Special effects wizard, Ray Harryhausen, has passed away at age 92. Most known for his stop-motion effects in such films as Mighty Joe Young, the Sinbad franchise, and Clash of the Titans, Harryhausen went largely unremembered in the digital age though his contributions to movies were still appreciated by fans who might not even have known his name. Even I, a fan of his work who did know his name, was unaware that Harryhausen was still alive until an interview appeared a few years ago.
Harryhausen admitted that he may have used computer animation in his work but he was not a fan of modern cinema, noting that Hollywood in his day was about escapism and focused on what he considered "real heroes." He lamented how the "heroes" of modern movies almost uniformly solve their problems through violence and how graphic the films are. Despite winning an Oscar for his work, he also admitted that he disliked the fact that his career mostly consisted of B-movies, though he later acknowledged that many of the films on which he worked managed to outlast the "A"-movies of the same time.
Harryhausen lived out his final years in London and was not much of a public figure. Several films regarding his contributions to movies have been released in recent years.
© C Harris Lynn, 2013
A rambling melange of pop-culture.
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