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classic cinema

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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2021 Viewing (Q2)

Continuing what is now a tradition, albeit a month late, and following the previous post back in April (sorry to be gone so long, but I promise there’s a bunch of new posts coming up!), here are the viewings from the second quarter of 2021… some of which were obviously started in Q1 but completed in Q2!

The Rebel (Johnny Yuma) season 2 (DVD)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents season 5 (DVD)
Have Gun Will Travel seasons 1-2 (DVD)
Department S series 1 (Blu-ray)
Star Trek: The Original Series seasons 1-2 (Blu-ray)

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The Defiant Ones (1958)

In Brief: this is the write-up of The Defiant Ones prepared for the on-off book on Lon Chaney Jr, Moonlight Shadows. Feedback is very welcome!

Defiant Ones Poster

Produced by Stanley Kramer for Lomitas Productions, Inc. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Screenplay by Nedrick Young & Harold Jacob Smith. Music score by Ernest Gold. Cinematography by Sam Leavitt. Edited by Frederic Knudtson. Distributed by United Artists.

Technical: 1.66:1, black and white, Westrex mono. Running time: 96 minutes. Production: late February to early April 1958. Premiere: September 24 1958 (NY).

With Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw, Lon Chaney, King Donovan and Claude Akins.

Two convicts—one white (Tony Curtis), one black (Sidney Poitier)—in a Southern chain gang are being transported in a van when the vehicle crashes. They escape, and what follows is a story of the tensions between the two, being forced to flee cross-country together―mostly through swamplands―until they find a way of breaking the four-foot chain that binds them.

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