Ray Harryhausen RIP—and the Movies of April 2013

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

The Last of the Old School Special Effects Masters has passed away. Now Harryhausen joins Albert Whitlock, Derek Meddings, L.B. Abbott and a small handful of others creating special visual effects for the Afterlife—all without computers!

Big Ray was no hired hand, though:

Harryhausen’s was the rare case of the special effects man determining the path of the motion picture routinely—essentially acting as a hands-on producer (even the directors usually hired by him and partner Charles H. Schneer were non-entities: so as not to interfere?). His individualized, specific form of stop-motion animation is intractably tied to the movies they were in and vice versa.

There is a certain tone to Harryhausen’s flicks, combined with an extravagant but classical sense of fantasy that puts his name directly on the same level as George Pal and Walt Disney as the Masters of Family-Friendly Fantasy. You might consider it a level of “cheese” in Harryhausen’s wholesome enterprises, but it is extremely earnest, and absolutely charming—and drips with the hard work of one solitary man.

LIE #85: This Evening, Scream along with God (or, Jesus Freaks vs. Bible Thumpers; Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them?)

“Summon the AAAy-toner!”

Can your soul stand the theological implications of 1971’s The Night God Screamed?

You get old-school 42^nd Street madness with this lost exploitation flick about the dangers of uncanny Bible-quoting hippies and the generation gap.

Deliciously nasty 1970s trash, and a great midnight movie!

LIE #84: “Hurricane” Warning—Our Entry Into the Mary Astor Blogathon

[This post is part of the Mary Astor Blogathon, being sponsored by the fabulous Silver Screenings site and our new best friend Tales of the Easily Distracted—both superb sites you should visit regularly. This tribute to Mary Astor runs from May 3^rd to May 10^th.]

One of the first “disaster movies”—from even before the term existed—1937’s The Hurricane is a melodrama about two South Sea islander lovers separated by the cruel twists of their oppressors’ laws—until Mother Nature clobbers everyone in the penultimate reel.

A fan of the Disaster genre, I was looking forward to The Hurricane, but man! Like a white-trash family living in a trailer park in Florida, Texas or Louisiana, I should have known better.

Mary Astor is billed third in the film, but if you’re a fan of her work, you’d do better by watching The Maltese Falcon or The Palm Beach Story for the umpteenth time instead of this depressing mess.

In Praise of Jack Kirby (and we've been given the LIEBSTER AWARD—Huzzah!) (Spraining My Arm Patting Myself on the Back Edition)

LERNER INTERNATIONAL ENTERPRISES is lucky enough to have had the Liebster Award bestowed on it by that absolutely perfect blog, The Girl With the White Parasol, and we here in the LIE control room, say THANK YOU, and send many, many delicious telepathic chocolates her way!!!

  

More on The Liebster in a moment, but first, the illustrations for this post: you might be asking, “What’s with all the Jack Kirby?”

Well, The King (Mr. Kirby’s nickname—and shame on you if you didn’t know that) is the answer to one of the Liebster’s questions (see below) because he is one of my favorite artist/writer/storytellers ever.

Kirby’s is a clunky, yet beautiful and psychedelic style that has always stirred my imagination—not only was his art cosmic, so were his tales: supreme super-weirdness from beyond space and time, with storylines that were never mundane. No simple stopping of bank robbers for Kirby! It was routinely gods vs. man vs. demons, with the soul of the universe in the balance!

RIP, Roger Ebert: The Good Soldier of Cinema Has Left the Building (as well as my reviews of the movies of March 2013)

Roger Ebert (1943-2013) has escaped into the future, into that dimension we have yet to see.

No matter what, fans of the Cinema of Weirdness have to love Roger Ebert because he wrote Russ Meyer’s 1970 magnum opus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, one of the greatest movies ever made.

That’s Roger and Russ above—and if you don’t know which is which, what are you doing here?

Ebert went on to script two more flicks for Meyer: Up! (1976) and my fave, the beyond-whacky Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979).

As a teen, after only having the opinions of NYC-centric-intelligentsia critics like Vincent Canby, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris to turn to (I won’t bother to comment on the nabobs and halfwits pretending to be critics on New York’s TV stations—even as a kid, I knew they were wastes of skin), discovering Roger Ebert via PBS’ Sneak Previews (I can still whistle its theme!) was a godsend: Ebert was a populist, but he was smart—and, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t a snob.

Flying Sperm Dogs, Yo! “The NeverEnding Story” for the White Elephant Blogathon

 [This is part of Silly Hats Only’s White Elephant Blogathon—for more details about this celebration of bloated/egotistical/insufferable/incomprehensible/why-did-they-ever-make-that films, go HERE…and for a complete list of films and blogs tortured by them, go HERE]

The NeverEnding Story (1984)

(Die unendliche Geschichte)

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

Screenplay by Wolfgang Petersen and Herman Weigel, with additional dialogue by Robert Easton

Based on the novel by Michael Ende

Special effects directed by Brian Johnson

Long story short:

One man’s nostalgia is another’s utter and complete lack of interest.

LIE #80: Stoked for “Stoker”!

In a nutshell, Park Chan-wook’s first English-language film, Stoker, is right now at the top of my list for Best Movie of 2013.

This is the type of film that feels like it was made only for me, with complete disregard for what “popular taste” demands.

What can I say? I LOVED it!