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Ray Harryhausen

As mentioned here, finally the post about Ray Harryhausen—not before time, as his work loomed large in my childhood!

(I’m assuming everyone knows who Ray is, and what stop-motion animation is…)

Stop-motion is, of course, long since deprecated, especially since the wonders of CGI took over everything and made the world of cinema so much more entertaining and lovely. Maybe I’m being a little facetious. Maybe I just prefer the human touch and don’t feel shiny perfection is the be-all and end-all of everything. How old-fashioned!!

Ray, like everyone else who saw it as a kid, became absolutely obsessed with the original King Kong (1933) when he got to see it during its original run. The ground-breaking visuals in Kong (especially the stop-motion work) inspired Ray to pursue the field himself. Unlike everyone else, he actually got to meet FX pioneer Willis O’Brien, who became his mentor.

Kong was my absolute fave as a little kid (still is, really). Well, how could you not love this fella?

King Kong
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Dreamcatcher (2003)

We watched Dreamcatcher last night. Was it worth the entry fee? Well, unsurprisingly, not really. But it was okay.

The main criticism going around seems to be, if you’ve not read the book, it might be awfully confusing due to how various elements are condensed. This is largely true: the ‘memory warehouse’ idea, for instance, doesn’t play as important a role here as in the book—in fact, it seems like merely a gimmick—so it probably should’ve been left out completely… and the way in which the gang of four’s history with Duddits is skimmed over quickly lessens his significance overall.

Dreamcatcher 2003
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Don’t Make Me Angry, Etc.

Hulk 2003

Well, I’m tempted to go and see it. We just watched a documentary about it on Five, which was fairly interesting. Oh, that green guy above? It’s Hulk. I bet you didn’t know that.

I have mixed feelings about the CGI. In order to make a creature that even vaguely resembles the comic book version, special effects are obviously necessary. From the scenes I’ve seen, it looks incredibly good in parts—but not so good in others. You know, I think the colour is partly the problem. The CGI Hulk looks best in scenes where there’s a lot of shadowing and the colour is subdued… but where the lighting is strong, it’s just too vivid. That shade can work in the comics, but it adds to the unreality of things on film. I think I might have gone for a more olive shade of green.
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Computer Fakery

Since I was droning about Harry Potter earlier… today (er, yesterday), I read the appalling story/rumour that they might use cast-off footage of Richard Harris from the first two movies, combined with his stand-in and computer trickery, to generate an artificial ‘performance’ for the third movie!

I really, really hope this is only a rumour…
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