Ray Harryhausen, one of the giants, geniuses, kings of the
motion picture died today; he was 92. Somehow it didn’t even make the news
crawl that one of the all time greats, whose movies were such a foundation of
most people’s childhoods, had died. At least Jeff Hanneman of Slayer made the
news crawl when he died last week. But you know, Chris Christie got a lap band,
so you know, that’s what everyone wanted to talk about. What’re you gonna do? I
don’t want to get into trying to hail his wonderful life here and now,
and I don’t want this to become an obituary blog, but it’s depressing that I
had to find out by accident online, and not even see it on the news tonight. I
guess despite the fact that he was perhaps the greatest titan of screen science fiction, stop-motion animation is just so
last century, huh? (But I still like it a lot better than most CGI stuff. And CGI would be a lot worse without Harryhausen’s work to inspire and guide everyone.)
Here’s the NY Times notice:
