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Poltergeist II
To Hell and Back
Article by Nora Lee and Janine Pourroy

In 1982, all hell broke loose in the Freeling household. Steven Spielberg's production of Poltergeist recounted the chilling tale of a family turned upside-down by ghostly goings-on engineered and executed by Oscar-winner Richard Edlund and his visual effects team at Industrial Light & Magic. Now, four years later, Poltergeist II finds the beleaguered Freelings once again embroiled in a multidimensional melee — this time without producer Spielberg or Industrial Light & Magic, but with Edlund still at the visual effects helm. Faced with the challenge of surpassing his own previous efforts, Edlund and his Boss Film Corporation — comprised of many veterans from the earlier production - redefined the nature of supernatural filmmaking, bringing to life in the process an array of horrific new phantasms conceived by surrealist designer H.R. Giger.

Young Sherlock Holmes
Anything But Elementary
Article by Jody Duncan Shay

Heading the ranks of cinematic supersleuths for decades has been the constant, ever-brilliant epitome of logic and clever deduction — Sherlock Holmes. As the latest entry in the Holmesian film chronicles, Young Sherlock Holmes — directed by Barry Levinson for Amblin Productions — presents a portrait of the fledgling detective as a teenager obsessed by a string of baffling murders. Veteran physical effects expert Kit West, first-time animatronics supervisor Stephen Norrington and the cinemagicians at Industrial Light & Magic were called upon to create the film's innovative special effects — ranging from flying machines and murderous hatracks to bizarre hallucinations requiring high-tech computer graphics, go-motion puppet animation and sophisticated rod puppeteering.