Ray Harryhausen: "If you make fantasy too real, it loses the quality of a dream."

AMEN! I was watching Life of Pi last night thinking, "Okay, that's a pretty impressive and realistic-looking computer-generated tiger and all... but...". This weird kind of feeling - attributed to a phenomenon called "uncanny valley" - has yet, for me anyway, to be overcome by CGI, no matter how good it looks. There's so such problem with Harryhausen's pioneering stop-motion animation creations. The hand-crafted charm, the jittery quality, the fact that an actual three-dimensional object was photographed, the onus being on the viewer to do some work filling in the gaps - these elements make, say the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts, feel a whole lot more real than some of the slick, overblown CGI effects we've seen and been accustomed to in recent years.

Anywho Ray Harryhausen's passing is a great loss to the film world. Without this guy there would be no Star Wars, no Jurassic Park, no The Thing, no Nightmare Before Christmas etc!  A lot of Hollywood's greatest and most memorable creatures, aliens and monsters simply would not exist.

Here's a pretty good comp of Harryhausen's work:
If you 'd like to catch up on some of the films he's worked on, this is a list of what we've got in our library:

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
It Came from Beneath the Sea
Earth vs the Flying Saucers
20 Million Miles to Earth
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
Mysterious Island
Jason and the Argonauts
First Men in the Moon
One Millions Years B.C.
The Valley of Gwangi
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Clash of the Titans

Ebertuaries

When Roger Ebert passed away last Thursday, I don't think I quite anticipated the extent of emotional outpouring that resulted. Obviously the presence of social media these days does have a way of magnifying things, and Ebert was the possibly most well-known film critic ever, but the wide-reaching grief at the news of his death drove home one point: he meant a heck of lot to a lot of people. Neither Donald Richie nor Andrew Sarris, similarly respected giants in film writing who died in the past year, received this much attention.

Ebert was the rare critic who could cut through all the oft-perceived academic high-brow-ness of film writing and make it accessible to everyone. His conversational style, his unmistakable voice (both in writing and speaking) - which I can still hear, and will miss hearing - was often imitated but never bettered. He could preach movies, but not dumb it down, and as someone who reviews films, this is one thing I try to do, and I can tell you, it's not as easy as Ebert makes it seem to be.

Here's a collection of heartfelt online tributes to the man:

What Did Roger Ebert Mean To You? - AV Club Q&A
Roger Ebert was a Superman - Thompson on Hollywood
A Mentor to the End - Variety's Scott Foundas
Roger Ebert Through The Years - clips
Remembering the Roger I Knew - Suntimes blogger Jim Emerson on his colleague
Roger Ebert, my mentor - Monica Eng, Chicago Tribune reporter

R.I.P. Tony Scott

I'm probably the worst person to write obits, but the news of Top Gun director Tony Scott's suicide was such a mad shock it left me reeling and wanting to devote some space to the man. So here are some stray thoughts and things:

• Why was it such a shock? The dude's a mega-successful Hollywood director who didn't seem to have any problems with drugs or illnesses or any bad shit - at least none that was made public anyway. He just appeared to be this jovial, energetic British guy who made fast, flashy mainstream films and enjoyed doing so (he called directing "the best job in the world").
• He's not a critically acclaimed filmmaker. His films do not grace Top 10s. His increasingly ADD editing and visual style were often derided. But one wonders how, or if, in the sea of grief-stricken tweets and comments, taste matters. There are people saddened that the guy who made "one of the greatest films ever" Man on Fire has passed, or those exclaiming that Crimson Tide changed their life. The fact is Scott entertained a heck of a lot of people - even if his films weren't critical favourites. 
• Which brings me to this tweet... Harsh? Insensitive? Or painfully true? 

• It's entirely true that Scott is responsible - or at least partially - for a lot of what glossy modern blockbusters look and sound like these days, both the good and the bad.
• Reports initially stated Scott had inoperable brain cancer and that's why he jumped - now that's apparently incorrect. Truly bad form, ABC.
• For the record, my Scott faves: probably True Romance and The Last Boy Scout. 
• A collection of celeb reactions to his death here, and a proper obit here from BBC.