ABSTRACT
This change in geographical nomenclature signals a profound change at the level of the cinematic text. As is lavishly apparent in blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) and Harry Potter films, but also discreetly evident in films like Road to Perdition, f/x work is now so thoroughly woven into contemporary moviemaking that it actually makes little sense to speak about ‘special effects’ anymore. ‘What we are witnessing now,’ writes Wheeler Winston Dixon, ‘is nothing more nor less than the dawn of a new grammar, a new technological production and delivery system, with a new series of plots, tropes, iconic conventions, and stars’ (Dixon 2001: 366). Like a rumble in the fault line, Old Hollywood’s epistemic
ground is shifting, and the fact that the town’s new stars are often digital is among the most obvious, though strangely, least theorized components of this new cinematic grammar.
