BEST FILMS OF 2011 by Roy Frumkes

So much fun to do these, but always hanging over them, for all of us I’m sure, are the possible choices we might have made had we only seen a few more…

THE SKIN I LIVE IN – Almodovar remains one of the world’s great modern filmmakers. Here, his elaboration on EYES WITHOUT A FACE has some great plot twists and revelatory moments.

LIMITLESS – I’m very impressed when Hollywood surpasses itself by giving us intelligent scripts and direction. I couldn’t have cared less about the promise of the film’s log line: “What if a pill could make you rich and powerful.” I mean…who cares? Invisible — now that’s a pill I’d take. But fortunately, the film went way beyond its promise. Editing, cinematography, emotional investment – all terrific.

SOURCE CODE – Same genre, and even better. Duncan Jones does such a fine job realizing the potential of this taut, intelligent, complicated thriller. Jake Gyllenhaal has had two fine performances in a row (the other: LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS). But I must add, I thought it was the worst title of the year. I have trouble remembering it, and I don’t know what it means.

THOR – Kenneth Branaugh, an actor’s director, makes sure his cast shines in this Summer tent-pole extravaganza.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS – Woody’s done alright since he left NYC. The real-life elements in his latest foray are a bit flaccid, but once you arrive at that gorgeously lit street at midnight, all fantasy breaks loose. The less you know the better, but the EXTERMINATING ANGEL joke is a riot (forget I said that…). The man refuses to make films for lowbrow audiences, though I’m told this was actually his biggest hit.

THE GUARD – What a great screenplay. When I put the DVD in the player, I know I’ll have the subtitles on, but still. Terrific, cynical performance by Brendan Gleeson. Don Cheadle lags a little behind, but isn’t bad.

CAPTAIN AMERICA – I think I’m in a lonely camp with this one, but Joe Johnston has a grip on nostalgia like no other current director. The narrative is thoughtful, the images beautifully framed, and his subdued color palette is simply lovely. I still can’t get over him using Rondo Hatton in ROCKETEER (just out on BluRay), and I thought he got a bad rap on THE WOLFMAN. There was a lot to like in that over-produced film, not the least of which was that he actually paid homage to the Universal original, unlike the remake of THE MUMMY.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – On this one I’m going to be boringly redundant. A textbook example of how tight editing can rescue a film from CGItis. And as my friend Tony Lover likes to say, “An E-motion picture.”

THE DESCENDANTS – Affectionately offbeat, uniformly well-acted.

J. EDGAR – DeCaprio and Armie Hammer, I assume, each had their own make-up artists for the grueling older age makeups. Bravo for DeCaprio’s. Too bad about Hammer’s. The film is hurt by this discrepancy in makeup artistry, but the screenplay is all poetry of the kind that graced THE SOCIAL NETWORK last year. And Eastwood…well, I really liked HEREAFTER, which should tell you how I feel about the guy. Much as he’s appreciated, I don’t think he’s appreciated nearly enough.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO – As good as the original, and the extra fifteen or so minutes helps clarify things. I liked Michael Nyqvist better than Daniel Craig (who was very good), I think the war of the Lizbeths came out a draw, and Stellan Skarsgard gives one of the best supporting performances of the year.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: GAME OF SHADOWS – This is a fascinating one for me. I strongly disliked the original. Not just didn’t enjoy it; I was offended by it. This one I had real fun with. It seems like they solved everything that bothered me, although Downey remains a tad too smarmy. But the gay subtext between him and Jude Law is much stronger and much more satisfying, the villain and the villain’s henchman are better, and the action and set direction are just as good if not a smidge better.

That’s twelve, so I can’t mention THE DOUBLE HOUR, DETECTIVE DEE (I’ll leave that for Mark Gross), HUGO, STAKELAND, and THE SUPER. Not to mention my own THE DEFINITIVE DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD.

BEST AUDIO-VISUAL MEDIA MOMENTS OF THE YEAR

* Paul apologizing for the flying saucer taking too long to leave (PAUL).

* Hopikins taking a cell-phone call during an exorcism (THE RITE).

* The Academy Awards Obit Montage with each of the deceased celebs slowing smiling.

* The house collapsing on Green and his wife (KILL THE IRISHMAN).

* Wilson selling Bunuel on THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL [forget I said that…] (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS).

* Casey Anthony’s expressions on being acquitted (TV – July).

* “I’m not gonna kiss ya!” as delivered by Tommy Lee Jones (CAPTAIN AMERICA).

* Hearing Morricone’s music at the beginning of the new THE THING.

* Caesar realizing something’s wrong with John Lithgow and helping him use his fork correctly (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES).

BEST DVDS/BLURAYS OF 2011

I CLOWNS (Raro Video)

SILENT NARUSA (Criterion)

ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, NOT OF THIS EARTH, WAR OF THE PLANETS (Shout Factory)

MOGULS AND MOVIE STARS – 7-PART DOC (Warner Bros)

KISS ME DEADLY (Criterion)

LOST KEATON – 16 SHORTS (Kino)

BEN-HUR 59TH ANNIVERSARY BOXED RELEASE (Warner Bros)

THE ESSENTIAL LAUREL & HARDY SOUND SHORTS AND FEATURES (RHI Entertainment)

CITIZEN KANE DELUXE BOXED RELEASE (Warner Bros)

THE SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (Olive)

And from the various on-line Archives:

THE OUTFIT, PHAEDRA, ROLLING THUNDER, THE WHITE BUFFALO, THE BLACK SLEEP, THE AMBULANCE, BILLY TWO-HATS, QUEEN OF BLOOD, THE BIG BOODLE, MY GUN IS QUICK, DARK OF THE SUN, THE SAINT COLLECTION, HICKEY AND BOGGS, THE MUSIC LOVERS, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT.

Continue to Mark Gross’ picks…

Warner Bros has released the much-awaited BEN-HUR BluRay Ultimate Collector’s Edition, having undergone a million dollar renovation by Ned Price and team, and a tasteful, impressive feat of packaging. Billed as the 50th Anniversary release, it’s a few years late, but one can assume it was in production for those extra years, and now it’s on our shelves.

If you want to see what the BluRay capabilities, plus the re-mastering, have done to the audio, you merely have to put on the disc and let the film start. You have the word “Overture” in front of you for six minutes, and all you have to do is listen to the embracing, enfolding score. I never knew there were such horns. The orchestra is articulated magnificently. I’ve mentioned, having seen THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR many times, that just listening to Bernard Hermann’s title music now can bring tears to my eyes. Add Rosza’s Overture to BEN-HUR to that rarified list, courtesy of the BluRay treatment.

The early scenes with Messala entering Judea are powerful and critical. Messala’s scene with Andre Morell is good exposition, if a bit obviously choreographed, whereas the several ensuing scenes with Messala and Judah are well written and grippingly underlain with tension. Much of this is informed by the now-notorious gay subtext inserted by Wyler and Boyd without Heston’s knowledge. Boyd’s sweaty, chiseled face says it all between the lines, although there is one overt line about unrequited love that lets the cat out of the bag. In fairness, there are so many opinions about whether that subtext is legitimate that, finally, it becomes the viewer’s decision. But I can’t think of a film with a more famous possible subtext, and there are certainly no better scenes in the film, except perhaps for the chariot race, which must be judged with a different set of standards.

Fraser Heston. Photo: Franco Frassetti

Back in the mid-90s I brought up that debate to Heston himself, and was amused at his response.

Roy Frumkes: There’s something I’ve heard over the years, which I’d love to hear confirmed or denied first hand. The story goes that William Wyler, at some point, decided that the real love story in BEN-HUR was not between Judah and Esther, but between Judah and Messala.

Charlton Heston: That’s bullshit.

RF: There’s no truth to that?

CH: That’s not bullshit, that’s Gore Vidal, which is more or less the same thing.

RF: Wyler never suggested that you and Stephen Boyd should play it as a homosexual relationship?

CH: (quietly disgusted) Of course not! This is Gore Vidal’s invention. He was in Rome on what was, in my view, a futile exercise. It was quite a while prior to shooting, and Willie was having problems with a certain scene between Judah and Messala. He was willing to take a shot at almost everybody, and Vidal wrote a version of the scene which Willie then had Stephen and I play with, but the scene was not workable.

I think Vidal got his idea from a story they tell about Olivier and Ralph Richardson in a production of Othello, directed by Tyrone Guthrie in the late thirties. I believe they were alternating the lead roles, which was not uncommon, and someone suggested to Olivier that it would be interesting, when he was playing Iago, to imply a homosexual…not relationship, but obsession, as the reason for Iago’s actions – an unrealized, unrequited obsession for Othello. So Olivier suggested to Guthrie that he try this during rehearsals, and Guthrie replied, “Oh, I suppose so, Larry. But for God’s sake, don’t tell Ralph.”

It’s a marvelous theater story, and I suspect that’s where Vidal got that idea. But in no way was it in any version of any scene in BEN-HUR.

I had the chance to bring this up with Charlton Heston’s son, Fraser, at the BEN-HUR BluRay junket, and he took the middle ground. Some think it true, some do not, and perhaps we’ll never know the truth. Fraser Heston is a big, bear of a guy, as tall as his father, and was very friendly and eager to discuss the BluRay release and his father’s legacy. I complemented him on the work he did with his father in films such as MOTHER LODE, and he singled out TREASURE ISLAND, which he directed and his father starred in, and which was both of their favorite books.

Roy Frumkes with Ned Price. Photo: Franco Frassetti

Included in the Ultimate box is a 64-page ‘Production Art’ souvenir book with a rectangular design reminding us of the widescreen format. It’s not as wide as the Camera 65 Aspect Ratio in which BEN-HUR was shot, though the shots on the inside front and inside back of the book, each stretching over the width of two pages, are at least that wide. 52 years ago I went to BEN-HUR at the Loew’s State theater on Broadway with my folks, who’d bought reserved seats for the show, and my father purchased the hard-cover souvenir book for me, which I treasured for decades afterwards. Later the thick-box LP album came out, and there was a duplicate souvenir book nestled in a space behind the record. Now I had two. There was a color fold-out picture of the massive Roman chariot-race arena, lots of color pix, info on the production, on Miklos Rosza, etc. I have to say, the new souvenir book in the BluRay box is better, and in the words of Charlton Heston in THE BIG COUNTRY when Gregory Peck challenges him to a fight, and Heston’s already miserable opinion of Peck as a man sinks to a new level, “…I didn’t think that was possible…” But it is. A great hard-cover evocation of the production.

