Harryhausen birthday party

[randy_byers]

David Cairns gives an appropriately fanboyish first hand account of the 90th birthday party for Ray Harryhausen held in London on Saturday. Interesting just for the names of the attendees, including Terry Gilliam and Simon Pegg.

Harryhausen was certainly part of my youth in the cinemas. I saw all his '70s movies in the theater. When my nephews recently asked me if I was going to see the new Clash of the Titans, I asked them if they knew it was a remake. "You mean that old one with the cheesy special effects?" No, I meant the old one with the cheesy script and the awesome special effects. Who can forget hunting Medusa in the dark? Kids these days! Ah well, I love the 1933 King Kong too -- animated by Willis O'Brien, with whom Harryhausen worked on Mighty Joe Young in 1949. I just love that old-school stop-motion animation.

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Both Ray Harryhausen and Forry Ackerman attended the Festival of Fantastic Films back in the mid-1990s, when a new print of King Kong was screened at a restored 1930s cinema. Ann had the honour of holding their seats whilst they went on stage and introduced the movie.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You gotta love it. I bet she was, as you Brits say, chuffed.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Even more so that she could arrange it for me to sit next to both of them and have a lengthy chat. Always looking out for me, that girl.

[wrdnrd]

Geeze, the effects were the ONLY thing decent about that old movie.

I love old school special effects, in particular stop-motion animation. I really enjoyed the special features on the "Lord of the Rings" movies where they detailed all the old school effects they used to complement the CGI. I still think the old school effects give a better, more real feel to a movie. CGI just isn't quite there yet. I don't (usually) want my movies looking like video games.

Speaking of, i guess there's a new "Tron"?? What???

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things about computer graphics that I have a hard time getting used to is the unnatural movements of the camera (something the LOTR movies were very guilty of). I'd love to see somebody do a study of it, because I'm not sure why this wasn't the case in old animation. Did they just try to mimic normal camera movements in old animation? There's no inherent reason for them to seem more naturalistic, at least that I'm aware of.

And yeah, remake of Tron. I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm not against the idea of remakes either. It's not as though the original couldn't be improved on. Same for Clash of the Titans, although from what I've read about the remake, it doesn't sound as though the script was any better than the original. Or the acting. Although I suppose these movies exist for the special effects. (What's that Japanese word for "special effects movie"? Ah, tokusatsu.)

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

The original Clash was boring, with middling stop-motion fx. The new Clash was boring with middling cgi fx. I very nearly fell asleep watching the latter.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

It's a sequel, not a remake.

If you want to check out a modern 'old school' movie, try Moon.