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6 Mind Blowing Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI

6 Mind Blowing Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI
Computer generated images are like the foam sets of the present era: 20 years from now, people are going to laugh their asses off at the fact that this stuff looked even remotely real to us. That's why, as we've mentioned before, there are still filmmakers doing special effects the old-fashioned way -- even if the results are so impressive that you'd never know it's not CGI. There's CGI in Cracked's new Adventures in Jedi School mini-series, but the humor is all a practical effect. #6. Inception -- The Dream Collapsing Inception is one of those movies that could have easily gotten away with doing every single special effect in CGI, because it's full of so many insane moments that we assume half the things in it are computer generated anyway (for example, there's no evidence that Ken Watanabe is a real person). Water: Leonardo DiCaprio's Natural Enemy Since 1997. "Finally, I can pee in public and no one will know!" Meanwhile, four exceptionally heavy sleepers rest inside a flying van. #5. #4.

5 Famous Movies That Shamelessly Ripped-Off Obscure Ones So, Hollywood likes remakes, apparently. As much as we, the citizens of the Internet, like to complain about that, there's nothing wrong with the idea of a remake by itself. Some remakes are so good that they seem to completely erase all evidence of the original from our collective memories, as we've pointed out before. Nope, sometimes the only problem with a remake is that they don't actually credit the obscure movie they are remaking (or, you know, pay them for the rights). #5. In 1995, Toy Story changed the world of animation by introducing kids to a little thing called CGI and launching Pixar's illustrious career. The Original: The Christmas Toy (1986) Nine years before Toy Story, ABC aired a one-hour TV special called The Christmas Toy. Replace "Rugb" with "Wood" and prepare to have your mind blown. But that could easily be a coincidence, right? Or Post-Op Buzz Lightyear. Another character is a Barbie doll who at one point wears a Little Bo Peep outfit. How They Improved It: #4. #3.

7 Celebrities Who Invented Amazing Things on the Side Most of us are lucky if we can make it through life with even one outstanding talent. But some just aren't content with that. Sometimes, celebrities lead second lives as inventors, either because being rich and famous is just too boring, or because inventing stuff doesn't get you laid. #7. Regarded as one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time (or a high-pitched grandpa who looks like a homeless man, depending on your tastes), Neil Young is up there with Led Zeppelin in terms of influence and prominence in your parents' record collection. GettyHe nurtures tiny baby birds under that hat. The Invention: Young is a model train fanatic, and when he wasn't giving your mother un-Christian thoughts, he was also part owner of Lionel, LLC, a model train development company that sold all of his innovations. What may be his most prominent invention came about while he was trying to come up with a way for his son Ben to enjoy trains as much as he does. amsvansGreat dad, or best dad? #6.

6 Fictional Places You Won't Believe Actually Exist (Part 2) We've written once before about make-believe fantasylands we thought existed solely in the minds of comic book writers and dead English professors, but that actually turned out to be real. Well, it looks like most of those "wondrously imaginative" settings were all just real places that the creators thought were neat, and subsequently, that most "wondrously imaginative" storytellers were just boring old tourists this whole time. Here are six more places you thought were fictional, when in fact you could totally roll up to them on a moped and take some obnoxious pictures in front of ... #6. The Fictional Setting: Via Starwars.wikia.com Located in the Happy Grove section of the Forest Moon of Endor, Chief Chirpa's Bright Tree Village is the enormous toy commercial from the original Star Wars trilogy that gave us our first dark hint of Lucas' future works. The Real Thing: Via ABC News"We're adults! "If you fall, aim for the large pile of past tourists." #5. Via Absolut-china.comThese trees.

6 Terrible Decisions That Gave Us Great Movie Moments Remember the awesome scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy shoots the swordsman? Yeah well, the only reason they included that in the movie is that Harrison Ford had the shits -- as we've mentioned before, Ford had dysentery and didn't feel like performing a sword fight like the script called for, so they improvised that joke on the set. Apparently that sort of thing happens in Hollywood all the time: Here are some examples of memorable scenes (or even entire movies) that only happened because something went wrong. (Something went right with Cracked's new Star Wars mini-series. #6. The carbonite scene in The Empire Strikes Back is arguably the most iconic moment in the entire movie that doesn't include the words "I am your father." Princess Leia is there, too. The scene also includes the dialogue that defines Han Solo: When Leia says "I love you" to Han for the first time ever, he just looks at her and says "I know." But They Only Included It Because ... #5. And this is what he got:

5 Classic Movies That Seemed Like Terrible Ideas At The Time The thing about a huge pop-culture phenomenon is that it seems so obvious after the fact. It's impossible to imagine people not going wild for something like Star Wars. But at the time, when the checks were being written and not a single ticket had been sold? Yeah, it was a different story. In fact, a lot of the biggest hits in Hollywood history sounded absolutely ridiculous in concept. So let's start with ... You are an executive at a movie studio. Via Swfanon.wikia.com"Oh, and he says 'motherfucker' a lot." Do you write this man a huge check? It Seems Obvious Now ... When it comes to blockbuster movie franchises, Star Wars feels like cheating. GettyGeorge Lucas: Proof that you don't need the support of a giant studio to sell out. But at the Time ... Actually, even George Lucas didn't really want to make Star Wars. "Underneath every stormtrooper's helmet is Dino De Laurentiis' head." And what reason did anyone have to think that Lucas could make a world-changing fantasy blockbuster? Nope.

