RIP Ray Harryhausen

by Tony Dayoub

"I'm another snowball. Willis H. O'Brien started the snowball. Then I picked it up. Then ILM picked it up. And now the computer generation is picking it up. Where it will end, I don't know... maybe in holography. Although I'm not sure I'd like a grotesque monster appearing in 3D in my living room."

-Stop motion model animator Ray Harryhausen,

whose name became synonymous with motion picture visual effects

Recommended Films - Mighty Joe Young, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C., The Valley of Gwangi, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Clash of the Titans (1981)

Movie Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

Why revisit a great movie when there are so many lesser movies that could be improved by a remake? Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is a huge improvement on its predecessor. And let's be honest, whatever feelings of nostalgia get stirred up when thinking of Ray Harryhausen's 1981 version, the designation of "classic" hardly applies. The acting in that one is wooden even by fantasy genre standards, with Laurence Olivier slumming as Zeus (no doubt after Alec Guinness' appearance in Star Wars made such a thing acceptable) and Siân Phillips generously wearing a permanent grimace on her face in order to not outdo the stiff Judi Bowker who plays her daughter. Concessions to the trends in fantasy at the time—like the requisite robot sidekick, in this case a metallic owl named Bubo—only served to highlight the great expanse between Harryhausen's increasingly antiquated effects technology and the ILM visual FX burgeoning at the time. Eight-years-old at the time, I saw the original on opening day in 1981 and recall it fondly much less for its story or visuals than for its two scenes of gratuitous nudity (not unusual in a PG-rated film back then). Ironically, today's political climate allows Titans to retain a PG-13 rating by eschewing the nudity but amping up the violence.