About an inch high, the figures were so expertly constructed by the English artist David Stokes in 1958 that they reveal emotions as clearly as do flesh-and-blood actors.

In the theater, the presence of the flesh-and-blood actors and one's awareness of the sophisticated technology of the stage constantly sabotage the innocence of the tale.

If this technology heralds the end of flesh-and-blood actors, then perhaps the actors are as much to blame as the technology.

That concept is counterintuitive: shouldn't it be more alarming to have a flesh-and-blood actor murdered before your eyes?

The scenes might go well with hot, buttered popcorn, but they are not taken from the latest action-adventure film starring flesh-and-blood actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He's suspicious of anything computer-generated, and most of all, anything that lessens the opportunities for flesh-and-blood actors to be seen.

For the people Miranda marvels at here are not people at all, which is to say flesh-and-blood actors, but digital simulacrums of them.

Digital imagery has so permeated the culture that flesh-and-blood actors now commonly impersonate computer-generated video heroines, complete with the cyberstars' supernatural powers.

Harryhausen's creations, figures brought to life by stop-motion animation, wires and clever camera effects, often have more character than the flesh-and-blood actors around them.

Although Mr. Bakshi "stumbled" into his medium, he thinks that animated characters can elicit more powerful emotions than flesh-and-blood actors.