Also included: a 128-page book of page reprints from Charlton Heston’s diary over the two years of BEN-HUR’s production and release, called ‘On the Set of BEN-HUR, The Personal Journal of Charlton Heston.’ The diary speaks of such things as Cecil B. De Mille’s death, Wyler’s grueling work schedule, and it is peppered with artifacts from the time – a ticket stub from the premiere of the film, etc. This memento was lovingly assembled by Fraser Heston. It’s a terrific volume. In fact, the emphasis in the box’s entire contents is clearly on Charlton Heston, and I’m glad about it. At the time many felt him stiff and wooden. Now the tide has turned. He has some of that in his persona, but much more – dignity, vulnerability, awe. And I always look forward to watching a film with him in it, for his willingness to take chances (the sci-fi films of the late 60s and 70s) and for his sincerity. He’s definitely the best one in THE BIG COUNTRY today, particularly when compared with Peck. Don’t remember if I felt that way back then. But time often changes the way things are perceived on celluloid, and it has clearly made a gift of Heston’s contributions to cinema.

At the press junket for BEN-HUR’s BluRay release, FIR got to chat with VP of Mastering, Warner Bros. Technical Operations, Ned Price, as well as William Wyler’s daughter Catherine.

Ned Price. Photo: Franco Frassetti

I asked Price about the difficulties of getting this film in proper shape to master to BluRay. There were about a dozen answers, all of them costly and time-consuming, and very delicate. One such procedure follows, and it indicates the extent of work that remains invisible to the home theater viewer:

Ned Price: The 70mm negative is very fragile, because you have a machine clawing at the stuff, and what happens is that when you have a splice for a scene change, the cement that they put in doesn’t change at the same rate that the film around it does, so when you come up to a splice, the film will briefly expand and then go down again. When you see tears in a print in the theater, they’re usually at the point of a cut. Over the years, people put backups on the splices, or repairs, and it makes them thicker. Usually when we have a negative like that, the first thing we have to do is strip off all the repairs and all of the ‘fixes’ and then make them more uniform. You can’t just put it in a machine and scan it. So a lot of time is spent in prep.

Ms. Wyler was happy to talk about her renowned father, setting a few fascinating records straight:

Franco Frassetti: What kind of man was your dad? He did BEN-HUR; was he a religious man? A spiritual man? How would you define him?

Catherine Wyler: I wouldn’t characterize him in those ways, no. I think what attracted him to BEN-HUR was the challenge of making an epic – an epic where the characters are really three dimensional – and the fact that he was going to have the biggest budget of all time at his command. He was a serious guy, but he also had a very playful side. So, I just think that there were so many things about it that attracted him. At the same time, even though he wasn’t religious, he used to say – once the movie came out and it was so successful – that it took a good Jew to make a good movie about Christ. But, also, the challenge of depicting the Nativity, and depicting the Crucifixion, when brilliant minds across the centuries had thought about how to pictorially recreate them. Now, he was doing it in moving pictures as opposed to paintings.

FF: I guess you were about 19 at that time, did you go to Rome for the filming?

CW: I was in college, but I definitely went. My family was there for the whole experience, but I was only there for the summer and vacations. The fact that he was making that movie, and everything about it was so enormous and so spectacular, it was really fun to be on the set. It can get boring on the set of most movies, but here the horses, the camels, the size of everything …it was pretty fun.

Catherine Wyler. Photo: Franco Frassetti

FF: At home, was it always movies, movies, movies?

CW: No. The great thing about him in my childhood was that there were these special phases. Pre-production was kind of 9 to 5. We had dinner together and we always talked about whatever the problems were. Script problems mostly – plot, character, and that stuff. I learned a lot from that. He always listened to us. He never paid attention, really, but he listened. Then there would be production, and we’d never see him. He would go into this tunnel and the movie was everything. Post-production, kind of 9 to 5 again. A more normal life, and with some of the films he would screen the rushes at home, so I’d get to see the whole movie built up before my eyes. It was so interesting to sit with him and see everything look so great, but he would be unsatisfied with it, you know, and I learned a lot from that, too. And then, when the picture was over, it would be vacation time. Hopefully, it would be the summer, and he would take us on a trip. Or, we’d go skiing. ‘Cause he was a quite a family man and he liked taking his family here and there. He was a fun guy to be with. He liked thrills and sports and he had a really good sense of humor.

FF: During the chariot race scene, when that person died, did you ever speak to him about that?

CW: Nobody died. When you see the chariot race – his name is Joe Canutt and he’s the son of Yakima Canutt, who dealt with all the horses and the stunts. Joe was doubling for Heston. He flipped out of the chariot…it was a mistake, but they wanted to use it because it looked so great. So they had to get a close shot of Heston crawling back into the chariot, but nobody was killed. That would have been horrible.

FF: Did he speak to you about Barbara Streisand and FUNNY GIRL? He did so many takes; I wonder how she dealt with it.

CW: She actually didn’t want him because she thought he was too old at the time. He was in his sixties. But then, a couple of days on the set with him and she totally fell in love with him. I think he became a real father figure. I remember going to visit him on the set, and they were holding hands. He loved her because she was so full of ideas and he loved actors with ideas. He wanted them to come with their ideas and he would use them, or not. He thought she was fabulous because she was so full of ideas. He told her she should be a director.

FF: Well, she took his advice.

CW: Yeah, yeah, right.

FF: When he forged relationships with people, were they carried on indefinitely?

CW: Some people didn’t like working with him because he was tough. The people who did like it became really good friends. I would say that his closest friends were writers and directors, not so much actors. But, certain actors like Barbara, like Audrey Hepburn, they were lifelong friends.

FF: With ROMAN HOLIDAY, your father basically started what they called ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ in Italy. Were you in Rome for that?

CW: Oh, sure. He got an award from the Italian government because they were so thrilled that somebody came along and showed Rome in all its glory. After all those Italian Neorealist films that made it look so sad. But he loved shooting in Rome.

FF: Any particular places that you enjoyed during that shoot?

CW: Well, if you ever see the movie again, I have my three deathless words in ROMAN HOLIDAY. There is a scene at the Fountain of Trevi where Audrey is getting her hair cut and Peck doesn’t have a camera, so he tries to grab a camera from a bunch of schoolgirls at the fountain . One of the girls is my sister. She gets the close-up and I’m in the background calling out to the teacher, “Hey, Miss Weber!” He never used me again.

FF: Even with all his Oscars, was there something that he wanted to do that he never accomplished or a project that never got off the ground?

CW: There were certain projects along the way. I remember one called PRECIOUS BANE. It was a lesbian story and I guess it was hard to make lesbian stories at that time. He and John Huston had one called, NATURE BOY in the ’30′s or ’40. Yeah, he usually had some book that he carried around with him everywhere and nobody would let him make the film.

FF: What drove him to continue in the business?

CW: Working with the writers, that was his favorite. Sometimes, critics would say that he had too much respect for the writers. If it wasn’t in the script, you were not going to get it on the screen.

FF: Was he friends with Dalton Trumbo?

CW: Oh, yeah, but I never knew . There was never a word spoken, even in the house or anywhere, that Trumbo worked on ROMAN HOLIDAY. I never knew it until it came out a few years ago.

FF: Did that affect his career afterwards?

CW: No, because it was secret. In fact, I remember on ROMAN HOLIDAY there were other people who had already fled who were living abroad and worked on it using pseudonyms.

Not any more.

Since my last article on this subject the venerated Doctor has regenerated twice, firstly in the form of actor David Tennant and now the even younger Matt Smith. The series has recently resumed on the UK’s BBC1 channel in its regular Saturday night slot.

I’m a great Doctor Who fan. I grew up with it, but I find now the subtlety has gone out of it. I’m glad the series is continuing but I feel they are heading toward killing the golden goose. The Doctor as a young action hero may pander to a lower common denominator but long time fans deserve something better than the current fare.

The Doctor running about, shouting and being overly eccentric is no longer charming, just annoying. And his continual justification of ‘Trust me, I’m the Doctor’ with a wink, a smile and a flourish of his sonic screwdriver and a rush of Murray Gold’s music doesn’t work any more. He should stick to L’Oreal hair product commercials – ‘Because I’m worth it…’

The score by Murray Gold and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (I wonder where that funding came from? Not from Wales I’ll bet, they’re skint) is heavy handed also – This isn’t Harry Potter, but they seem to think it is.

Even the pathos is flogged to death, and though I am loathe to admit it, though you still struggle with irony, you Americans DO do pathos best and more subtly – look at series like M*A*S*H, Frasier or Monk, all of which I love. They can bring a tear to your eye. Doctor Who just beats you over the head with it, and with ridiculously over the top sumptuous music to reinforce the fact in case you didn’t get it.

I remember a quote from Christopher Plummer on the set of THE SOUND OF MUSIC where he said working with Julie Andrews was like going to work with a greetings card every day. It’s a bit like that. Sorry, a LOT like that.

There’s also been an overly long story arc about River Song/Melody Pond. And I’m not even going to go there.

Doctor Who has become demographic fodder for idiots. And sadly they all lap it up.

In 1975 Harlan Ellison had these words to say at a Sci Fi convention after being introduced to the series by writer Michael Moorcock:

‘STAR WARS is adolescent nonsense! CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is obscurantist drivel! STAR TREK can turn your brains to purée of bat guano! The greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I’ll take you all on, one by one, or all in a bunch, to back it up!’

I think his view may have changed by now. Mine has.

Hey, BBC – Note to self – Nobody cares anymore. No wonder Eccleston left.

Good man.

“I solemnly pledge to up hold the principles of the sentinels of liberty and assist Captain America in his war against spies in the U.S.A” was all you had to agree to in order to join forces with this newly conceived superhero. An official Sentinel of Liberty badge and a membership card were also granted, having sent 10 cents to Timely Publications, which was later established as Marvel Comics. The aforementioned signed oath appeared at the end of the very first issue, dated March 1941.

This emerging savior was once feeble U.S Army private, Steve Rogers. He was injected with a serum to increase his stature and intelligence as part of a plan to create super-agents who will crush spies and other saboteurs. Thrilled by the successful transformation, the operating doctor proclaimed: “We shall call you Captain America, son! Because, like you, America shall gain the strength and the will to safeguard our shores!”

