Expelled Grey Matter

As a child I loved reading all the major Greek mythological stories.  Hercules and Jason were great but, when it came down to it, the story of Perseus was always my favorite.  It helped that I was also interested in astronomy, which is what led me to be interested in the myths in the first place.  Unfortunately the Phoenix area has expanded, light pollution is worse, and I can no longer sit on a lawn chair and look up and see the brightest stars that make up Pegasus, Andromeda, Cepheus and Cassiopeia.  Perseus was always tricky because, except for Algol, the eye of the head of Medusa, it was always a bit fainter, as was Cetus.  Still, I loved looking up and remembering the tale.  Clash of the Titans came out at the time when I was still most interested in the stories.  I knew nothing about Ray Harryhausen at the time.  I remember the few toys Mattell made in connection with the movie in the stores and remember seeing the story books that were released along with it.   I so much wanted

I sometimes wonder how it would have been to be sitting in a theater in 1963, watching on the big screen where one might have seen giant bugs or guys in monster suits tromping around, and suddenly see something spectacularly new.  I can especially imagine being a kid sitting in the front row as Triton rises from the sea to provide safe passage for Jason and his crew.  For me it has always been one of the most memorable scenes from Jason and the Argonauts , which says a lot since this has some of Ray Harryhausen's best effects work, including the living bronze statue Talos, the Hydra and the skeleton army that arises from its teeth. This was a time when Hercules and Jason films were popular in Italy, and mostly churned out as cheaply as possible.  Predictably, Hercules is in this, played by Nigel Green as producer Charles Schneer didn't want him looking like a body builder, but the movie largely deals with Jason's journey to find the Golden Fleece.  It's been a story I l

Discussions and rumors had been tossed around about a fourth Indiana Jones movies since the early 1990s.  Harrison Ford is known to be a bit mercurial, Sean Connery eventually retired and, unfortunately, River Phoenix died in 1993, and Denholm Elliott around the same time.  George Lucas went on to produce  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles  with a completely different cast, although Ford made a cameo on the one of the episodes.  While discussions were always being had it was clear that, as popular as  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade   was, the only character that would be returning at all would be Indy himself.   Also as the years went by the realities of time set in.  Harrison Ford wasn't getting any younger, and neither was Lucas or Steven Spielberg.  After awhile things just kind of came together and, with a script that was originally titled  Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars , word eventually came that a new movie was in the works.  It eventually became  Indiana Jo

I think with The Tomorrow War the major movie studios may have figured out what to do with their major event films.  Even before the pandemic most of them were losing money, at least in the United States as many Hollywood studios decided that their home country didn't matter as much as China.  But, even with China's audiences seeming to enjoy things that go boom with a lot of pretty lights and, often, the Rock, it wasn't like that market was helping to save the summer blockbuster season either.  Throughout 2020 studios tried to figure out what to do with the films they had made or had almost finished.  Many have been delayed for theatrical release, while a number of others either got streamed on the various platforms the parent companies of the studios own or, in the case of Disney, occasionally gambling that someone will pay $30.00 for something they can see as part of the package they already pay for if they're just patient.  It hasn't helped that most of those mo

Only John Huston could have convinced a major movie studio to let him film on location in Africa in 1951, despite all the logistical problems.  Having Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn as the leads pretty much guaranteed a hefty return for the investment, provided that everyone came back okay.  Lots of apocryphal stories have come about - some the usual colonial myths about cannibalism, which peers said Huston made up out of whole cloth - but one thing that was true is that almost everyone got sick, largely from contaminated water.   Huston had originally planned on filming in Uganda, but decided instead to film along the Belgian Congo.  Bogart hated the humidity, bugs and pretty much everything, while Hepburn loved it until the inevitable dysentery set in.  While filming in some countries in Africa still presents a challenge, at the time many places were still under colonial rule or had just, often violently, shaken it off. Despite European powers saying they were bringing civiliz

1977 is an interesting year for cinema.  Two of the biggest hits were Smokey and the Bandit , which celebrated American automobile culture and also pretty much invented the modern action comedy, and the other was Star Wars , which started a long-running franchise and pretty much changed how science fiction and fantasy movies were made.  One of the other films released that same year was Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger , an example of old school fantasy filmmaking and Ray Harryhausen's penultimate film before he retired.  Ironically, the gameboard scene in Star Wars featured stop motion from effects artists that Harryhausen had influenced, and Industrial Light and Magic would improve on his techniques for The Empire Strikes Back .  I say ironic because, by the time The Clash of the Titans was released, it looked quaint and old fashioned compared to what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were turning out.  I saw both Star Wars and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in the same theater b

