I keep seeing ads for the new movie The Guilt Trip with Barbra Streisand. Ms. Streisand looks to be maybe 45 in the ads. Imdb.com lists her age as 70.
I saw The Hobbit last weekend. I don’t want to include any spoilers here, so let me just say that this new movie includes a few characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Fellowship of the Ring was released 11 years ago, but the characters don’t seem to have aged at all.
So how do they do this? Is it postproduction manipulation of the film images? Or is it makeup? Both?
There have been many times in the past where I’ve seen an actor portray a younger version of him/herself, but in each prior case it took a pretty big suspension of disbelief on my part to buy it.
Probably both. Makeup in the scenes where they can get away with it, CGI in the scenes where they can’t. Note that when the CGI is done badly (think about Nicolas Cage in Ghost Rider, and his CGI-ed abs), it really really stands-out.
If I were to wager a guess, I’d guess that The Hobbit is much more likely to use CGI for this purpose because:
It likely has a much greater effects budget
It likely has better studios responsible for the effects
Since the characters spend much of their time surrounded by effects, the CGI “facelifts” won’t stand out as much
The Guilt Trip is probably relying mostly (or exclusively) on make-up artists (and perhaps a few plastic surgeons.)
I noticed this years ago with some classic actors (definitely pre-CGI). E.g., Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda seemed to hardly age at all for a long time. But only up to a point. Once they got a bit old (late 60s), then it quickly became more noticeable.
OTOH, for younger actors, it seems to be the opposite. Many overdo the plastic surgery and they go to pot at surprisingly young ages. Examples include Melanie Griffith and Mickey Rourke.
Having just seen Melanie Griffith on Raising Hope last night (I don’t watch the show, just surfed passed it), she looked pretty good. So I assume that is no CGI, makeup, plastic surgery and genetics.
Barbara Steisand regularly bathes in the blood of virgins. That’s her secret.
But, also, masking parts of the body that tend to show a lot of age, like putting scarves around the neck, and not focusing on the hands, etc. can help.
When he first got cast as Elrond, my complaint was that he wasn’t beautiful enough. Now that it looks like all of his skin was airbrushed in The Hobbit, I can see the good casting choice.
I read about 20 years ago that Streisand was raising all kinds of cain about some editors not editing out her wrinkles on some filming they had done on her. Or lighting, or some such.
Then, about a week later, I saw her on tv with Diane Sawyer (?) saying to her "I can’t believe how young you look!’
Point being, Babs probably has a lot of good FX on her side, distant shots, quick takes, long hair cuts, and some expensive makeup.
Can we talk about Julia Louis-Dreyfus? She looks essentially exactly the same as when Seinfeld first started… and that was over 20 years ago. I mean… damn, I’m not straight but sometimes she makes me wonder.