Unlike popular horror or sci-fi comics of the day, Captain America was especially commissioned to the then-present times of the Second World War, facing immediate threats and familiar personas such as Adolf Hitler. The Cap’s patriotic assignments offered the young readers a steady reminder of the self-proclaimed American values at stake, Freedom and Democracy. The danger involved, enhanced by the real-life challenges posed to U.S military and the country’s foreign policy, made it impossible to remain indifferent towards the character and his missions.

Captain America could use all the help available. Bucky, a fellow soldier, who discovered Rogers’ secret identity, was named his loyal sidekick. But they were not all alone on the U.S front. Other superheroes were recruited as moral boosters and Nazi bashers as well. For instance, in 1940, Superman appeared in a story called How Superman Would End the War .His simple plan was to capture both Hitler and Stalin and surrender them to the League of Nations. Yet, Captain America became the most dominant contributor in the comics’ war effort, fighting home and abroad with an inspiring conviction. He was also easily recognizable due to the bold American-flag like colors, stars and stripes of his costume and shield.

Despite being quickly regarded as an icon, Captain America soon met hard times and was in and out of the public eye due to an ongoing mismanagement of its brand. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, which opens on July 22nd, is already considered to be the most high-profiled and anticipated adaptation of the character. Its potential success could easily eclipse years of lesser attempts to exploit and expand Captain America’s impact and would promptly salute one of American pop culture’s greatest figures.

In 1944, Captain America became the first of any Marvel character to be adapted into another medium. Republic Pictures produced a serial film under his name, starring Dick Purcell. It was one of Purcell’s last roles and undoubtedly a career highlight, after receiving only minor parts while working for Warner Brothers throughout its gangster-film craze of the previous decade. As the first big screen Captain America, Purcell seemed to enjoy himself more during the brief moments that didn’t call for a costume change, as if his time as a legitimate leading man had finally come.

These 15 black and white episodes had little to do with the comics. The secret identity of Captain America was changed to that of a district attorney named Grant Gardner, rather than that of a U.S soldier, and gone was the sidekick, Bucky. Further establishing an urban setting, Republic Pictures armed Captain America with a handgun, much like a rugged private detective. The only vague similarity between the 1944 serial and the comics were the devious art collectors and cruel scientists whom the superhero tried to stop from fulfilling their evil plans.

Purcell as Captain America

The serial proved indeed, almost 70 years ago, that expecting a comic book film to be a faithful adaptation was as useless as hoping for a proper Hollywood treatment of any other kind of literary work. However, this tradition of mishandling origins is somewhat in favor of the Captain America legacy. The original comics included many ethnic stereotypes, mocking German accents being the least severe of them. Captain America and the Ageless Orientals Who Wouldn’t Die and Captain America and Ivan the Terrible are 1940s story plots that may still interest collectors and scholars but are obviously deemed as unacceptable by today’s politically-correct society, and unimaginable as the American film industry is so crucially dependent on foreign markets.

During its first run, Captain America comics did not even spare jokes at the expense of the allied nations. In Trapped in the Nazi Stronghold, one of his earliest adventures, he and Bucky travel to Europe, starting with a visit to occupied France and Germany. They try to blend in by an unnecessary wardrobe change; disguised as a grandmother and her grandson while dressed in ridiculing local attire. When learning the mission requires an additional stop in England, Bucky quips: “Oh, gosh! That means I’ll have to wear this darn sissy suit!”

After the Second World War had ended, new fads within the comic book medium such as romance comics, and other forms of entertainment, grew popular. No one was more devastatingly affected by it than the best-known veteran, Captain America. He was first killed off during the late 1940′s, growing outdated even for his own original creators, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, who by then were working on other groundbreaking titles. As a response to Captain America’s brewing resurrection by Marvel in 1954, they presented Fighting American, a new superhero destined to keep the U.S.A’s dominance during the Cold War. In a recent introduction to the collected stories of Fighting American, Simon recalled its birth:

“They’re bringing back Captain America, Jack,” I said.
“Yeah, but it won’t last,” Jack replied. “It won’t be like when we did it”.
“You know,” I said, “There’s no reason we can’t do our own character again. They can’t corner the market on patriotism, after all”.

After feeling bored and looking for a gimmick, Simon and Kirby turned Fighting American into a parody of the entire superhero genre they once helped define. Their new character dealt with Soviet villains like Super Khakalovitch, who raised hell by dancing to the famous Russian song Kalinka. Captain America became a laughing stock as Fighting American wore a decisively similar costume and his sidekick, Speed Boy, was just an over-exhilarated Bucky. Eventually, Fighting American outdid his prototype, lasting for seven issues while Marvel’s new comic book adventures of Captain America lasted only four before being shelved again.

The Cap’s uneven status was maintained through several brief and unsuccessful T.V adaptations. In 1966, an animated series, The Marvel Superheroes, showcased five of the publishing company’s characters. Captain America’s segments were featured alongside ones starring The Incredible Hulk and The Mighty Thor, among others. The 13 episodes provided a typical animation program of its day with most of the motion done by camera close-ups, and included the entertaining “Zap” and “Clang” sound effects. Aligning Captain America with other superheroes was in accordance with his path in the comic book world. In 1964, he joined The Avengers after being brought back to life yet again. Just a year later, everyone on the team was to be featured in their own titles, except for Captain America. He had to wait until 1968 to have another entire comic book series for himself, a sad testimony to his dwindling star power.

CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: DEATH TOO SOON

A reasonable degree of popularity was difficult to maintain as Captain America’s defense strategies seemed less vital as time went on. Not only did America sustain its own precious values during the Second World War as the Cap originally campaigned for but in reality, the U.S also turned into a leading superpower, influencing and intimidating other nations like never before. Politics aside, the character also lacked a deep emotional tone, one that kept other superheroes so engaging. Steve Rogers wasn’t tormented by his alter-ego as Bruce Banner was by turning into The Incredible Hulk, nor was the Cap a complex outcast like the mutant X-Men force. Leading a double life didn’t take its toll on Rogers as it did on the recluse Bruce Wayne as Batman or Peter Parker as Spiderman. Perhaps since, unlike other mysterious superheroes, Captain America was also never romantically involved, readers weren’t aching to see him start living a more “normal” life via marriage. Instead, he was perceived as nothing more than a mixed bag of old fashioned propaganda and nostalgia.

The loosely binding TV-movie format was almost ideal for a character like Captain America, which held on to an appealing name but with a tiresome substance.The CBS network produced two TV-movie adaptations in 1979, CAPTAIN AMERICA and CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: DEATH TOO SOON. They reflected the current trends in television more than anything. Presenting car chases and commanding scientists made them seem like a crossover between the Dukes of Hazard and Charlie’s Angels, two prominent top 20 shows at the time. Reb Brown was cast in the lead role for both versions. His principal acting experience came from small guest appearances on numerous TV shows.

The 1979 Steve Rogers was a young motor head and an ex-Marine, who wished to pursue his artistic tendencies. He learns that Captain America was a mockery nickname for his late father, a patriotic scientist. As his son, Rogers is lured to protect a classified government weapon and to become an actual superhero. Brown finally slips into the famous costume with almost 80 grueling minutes gone by since the opening credits. His poor acting skills do not make the long wait worthwhile. CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: DEATH TOO SOON offered more of the same dabbling but at least, for a change, the Cap was not the one dying. This second installment stood out slightly since it was much more styled as a proper TV show. All in all, these adaptations basically served as pilots which, understandably, were never picked up.

Prior to this year’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, the most elaborated adaptation was the 1990 feature CAPTAIN AMERICA. It was the brainchild of the former creative force behind the Cannon Group, Menahem Golan. A sharp producer, he wisely foresaw that the future of summer blockbusters belonged to comic book films and was determined to cash in. He owned the rights for a Spiderman movie for seven years but was unable to finance it. The 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA appeared to be the next best thing for Golan, made during his fresh start at the 21st Century Film Corporation. The film only briefly recreated the original comic book setting of the Second World War, the U.S army experiment which generated Captain America out of a weaker human body, and finally introducing his biggest nemesis since the 1940′s, the Red Skull.

Many potential dramatic features were brutally hashed in this version. Steve Rogers, played by Matt Salinger, was reported to be the most suitable candidate out of hundreds for the project but the lineup and tests were never shown. Salinger was another small-time actor, whose boyish looks could actually have made him a decent “Bucky” if he had a slimmer build. A supervising Colonel did little to excite upon telling his peers: “He may not be Superman but he’ll be a living symbol of what this country stands for.” Salinger was first seen in the Captain America costume just moments before parachuting out of a plane as part of his original mission to invade an enemy facility, dismissing the uniform he was already wearing with a few dry sentences.

Matt Salinger as Captain America

The 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA was clearly much more action-packed than all of its predecessors but still fell short of delivering a compelling adventure. Largely, it failed due to its embarrassing special effects and editing loopholes that intensified an exhausting storyline with many time travels and relocations. This adaptation was never officially released in American theaters and went straight to video almost everywhere else as well.

Meanwhile, Captain America has continued to battle its longevity as a comic book character. Recent struggles in print included the acclaimed 2007′s The Death of Captain America and 2009′s Captain America: Reborn series. Throughout the years, the Cap has been primarily taken notice of at times of crisis or when reaching a significant milestone. This year marks the character’s 70th anniversary, and hopefully CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER will make the crowds keep their Sentinel of Liberty badges just a little bit longer this time around.

I wonder, why does almost every reference to vintage Hollywood depict either GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA? It’s as if we are all forced to worship certain “iconic” films with strong fan-bases, films that have become cultural landmarks. There are better films, similar to these icons, that deserve a closer look. It doesn’t mean I hate these iconic films. I feel these are good, maybe very good, films worth having in a home video collection, worth a repeat viewing, but I don’t see them as being the very pinnacle of their genres.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925) has been referred to in horror movie magazines and books as the definitive silent horror movie. For years, this was almost the only Hollywood silent horror film easily available for revival screenings. Of course, its most famous scene is still brilliant and a chiller – where lovely Christine (Mary Philbin) sneaks up behind her masked captor, The Phantom (Lon Chaney), and unmasks him. The rest of this 107-minute film doesn’t measure up. PHANTOM’s director, Rupert Julian had almost no grasp of making a horror film. Apparently he constantly fought with the cast to the point where romantic lead, Norman Kerry, physically attacked him. When Julian walked off the film, Buster Keaton’s sometimes director Edward Sedgwick worked on it uncredited. For quality silent era chills, go with other Lon Chaney horror films, which only recently became available on DVD, such as THE UNKNOWN, or HE WHO GETS SLAPPED. Universal’s silent horror masterwork THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is a far more compelling, suspenseful horror film than PHANTOM THE MAN WHO LAUGHS was intended for Lon Chaney, but Chaney dropped out and Conrad Viedt took the role (and created wonders with it.)

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) The first half of this world famous screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel about the fall of the old South is Hollywood studio film-making at full tilt! It is bursting with compelling characters, enticing history, scenery and breathtaking Technicolor cinematography (Cinematographer Ernest Haller deserves strong praise here!) But then the second half of the film, after the Civil War ends, where Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) rebuilds Tara, etc, is rather mediocre. Scarlett’s rocky marriage to the guy best suited for her, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is tainted by her wanting unattainable Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). This is something straight out of a soap opera. It might as well take place in Long Island in 1939. GONE WITH THE WIND plays like a fireworks show in reverse: the spectacular overload of pomp and awe is all at the beginning, and the smaller introductory booms and pops conclude the show.

CASABLANCA (1942) Many “movie best” books and references to Hollywood’s golden era immediately depict this well-made mix of wartime angst and romance, but I always have a hard time getting drawn into CASABLANCA. I’m sorry, I find Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) to be uninteresting characters. Everybody involved in this film, cast and crew, did really good work here, but they are all better in other, less iconic titles. Humphrey Bogart will later show what acting is all about once and for all in THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE. Ingrid Bergman will star in a more romantic and suspenseful wartime-valentine film – Alfred Hitchcock’s NOTORIOUS. Director Michael Curtiz did better films (THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES instantly come to mind), and I have stronger memories of CASABLANCA’S co-stars (Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Conrad Viedt, etc.) in other films.

RASHOMON (1950) Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant, minimalist study of how the shattering experience of a rape/murder rattles the human spirit was the first Japanese film to make a worldwide splash. That’s because it won, amongst other well-deserved awards, the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. Those handing the award to Kurosawa didn’t know that this director made a better film one year earlier, which I feel is the film that should have opened the floodgates for Japanese cinema – his 1949 crime thriller STRAY DOG. STRAY DOG, which didn’t work the festival route upon release, has only recently become known amongst stateside Kurosawa fans. In STRAY DOG, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) tracks down the homicidal thief who stole his loaded pistol and is using it in robberies all throughout World War II torn Tokyo. It’s Japan’s BICYCLE THIEVES – a compelling search through a war-ravished city.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) This must have been 1951’s big shocker!. The film’s leading man is Marlon Brando’s Stanley Kowalski, a morally vacant control freak in dirty clothing with the violent temperament of a badly behaved six year old. Brando’s performance is so strong, your blood boils whenever he’s on the screen. My problem with STREETCAR is that it takes itself so seriously. Director Elia Kazan knew he was making something different, and dealing with such adult subject matter, that the film becomes painfully self-conscious. I feel Kazan was a breathe away from slapping a pulsating “See folks, this is just like real life…” subtitle whenever Brando misbehaves, or whenever the ready-to-boil living conditions are shown. Kazan would repeat this so-serious-it’s-deathly preachy approach with ON THE WATERFRONT (1954). His later film, A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957), about the rags-to-riches tale of a megalomaniac TV personality (Andy Griffith at his very best!) is a much better slice-of-real-life film. Unlike STREETCAR, A FACE IN THE CROWD delivers a strong message and doesn’t mind becoming satirical.

GIANT (1956) I feel horrible adding an Elizabeth Taylor film to my “iconic films that ain’t that great” list so soon after this wonderful lady’s passing. George Stevens’ film version of Edna Ferber’s novel about the rise of Texas as an empire is majestic, with great scenery and larger-than-life characters that need to be seen on a large screen. When James Dean’s bad-boy Jett Rink strikes it rich with his struggling oil well, the screen and our senses are full of life, but this segment is surrounded by endless drawn out material about the Benedicts (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor) adjusting to life in an awfully big house. GIANT gains energy again towards the end with the introduction of Rock Hudson’s modernized and emotional son, played with brooding gusto by newcomer Dennis Hopper. Apparently Dean was needed for post–production re-shoots but his untimely death caused Stevens to live with already-filmed mediocre material, for which he hired rising star Nick Adams to re-dub some of Dean’s dialogue.

MY FAIR LADY (1964) Jack L. Warner pulled Hollywood’s top drawer (Director George Cukor, costume designer Cecil Beaton, cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. and musician Andre Previn) to create this colorful musical version of PGYMALION, George Bernard Shaw’s wonderful satirical spin on how the English should be spoken in much gooder and correcter ways. This film is gorgeous eye candy, and Audrey Hepburn is a delight here, but its 170-minute length is a killer. I prefer Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard’s 1938 PYGMALION instead. That earlier film is not a musical, but Howard’s Professor Higgins is such a perfectionist-lunatic, you’re amused and intimidated by him at the same time. MY FAIR LADY took home that year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. Instead of being traditional and giving the Oscar to an expensive old-fashioned musical behemoth, why didn’t they give the award to the much funnier and more inventive musical, that same year’s A HARD DAYS NIGHT?

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ in-your-face morality fable is blasted with such immoral and shocking imagery that it rivets you to your seat in the first act. This famous film starts off following a vicious young street gang in a futuristic, cheerless society. But, as soon as “your humble narrator”, Alex, is told by police “Your latest victim had died! You’re now a murderer!” the film falls apart all at once. Sophomoric humor is slipped in everywhere, as if during production a naughty fourteen-year old kid demonically possessed Kubrick. You’re trying to watch the film, get into the story, and every other second, it’s “here’s a line of dialog with dirty innuendo,” “here’s a man blowing kisses to Alex,” “another naked lady,” “another overdone reaction by star Malcolm MacDowell.” This almost X-Rated material resulted in CLOCKWORK getting copious amounts of press. CLOCKWORK was rushed into production after Kubrick’s failed NAPOLEON film, and it feels rushed, sandwiched between vastly superior Kubrick films – DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and BARRY LYNDON and THE SHINING.

THE GODFATHER (1972) Living within hollering distance of Brooklyn and Queens, “Godfather” imagery, tributes and satires are everywhere for me. Francis Coppola’s film, on first viewing in 1972 showed audiences, weary of political corruption, a society that made no-bones about it, a society that earned money by stealing and strong-arming. This society protects it’s own, and sometimes, allows for the growth of honest enterprises within it’s system. Corruption and savage violence are the elements that keeps “the lights on” in this society. I really enjoy THE GODFATHER, but it drags in spots, and it’s segments become predictable. Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS did Cine-Mafia much better. For me, Marlon Brando, in the title role, has little to do here, but it’s the individual stories about his varied sons that keep THE GODFATHER a grabber (Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and John Cazale should have received a group Oscar). Coppola would return two years later with the much more compelling and better paced GODFATHER PART TWO. PART TWO gives the audience a clear cut “history” of the Mafia, forming in old Italy and becoming the other great power in 20th century America.

Again, I feel these are all very good films, but not great. Calling most of these films iconic is like calling a well-made tuna sandwich a five star delicacy. These films came at the right time, striking a mass audience nerve. However, circumstances have prevented better films, sometimes with the same cast, director or subject, from getting the proper release, or the well deserved critical response they deserved.

Roy Frumkes’ Top Ten (or Twelve) DVDs, BluRays, Theatrical & TV releases.

I see two theatrical features a week, and try to watch one DVD or BluRay every night. At that there are those who see three or four times what I do, but I haven’t figured out how to reduce my other activities like showering, exercising, going to the bathroom, and sleeping. So I remain behind the front guard of cinema enthusiasts in terms of viewing. Still, I’ve seen a lot, as have FIR’s other writers, so here are a few TopTen lists for the year we left behind:

My DVD & BluRay choices first: At a certain point, these are no longer in order, but the first few are…

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Criterion) The archeological restoration of the year, this immaculate BluRay transfer is accompanied by a 2 1/2 hour compilation doc of equally pristine outtakes from the film, with sound, so that one can hear Charles Laughton directing, can see and hear the little girl chiding Robert Mitchum for forgetting his lines, Shelley Winters praying in Hebrew, the boy warmly following directions even though he comes off stiff in the final version, and countless other wonders. It’s one of the great treasure discs of all time. It’s been around for years, but has been updated slightly for this, its first home theater release.

THRILLER (Image/Universal) 14 DVDs containing 67 episodes. Though almost all the episodes have dated in one way – they now appear padded in an effort to support the hour time slot – they are still remarkably well lit (PIGEONS FROM HELL has the lowest key lighting I ever remember seeing on TV), elaborately scored by such luminaries as Jerry Goldsmith (with many M&E tracks isolated), dripping with fun star power (Henry Daniell is in five episodes – the first times I remember his being in the same films with Karloff since THE BODY SNATCHER in 1945), introduced and occasionally featuring Boris Karloff, and accompanied by insightful commentary tracks. It’s the best-produced DVD release of the year in terms of marshalling outside forces to bolster the original material. THE ALIEN QUADRILOGY, for example, is even more packed with phenomenal commentaries, featurettes, alternate cuts, etc. It’s astounding, to be sure. But all that material was within relatively easy reach. The producer of the THRILLER package had to think out what material would best accompany each of the 27 commentary-supported episodes without becoming redundant, and then go out and hunt down appropriate commentators, and he’s done a miraculous job. As examples: For THE FINGERS OF FEAR, a pre-meditated mixture of THE HANDS OF ORLAC and MR. SARDONICUS, about a pianist (played by SARDONICUS’ Guy Rolph) whose obsession with a rival performer leads to doom, the commentary track is all about horror filmusic, and for THE HOLLOW WATCHER, which has a vaguely Western theme, the commentary focuses on Horror Westerns.

METROPOLIS (Kino) Refer to Ben Peeples’ review, though it is better served on DVD, considering the format and degraded condition of the recently restored footage.

THE LEOPARD BluRay (Criterion) You don’t need a 3D TV, or 3D glasses, to get the depth effect here. The film is so gorgeously transferred, and Visconti layered it so elaborately with art direction, that you feel you are looking into those vast period rooms with bewildering dimensionality. Both versions are available, and there’s Nina Rota’s magnificent score.

THE ELIA KAZAN COLLECTION (Fox Home Entertainment) Plus a heartfelt doc by Martin Scorsese. This is a beautifully packaged, near-inclusive slew of Kazan films on DVD, showing his progression from stage-bound flicks to fully cinematic works.

