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Godzilla Teaser Trailer
This is looking surprisingly good. But what else would you expect from the director of Monsters?
Ray Harryhausen: A Brief Appreciation
It’s been a week since special effects legend Ray Harryhausen passed. Like so many others of my and earlier generations, Harryhausen’s classic stop-motion effects were the movie effects we grew up with. Who else could make a metal giant so terrifying, a sword-wielding skeleton so dangerous, or a gorgon so freakishly crowned?
Gareth Edwards of Monsters fame (and soon to be of Godzilla fame) has written a nice appreciation of Harryhausen’s work, which seems especially honest since Edwards is a special effects man, himself.
Way before digital came along, the only way to achieve some of the things in your head was to go about it the hard way with stop motion animation. It’s so much harder than what we can do today. I can’t wrap my head around it. He would do scenes like Medusa’s snakes on her head and managed to keep track of every single movement of every snake one frame at a time. It took a level of discipline and genius that we don’t need to do visual effects today. It’s quite remarkable what he did — and I don’t there will be anyone quite like him ever again….
When I was doing visual effects on my first feature film “Monsters,” I would watch Harryhausen’s films on loop. Seeing the way he did it back then, with such harder resources, was definitely a motivation for me. I think he’ll always be remembered as one of the greats in cinema history. His name will become more and more valuable.
Monsters: Film Review
When you hear of a film called Monsters, your mind probably makes a quick number of associations: Monsters, Inc., Monsters vs. Aliens, Monster’s Ball, etc. When you hear it’s about alien lifeforms and the people who try to survive their invasion, you probably think of Godzilla, Them, Predator, Cloverfield, and others. What you’re probably not imagining is a quiet and contemplative, but never boring, trek through alien-infested territory that is beautiful more often than it is terrifying.
Monsters was written and directed by Gareth Edwards, who was not known for much at the time. It was filmed with a budget of less than $500,000, and Edwards did all of the visual effects himself after filming was complete. Released back in 2010, Monsters made the rounds at various film festivals and eventually as a limited release in theatres. It seems to have descended into rental land without making much of a splash, which is a real pity.
It’s hard to say too many good things about this movie. The setup is fairly simple: a space probe sent to find suspected life elsewhere in the solar system returns to Earth with an alien infection, and crashes over Mexico. The northern half of Mexico is quickly overrun by the giant octopus-like creatures, forcing the U.S. to build a massive wall to protect its southern border. America and Mexico combine their armed forces to send air strikes at the aliens whenever they creep too close to civilized areas.
