hatching, needing Gromit to extricate him? Or does it represent the inevitable next step? Once the Aardmen have made a film with computer, can they return to the old ways? Go back...