By Jason Apuzzo. • Happy 90th Birthday, Ray Harryhausen! Ray’s an acquaintance of ours, and we want to wish him all the best on his big day. Ray’s birthday happens to coincide with a new exhibit of his work at London’s National Film Museum, and today’s announcement by the UK’s National Media Museum that they’ll eventually be receiving Ray’s collection of memorabilia from his career.
Anyone who’s ever met Ray or worked with him knows what a consummate gentleman he is, and also how warm and generous he is in giving of his time and knowledge to younger generations of filmmakers and movie fans. Ray’s place in the history of cinema is special: he is, in effect, the creator of the modern fantasy genre – a genre he needed to create almost single-handedly in order to bring his unique vision to the world. The technical sophistication of Ray’s work is matched only by the breadth of his vision, which encompasses not only ancient mythology but modern science fiction. He’s one of the absolutely essential figures in cinema history.
Tributes to Ray are pouring in today, and you can see them collected at MUBI. Congratulations, Ray!
• The trailer is out for the next 2 Harry Potter films that will be wrapping up that series … but it isn’t nearly as good as the trailer for the new Japanese film Space Battleship Yamato!
• Confirming what we’ve reported here before, Tommy Lee Jones has joined the Captain America cast, apparently as Col. Chester Phillips. Is this to make up for Valley of Ellah?
• The “Christopher Nolan’s Inception is the ‘smart’ alternative to summer pap” meme is gaining steam in advance of the film’s likely-to-be disappointing performance at the summer box office. What a farce. Once again audiences will be insulted by critics in order to protect a director’s reputation. Btw, what’s Inception done exactly to so swiftly merit this ‘smart’ sobriquet? All the ads actually show of the film are explosions. Maybe they should market this film as ‘The Thinking Man’s A-Team.’
• It’s circle-the-wagons-time around Team Cruise, as one Fox executive falls on his sword to protect Tom, post Knight and Day. I’m also seeing some meaningless chatter on-line right now about a potential Top Gun sequel, but those rumors are old and long-debunked. The reality is that Cruise has got nothing left in the tank right now beyond the Mission Impossible franchise. We’ll see if he can reinvent himself again, or else find himself doing cop movies.
• M. Night Shyamalan is taking heat over the racially insensitive casting of his Last Airbender, and the reality is that Hollywood filmmakers are going to continue taking heat on this until they stop second-guessing who the American audience will ‘accept’ in major roles. Have any of these guys noticed how multi-ethnic America is right now? Do we really still need white people to ‘sell’ films domestically?
• Check today’s The Wrap to find out where the Hollywood money is going this political season. Funny that Bob Iger is giving money to Jerry Brown, given that Meg Whitman interviewed for Iger’s current job.
• New Malaysian TV show looks for Malaysia’s Next Top Young Imam. Reality TV for the rest of the world. But is it as good as “Basketball Wives”?
• Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart is debuting her new red hair just prior to her film’s launch. I’ve always had mixed feelings about redheads, but I’m rolling with this.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Fox News does some hard news reporting today on the seedier aspects of recruiting Russian supermodels. Who knew? So here at LFM we’re taking the occasion of posting a picture of former Russian supermodel, Bond girl and Centurion star Olga Kurylenko – just to provide some needed news context to Fox’s story.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …
Posted on June 29th, 2010 at 2:49pm.
Nolan is overrated, but what bothers me more is how Dark Knight became a conservative cause celebre. I don’t think it deserved that treatment. I think the right winger types just flocked to it because it made money.
Perhaps. Conservatives seem to endorse comic book movies en masse because of their Manichean, good-vs.-evil worldview. The problem is that these films just as often portray conservatives as being on the evil side (think, for example, of the way defense contractors become the villains in both “Spider-Man” and “The Hulk”).
Happy Birthday Mr. Harryhausen! I’ve loved Ray Harryhausen’s films ever since I was little, and in my view, no computer special effects today can top the magic of his hand-done animation. His movies have classic, timeless values that kids need now today more than ever. Harryhausen’s original “Clash of the Titans” is also still miles away the best. (The awful remake cannot compare.)
There are so many others of his films that I love, from the Sinbad movies to his sci-fi, and all I can say is that Mr. Harryhausen has brought years of happiness to all his fans. God Bless him always.
I don’t know about Kristen Stewart’s red hair. It just doesn’t look right. Now she looks like Angie Everheart.
Happy Birthday to Ray Harryhausen. One of my favorite movies growing up is Jason and the Argonauts and the “original” Clash of the Titans. Ray is a great cinematic artist that epitomizes the craft of movie making. A truly lost art in today’s cinema. His movies were not Shakespeare but they’re entertaining and well done. They have a plausibility within the world they present because of the extraordinary cinematic craftsmanship of Ray Harryhausen.
I watched the trailer of the Japanese film Space Battleship Yamato and I have to say, and please correct me, are they raising the original Battleship Yamato for space battle? If so and I apologize in advance because I watched it once and I do not remotely understand the Japanese language but if that’s the premise then I’ve got a real issue with this film. It’s not in regard to my above comment regarding plausibility because if it’s well done then anything is possible. My issue is the Japanese have never acknowledge the horrific crimes of genocide and warfare they committed during World War II anywhere near the level of the Germans. In fact they really don’t acknowledge it at all. In a lot of respects they were as bad as the Germans and in respect to treatment of prisoners of war they worse. I know the victors write the history books but they were really bad guys.
Happy Birthday Mr. Harryhausen, and thank you for Mighty Joe Young, Ymir, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Cyclops, Talos, The Hydra, Kali, the (original) Kraken, et al, thank you for dreams they put in a young man’s head, thank you for the joy, and thank you for following your dream.
By the way everybody…Welshbard is back!