Dear Steve Salazar, Welder on TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF DISTINCTION,

When it comes to melting metal on Hollywood sets, it's hard to top your CV. In the last few years alone, you've built some of the most badass battleships, spaceships, train sets and superhero battlegrounds we've ever seen. Now you've come back to the Transformers_ _franchise, where the metal thrashing must be bigger, harder, faster, and louder than anything that came before it. Personally, I'd rather just bang my head against…

Dear Fritz Beck, Lighting Artist for STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS...

I hope you appreciate the irony - or should I say, "highly illogical" nature - of putting so many blindingly bright lens flares in a "dark" movie. Yes, I know those red, white and blue streaks are director J.J. Abrams's visual trademark. I also realize that even though the latest Star Trek movie professes to go "into darkness," that the movie still upholds the summer blockbuster obligation to be light…

Dear Trevor Morris, Composer for OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN...

In junior high, while my peers were awakened by the atonal notes of the early-90s alt-rock movement and the emigration of hip-hop from the inner city to the suburbs, I spent my time at the local record store flipping through the soundtracks bin. James Horner and James Newton Howard were my Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Hans Zimmer’s gang of synth-inspired virtuosos were my Wu-Tang Clan. I made mix-tapes that cleverly segued between…