Special Effects

It may be by bus or it may be by plane, but one way or another Keith Staten will get to Philly in time for his Dell East concert tomorrow night. Staten, along with Fred Hammond, Michael Brooks, Mitchell Jones, Michael Williams and Karl Reid, make up "Commissioned," one of the hottest groups in contemporary gospel music. In three years they've produced as many albums - "I'm Goin On," "Go Tell Somebody," "On The Winning Side" - two of which reached Top 5 status on the Billboard chart.

With the rise of the high-tech generation of directors led by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, more than a few movies have been accused of allowing the special effects to overwhelm the characters and the stories. With an idea that proves a little too ingenious for the film's good, F/X offers a movie in which the special effects are the story. The film's title, it should be pointed out, is not a new category in the ever-controversial film-rating system, but movie slang for special effects.

In 1933, a 13-year-old boy got a free studio ticket to see King Kong, the movie sensation that was packing them in at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles and everywhere else. Hollywood, deservedly notorious for lunatic investments, was to see this modest outlay pay off handsomely for the next 50 years. The boy was Ray Harryhausen, and he remembers being "stunned and haunted" by the special effects that Willis O'Brien, the reigning wizard of the art, had dreamed up for King Kong.

Long before the term disaster movie came into vogue in the '70s, When Worlds Collide showed what could be done in the genre in 1951. George Pal, the reigning movie special-effects wizard of his time, came to the project after the success of his Destination Moon. The work of Pal and his team won an Oscar for special effects that were state-of-the-art for their time. They will not, of course, make anyone forget what George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic conjure these days, but the effects support an intriguing paranoid premise.

Call him "Father Nature. " Nine years ago, Hollywood special-effects guru Dieter Sturm won an Academy Award for inventing an environment-friendly fake snow. Yesterday he dumped more than 40 tons of it on a car dealership in Cherry Hill. It was a Christmas-in-July publicity stunt for the Cherry Hill Triplex on Route 70, near Haddonfield Road, complete with the requisite red-and-green balloon bunches, Christmas carols and salespeople donning Santa hats. Despite a hard-fought battle by the sun and 85-degree weather, Sturm's white stuff prevailed into the night, piled high on the black asphalt parking lot. Children in shorts frolicked in it, marveling over their summertime snowballs.

If you go to the shore this summer, you will swim easier knowing that Bruce, the killer shark from Jaws, is not lurking. He has better things to do than turn you into human sushi. A model for beach bums everywhere, Bruce got a summer job - at the Franklin Institute. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the museum! From tomorrow through Sept. 3, he will greet visitors at "Movie Special Effects," a lively exhibition in which film magicians reveal their sleight of hand. When you peer into Bruce's jaws of death, you will laugh in relief to learn that he is merely 27 feet of sponge rubber with wraparound teeth.

"High Spirits" wants to be a grand romantic ghost story in the old Hollywood tradition, but it suffers from a terminal case of 1980s overkill. Despite a good story idea and a very attractive cast, director Neil Jordan's film is wrecked by an over-reliance on Spielberg-style special effects and frenetic, unfunny comedy. Ghostly love affairs are certainly a staple of the Tinseltown mind set. Just think of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" or "Portrait of Jennie" and you've come up with some superior entertainment.

We cannot vouch for Calista Flockhart, but Ally McBeal eats Duncan Hines milk chocolate frosting. There's a can of the stuff in the kitchen that the neurotic little lawyer of the Fox hit series shares with down-to-earth D.A. Renee Radick (played by Lisa Nicole Carson). Right next to the box of Wheat Thins, the bag of Ruffles with Ridges and the SnackWell fudge brownies. There's olive oil and coffee beans in the canisters, Lactaid and yogurt in the fridge, Lean Cuisine in the freezer.

Beep! Boop! Beep! Beep! Bong! Each step that leads to Remo Saraceni's second floor office plays a musical note. Step on the mat in front of his door and it sounds chimes. If you say the word "time" to the clock on his desk, it will announce it to you. Does this sound like a fun place to work? You haven't heard the half of it. The lights in the ceiling look like clouds. Still more fluffy looking clouds (actually made of plastic) hang on the wall. Clap your hands and they change color.

As gunfire breaks out aboard a private jet and bullets careen around the cabin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the high-flying hero of Eraser, pushes open the plane's hatch, sending the craft's pressure plummeting. Then he hurls something into the fan of the engine, causing a crippling flameout. Cut to the cockpit, where, following all this deafening mayhem, the pilot turns to the copilot and says with a puzzled frown that there seems to be something wrong back there. Not just back there, buddy.

