Movie MAGIC!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I hereby wish to declare that Ray Harryhausen does AWESOME DVD commentaries. I now want every commentary to include at least one old man who doesn’t remember anything about production and can’t bring himself to believe that anybody cares about it, anyway.

The film is 20 Million Miles to Earth, which for a lousy B-movie actually has some decent 50’s effects—courtesy Ray, who made a pretty nifty stop-motion monster for it. The monster even manages to look like it’s interacting with the people and everything.* And for the 50th anniversary DVD they got a mostly-dead Ray to sit down (via satellite) with some less-dead special effects artists and commentate. The other guys—including Dennis Muren, who is an effects wizard himself**—all kind of understand DVD commentaries and ask interesting leading questions that give Ray an opportunity to impart his Moviemaster Wisdom.

Ray, on the other hand, is fuckin’ 87 years old and made the movie fifty years ago, when nobody in the audience cared much about The Making Of This Movie, and thus he is eminently practical and unromantic when he hasn’t forgotten what happened:

DENNIS***: So, Ray! Why did you decide to set this movie in Rome?

RAY: I wanted to take a trip to Italy.

---

DENNIS: You know, we have all noticed that your interestingly lifelike models tend to have bent elbows. This lends them a strangely inhuman look. Was that a conscious trademark?

RAY: Actually, I just didn’t want to have to animate swinging arms.

---

DENNIS: How did you come up with this particular design for the spaceship, Ray?

RAY: I looked at some pictures of rockets, and came up with this one.

---

Ray is also totally fascinated by the colorization process (“Amazing that those computers can make the color follow the moving people!”) and thinks it’s great that they’re doing this commentary via satellite from London and Berkeley respectively and yet “it sounds like we’re all in the same room!” Movie Magic strikes again!

(Also, for the record, that monster he made was adorable. I think it was its droopy mustache.)


*As opposed to most B-movies I’ve seen, in which the monster is either Some Guy In A Rubber Suit or a process shot of an iguana or a tarantula or something.

**Industrial Light and Magic, yo. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Terminator …

***Or somebody. There were a couple of other guys, but I didn’t catch the names.

Comments

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

He did a live commentary at SDCC for that one two(?) years ago and I agree, he's totally awesome. Tacky B-plot aside, Harryhausen movies are really incredible for when and how they were made.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, his effects are amazing given the usual B-fare at that time. Anyone who can make process shots and rear projection look halfway decent deserves a medal.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

I also liked his "pentapus" - because animating 8 arms was too hard

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

AHAHA. Sounds about right.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Ray Harryhausen is the key reason why Clash of the Titans from the 80's is better than Clash of the Titans from two months ago.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Ray Harryhausen is the bomb, yo. The movies are usually drek but damn they've got style.

I love the Ymir.

Ever seen his dinosaur/lost world flick "Valley of Gwanji"? I like to sing along to the theme tune. "Journey...into the valley...of Gwanji. (Gwanji!)"

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

It cracks me up that the Ymir looks a lot more realistic than an actual guy in a rubber suit. And at least it wasn't A Chilling Example Of Things To Come Unless Humanity Gets Its Shit Together, like most aliens from that era--it was just a lost and spooked animal. (Also, bonus points for making The Woman a med student--even if our hero Dirk Squarejaw condescended his way into her heart.)

I just loved how he didn't get why anybody cared how he did it. At one point he complains that "These days everyone wants to know how it's done," and later gives the other effects guys some shit about how they study his work so closely: "It was only meeant to be seen ONCE! But SOME PEOPLE just insist on going back and studying it ..."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Oh I'm not quite sure how to word it but there's a joke opportunity about creationism with God as an old geezer and us humans with our annoying science studying his work so closely in there somewhere, I'm almost sure of it.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

"Those fossils were a mistake. I just put them there for decoration, but no, you had to go and study them."

Actually, I have sometimes mused that maybe the reason the universe seems so much more complex than it used to is that the more we examine it, the more arbitrary rules it has to make up to fill in the gaps, like a GM trying to keep the story together with a bunch of vagrant PCs.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I am now in love with the image of God as a writer desperately trying to retcon in some plausible technobabble explanations for all the fallacies Man, as his annoying nitpicker fan, keeps pointing out.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! When you get a really good one it's terrific, isn't it? Ray's geezing is indeed worth the whole thing. It's like they asked Grandpa to sit and tell us a story.

Lemme see ... aside from this one, my favorite commentaries have been Love Actually, the LotR trilogy, and all the Futurama episodes. (John DiMaggio alone makes the Futurama ones intensely funny.) Although my sister assures me that Snakes on a Plane is definitely worthwhile, too.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

The very Best Harryhousen, IMNSVHO, is the skeleton army from Jason and the Argonauts/Golden Fleece.
I saw that movie when I was TEENSY and I still remember them guys as being all kinds of awesome.

:D

Also, awesome transcript selection, you. *grin*

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

I kinda need to see this movie now.