performing arts

Ray Harryhausen inspired a generation of special effects artists with movies, which, while pretty hokey today, fascinated most of his audience and made the rest set up miniature studios in their garages. Many of the latter went on to impress audiences with special effects surpassing those of Harryhausen, but forever praised him and acknowledged their debt to him, hence passing along his name to new generations, including my own. I learned his name through Peter Jackson mentioning him in an interview about "Bad Taste". They showed a short clip from "Jason and the Argonauts" (guess which scene), and I was impressed. Later, I read copious amount of material about him, and when I had the money, bought this rather expensive, but hugely informative book.

Ray wisely keeps his private life out of "An Animated Life". 99% of the book is business or SFX-related, which I found pleasing, as I tend to loathe the kind of self-indulgence practiced in other auto-biographies, particularly those of rock-stars. The book's 300 pages are jam-packed with pictures, illustrations and text, explaining in a mostly non-technical language, how Harryhausen's breakthrough effects work was done (it also has a nice picture of Jane Seymour in a bikini). You find yourself going "aha" and "wow, that was pretty logical", which is a good indicator that the editor has done his job well. Your respect and admiration for Ray grows with each page, as you begin to realize the amount of work it took to put to screen stuff that looks pretty ordinary, or even bad, today.

Personal commentaries are frequent throughout, and this is the only place where the book failed to impress me. Harryhausen comes across as a pretty naive gentleman with a narrow-minded view of movies. Some times, his opinions and attempts at dry humour are amusing, at other times they just sound like a bitter old man. You can't really dislike him, he's too much of a nice and non-confrontative guy for that, but his comments about CGI and modern on-screen violence kinda irked me. This is the only fault I could find with the book, otherwise it's a brilliant and thoroughly researched book about a great on-screen magician.

One might assume that having all the unprecedented technical information about R H's stop-motion model animation process that this book affords could take away much of the mystery and magic from his work, but I can assure you that, for me at least, it only increased it. Any number of intelligent (and very patient) people could be taught this animation process in detail and still not be able to create work on the same level as R H's because they would not be able to bring to their work the same depth of artistic vision. That is one of the many values of this books that it makes clear that R H's greatness is not a matter of mere technique. All art of genius has the ability to open up dimensions that technique alone can not totally account for because the vision-seed is in the artist before the technique is ever developed. The technique gives the vision a means of becoming visible to other people, but the vision itself is already there. This what I mean by saying that having my understanding of R H's technique increased by this book does not take away any wonder from his work. Again, the increased understanding makes it clear that the technical process can not explain this wonder and therefore can not diminish it. In fact, I think we can safely assume that R H's technique was brought into existence by the force of his artistic vision and not the other way around. When R H sets about animating one of his fabulous models, his vision mysteriously seeps into the process in a way that the process itself does not reveal. The technique reveals the vision, but does not, and can not, reveal the source of the vision or how it enters into the technical process. This is the mystery of ART. And this reveals why no current CGI animation, with its blind and lopsided emphasis on, and faith in, mere sophistication of technique can produce art on the level of R H's. His process may seem crude and even primitive to the sophisticated philistines, but his vision puts mystery and magic into the work of his hands that no computer can touch nor ever will unless some other true artist can bring to CGI a genuine vision comparable to what R H brought to stop-motion model animation. The photo-realism of the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK may be powerfully entertaining in an unsettling sort of way that appeals to jaded viewers, but that does not make it art, nor does it even make them realistic in a deeper sense. And if one were, incidently, to actually encounter a dinosaur in an uncontrolled setting, I think it would be a far more 'unreal' experience, and far less photo-like, than seems to be assumed by the current popular narrow mind-set that is only an extension of the ridiculous faith in the salvific nature of technology itself. There is an artistic and a philosophical principle involved here: technique follows vision and no amount of sophistication of technique can create genuine art when genuine vision is lacking.
This wonderful book does have some inevitable short-comings from the perspective R H fans such as some too small photos and not enough photos of armatures, etc., due to the fact that it is a product limited by business considerations: the first priority was to make the publishers a profit, the second to please R H fans. But I am still delighted with it and recommend it very highly. I believe it will greatly please any real R H fan as long as you take it for what it is, a technical exploration with an interesting glimpse of R H's life and personality, and don't expect it to 'explain' R H's work as art. In that light, I think something that would be very pleasing would be a companion volume of comparable quality that was critical study of R H's work as art.
We are still really only beginning to understand what R H actually accomplished and this book constitutes a genuine foundation to build on. I am very happy to have it. Let me note too that the Amazon price is good and that the first copy I received had a cracked binding and Amazon replaced it no charge in a very prompt and courteous manner.

This is the book RH fans have been waiting over 20 years for! When you realize that the last RH feature film was released 23 years ago, it's remarkable that one individual has so much staying power among fans and film industry types. More than a generation has grown up never having seen a RH film in theatrical release!

A fantastic book cover to cover. The little stories, technical details, and personal remembrances are what makes this book special. Contrary to what many mainstream moviegoers may think, RH films are not campy. RH is genuine in his passion as a storyteller, and it is very poignant to read RH lamenting the passing of stop motion as a cinematic art form--now having been completely eclipsed by CG effects.

I was very impressed with the quality and quantity of the photos, many never before published. This is truly the final statement of RH's magnificent career. I'm very pleased that this book has been published. I noticed a few small but embarrassing typos. The typeface is also too small but with a book of this size it's a compromise the publisher had to make. It should not deter you in the least from buying it. After reading it you will want to watch all RH's movies again.

The stop motion models--in particular the major characters--are stars themselves, and I would have liked to have seen a section devoted only to the models, i.e. a "where they are now" kind of appendix. RH tells us that some models were cannibalized to make other ones, and time has not been kinds to others. I really would have liked to have seen more shots of the models as they are today.