One of the reasons George Lucas gave for making Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a prequel was that he didn't want to have to bring the Nazis back into the story.  Much of Raiders of the Lost Ark was a race between Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Hitler's minions, as they were ramping up the Third Reich, to obtain the legendary artifact that would make a country invincible against all other armies.  For once, although Temple of Doom did not turn out to be a great movie, Lucas was right.  Another movie with generally the same enemies would have felt like a carbon copy at the time. There were a number of reasons  Temple of Doom didn't work, and one of those was that the story was way too dark.  There were many serious moments in Raiders , but there was a lot of comedy as well.  Temple of Doom may have had the action but it didn't have the sense of adventure that the first one did.  After giving Indy a few years off both Lucas and director Steven Spielberg were abl

The saying is that there is nothing new under the sun.  While sticking prisoners on an island and letting them fight it out is something often discussed once a few beers are down and the entire way to run the world becomes suddenly clear, the idea of following through may seem quite familiar to those who enjoyed Escape from New York , suffered through Escape from L.A. and, though they're not prisoners, are familiar with the manga and the movie called Battle Royale .  While not the most efficient way of handling criminals in real life the idea of just letting them have their own place to hash things out is prime b-movie fodder.  It should be no surprise that the idea popped up as a '70s exploitation film.  The film is called Terminal Island , and it takes place in a United States where the Supreme Court has outlawed the death penalty.  California has decided get around this by declaring those convicted of first degree murder legally dead and shipping them off to a place called S

The one thing that movie studios are always hoping is that lightning will strike twice.  In the case of Romancing the Stone the movie came out at the right time, was largely based on a good script written by first-time screenwriter Diane Thomas and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who was about to go on to bigger things.  Adventure films were quite popular and it didn't hurt that Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner worked well together.  The problem with lightning is that it can be as destructive as it can be beautiful and exciting.  Thomas had gone on to start working on a project with Steven Spielberg and was unfortunately killed in an automobile accident so, even though the same actors and the same characters are largely present, this was an entirely new script by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner.  Michael Douglas was again producing, and as part of his job as a producer he ended up suing his costar as she had plans to pursue other films but was under contract to do a sequel.  Th

Although Ray Harryhausen originally made a name for himself animating creatures and alien invaders in the early 1950s his popularity really soared when he began making a number of adventure films based on mythological heroes.  The first was the Middle Eastern sailor and adventurer Sinbad, the central figure in a cycle of heroic tales based in the 9th century Abassid Dynasty of Baghdad.  The 7th Voyage of Sinbad   was loosely based on those stories, featuring a giant cyclops, rocs, a dragon and all sorts of great effects.   Harryhausen returned to the world of Sinbad in 1974 with The Golden Voyage of Sinbad , this time giving us a largely original story and, in typical mythical fashion, treating the new story not as a sequel but just as another story featuring the same character.  His original Dynamation technique had by this time evolved into Dynarama, and the original movie had received a recent revival.  While this may not have the same feeling of whimsy as the original did it is sti

Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the biggest hits of 1981 and it made it clear that both George Lucas and Harrison Ford had careers outside of the Star Wars series.  That had in fact come to an end in 1983 with The Return of the Jedi , and at the time it looked like that was going to be the last time Han Solo was going to make an appearance anywhere.  With that behind both Lucas and Ford it was time to revisit Indiana Jones.   Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a fun romp for the whole family with a few shocking scenes but nothing that caused parents' groups to get their hackles up.  Unfortunately, by the time the second Indy movie came out, those hackles had been raised by Poltergeist .  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , along with Gremlins , would be the straws that broke the camel's back.  Christians had drummed up an entire fake Satanic Panic a few years before, the Parents' Music Resource Center was in full swing and groups of "concerned parents" began

Where the original Star Trek series kind of sputtered to an end after three seasons, Star Trek: The Next Generation became the highest rated syndicated show of its time and came to an artificial end in 1994.  It was brought to a close for a purpose: as the original cast had their last adventure in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country , it was felt it was time for the crew of the Enterprise-D  to move from the small to the big screen.  While the cast, and some of the producers, were a bit concerned with this and thought that the show should run parallel to the movies, Paramount (and its new owners, Viacom) decided that there would be plenty of Trek on television with the new show, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which had debuted a year before.   Despite the popularity of TNG there were those hardcore fans who still wanted to see more of Captain James T. Kirk.  For that reason, from the very beginning this was supposed to be a movie that symbolized the changing of the guard.  It was also so