When Worlds Collide: The Science of Movies

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (top); Tobey Maguire in Spider Man 3 (bottom)

"When Worlds Collide: The Science of Movies" is the title of the Academy’s Science and Technology Council’s program about the physics behind some of Hollywood’s best-known action and science-fiction scenes. "When Worlds Collide" will be presented on Thursday, August 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will be hosted by author Adam Weiner (Don’t Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies) and will feature film clips and a panel discussion with Oscar-winning visual effects artists Robert Legato (Titanic) and Scott Stokdyk (Spider-Man 2), Oscar-nominated visual effects artists [...]

Lucy Gordon

Lucy Gordon, a young British actress perhaps best known for a small role in Spider-Man 3, was found dead in her Paris apartment yesterday, May 20. Gordon’s death was an apparent suicide. She is supposed to have hanged herself while her boyfriend, cinematographer Jérôme Alméras, slept. Gordon would have turned 29 tomorrow, May 22.
The Oxford-born Gordon worked as a model before making her feature-film debut in the little-seen Perfume in 2001.
Among her other screen credits are the romantic comedy Serendipity, with John Cusack; The Four Feathers, opposite Heath Ledger; Steve Clark’s dramatic comedy Frost, starring Jason Behr; Russian Dolls, with Romain Duris; and John Krasinski’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which was screened at this [...]