All posts tagged: King Kong

Hollywood Makeup Guru Rick Baker Addresses AI, CGI, Eddie Murphy

Hollywood Makeup Guru Rick Baker Addresses AI, CGI, Eddie Murphy

Rick Baker, who holds a record for being a seven-time Oscar winner in the makeup field, now also holds a Golden Leopard, which he can add to the collection of fantastical creatures he has created over the course of his career. After all, he just received the Vision Award, bestowed upon him on Wednesday evening during the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival and presented by Ticinomoda. “Rick Baker was responsible for a Copernican revolution in cinema: visionary and revolutionary, he opened new paths for the imagination of entire generations, showing what it truly means to witness physical transmutation on the big screen,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro when he first unveiled the honor. Given Baker’s experience and track record, Hollywood folks, including those outside the makeup world, are surely curious how the maestro feels about technology and other much-discussed issues, which THR recently talked to him about. Asked about the rise of AI, Baker compared his take to his feelings about the rise of computers and CGI, recalling: “We instantly became dinosaurs, people [said]. But at that time, the computer …

Rick Baker Recalls Jim Carrey Grinch Makeup, ‘Thriller’ Video: Locarno

Rick Baker Recalls Jim Carrey Grinch Makeup, ‘Thriller’ Video: Locarno

The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will have Oscar royalty in the house on Wednesday evening – well, on its big 8,000-seat square, the Piazza Grande, to be precise. It will bestow its Vision Award, presented by Ticinomoda, upon Rick Baker, a seven-time Oscar winner, a record in the makeup and hairstyling field, and the creator behind some of cinema’s most fantastical creatures. While at the Swiss festival, Baker is also presenting two key films from his career, namely An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Nutty Professor (1996). The former marked his first Oscar win in 1981, followed by Harry and the Hendersons (1987), Ed Wood (1994), The Nutty Professor (1996)Men in Black (1997), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and The Wolfman (2010). You also know Baker’s work from Michael Jackson‘s famous Thriller video, in which he also played an on-screen role. “From his early make-up work on genre films in the 1970s to his sophisticated creature and character designs for large-scale studio productions, Rick Baker has forged a new visual grammar for cinematic metamorphosis, earning him a record …