‘Hugo’ boss

In theaters Friday: 21 Jump Street, Casa de mi Padre, Jeff, Who Lives at Home

New on Blu-ray/DVD: The Descendants, Melancholia, The Three Musketeers

Two weeks ago today, surrounded by Gov. Bobby Jindal, BRAC chief Adam Knapp and other officials, Frankfurt native Thilo Kuther stepped up to the microphone at Celtic Media Centre and announced that the global visual effects company he began in Germany more than a decade ago and has since expanded to offices across the world from London to Toronto to Beijing would open its newest location right here in Baton Rouge.

It is only Pixomondo’s second U.S. effects house. The first opened in Los Angeles several years ago.

“What do they say at the office, ‘The sun never sets on Pixomondo,’” Kuther joked.

This is, of course, a huge win for Celtic and the local economy of Baton Rouge. Kuther aims to employ 75 full time staff by the end of the year, many of which will have the chance to contribute to some of the most dynamic feature films and commercial campaigns in the world.

Pixomondo’s work shows a mastery of both form and function and a dazzling display of what absolute magic can happen when creative minds work together but never lose sight of reality, of what grips us as an audience.

There is no better example of Pixomondo’s elite talent level than the effects seen recently in Martin Scorsese’s multiple Oscar-winning family film Hugo. From the delicate snowdrifts across the rooftops of 1930s Paris, to thrilling zooms through the insides of a bustling train station, Pixomondo’s effects are the perfect blend of fantastic and familiar.

Special effects don’t have to be big in order to be special. They can be small. Visual effects don’t have to mean giant, fighting Transformers or throwing out all laws of physics or being engulfed by impossibly huge explosions. Like the best work of Michel Gondry—a French director behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep—Hugo reminds audiences of the power of subtlety and whimsy and heart.

The turn of the century films of George Melies, the subject of Hugo and a man the film pioneering Lumiere brothers once called the “creator of the cinematic spectacle,” elicit the same reaction, as does Thilo Kuther’s enthusiasm for Pixomondo.

In the right hands, movies can be a wondrous place to visit.

As Ben Kingsley’s Georges Melies says toward the end of Hugo, “My friends, I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, magicians… Come and dream with me.”