One of our all-time favorite blog names is Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule; it really sums up the finest things in life in one pithy phrase. This week, proprietor Dennis Cozzalio has outdone himself with a mammoth rep report of his own, dedicated to specialty screenings in Los Angeles over the next month or so. A Mario Bava retrospective and a timely “Heist Films” festival are among the highlights, along with a series at the UCLA Film and Television Archives “highlighting the work of one of the pre-CGI greats of special effects, L.W Abbott. If you are of a certain age (like me), Abbott is probably directly or indirectly responsible for some of the most awe-inspiring images you eve saw in a movie theater, and maybe even one of two of your most indelible nightmares as well. Abbott started in the film business as an assistant cameraman on no less than Sunrise, ended as a consultant on the physical effects for 1941, and spent some of the multitude of years in between, for 1957 to 1972, as the head of 20th Century Fox’s special photographic effects department. The series, entitled ‘Wire, Tape, and Rubber Band Style: The Effects of L.B. Abbott’, is an unbelievable gathering of amazing imagery (and occasional patches of some clunky dialogue, if I remember correctly) that effectively illustrates the great talent Abbott summoned to create some of the most spectacular sequences in movies during the 60s and 70s.”
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