THE ALIEN ANTHOLOGY (Fox Home Entertainment) This BluRay update trumps the earlier DVD release, something I didn’t think was possible. There are more supplementals, but just the increased sound quality alone is astounding.

KING KONG (Warner Bros Home Entertainment) Better than ever on BluRay.

THE HAMMER ICONS OF SUSPENSE COLLECTION (SONY Pictures Home Entertainment) – THESE ARE THE DAMNED, CASH ON DEMAND, THE SNORKEL, STEP ME BEFORE I KILL!, MANIAC and NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER. This was a genuine surprise – that so late in the game, six delightful non-horror Hammers would see the light of DVD. Pictorially they’re all fine. In terms of execution they vary in quality, but all of them are compelling, and CASH ON DEMAND and STOP ME BEFORE I KILL! Particularly so.

THE AFRICAN QUEEN (Paramount) – Refer to my review earlier in the year. On BluRay, it’s better-looking than it was when originally released.

GONE WITH THE WIND (Warner Bros) BluRay. Like film… And in a beautifully designed collector box.

DALI & DISNEY: A DATE WITH DESTINO (Disney) BluRay. I liked the end result of the long-buried, never completed short produced by Walt Disney and directed by Salvador Dali. But I loved the feature documentary made about the ill-fated venture. It captures their two creative personalities, and the times, and follies of creativity and genius.

OCEANS (Disney) The old True Life Adventures were never like this. From Monstro the Whale (in the flesh) to vast schools of fish doing head-trips on us, it’s an overwhelming experience.

TOP 12 THEATRICAL & TV releases:

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

BLACK SWAN

TOY STORY 3

THE GHOST WRITER

THE TOWN

HEREAFTER

TRUE GRIT

TRON LEGACY

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

MOVIES & MOGULS (Mini-seies)

FISH TANK

FROZEN

Bryan Layne next…

Boxing. The brutal sport. Known as the poor man’s way out of the ghetto.

Its combatants bear the repercussions of the devastating onslaught of physical abuse. Whereas some abhor the sport, voicing an outcry to decree a ban, others praise its combatants, giving rise to icons that are heralded as a paladin for a particular ethnic group.

Does boxing slake our animalistic urges? In its simplest terms, one must bash the head of another, put him down for the count, and make him submit to the victor. What is the appeal? Are boxers a proxy for the humble and meek masses?

Boxing movies have been around since the earliest days of cinema. Thomas Edison filmed men boxing on June 14, 1894 at his Black Maria Studios entitled, LEONARD-CUSHING FIGHT, many other Edison boxing films followed. 116 years later, after films like ROCKY, CINDERELLA MAN, THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, THE SET-UP, RAGING BULL, KID GALAHAD, FAT CITY, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, and THE CHAMP, the latest film about the boxing world is THE FIGHTER.

30 year sports business professional Greg Marotta offers his perspective. “Boxing IS Human Drama. It will continually be appealing to filmmakers because boxing offers a metaphor of real life. More than any sport, boxing presents life as a quest, a journey, a search for truth. When the bell rings there are no timeouts, no substitutions, no second string. It’s a mano a mano struggle to the finish, truth be told.”

A tough sport demands tough men. An atmosphere of negativity hovers over the type of male that steps into the ring. Rough types, criminals, kids careening down the wrong track don boxing gloves. In an instance of art imitating life, RUNAWAY TRAIN has a boxing scene that takes place in prison. The boxer is actor Danny Trejo in his first movie role. Trejo was a councilor after being incarcerated as a result of a childhood filled with criminal activity and drug use. With his signature tats and menacing demeanor, Trejo was an inmate in San Quentin, and its boxing champ. Most recently, James Toback’s documentary, TYSON, delves deep into boxer-turned-actor, Mike Tyson. The former heavyweight champion reveals a stormy childhood, prison horror, and the trepidations of stepping into the ring. These guys are furthest from the Errol Flynn boxing character in the 1942 film, GENTLEMAN JIM. Although Mickey Ward is THE FIGHTER’s main character, it is his brother Dicky Eklund that certainly has been born under the same misaligned stars such as Mike Tyson, Jake LaMotta, Hector Camacho, Bernard Hopkins, Trevor Berbick, etc. etc. etc.

Ironically, Mark Wahlberg was a troubled youth with several run-ins with the law, who grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts, just thirty minutes from Ward.

The majority of boxing films attempt to humanize the fighter by purging the relentless thirst for blood from the battling soul. The theme of man vs. man is central; yet, man vs. himself is the battle raging on a blood-stained canvas. Usually it’s the down-and-out guy looking to make it to the top one last time, struggling to juggle his personal life and professional career.

Ward and Eklund are two brothers with a dread of Palookaville; the Hades of the boxing world where washed up, no talented, punch drunk shells of former selves lay to waste. “I’m just one punch away.” Robert Ryan’s character delivers this line to his wife in THE SET-UP. Marlon Brando’s character in ON THE WATERFRONT groans about a past opportunity after taking a dive, when he exclaims, “I coulda been a contender.” Again and again such phrases of would have, could have, should have, are mouthed by boxers.

In THE FIGHTER, Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal of boxer Mickey Ward deals with these themes. Time is running out for Mickey. The exception is that it is not he, but his boxer brother, who has the checkered history. Without the heroic ROCKY anthem blaring, director David O. Russell successfully delivers a film that is packed full of personal struggles and multi-dimensional characters without pulling any punches.

Mickey Ward’s adulatory celebration as the title-holder defines his ability as an athlete in the world of boxing and lends pride to the Irish townspeople of Lowell, Massachusetts. Surpassing all of that, his victory overcoming personal strife and the burden of being “the good son” is a monumental testament to his inner strength and belief.

As in any boxing film there is a woman. In this case is more — a woman, a mother, and his skein of seven surly slovenly sisters. The complexity of his relationship with his family and his connection with a new woman that enters his life creates a friction that combusts into a struggle that is pertinent in Ward’s in-ring domination. The script moves with fluidity while strengthening the drama and characters.

Where men are the fighters, women in this film are equally as strong or even stronger. Other than Jane Alexander’s character in THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, all other women in fighting films pale in comparison. Ward’s mother is his manager and his sisters are her henchmen. The trouble is that she is not management material and she suffers a clinging hope on her other son, Dicky Eklund.

Mickey’s new love interest is Charlene Fleming as portrayed by Amy Adams. As a bartender wearing shorts and tank top, she runs her mouth and chugs shots with the blue collars at the bar, fending off unwanted groping. Although Mickey initiates, it is she who comes knocking.

The Ward household is built on beer and dysfunction and feminine tyranny. Simply put, in Alice Ward’s home, all men have been castrated. Mickey’s ex-wife belongs in this realm demonstrating this very same behavior by ruling her current husband as she does Mickey with a berating emasculating fervor as both men react in unison with the same docile frailty.

Any woman that dares to enter as a romantic interest is doomed. Strong willed, Charlene is to butt heads with the women of the Ward/Eklund clan, as Michael Buffer’s trademarked catchphrase could have echoed loudly throughout Lowell, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” And they do.

The director chose to add a bit of comedy to lighten the tension by taking moments to get up close and personal with Ward’s sisters. They are quite the spectacle. Think trailer park, think bad hair, think Rachel Dratch characters on SNL. They don’t like Charlene and feel that she has an air of superiority about her, calling her, “Miss MTV.” Well, Charlene had some college, so she is ahead of the pack. Charlene and Mickey go to a foreign film complete with subtitles and she remarks that the film “didn’t even have any good sex.” So, now you know the general IQ of the bunch.

At the core of this dysfunctional family dynamic is Dicky, Mickey’s half-brother, the former boxer, living a warped sense of reality due to his crack addiction, truly believing that he is at the threshold of the prolific boxers dream, the comeback. Aiding in this glass pipe fantasy is his mother who dotes on him with rose-colored, heart shaped glasses. Mrs. Ward continually wears out the heads of the VCR as she plays Dicky’s recorded televised boxing matches. Her son is her hero.

THE FIGHTER is a movie within a movie. An HBO film crew follows Dicky in Lowell as he parades through the streets – the hometown hero who fought Sugar Ray Leonard. He thinks the documentary film is all about him and his comeback. What it reveals is his pathetic crack addiction, his crack addict friends, and the shambles that he made of his life. (Look on Youtube for HIGH ON CRACK STREET to see the real Dicky Eklund and his friend Boo Boo. It’s worth a look at the end credits of THE FIGHTER since the real life Ward, Eklund, and Boo Boo make an appearance.)

The problem is that Eklund trains Ward. Truthfully, he is a great trainer. However, his addiction and resulting behavior are a hindrance to his brother. Eklund wants center stage at all times, and if need be, Ward should step-aside for mama’s boy.

The defining moment for Ward’s about face is when he goes into the ring with someone that is way out of his weight class and is pounced upon rendering him a bloody pulp with just enough humiliation not to face everyone at home. This travesty was the decision of Ward’s mother and Eklund over concern of the purse. If Ward did not fight, even though his scheduled opponent was not able to get in the ring, they would go home empty handed.

Enter Charlotte, the strong willed. And so, the power struggle ensues. Eklund indirectly causes the calamity. He should have been known as The Hurricane. The very guy that is petrified of his mother contributes a swirl of issues and incidents such as arrests, brawls, tears, and family torment.

Imagine a man, a tough man, one that can easily do time, clouded with crack, bailing from a second floor window to hide from his mommy. The same man has a child that must visit him as he is incarcerated. A man who causes heartbreak, angst and disgust. This vexing soul is also so dearly loved by his family and the people around him at all cost.

In a performance worthy of an Oscar, Christian Bale plays a character with remarkable range. Again, Bale lost weight for a role. He was skeletal-like in THE MACHINIST. This time, he is as thin as a drug user. His anger, sorrow, self-loathing, and so many emotional outpourings leave one to feel for the character. Bale was not originally scheduled for the role. As Wahlberg states, “Thank God he was” the one who finally did take on the part.

In prison, Eklund suffers during his detox. Then, the darling of the pen is having his HBO premiere in a room with the other inmates. Cheers for Dicky! Quickly, he is thrown from his throne as he watches himself as a drug addict, and violence erupts as he cuts the film short. This same guy is later listening to one of Ward’s matches on the prison payphone and is giving a detailed account to all of the attentive inmates.

A new Ward takes to the ring. Raising his hands in victory is due to the family and Charlotte working as a cohesive unit for the good of Mickey Ward. Ward breaks from his Cinderella chains and finds triumph in the ring and at home to end his book with the closing, they lived happily ever after.

