On May 7th, 2013, the world said goodbye to a legendary special effects master, who enthralled our imaginations and our wildest nightmares. The mind of Ray Harryhausen is a treasure trove of mythology, monsters and mighty men. Since he first viewed the historic King Kong, he set off on his own special effects odyssey, and [...]
We tend to expect a certain kind of behavior from people on camera; namely, the non-criminal kind. The fact that we might later be watched by someone, especially someone who could punish us, is supposed to keep us in line. Oftentimes, in surprising ways and to shocking extents, it turns out not to inhibit behavior [...]
Hollywood strives to make movies look as real as possible: after all, The Matrix wouldn’t have been nearly as convincing if it’d been filmed in some guy’s basement. To make that magic, sets are often elaborately and solidly built. So elaborately and solidly, in fact, that after filming is over, those sets keep being used, [...]
The original Godzilla suit (the big-ass rubber one from the 60’s) weighed in excess of 200 pounds. The guy who actually designed and made it, despite being the person who fucking made it, couldn’t walk more than 10 feet with it on. Haruo Nakajima, the guy who’d eventually go on to don the suit for [...]
The public remains fascinated with seeing behind the scenes. Problem is that many of the special features you get on a disc or online are such dull puff pieces. These, however, are much more fascinating than cast and crew members sitting in a chair and delivering platitudes about their project. 10. Dangerous Days/Blade Runner While [...]
Some actors are chameleons. Upon first viewing of any movie Gary Oldman has ever been in, you likely found yourself asking, “Is that- is that Gary Oldman?” Then exclaiming, “Holy crap, that’s Gary Oldman!” Other actors are whatever the opposite of a chameleon is. basically playing themselves role after role, and not always convincingly. Hey, [...]
Movies are a window to another world, 90 minutes for us viewers to switch off our brains and be entertained. However, when you take a closer look at some movies, the actions of the characters seems downright stupid, especially when there are obvious, much better options available to them. For example. 10. Jurassic Park: Why [...]
Once Hollywood gets the gentle whiff of box-office success, it can’t help but try and capitalise by quickly farting out a plethora of sequels, remakes and spin-offs. For a variety of reasons — the original cast not returning, an opportunistic studio or simply a terrible, terrible writing team — these films sometimes bear little or [...]
Because of the occupational hazards of the job, or because of the Type-A personality required, film directors tend to have famously large egos. Because of this, it’s somewhat surprising that the main creative force behind a film would choose to cast themselves in anything but the title role. Here are examples of directors who cast [...]
Lots of iconic stuff is adapted from other iconic stuff – Jaws the movie from “Jaws” the novel, the Pirates Of The Caribbean skeleton monsters from Keith Richards, and the works of Terry Gilliam from full-blown dementia. But not these. These iconic works are adapted from … well, weird crap. Crap you’d never think to adapt to film, [...]
