Editorial pointers

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 5 COMING NEXT MONTH: Two special sections that explore the businesses, enabling technologies and tools, user experiences, deep issues, and science of data mining that together paint a beautifully detailed picture of the current state of personalization. I caught an interview with Tom Cruise on TV the other day, out promoting his latest box-office boon Mission Impossible 2. Clips from the film’s action-packed scenes show Cruise scaling treacherous mountains thousands of feet high with nothing more than his fingernails, his megawatt smile, and a piece of chalk. Cut to Tom leaping from peak to deadly peak. Cut to Tom spinning a series of what looks like Triple Axels (sans skates). As the breathless scenes unfold, the actor is adamant about clarifying to the interviewer that he did his own stunt work. “I’m afraid the audience will think the stunts are all done with computer-generated imagery,” he laments. “It’s really me!” The same day the Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating article on Walt Disney Pictures’ decision to salvage its latest computer-animated film Dinosaur by promoting the technology that made it all possible. The $150 million-plus movie, scoured by critics for its lack of plot and character development, prompted Disney to attempt to save face by marketing the film’s groundbreaking, photo-realistic computer animation techniques. What statements to the mastery of computer graphics and animation when the renowned Disney resorts to touting its movie technology rather than its movie, and one of the world’s most recognizable superstars fears his fans won’t recognize fact from fx.