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Stan Winston and T-Rex Legendary creature creator Stan Winston has died. The man responsible for more movie creature than you can imagine has passed away at the age of 62.

Winston won Academy awards for his work on Aliens, Jurassic Park, and Terminator 2. He was also worked on films ranging from The Monster Squad to Iron Man. Just take a look at his IMDB entry.

Be sure to check out Ain’t It Cool News and their tribute to Stan Winston. Over the next few days they’ll be posting various comments from industry people that Stan worked with over the years.

I think this quote from him easily sums up his work

“If I can dazzle myself, I’m pretty sure I can dazzle you.”

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Mickey in the Parade

In a few years, I will make it to Disney World in Florida for the Star Wars weekend. I can’t wait to take “the boys” (Carter and Riley) when Riley is old enough.

When we visited Disney/MGM last year, Carter wasn’t quite tall enough to ride the Star Wars ride, so we had to make do with the large AT-AT and Speeder Bike on display. We did manage to catch the parade at MGM (which I highly recommend) and the appearance of Darth Vader, R2, and C3-PO were his highlights for the day. A full Star Wars takeover of Disney would be a blast.

View more photos from the Star Wars Disney weekend on Flickr.

Halloween 1980

While in a Star Wars mood, check out the photos on the Growing Up Star Wars Flickr Photo Pool. Featuring all vintage photos of Star Wars memorabilia, there are lots of photos like the one above. Somewhere in the Duncan archives, there’s a photo me wearing that Yoda costume.

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Meg - the Prehistoric Shark Author Steve Alten’s MEG series of books have been a guilty pleasure of mine. The first was a great and unique read. Imagine a prehistoric shark the size of a bus roaming the seas in the world today. It was Jaws (favorite movie), only dinosaur sized. That’s a combination that all boys are predisposed to like.

The book was a great success and it spawned to sequels (a third is due Summer of 2009). The first sequel The Trench was a great continuation of the story. but are still tremendous fun. The second sequel–Meg: Primal Waters–was an adrenaline filled, MTV style sequel that went for action over science. It was fun, but not as good as the first two books.

It’s a perfect idea for a movie and there have been many attempts. The most recent was a 2 year plus attempt by now defunct studio New Line. For a full history of the cinematic trials and tribulations of MEG you can read a great story recently posted by the LA Times. Hopefully, someone will get a the giant shark on film.

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ForgettheFilm

Be careful if you visit Forget the Film, Watch the Titles. You might find yourself watching all of the great collections of film title sequences they have.

Split into categories, such as: Animation, Motion Graphics, Mixed Media and 3D, the site offers up tons of content one place. It’s a worthy and eclectic collection and not focused on classic films. Many films in the gallery are bad, but as the site professes, a bad film can still have a great title sequence.