5 Celebrities Who Got Famous by Being Obsessed Fan Boys Right now there are kids all over the world wearing their favorite band's T-shirt and strumming an oddly sized air guitar in front of their mirror, nursing implausible dreams of some day getting to take the stage. Real life never works out that way, of course -- liking something a lot in no way guarantees you'll grow up to be any good at it. The closest we'll ever get to our idols is when their bodyguards rough us up for trying to get an autograph. Most of the time, anyway. #5. Via levelselect.co.uk Started Out As: Seth Killian, an ordinary, nerdy kid who just happened to really, really freaking love Street Fighter. Official GDC But Became: A freaking character in Street Fighter IV, the main boss "Seth" ... It's a damn good thing his name wasn't Mortimer. ... and also a Capcom employee. Admit it: When you were 10 years old, a lot of you thought that if you got really good at Mario, some day they'd let you work at Nintendo. But then we have Seth Killian. #4. Getty One of the stars of the films.

6 Absurd Movie Plots You Won't Believe Are Based on Reality We spend so much time here debunking silly things we see in fiction that it's easy to forget how truly ridiculous real life is in comparison. Even the silliest, most implausible characters or plots from action movies have come true. Not often, mind you, but they do happen. We're talking about things like ... #6. Badass Adventurer Scientists Indiana Jones movies, The Mummy movies, The Da Vinci Code movies, those Nicholas Cage movies that basically rip off The Da Vinci Code -- they all feature ridiculous but popular characters: university professors who throw away their mortarboards and "research" history by punching it right in the goddamn face. "Before you start killing everyone, would you mind fact-checking my thesis on Ancient Egyptian religion?" Nobody believes it's really like this, or at least we hope not. But It Has Happened ... Wikipedia"I try to carry at least one thing that could impale a Nazi at all times." thedispersalofdarwin"You're my next hat." #5. Daily MailPictured: Minions.

7 Insane Easter Eggs Hidden in Movies and TV Shows We've already told you about some of the most mind-blowing Easter eggs hidden in music albums, classic works of art and video games, so it was just a matter of time before we explored our favorite Easter Eggs from the world of television and film. Captain, unleash the list. Hidden Faces and Naked Women in Movie Posters Most of us don't look twice at movie posters, short of muttering under our breath and saying, "Oh fuck, they're doing a sequel/remaking/rebooting that shit?" For example, check out the poster for the fourth Indiana Jones movie: Now take a really close look between the eyes of the skull and you can see this distinctly alien-looking figure: It's either an alien, or a pumpkin. Well ain't that something? If you look at the smoke in the lower right, you can kind of see half of a face. Either it's the film's monster, or it's the devil or some shit. But neither of those compare to the poster for The Silence of the Lambs. That's not a skull at all. Dali can make anything creepy.

6 Movies That Predicted Disasters With Eerie Accuracy #3. Wag the Dog Predicts a Sex Scandal and a Convenient Bombing There should be a name for that very specific genre of movie that accidentally satirizes a news story before it even happens. People tend to think The China Syndrome was playing off of the fears of nuclear power in the wake of the Three Mile Island incident, but the movie actually came out two weeks before. Which came out three weeks before Dustin Hoffman was invented. In Wag the Dog, the president of the United States gets caught trying to sleep with a Girl Scout, so in order to distract the public and the media from the scandal, a political publicist (Robert De Niro) hires a Hollywood producer to stage a fake war with Albania. If that phrase sounds familiar, it's probably because it quickly became a catchphrase splashed across the front of newspapers in the late '90s, usually with an unflattering picture of this guy: sodaheadYou might remember him from several episodes of Saturday Night Live. #2. #1.

5 Famously Terrible Movies (That Actually Don't Suck) There have been lots of articles about big film flops and/or the worst movies ever made. Usually, they're filled with stats about inflated budgets, production problems and crappy box office returns. Or sometimes, they're just long-winded rants about substandard writing, directing and acting, regardless of box office returns. But over the years, I've noticed that a handful of these movies not only don't suck, but are actually enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, Waterworld, Gigli and Matrix 3 are all as terrible as everyone says, but a "bad" movie's reputation doesn't always go hand in hand with reality. But, again, Waterworld did indeed suck. #5. In 2001, we got to see the third installment of the Jurassic Park series. Why People Hate It: Unlike the first two movies, Jurassic Park III was not based on a book by Michael Crichton or directed by Steven Spielberg. Why It's Still Good: Jurassic Park III is just a movie about killer dinosaurs!!! Jurassic Park III understood this. #4. #3.

6 Crucial Movie Scenes That Never Made It Out of the Script There's a saying in Hollywood: "Cut what you love." No, it's not about cocaine. It means that it doesn't matter how expensive, beautiful or awesome a scene is -- if you can cut it and still have the movie make sense, then cut it. Of course, sometimes the movie doesn't make sense without that crucial deleted scene, but we just didn't notice it. #6. We've mentioned before how Quentin Tarantino's Hitler-killing epic Inglourious Basterds ties the entire Tarantinoverse together like a fine carpet, but one mystery still remains: Why the hell is the title misspelled? If that's the case, then he probably shouldn't have put the answer right there in the script, where we can see it. Getty"Alright, it's Marsellus Wallace's soul. The Missing Scene: The script by Tarantino contains an extended flashback sequence starring Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, a part played by Eli Roth that was originally written for Adam Sandler. imsdb.com"Put down your Yahtzee/It's time to beat some Nazis ..." #5. #4.

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