Rick Baker retires. This is bad.

[popperock]

Luckily, Rob Bottin's still around too. If you've never heard of him, he did the effects for The Thing, RoboCop and The Howlling and was Baker's understudy.

As an aside, I too find the CGI sploogefest in movies tiring as well. I don't get how people think that they look better than practical. Look at Escape from New York vs. Escape from L.A. for example. New York is all practical (even the computer readout on the glider is a practical effect, done by some Canadian dude named Jim Cameron) and uses matte paintings to simulate the New York skyline (also done by Cameron). It still looks realistic today. L.A., on the other hand, has some of the shoddiest fucking CGI work I've ever seen in a film, especially the surfing scene. I mean fuck, the surfing scenes you used to see on 60's TV, the one's that were clearly just the actors standing in front of a rear projector and pretending to balance looked better than Escape from L.A., and that was done on four times the budget of the first film (and yes, that is adjusting for inflation). I guess my point is fuck lazy ass directors that want to do everything difficult in post and the shit studios who force CGI in films due to lobbying by the industry.