[Eric Paddon]

Then I guess where we part company is that I don't regard sci-fi as anymore special a genre from a filmmaking standpoint than any other one that has required what we call "special effects" to tell part of its story. "The Ten Commandments" is not what we call a "sci-fi" movie, but its strength lay in the fact that Cecil B. DeMille used the tools of his time to sell the illusion of the Red Sea parting. But even when we consider the world of sci-fi, are we honestly going to be doing this tinkering with films from an even earlier era like "Forbidden Planet" and "War Of The Worlds"? If anything, I look at these films and TV shows from an earlier era with their limitiations and find that when there are limits, it has the effect of making me think more about the *story*, in effect getting me to use my imagination more and let my mind be sucked into the reality of the setting that the actors, writers and director have created. The limited FX of the day becomes a conceit I can accept simply because the compensation is stronger on the other end, which are the elements today's CGI-laden movies have IMO totally forgotten how to do properly. So perhaps I suffer from an instinctive dislike of CGI simply because I associate it with a style of storytelling I've come to have no use for as I get older.

The only restorations I approve of are when movies that were cut down from their original roadshow cuts are then restored back to their original versions as we saw with "Lawrence Of Arabia" or "The Alamo" because that's using the materials that were made *in that era* and giving us the kind of viewing experience that those who first experienced those films got to see. The end product is enhanced but remains a product of its time.