The new Broadway musical "Ghost the Musical," modeled on the hit 1990 movie about a young banker who is murdered but whose spirit sticks around to keep his girlfriend from harm, is an astounding marriage of live theater and high-tech. The musical opened last summer in London and on Monday night on Broadway, where it packs a wallop for its blend of recorded and special effects with real action — in this case full-wall projections by Jon Driscoll that double or triple the cast with silhouettes that move, or filmed subways inhabited by real actors, or filmed backdrops that depict a frantic New York.

THE FOLKS over at the Razzie awards will be examining the new DVD of "Wolfman," and you can anticipate nominations for Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro. Both men find themselves in hairy situations, but the scariest thing in the movie is the acting - Del Toro's miserable, mumbling hero and Hopkins' homicidal aristocrat, Hannibal Lecter with Rogaine. Also scary, the DVD special features include "extended" scenes, offering more of same. On a brighter note, Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" arrives.

A youth learns by accident that he possesses extraordinary powers, is dispatched to a special academy for those of his kind, and undertakes a quest with his two best buds to defeat the dark powers. Luke Skywalker? Harry Potter? Guess again: Percy Jackson, archetypal hero for the modern, emo middle schooler. Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is a loser. Because he has dyslexia, the question on the blackboard is too hard to decipher. Because he has ADHD, he can't focus. And because he has an abusive stepfather, Percy can't bear to be at home.

You may find it hard to distinguish the howls of the beast from the howls of the audience in "The Wolfman. " There are a lot more laughs than scares in this inadvertently campy debacle, a thoroughly botched attempt by Universal to leverage one of its classic horror brands. Everything is bad - the awful script, Joe Johnston's un-atmospheric direction, and the acting, which contains enough ham to meet the protein needs of an entire pack of wolfmen. Benicio Del Toro stars as Lawrence, estranged son of a Victorian aristocrat (Anthony Hopkins)

Get set to salivate. Julie & Julia , a film that pairs the true tales of Julia Child, who brought French cooking to American kitchens in 1961, and Julie Powell, a Queens nobody who hit the celebrity jackpot by emulating Child 40 years later, opens tomorrow. The film stars Meryl Streep as the high-pitched Child, who died in 2004 at 91; Amy Adams as the adorably squeamish Powell; and one close-up after another of food, glorious food. Tight shots of crisp bruschetta reveal tomatoes at their juiciest (see recipe)

Alien versus Predator versus Viking. That's a lot of versuses, and they account for only a sliver of the action in the wigged-out "Outlander," which dips lustily into "Beowulf" and "Starman" and "The Thirteenth Warrior" and about a dozen other titles. Is there a single element that could plausibly link all of these various movies and disparate genres? As it happens, yes. Extreme violence. "Outlander" tries to observe the most important rule of cinema - no movie that features a character named Rothgar (or Ragnar)

Sixteen-year-old Lisa has one rule of engagement for her pesky little brothers: "Unless the house is burning down, don't talk to me. " Does a meteor shower count? The third time was a charm for Goldilocks. So it is for author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg. The film version of his Jumanji was overwhelmed by special effects; likewise, The Polar Express lost its human factor in the translation to screen. Zathura, the thrilling action fantasy based on Van Allsburg's 2001 book (and sequel to Jumanji)

What a difference two years - and $400 million - makes. When Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire showed up for work for the first "Spider-Man" movie, Dunst was 19 and too naive to know she could have opted out of some of her stunt scenes, and Maguire was best known for low-key roles in dramas "The Cider House Rules" and "The Ice Storm. " For the sequel, Dunst had her own posse of wigmakers and wardrobe stylists and the confidence to summon her stunt double whenever she felt like it. Maguire's paycheck quadrupled - to a reported $17 million - and he got what every actor playing a superhero wishes for: "Better harnesses," he said.

Call him "Father Nature. " Nine years ago, Hollywood special-effects guru Dieter Sturm won an Academy Award for inventing an environment-friendly fake snow. Yesterday he dumped more than 40 tons of it on a car dealership in Cherry Hill. It was a Christmas-in-July publicity stunt for the Cherry Hill Triplex on Route 70, near Haddonfield Road, complete with the requisite red-and-green balloon bunches, Christmas carols and salespeople donning Santa hats. Despite a hard-fought battle by the sun and 85-degree weather, Sturm's white stuff prevailed into the night, piled high on the black asphalt parking lot. Children in shorts frolicked in it, marveling over their summertime snowballs.

Genetic mutants with superpowers and super-neuroses, the X-Men return in X2: X-Men United unfettered by having to explain who they are, where they came from, and what's up behind the walls of that fancy prep school in suburban New York. You know, the one populated by kids who can walk through steel, breathe fire, and emit glass-shattering screams. (Where's Edison Schools Inc. when you really need it?) Headed by the wheelchair-bound Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, looking exceptionally dapper in a series of tailored suits and silk ties)