The boxing scenes are very straightforward. Scenes such as Robert DeNiro in RAGING BULL bearing the blows from his opponent or the highly stylized choreographic fighting from Stallone’s ROCKY series are not found in this film. The rather straightforward approach is similar to what can be found in THE SET-UP. The boxing takes a backseat to the drama unfolding outside the ring. Director David O. Russell said, “We only had three days to do the fight scenes, which made those very focused. We shot them HBO style, which was a suggestion Mark had. ”

Mark Wahlberg had met Ward, and wanted to do a biopic about him for several years. Just as Sylvester Stallone was passionate about doing a film on Bayonne, New Jersey based boxer Chuck Wepner and made ROCKY, Wahlberg felt a kinship towards Ward.

“First time I met Mickey I was 18 years old and I was already a huge fan of his. I was just starting out in my music career. Some years later I started making movies and it dawned on me that this would make for a great story. I went to Lowell, the rights weren’t available, but I got to spend more time with Mickey and Dicky. And then, I just got a call that Paramount had the rights and they had a script that they wanted to make. I read it, and right away I was in. I started training the next day. That was five years ago. We finally got the movie made, but ultimately, I promised Mickey that we were going to get this movie made one way or another. And, he was happy with the fact that I was going to play him. Also, they were all very thrilled that the people involved in the movie cared about them, were in love with them, and we appreciated what they were able to overcome and to accomplish. That was important to them. We haven’t shown them the movie yet. We will be showing it in Lowell. Alice hasn’t seen it, the sisters haven’t seen it. We’ll see how that goes. It’s okay for me because I have a lifetime pass, everybody else, I don’t know. This movie is a tribute to them and everything that they had gone through.”

Eventually, once the project was greenlit, it went with major hitches along the way, keeping Wahlberg miffed. “It was just one of those pieces of material that everybody was immediately drawn to. That’s why I thought it was a no brainer. I started training and thought it’s only a matter of a couple of months before we’ll be shooting this movie. But, wanting to do it and actually doing it are obviously two different things. For whatever reason, it attracted some really major talent but nobody wanted to pull the trigger. We’d have a start date and the next thing you know, everybody would leave and I’d be standing there saying, ‘No we have to do this, we promised Mickey, we promised Dicky, this could be great.’”

Scorsese passed, not wishing to revisit the world of boxing. At one point, Darren Aronofsky, who is a producer on the film, was geared to direct. David O. Russell took the helm of a genre depicted numerous times on the silver screen. Why was he drawn to a genre such as this? “I felt the fact that the mother was so central, I hadn’t seen that. Where the mother was the manager. Where the mother, in spite of having nine kids was still beautiful enough that she could almost look like the older brother’s girlfriends at times. There are two romances in the film, between her and Dicky and between Mickey And Charlene.”

With so many starts and stops, the cast was reshuffled many times. Wahlberg’s brother Donny was once in the running for Dicky’s role as were many others. On shooting day, it was Christian Bale who was on set. Bale didn’t have much in the way of boxing training for the role. Wahlberg comments, “He didn’t have a lot of time to train. Thankfully, the main thing for him was doing the physical transformation, which he had done in the past, which is why when I saw him across the schoolyard, our daughters went to the same school, I was like, this is the guy. I had seen RESCUE DAWN, I had seen THE MACHINIST. Thankfully he read the script right away and responded to it immediately. I knew I had the right guy.”

For Wahlberg, intermittent training as the project was constantly delayed was a decision to keep the film alive. So he looks the part and has the skills to make the film as real as possible. As the actual shoot loomed closer, training with Ward and Eklund began. “When they came to live at my house, we started the training process, every single day we would go from my house, drive down to the church, and we’d spend 20-30 minutes praying before we would go running 8 miles. Every single time we’d walk out of the church, I’d feel fine and they would walk out with tears in their eyes.” Commenting on Ward in the ring with him, Wahlberg admits, ” It doesn’t matter how much he likes you, if you get in the ring with him he is going to try to hurt you. That’s just the way it is. It’s the name of the game and he likes to play the game.”

What you see on screen is the real thing. With a 33 day shooting schedule and a budget that was halved, the focus to do it quick and right was the name of the game. “We didn’t have the luxury of having stunt doubles and stand-ins. We hired real boxers. They came to my house and we trained and we duplicated the fights and the most interesting moments in those real fights that Mickey had. I was just adamant about doing it in the very beginning because I had been training for so long. I probably made four or five movies during the course of training for this movie. It’s extremely difficult to get up three hours before your call time, train for two and half hours then go shoot a twelve hour day. I was adamant about getting the boxing stuff done so we could focus on the rest of the story. To kind of separate it from other fight films, we needed to hire real boxers and really box and shoot it like a fight you’d see on HBO.”

Was Mark Wahlberg given special star treatment in the ring with the pros? “You figure out a way to hit at 60%. But, if I catch the number three middleweight in the world with 60%, he’s gonna want to hit with 65%. The next thing you know, we are throwing pretty hard. But, you know what, nobody got seriously injured except for some bumps or bruises, we came out okay. I was really wanting to make the fights as realistic as possible, so that meant getting in there.”

With awards season fever quickly approaching, Wahlberg should stand proud that he never threw in the towel, and made a truly remarkable piece of film history.

While known mostly for his literary works, there can be no question of Ray Bradbury’s powerful cinematic connection – he has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame – and so the celebration of his 90th birthday is entirely appropriate at Films In Review, which was actually first published the year before he was born.

An American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. In 1938 he was selling newspapers on the corners of LA while pounding the library and typewriter keys at night. By 1943 he was a full-time writer of published short stories. By 1947 his first anthology, DARK CARNIVAL, was published and was a hit.

1950 saw the novel that would establish him, THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, which tells the tales of earthmen attempting to conquer and colonize Mars.

It was, interestingly, his Saturday evening Post story, THE FOGHORN which jump-started the separate motion picture careers of himself and his best friend for some 70-something years, now, Ray Harryhausen, with the release of the movie based on that story, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. Harryhausen created the groundbreaking special effects, and the prestige awarded Bradbury from the film’s smash box office hit status, in Bradbury’s words, “Changed my life” in 1954.

Part of that continuing change included writing the script for John Huston’s 1956 classic film adaptation of MOBY DICK, which seems like a funny kind of aesthetic connection, because while the two films in style could not be more different, both deal with titanic monsters of the ocean depths. Given the chance to write the screenplay here, however, Bradbury shows he’s very much more than the movies’ monsters: he cuts the fat from the lengthy (700 page!) Melville novel and focuses down on the moments from the book that bring not no much the whale, but the characters to full-blooded and engaging life. It’s an astonishing piece of creative editorial work and screenwriting, filled with rich moments and an appropriate mix of raw reality and unapologetic sensitivity that makes the period of the film seem so vivid and authentic.
Cinematic translations of Ray Bradbury’s own novels have not always been so successful, however – not because Bradbury’s original works are difficult to translate to the screen (they can be) – but often because producers have entirely missed both the point and style of Bradbury’s works. THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, one of Bradbury’s most famous novels was realized as a hopelessly slow mini-series that somehow managed to wring all the gold out of the mining pan and present us instead with little more than the desert dust of the red planet. Likewise, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is only partially successful in the eyes of many.

Perhaps no work of Bradbury’s saw such a fruitless squandering of initial potential, however, as the Disney’s realization of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. This novel in the original form was a unique and truly sensitive coming of age story about the relationship of a father and his son, developed through the nightmare experiences of a conflict with a carnival of the “dust people” – evil spirits who use people’s needs and fears to draw them into a Faustian pact of damnation, leading them to become themselves sideshow exhibits for all eternity in this carnival that arrives from nowhere, and vanishes without warning. The sometimes brutally honest recreation of coming of age in the heartland of this country in more innocent times, combined with the sort of evil that could otherwise only have been imagined in the Victorian era, makes for a mesmerizing tale.

For SOMETHING WICKED, Jack Clayton, whose brilliant film, THE INNOCENTS, made him a – probably literally – perfect choice to direct, was engaged. Jason Robards was appropriately cast as the father and in the performance of his career (as “Julian Karswell” was to actor Niall MacGinnis ) is Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Dark, the dispassionately evil proprietor of “Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival”. With a solid script by Bradbury, this film could have and should have been everything for which one could have hoped.

But, the story goes, in a maddening moment of an eye-to-brain disconnect, the executives at Disney apparently failed to comprehend in a rough cut what the film was about stylistically and perceived it’s strongest values as negatives. For example, they felt the film was “too claustrophobic”, so they had FX artists direct new shots to “open the film up”, not understanding that Clayton’s claustrophobic cinematic style, which was so perfect for THE INNOCENTS, would have had the same – and very appropriate – effect in SOMETHING WICKED. Eventually so many cartoon-animated special effects were inserted at the whim of the uniquely Disney special effects people, who had none of Bradbury’s and Clayton’s sensibilities, that at times the film is a confusing mess in which we don’t even know whose point of view we are supposed to favor. But the brilliance is still there, and through the loud and over-saturated cartoon animation and poorly re-shot replacement scenes, one can still see that brooding, dark and claustrophobic motion picture masterpiece demanding to be viewed and heard in the explosive dramatic form that would have resulted in its original measured and deliberate restraint. Let us hope that sometime soon the executives at Disney will use a little marketing acumen and release a “restored” version of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES the way Universal seized on the errors of their meddling predecessors and restored Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL to its rightful state as a brilliant film noir masterpiece. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES deserves to be seen as originally intended. Doubtless the footage still exists to restore it. They should.

Such situations led to Bradbury producing his own TV series for several years, RAY BRADBURY THEATER, in which he maintained control over all and in the process provided TV with some truly outstanding moments.

There are more happy exclusions to the poor cinematic treatments, and, for this writer, saving the best for last, there is FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966). Produced and directed by acclaimed French Director Francois Truffaut (Jules and Jim), the British film is a medium-budget futuristic story in which Bradbury’s cautionary tale of television reducing the mass public consciousness down to it’s lowest common denominator is presented full-bore. In that story a totalitarian Government burned all books. It is often assumed, then, that because of the shocking image in that story of great works of literature being burned, that Bradbury was warning the world of the dangers of censorship. But as Bradbury himself is quick to point out, that was only one small piece of the puzzle. In the vernacular of today, his primary warning was one of the Dumbing-Down of the population by pop culture. The original novel, written in 1953, is a bit of clear-headed, prophetic thinking that must rank among the great analytical moments in literature. More striking is that, to the greatest extent imaginable, his warning has come true. Blathering talking heads, endless remote control audience participation of nonsense programming and a relentless focus on the glossy and superficial instead of more significant thought are more the fact of the world we are in then was ever true when Bradbury wrote the tale in the fifties. Indeed, if you had to pass through several walls of internet news and pop culture to get to this site, you just lived the unnerving reality of Bradbury’s cautionary tale.

