The day after my sister's wedding, my family and I took a few hours to visit the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in L.A. We happened to hit it on a free admission day, but I enjoyed it so much I'd have paid for it!
In addition to its permanent collection of props, costumes, production equipment and ephemera, the museum had exhibitions on Jaws, Barbie, Cyberpunk, and the films of Bong Joon Ho. Something for everyone! Recommended.
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| I was stunned to see the Aries 1B lunar lander from "2001: A Space Odyssey," partly because it's from one of my top-five favorite movies but also because I knew director Stanley Kubrick had ordered all the models from the film destroyed so that nobody could make a cheap sequel. I also knew the Aries was one of the few props that escaped that fate but had no idea where it was. And, suddenly, there it was! She's a beauty. |
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| Swatches that defined the color palette for the "Barbie" movie. I love this process stuff. |
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| The red-armed C-3PO from "The Force Awakens." |
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| Iron Man's helmet and, in the background, Captain America's shield and, in the even further background, the back side of Morpheus's costume from "The Matrix." |
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This one is hard to see, but it's a matte painting from the film "The Running Man" (1997). It's a sheet of glass maybe 3 by 5 feet in size, so you're seeing reflections of museum visitors in addition to a backlit cityscape. Matte paintings were used from the earliest days of filmmaking. In the pre-CGI days, artists painted vast backgrounds on sheets of glass, through which live action was shot or projected onto the scene. One of the most famous is the enormous warehouse at the end of "Raiders the Lost Ark"; only the worker pushing the cart is real, everything else is a painting. I've always been fascinated by the process and never seen one in person. Cool!
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| The Hollywood Sign, visible from the upper floors of the Academy museum, just in case you weren't sure where you were. |
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