Ray Harryhausen passed away last week. This has been noted by people more qualified than I to discuss the master of stop-motion magic—Rick Baker, Adam Savage, Todd Masters, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and more. The superhuman talent and perseverance evident in a Harryhausen effects sequence can easily be seen in countless visual effects artists since he first brought his creations to frame-by-frame life on the big screen. That makes sense. So how can I really say anything of worth when I say that I was also profoundly influenced by the artistry of Ray Harryhausen? With modesty, and a story about Clash of the Titans. Continue reading…
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Recent Features
Ray Harryhausen and Me: A Life of High Adventure and Escapism
Things That Change You Forever
I have a ghost story of my own. At least, I have a ghost-cat story.
My final year as an undergraduate was spent in relative splendor. My friends and I lucked into tenancy in the house of a professor on sabbatical. Twelve foot ceilings! Built in bookshelves! Three cats! Real, grown-up furniture! Wait… let’s get back to the cats. The professorial family had three cats and a dog, though the dog was sent to a friend with a farm (later, they told us later that we clinched the lease when they told us that cat care was part of the deal and our response was, “Aw, we don’t get the dog?”).
So. Three housemates, three cats. One morning around the (solid oak!) table, we were chatting about the cats’ sleeping habits. Two of the cats routinely slept in my room, the third with one of the others. Feeling a little left out, the third roommate said, “That’s okay, because Ghost Cat slept on my bed last night.” Continue reading…
Secret Agent, Detective, Genius, Jerk: Modernizing Sherlock Holmes
A man with dark wavy hair wakes up in an iron-framed bed in the middle of a windowless room. He leaps out from under the white sheets and stares intently at a corner of the white ceiling. Suddenly, gracefully, he spins to defeat an invisible opponent in four swift motions, finally falling to his knees in front of an empty chair, hands outstretched.
There’s something about the way Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead role in the BBC series Sherlock that seems like it could be Holmes’ fantasy version of how a brilliant detective behaves. Continue reading…
My New Weapon of Choice
In April, the Guttersnipes like to mix it up a little. This month, Comics Editor Carol Borden writes about romance.
“You hit him with a frying pan,” he said to her. “How come you didn’t grab a knife?”
“The frying pan was closer.” Her eyes slid away. “It’s not like I had time to pick a weapon. It’s not like the frying pan is my weapon of choice.” –Agnes And The Hitman (27)
Growing up in a town where Elvis was sighted post mortem, I despised and mocked The King. Now, I have held wakes in his honor. I used to only like punk. Then I used to say I liked everything but country. Now I don’t even bother arguing that I’m listening to “Americana,” not country. It is a truth universally acknowledged that something I once despised I will come to appreciate and, often, love. So when both Chris and alex recommended Jennifer Crusie, the author of many romance novels, and in particular her collaboration with Bob Mayer, Agnes And The Hitman, I knew I needed to read it. Continue reading…
Vintage Ninja
Vintage Ninja offers, “A 1962 Point of View” on “ninjutsu”–including covers and pages from an out of print copy of Jay Gluck’s Zen Combat. My favorite line, “The ninja never swaggered.”
A Hero Dies 50,000 Deaths!
In chanbara, Japanese sword-fighting movies, actor Seizo Fukumoto is a master of the art of dying. Anthony Kuhn interviews him about his life dying on screen. “In a trademark move, Fukumoto is dealt a fatal blow, then bends over backward, seemingly suspended in midair for a moment of final agony before crumpling to the ground. [...]
The Portrait of Sho Kosugi
Dare you explore the illustrated history of Enter the Ninja‘s Sho Kosugi? “In the 80′s, Sho Kosugi posed for over 73 billion photos in full night gear, laden with weapons, in magazines like Black Belt, Ninja, even Karate Illustrated and Inside Kung Fu. Yet when it comes to movie and video game ad campaigns, you often [...]
Cartoon Trailers!
Cartoon Network has trailers for the upcoming animated shows, ThunderCats and Legend of Korra, the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender as well as an extended look at Green Lantern: The Animated Series with a short peek at the LEGO Ninja show, Ninjago.
More Ninjas!
Ninjas throwing swords and flipping in the forest and Ken’ichi Matsuyama from Death Note and Detroit Metal City plays another manga hero in Kamui Gaiden.
So Many Fukasaku Kinji Soundtracks!
Don’t have enough soundtracks by Japanese composers? Wild Grounds will help you out with “The 5 Japanese Film Composers You Must Know” and a whole section of downloadable soundtracks and excerpts from Yojimbo to Battle Without Honor or Humanity.
