The Danger of CineMagic

From an WIRED interview with Danny Boyle on his upcoming film Sunshine:

One of my obsessions was that I didn't want this to be a green-screen or blue-screen film, to have the actors looking at a blank screen that would be replaced months later by some astonishing effect that they weren't aware of and therefore couldn't react to.

I really like this quote because it shows that I'm not insane when I criticize the hollow acting that comes with purely green-screened films. For all of its noir beauty, I think Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow has been the film most guilty of drinking the CGI Kool-Aid, but my suspicion is that the first Star Wars trilogy suffered as well. Say what you will about George Lucas being a terrible director, but he's not so bad he can totally ruin performances by Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor. That would be giving him WAY too much credit. I really think that the amount of things the actors had to imagine in both movies made it very difficult for them to give authentic performances.

I think that as cereberal as acting can be, it requires a certain amount of real context to be something more than reciting lines. And as convincing as the sky lines that Lucas Arts produces are, they're nothing without the believability of the characters in front of them. So props to Danny Boyle for refusing the Kool-Aid.