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Director who found success across film, TV and advertising

Paul Dickson, who has died aged 91, had a long, versatile and award-winning career in film, television and advertising. His critical reputation rests on two remarkable postwar documentaries, The Undefeated (1950) and David (1951, the Welsh contribution to the Festival of Britain). Episodes of The Avengers (1968) and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 1969 were among his best-known television credits.

Dickson first attracted notice with The Undefeated, a film about the difficulties faced by injured wartime combatants who were patients at rehabilitation centres in Roehampton, Stoke Mandeville and elsewhere, as they adjusted to life in the postwar world. A calculated but moving attempt to destigmatise state help for disabled people, the film quickly became a critical success after opening at the Edinburgh film festival. A recruitment drive for the Korean war appeared to curtail its wider circulation, but it was awarded best documentary by the British...

Born in Northern Ireland, now residing in Brooklyn, NY, Rodney Dickson made his mark with staunchly anti-war art. This stance led to a special interest in Vietnam and Cambodia, and he has exhibited frequently in the former country -- and around the world. CultureCatch's Bradley Rubenstein recently caught up with Dickson to review his career and bring us up to date on his evolution.

Bradley Rubenstein: Let's go back a few years, first, and touch briefly on the paintings of yours that I first saw: pictures of Tanya Roberts. They evolved out of a complex system of sending off fan shots or pap shots, which were faithfully, more or less, reproduced. In retrospect, though, it seems that you were really interrogating painting via an intercontinental telephone game -- seeing how others saw American culture. How did you see the project, and how, in a larger sense, did this have...

Heralding the return of Ian "Dicko" Dickson to TV, new topical panel show Can of Worms will explore what Australia really thinks once the barriers of political correctness are removed.

Recognised nation-wide as the irreverent, frank "love-to-hate" TV personality, Dicko and the highly controversial series look to be a match made in heaven. At least, that's what producer, Andrew Denton of Zapruder's Other Films, is saying:

"When Dicko came to us earlier in the year about with the gem of an idea about a...  More >>...

You can’t wait to see Ryan Reynolds in the Green Lantern costume, can you? Well, too bad! The costume will reportedly be entirely computer-generated. The filmmakers behind the Warner Bros./DC Comics superhero movie have designed a motion-capture suit with tracking LEDs for Reynolds to wear on set. Green Lantern’s recognizable green and black outfit will then be added in post-production by the visual effects team.

According to /Film,

“The suit that Ryan wears on set is a grey tracking motion/performance capture suit with led lights. I’ve heard that Ryan Reynolds has been joking on set that Warner Bros is going to make him into a Na’vi when the final cut is released. His joke, not mine. The Green Lantern suit you will see in the final film will be almost entirely created using computers”.

“Remember, the Green Lantern suit is something that should look...

Ryan Reynolds, star of the upcoming Green Lantern movie, is doing the flick without a costume -- but that doesn't mean he's doing the film naked. Turns out that the plan for this film is to do the entire costume for the flick in CGI, in order to give it an otherworldly feel.

The effect will be somewhat like what Billy Crudup did in Watchmen as Doctor Manhattan, though sans giant blue penis. Instead, the post-production process will make the suit:

"... look alien — it needs to seem other worldly. It encompasses any creature that wears the ring, and Hal Jordan is the first human to ever wear the suit. This was a chance for Dickson to do something different. You also have to consider that Hal changes into the suit multiple times in mid scene, and the cg also allows him to do this. I’ve heard that when the cg is complete,...

One the continuing conversations I have had with fanboys and comic geeks about the upcoming Green Lantern film is how the filmmakers and creative teams plan on handling the various look and styles that are offered in the Green Lantern world. Consider this: You have so many vibrant colors working together such as different color skins of the creatures/aliens in the story (pinks, purples, oranges, Human color flesh, etc.), plus you have real life tones and features with present day Earth and other planets mixed in along with the darkness of space and much more. Its a tough combination for sure.

The Green Lantern boasts a lot of challenges for any creative team all on top of honoring the source material and pleasing tons of fans worldwide. It will be interesting to see the final product but until then articles such as this will give us a small insight...

The choice of CG will play into both the look and the theme of the film/Film is reporting that in DC Comics' and Warner Bros. production of the Green Lantern (starring Ryan Reynolds) the suit the character wears is going to be almost entirely CG.

They are citing independent sources saying that Reynolds is utilizing "a grey tracking motion/performance capture suit with led lights" to make this happen.

goes on to cite the films costume designer Ngila Dickson (Academy Award winner for The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King) as being solid proof that this should work.

Ngila was tasked with trying to find a way to do something that stands apart from all of the other superheroes spandex suit designs we've seen in the past.

They also went on to say that the medium of CG is actually quite suited to the look...