3 Trailers from Twitch
It’s Twitch round-up time. Supporting martial artists Mike B. and Russell Wong take the lead kneeing and kicking people in the chest in Thanapon Maliwan’s The Sanctuary. Lee Byung-Hun, Kimura Takuya and Josh Hartnett go to Hong Kong and walk the line between the police and organized crime in Tran Anh Hung’s I Come with [...]
So Many Fan Films!
The monkeys over at See Monkey round up a whole whack of fan film action including “the greatest fan film of all time,” which “def[ies] all laws of God, man and intellectual property and cramming vastly different fictive universes — Marvel, DC, Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, you name it — into one great big ball [...]
It’s like Math but more Fun
What is Robot x Ninja? Or, Platypus x Lincoln? Creebobby’s Comics Archetype Times Table has the answers. It’s like math, but more fun. (thanks, James!)
Lady Bullseye and Lady Snowblood
Richie muses on Lady Snowblood in manga and film and a little on Lady Bullseye: “That a samurai revenge film from thirty years ago manages to be significantly less exploitative than anything around now speaks volumes. It is, ironically, an excellent twenty first century samurai movie, which keeps the best parts of the genre while [...]
SpyCast!
Get the skinny on spying with the International Spy Museum’s SpyCast. The Background Briefings about East Germany’s “Romeo agents” and “Spies of the Kaiser” are pretty neat, too.
JJ Sonny Chiba, Ph.D.
Kyoto University of Art and Design’s newest teacher is none other than JJ Sonny Chiba. Prof. Chiba will be teaching film acting and swordfighting. And I bet ninjitsu, but secretly. (via Kaiju Shakedown)
Ninjas Strike!
Ninjas strike with “justified yet merciful force” in New Jersey and are arrested by the police.
MAN-BAT NINJAS, NINJA BATMEN AND ART WITH NO CONTENT
At the risk of tearing up Carol’s yard (a risk I’ll take, since she’s parked on my lawn currently, leaving me nowhere to pull up). I’m going to talk about comics for bit here. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the screen part soon enough.
MK vs DCU screenshots: Dark Knight vs Ninja!
Always wanted to see the Dark Knight go ninja a ninja with Scorpion? Newsarama has screenshots from the Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game.
Do You Want Fries With That?
Last year when I heard that Burger King was planning to release a series of video games for the Xbox 360, I thought the game industry was headed for a new low. To me, this went way beyond the shameless hordes of promotional tie-ins to popular movies and TV shows, and seemed more inappropriate than [...]
13 Ways of Looking at a Bat
“Among twenty empty warehouses, The only moving thing Was the eye of the Batman.” –sorta Wallace Stevens You should know right from the start that I’m a terrible geek—not extremely geeky, but bad at being a geek. Continuity in the sense of an overarching, epic and harmonized chronology just isn’t that important to me. What [...]
Ask a Ninja!
A compelling case for the importance of editing in video: compare Ask a Ninja 1: Ninja-Mart Store to the latest, brilliant Ask a Ninja Special Delivery 4: Net Neutrality.
Ninjas vs. Pirates
It’s an idea whose time has come: Ninjas vs. Pirates! Sounds homebrew too: “Almost all scenes in NVP were shot in front of 9 sheets of 30-cent green posterboard in a 12′x13′ apartment living room, lit with $12 Wal-Mart halogen work lights.”
Indie-meets-industry shindig
It might have been the buckets of beer or just the balmy San Francisco night that had me feeling so upbeat after the Game Developers Choice Awards and the Independent Games Festival but even in sober retrospect it was pretty remarkable. On a basic level, it was simply seeing the best videogames of the year [...]
keep looking »Of Note Elsewhere
Support Manos The Hands of Felt–The Master will be pleased.
At Sequart, Julian Darius makes the case that Star Trek: Into Darkness damages the Star Trek franchise and that “Starfleet must be destroyed.” (via Mike White)
“It’s easier to tell the same stories everyone else does. There’s no particular shame in it.
It’s just that it’s lazy, which is just about the worst possible thing a spec fic writer can be.
Oh, and it’s not true.”
Kameron Hurley writes about lazy writing, cannibal llamas, female soldiers, and women here. (Thanks, James!)
Patton Oswalt’s multi-franchise super-movie described in his Star Wars filibuster from Parks and Recreation, animated.
Corrigan Vaughan writes an open letter to “Fans of Geek Things“: “I appreciate that you think I have a nice rack and that some of you even find my friends and I to be pretty. That’s very kind. I’m not, however, super in love with the fact that having a rack at all seems to preclude me from being considered a ‘real’ fan.”
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