The final 15 minutes of FAHRENHEIT 451, with highly sensitive cinematography of the Book People among the first light snowfalls of winter, punctuated by one of the most stirring moment’s in music composer Bernard Herrmann’s career, make this sequence, in this writer’s view, one of the finest moments in cinema in the second half of the 20th century.

Let’s take the opportunity of his milestone birthday to learn a thing or two from the undeniably prophetic Ray Bradbury, as common a man in his unabashed love for cinema and the creative as he is deservedly world-renowned for his skill and ability to take a simple today and foresee the complex reality of tomorrow while keeping the reader glued to the page. Still writing and creating and doing a million things behind the scenes that both change and anticipate the whim of destiny, the world is still young and the future vast and welcoming for Ray Bradbury as he celebrates his 90th year.
This author and Films In Review wish him a very Happy Birthday and many more to come.

Ray Harryhausen and Medusa, whose sequence is one of the great fantasy moments in all of cinema. Photo by the author.

On June 29th, 2010, depending on when you read this, Ray Harryhausen will or did celebrate his 90th birthday.

To the geek squad of science fiction and stop motion animation enthusiasts (yours truly included), Ray Harryhausen is a name which is more than respected; it’s revered.

However, the more general readership at FIR perhaps should be told from the outset that his importance is so great that the following can be legitimately understood to be true: in the long-term perspective of things, so influential has Ray Harryhausen been that he – to a great extent literally single-handedly – changed the face and direction of motion pictures, probably for all time.

Quite a claim, to cite a single individual who by sheer enthusiasm and dint of effort changed with small films an entire industry operating on many times the GDP of legitimate free nations and run by often ruthless powerbrokers by the hundreds, but thus it has come to pass.

To those who may not know, Ray Harryhausen, known primarily for his stop motion special effects, is the auteur of approximately 18 feature films, many of which sprang, initially unscripted, from theme-based drawings created by him years before and put away before being eventually presented to his long-time producer, Charles Schneer. Among these is a small “children’s fantasy”, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, which was the hit of 1958 and, in historical hindsight, truly changed everything.

Ray Harryhausen’s history, in a nutshell, goes like this: influenced in 1933 at the age of 13 to the point of obsession by the stunning visuals in the original KING KONG, he worked tirelessly, at first as a hobbyist, and then eventually as the head animator under his hero, Willis O’Brien (creator of the animation and many designs and scenarios of KING KONG) on the feature MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, which could be described as “KONG Light”. Short films, both as an employed animator and creating his own educational works followed in what was sometimes a family affair, with his skilled machinist father creating rigs and steel articulations for his figures while his mother created miniature clothing and other artistic touches. Eventually this led to his first feature solo FX assignment, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), a low budget film in which his visual effects were so realistic for the time that the modestly-produced film was an industry-changing runaway smash hit. In that film, an atomic blast test in the arctic releases a enormous prehistoric beast who winds up eventually surfacing off a pier in New York City, leading both to panic in the streets and, at the time, a motion picture riot of copycats of variations on the theme.

Here begins Ray’s turning of the motion picture industry into an imitation of his own imagination: this single film ignited the science fiction movie craze of the 1950′s like a brushfire, and in so doing, created by proxy a media empire for Toho studios in Japan started with GODZILLA – which continues to spawn sequels and is a multimillion dollar merchandizing juggernaut even today – a clear though fanciful knock-off of THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. That industry-wide frenzy to cash in on the success of BEAST would not have likely happened had Ray not infused the film with a standard of realism and special effects dramaturgy that can be plainly said to have exceeded by far anything that had come before, regardless of budget.

20 Million Miles To Earth - The Ymir

Warner brothers demonstrated it clearly understood what Ray had created when they advertised it with such lines as, “They couldn’t believe their eyes – and neither will you!” – an unambiguous reference to the realism of Ray’s achievement. This he did through his own sheer artistry and ingenuity, as his budget allowed for little else.

Somewhat sadly, in this one premier effort, Ray essentially eclipsed his idol and mentor, O’Brien, who would find himself playing catch up several years later, creating the visual effects for even lower budget knock-offs of the BEAST and not faring at all well in the head-to-head competition. O’Brien was a man of large budget operations, like KING KONG, who simply failed to demonstrate the artistry to turn on a thin dime like his young protégé.

THE BEAST caught the attention of Charles Schneer, a young and ambitious producer at Columbia Studios, who contacted Ray about doing a similar version of that very film, only this one about a giant octopus. While not the runaway smash of BEAST, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA made a great deal of money for Columbia and started a relationship between Ray Harryhausen and Charles Schneer that would last for three decades and leave indelible impressions on hundreds who would come to matter a great deal in Hollywood in every possible aspect.

At this point something needs to be said to enrich the record: producer Charles Schneer, who passed away last year, is generally and correctly credited as being the man who made it possible for Ray to bring his visions to feature film life. The industry otherwise was very staid at that point and had not yet been influenced by Ray himself, quite frankly, to be receptive to his unbridled imaginative and fanciful ideas. Schneer saw the artistic and commercial value in Ray that few others had and thus continued to make possible platforms on which Ray could express himself. While there is no lack of truth to this, another name has been overlooked.

Hal Chester.

Hal Chester was a rough-around-the-edges producer from New York and originally a tough-guy child actor. Turning to producing later on, he in fact made not one but two genuine classics of the genre: The sublime NIGHT OF THE DEMON (UK) and the aforementioned THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. While it is indeed readily known that Chester hired Ray Harryhausen, placing enormous faith in the talent he recognized, this producer, for whom a reported lack of personal sophistication has led to often near-character assassination by smarmy aesthetes, also gave Ray an extraordinarily good deal, essentially setting Ray up as an independent special effects creator for life.

When Chester met with Ray, Ray owned only his 16mm equipment (35mm was the standard of the day, as it remains). After a few meetings and a signed contract, Chester started an unusual process with Ray: he took the trouble to find what Ray needed. This was not a terribly common method for producers of the day. Ray suggested to Chester that the sometimes custom-created equipment from MIGHTY JOE YOUNG might still be available at RKO. RKO was looking to dump it, and offered it to Chester for $6,500.00 (approximately $50,000 today), which was a fraction of its actual value (approximately a full half million today adjusted for inflation). It needs to be known that most producers would have simply set up shop with the equipment under their ownership, have Ray use it, and then sell it off for far more than the price for which he bought it (Schneer himself did that on some abandoned camera equipment on location left behind from another feature by other producers, and used it to partially offset the costs of one of Ray’s features). This was some of the finest equipment of its kind anywhere, and had a pedigree to boot, in that MIGHTY JOE YOUNG won an Academy Award for best special effects. So good was that equipment that Ray continued to use it for the entire length of his career, through his last film, 1981′s $20 million CLASH OF THE TITANS.

Ray Harryhausen and two seldom-seen friends from his early, storybook days. Photo by the author.

In other words, when Charles Schneer approached Ray, Ray was already set up and ready to go with some of the finest equipment the era had to offer, thanks to Hal Chester. Would Schneer, then young and on very low budgets, have been able to get what Ray needed with the finance available if Chester had retained ownership of that equipment, as was the common practice? Would Schneer have done it if he could? And would he have offered ownership of it to Ray as part of the deal, knowing how he handled the situation with the abandoned camera equipment? We can only speculate. But Chester’s basic altruistic decency might have made all the difference between what Ray’s career ultimately became and what we might speculate it could otherwise have been. Hal Chester has become a footnote in the career of Ray Harryhausen and the fact is that he deserves more praise than history has thus far allowed.

Eventually, more amazing films sprang from Harryhausen’s imagination, each filling the screen with sights and ideas that were so amazing that he was – never, mind you – nominated for an Academy Award. We can only speculate on that, too, but the reason seems clear: Hollywood was still operating with large studios, and most had a special effects department, filled with people who punched a union time card every day and went home to wives and kids whose lifestyle depended on that job. These were also the men (primarily) who voted for the Special Effects Oscars. Knowing the world as we do, how can anyone believe that they could not see the artistry in work that left millions of common ticket holders in theaters in absolute jaw-dropping awe while their own collective efforts, with large overheads and overtime, were sometimes met with unintentional laughter? The almost certain probability is that Ray was perceived as a genuine threat (as a good example of this mindset, Bud Westmore, in the early 50′s, apparently demanded, until Universal Studios nixed, the continued personal and television appearances of artist/ actress Millicent Patrick who designed THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON for Universal, opting to lay claim to the creation himself. As the makeup department head from a prestigious family of makeup artists, he could make the demand and have Universal decide in his favor).

So they didn’t nominate Ray. Not once. Until he retired, that is, whereupon Tom Hanks, who said that Ray’s JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was the primary influence that made him decide to be an actor, handed Ray his lifetime achievement Oscar, presumably when it was safe for all those union effects department workers to vote for him. In other words, after Ray had retired and was no longer a threat, though the prestige of that award when it was deserved for individual films could have helped his career enormously.

However, even being passed over for Oscar after Oscar, Ray was having an impact that would reshape motion pictures. Throughout the 60′s and into the early 70′s, artists of all cinematic varieties were growing up fancying themselves to be next-generation Harryhausens (the author sheepishly raises his hand in admission), and Ray’s reputation grew, not only as an artist delivering fantasy with the passion of a religious convert, but as an underdog folk hero as well. “How could he not even be nominated?!”, the cry would go every few years when a new Harryhausen film would be passed over by the Academy. “How could this happen?!” And indeed, most were at a loss to explain it. As I sat as a student in the late 70′s in the auditorium classroom of one of the most celebrated film historians ever, the late William K. Everson, even he went on at length about the insane injustice of such a situation with a passion that left many of us amazed, as this portly, old-school English gentleman was not prone to dramatic outbursts.

Admittedly, it is this author’s unconfirmed speculation alone that he was regarded as too great a threat to be nominated for an Oscar, since to nominate Ray would prove to the department worker’s bosses that they and their large operations were mostly superfluous. Should anyone have a more conclusive answer, this author is open to suggestions. Ray’s films were occasionally box office smashes and therefore impossible to ignore and everyone understood his primary stop motion technique. There has been speculation that his techniques were so well executed that fellow special effects technicians and artists simply did not understand what they were looking at. Had that been true, however, it would have been all the more reason to nominate him, not less.

