Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan
Released by: Arrow Video
Released on: June 28th, 2016.
Director: Gilles Penso
Cast: Ray Harryhausen, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Terry Gilliam
Year: 2011
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan, directed by Gilles Penso, is both a documentary detailing the life and times of one of the most influential movie magicians in history, and also a fairly touching tribute. The feature length look at his work uses footage shot with Harryhausen himself, plenty of archival clips and stills and then footage shot with those who were influenced by his efforts to paint a pretty comprehensive picture of who Ray Harryhausen is and why he mattered so much to so many.
Clearly made by someone with a huge affection for the subject, the movie won't really give Harryhausen devotees much in the way of new information, but it's an entertaining watch regardless. He speaks with knowledge and enthusiasm about various film projects that he's worked on over the years and offers up some insight into how he was able to create the different stop motion effects that have since gone on to be so identifiable with his name. Most of his bigger films are covered well here, and there are clips and stills and various pieces of ephemera used throughout to keep things visually interesting. Pictures of various props are neat to see and give us a glimpse at the real size of some of the man's larger than life creations - it's interesting to note how something could look so huge and awe inspiring on the big screen but really be only a few feet or sometimes even just a few inches in size off screen.
Along the way, we also hear from some of his more recognizable fans - Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Terry Gilliam, John Landis for example - as well as some of the people who worked with him such as the eternally beautiful Caroline Munro and John Cairney.
It's a warm and affectionate look at the Harryhausen mythos. He speaks candidly not just about his work and how he got into the special effects business, but also about many of his collaborators and about his own influences, his father being an obvious one. Personal photos and footage from his own collection are used here as well, giving us some insight into his private and family life. It's all nicely put together and well edited - this is interesting stuff and worth checking out for anyone with even a passing interest in Harryhausen's work and legacy.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan arrives on Blu-ray in AVC encoded high definition framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. The newly shot interview footage looks nice and clean if not super detailed the way the best HD footage typically looks. The archival footage varies a lot. Much of the VHS sourced stuff is all over the place in terms of clarity, but that can't be helped. For the most part, everything here looks just fine. There aren't any compression problems and really, it just varies here and there because of the different sources used.
The same can be said of the movie's English language LPCM 2.0 Stereo track - most of the material sounds just fine, some of the archival clips not so much. But again, the vast majority of this is properly balanced and it sounds just fine.
Extras start off with a commentary track from director Gilles Penso, producer Alexandre Poncet alongside Timothy Nicholson and Tony Dalton. It's an interesting track that covers how and why this project came to be, where the various interview segments were culled from, how and why they chose to interview the people who appear in the film, their own thoughts on the documentary's subject and quite a bit more.
In the Interviews section we get fifteen minutes of footage in which Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Peter Lord and Rick Baker all express their admiration for what Harryhausen did for cinema and share some stories about what his work meant to them. There are also twelve separate interview outtakes included here, running about fifty-five minutes in length and featuring more screen time with Joe Dante, John Lasseter, Nick Park and a few others. Arrow has also included two Q&A sessions here, one conducted at the Paris Cinematheque with a few different cast members and running nineteen minutes and the second conducted at the London Gate Theater running nine minutes with a few cast members and with Harryhausen himself. They cover some of the same ground gone over in the commentary track but the second Q&E with Ray in attendance is worth watching just to get a look at him and the appreciation he clearly had for this project.
Rounding out the extras is an original trailer for the feature, three minutes of footage shot on the set of The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, eight minutes of deleted scenes, a two-minute 'Message To Ray' (basically a few quick tributes to the man from his cohorts), a Ray Harryhausen trailer reel (twenty-two minutes of stop motion awesomeness!), menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan is a fitting tribute to a giant of genre filmmaking. The documentary itself does a fine job of detailing the man's life, times and influence while the healthy smattering of supplements round out the package nicely. Anyone with an appreciation or interest in the history of special effects should check this out.
Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (270)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4138)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2512)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (385)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (295)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (496)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Severin Films
Released on: April 30th, 2024.
Director: Lee Frost
Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
Year: 1969
Purchase From Amazon
Hot Spur – Movie Review:
Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but...-
Channel: Movies
03-22-2024, 11:53 AM -
-
Released by: Mondo Macabro
Released on: April 9th, 2024.
Director: Max Pecas
Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
Year: 1985
Purchase From Amazon
Death Squad – Movie Review:
Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual...-
Channel: Movies
03-22-2024, 11:46 AM -
-
Released by: Quality X
Released on: February 28th, 2024.
Director: Chuck Vincent
Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
Year: 1982
Purchase From Amazon
Roommates – Movie Review:
Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),...-
Channel: Movies
03-15-2024, 01:10 PM -
-
Released by: Blue Underground
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
Year: 1970
Purchase From Amazon
Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:
Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it...-
Channel: Movies
03-15-2024, 01:07 PM -
-
Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Saul Bass
Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Phase IV – Movie Review:
Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and...-
Channel: Movies
03-15-2024, 01:02 PM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
Year: 1969-1972
Purchase From Amazon
The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:
Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this...-
Channel: Movies
03-13-2024, 11:30 AM -