Jason Battles The Skeletons

And thus his underdog folk hero status, combined with his obvious passion for his art showing with each new and more technically improved film, and the pure inspiration of his fantastic internal vision, began to make the folk hero a legend – and a legend of the rarest variety – a legitimate one who deserved the designation.

Then in the late 70′s, the “Children Of Harryhausen” had grown up and were beginning to make an impact. People with names like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg readily admit Ray’s significant artistic influence on them, and that influence is readily apparent in some of their films. More to the point, the large number of people they first needed in the beginning, Lucas particularly as he set up his own special effects shop called Industrial Light and Magic to produce a little movie called STARWARS, were available and skilled and passionate and ready to work long weeks for very low wages because they, too, had been impassioned from their teenage years by Ray’s singularly unbridled imagination coupled with his stunning technical virtuosity.

A bronze of “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”, the one and only film that started the “giant monster craze” of the 1950’s, also at the Harryhausen home. Photo by the author. While the bronze was a separate sculpture not related to the original animation model, the lighthouse is the same prop used in the film. – DR

Though inspired by many sources, these eclectic individuals from diverse backgrounds were mostly all coming from one primary artistic influence: Ray Harryhausen, and they were and are more than happy to admit it. Many of them even have photos and 8mm films available from their formative childhood years, and over and over again you see clay variations of the Beast, the Cyclops from THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and other childhood creations patterned after Ray’s designs. Even if Lucas had decided to make STAR WARS and had not been inspired by Ray Harryhausen, the chances are that the homegrown special effects fanatics he needed to work long and to get the ball rolling probably would not have existed to do it. Remember, without Ray, not only would his films not exist, but the 1950′s science fiction craze almost certainly would not either, and all that was the fertile breeding ground for most of the people who in time would turn STAR WARS and similar films into stunning visual realities. And without the STAR WARS franchise breaking box office records at every turn in the late-seventies through the mid-eighties, everything would be entirely different today. Of that there can be no discussion.

Had Ray not done what he had done, then, so far we can count the following: probably no science fiction boom of the ’50′s, no GODZILLA mythology and probably no STAR WARS, or at the very least, not remotely realized to be the stunning achievement that broke all records and changed the way motion pictures looked an felt initially from the 1980′s and onward.

But Ray was still not through. CLASH OF THE TITANS, his final feature released in 1981, boasting a cast of some of the finest actors ever to grace the screen, was, along with E.T., one of the two smash hits of that year.

Lucas, Speilberg, James Cameron, Tim Burton, other directors, special effects technicians and artists, cinematographers, writers, actors, the list of people very directly influenced and to a great degree set on their professional paths by Ray Harryhausen is almost endless, and much of their work still bears the imprint of his influence. From video games with sword fighting skeletons to a myriad of design features which often have some mark of someone having grown up to want to be Ray Harryhausen, there is no escaping his brilliant and exciting shadow. Tim Burton’s CORPSE BRIDE, for example, shut down the entire animation production one afternoon when Ray visited in order to show him around and offer some inspirational thanks. He has had exhibitions of his art and animation figures at some of the world’s most prestigious museums, including the New York Museum of Modern Art. Turner Classic Movies occasionally runs a night, and once in a while a weekend, of Ray Harryhausen films. And DVDs of his motion pictures continue to be strong sellers.

From Harryhausen’s home, this magnificent bronze is an interpretation of the classic scene in which Kong slays the Tyrannosaurus. Note the beautiful completion of the composition in the piece by the Ann Darrow character in the lower left. Photo by the author. A more studied shot of this sculpture from a different angle, can be seen in the very highly recommended book by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton, “The Art Of Ray Harryhausen” on page 219. The full painting in the background can be seen on page 25 of the same book. – DR

Today, Ray continues on with his fine art sculptures and restorations of his favorite classic films, both from his hands and those of others. He remains enthusiastic, tireless and a champion. He has written three large, coffee-table size books heavy enough to put behind the wheel of a car in lieu of an emergency brake, and watching long lines of people of all ages, from teenagers to men in their sixties, make the rite of personal passage for an autograph at a book signing is a wonder to behold. As each person makes their acquaintance, you hear the same words repeated endlessly with little variation: “I love your films”, “You changed my life”, “I became a professional (fill in the blank) because of your films”, “I’ve introduced my kids to your films and they love them as much as I do”. It is almost unbelievable. (Naturally, I, too, have said those same words, of course, so take that sense of disbelief with a grain of salt, please) It is truly wondrous, heartwarming, and utterly astonishing.

What makes this a pleasure to write is that Ray himself is so personally pleasant and unassuming, as anyone who has met him can tell you. In a cynical world, it gives one hope and comfort that a man so revered is so personally appreciative and yet unaffected by the adoration. When my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting he and his lovely and charming wife Diana in their London home a couple years back, as I learned in times past, you could rest assured that you’d never spend an afternoon with a more relaxed and easygoing gentleman, not at all miserly with a smile and a laugh, with not an ounce of ego or pretension, even as he pointed out the occasional offerings from highly-placed followers, such as a stunning four-foot long bronze sculpture of a Tyrannosaurs on the run personally created for Ray by Phil Tippett, one of Hollywood’s biggest Oscar-winning FX players, yet another “child of Harryhausen”.
The famous writer and Ray’s childhood/lifelong friend, another “Ray”, author Ray Bradbury, once said, “Ray and I agreed to grow old, but vowed to never grow up.” Meaning, of course, to never give up a love for things that a child, too, might love. Ray’s enthusiasm is contagious not only in his presence, but much more importantly, that enthusiasm has proved to be contagious through his very work on the screen. And in and through those amazing moments and images and places, millions of people have followed suit and also consciously decided that they, too, shall never grow up, either.

And that, perhaps, is his greatest legacy.

A Happy Milestone Birthday to Ray Harryhausen, and many more to come.

FIR ADDENDUM TO THIS ARTICLE (08/08/2010): In the Forward to the book, “Ray Harryhausen, A Life In Pictures”, George Lucas has confirmed David Rosler’s bold theory – published here before the book. Lucas writes, “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars, “ and for the same reason David theorized: without Ray Harryhausen’s influence, the “grassroots” special effects enthusiasts would not have been available for Lucas to hire to set the foundation for his eventual motion picture empire.

It may indeed have taken a seasoned professional with David’s intimate knowledge of the arts involved in fantasy filmmaking and access to certain top-level participants to make that bold, on-target analysis where others failed. Therefore, a special FIR thanks to continuing Guest Contributor, Producer/Director/Animator David Rosler for providing the oldest film journal in the United States with another in its continuing 91-year legacy of breaking, inside-the-industry firsts.

With the CGI remake of Ray Harryhausen’s original stop-motion special effects CLASH OF THE TITANS doing well in theaters, the stop-motion special effects vs. computer animation special effects battle, which has been a passionate one in the industry among old and new practitioners, has been framed with a new and unique sense of clarity.

This isn’t just a geek squad topic of conversation; it has more general implications across the entire spectrum of motion picture visual aesthetics.

To set the ground rules: stop motion is the process by which – for special effects applications – reasonably realistic miniature articulated figures are moved one frame at a time and photographically combined with live action (the classic though somewhat technically primitive example of this would be the original King Kong, still an artistic powerhouse). Even today, the effect can be occasionally stunning. In the opposing corner, CGI, which means “computer generated imagery”, is a technique whereby the figures and often-greater parts of the worlds they inhabit are created within the computer by artistic and design wizards. Stop motion is by necessity usually the work of a lone or nearly lone craftsman performing all the duties under intense concentration one frame at a time while CGI special effect sequences tend to have small armies devoted to their specialized tasks.

In the larger debates, stop motion generally wins with traditional artistically-biased aesthetes because its handcrafted nature does more than telegraph its traditional art history background of design and sculpture, but it’s also a magic show in which actual physical material objects have been handled in a way which produces an illusion. CGI is an abstract technological computer world of zeroes and ones, and while the artistry is there to be sure, the traditional special-effects-man-as-magician magic show is not. This forces special effects practitioners in the CGI realm to be better artists to compensate for the lost magic-show wow factor, but when it works, it’s a detail-enhanced and roller coaster with a wow factor all its own.

It would be a mistake, however, to simplify the discussion into being about one of Paintings (CGI) vs Sculpture (stop motion) – the details are too nuanced for that.

One additional mistake we should not make, which won’t go down well with stop motion people, is that we need to keep a perspective on the stop motion medium in the totality of the examples that exist . To say that something Ray Harryhausen created decades ago does or does not hold up well does not speak to the entire medium. There have only been a few geniuses in the stop motion field of special effects and Ray Harryhausen sits alone at the top.

Additional to Harryhausen’s often-flawless live-action/animation matching was a powerful directorial talent that often left people mistaking that it was the animation that made his FX sequences so interesting when it was often Ray’s direction and cutting that ultimately sold a scene. Put it all together and we have a unique singular talent who will probably never be equaled for generations yet to come.

The point is that just because Ray Harryhausen = stop motion animation does not mean that stop motion animation = Ray Harryhausen. Stop motion proponents often remark about the stop motion technique in a context divorced from the artist who made it most interesting and believable. Some stop motion enthusiasts might even feel that the stop motion special effects from the non-Harryhausen JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1960) are superior to the best current CGI (and such people do exist), but with that film’s animated creatures looking like little more than refugees from a play-doh factory, that’s going to be an extremely hard sell outside a very tiny and specialized group of fans and practitioners.

Speaking for myself, CLASH OF THE TITANS, both versions, reminds me that I don’t miss stop motion special effects. I miss Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion effects, specifically, combined with his design and scene set-up, direction and cutting. While stop motion enthusiasts will agree that what we need, really, are fewer computer render farms, that only works for stop motion if those render farms are replaced by brilliantly imaginative lone geniuses, regardless of the technique and technology. The problem is that computer render farms can be bought. Not so with lone geniuses.

Ultimately this reality should satisfy no one on a schedule and a budget, but has the advantage of making the very occasional lone genius all the more special when he or she arrives. A toast, then, to Ray Harryhausen and the very, very small, exclusive club of occasional lone geniuses, regardless of the technology. It’s been officially proven: assembly lines and render farms cannot replace them.