Aucbvax.1792
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-ML
Wed Jun 17 02:55:18 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #152
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Tuesday, 16 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 152
Today's Topics:
SF Books - Dream Park, SF Movies - CEoTK &
Clash of the Titans & Special Effects (Ray Harryhausen),
SF Topics - Physics Today (Holograms) & International Animation &
Children's TV (Space Angels)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 JUN 1981 0835-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Holograms, fact and fancy
I have not read DREAM PARK (If I allow myself the luxury of
reading I don't have time to write), so I can't comment directly on
Larry Niven's use of holograms in the story, but I thought I would
clarify Ayers comment on a hologram image appearing between you and an
opaque object, such as a rock. Ayres is right if he meant
non-reflective and non-emitting by the word opaque.
If the rock was the emitter of the laser light, either directly
or by reflection from some hidden laser projector, then your brain
would interpret the lights coming from the rock as coming from the
position of the holographic image between you and the seemingly
non-illuminated rock. The rock does not have to be flat. The
computer can compensate for its shape.
What IS impossible is for a holographic image to appear when
there is NO object in the line of sight. (Of course, the object could
be subtle, such as a holographic tissue lens or mirror that is
completely transparent and non-refractive or reflective except at
three very narrow laser frequencies in the red, green, and blue.
Bob Forward
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1981 09:21 PDT
From: Ayers at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Holograms, fact and fancy
One can of course produce a hologram image between a viewer and a rock
if the rock is a little special. It could, in theory, be filled with
miniature lasers (diodes?) or, as Dr. Forward suggests, it could be
reflective at several laser frequencies and its shape accurately known
by a computer.
But such a "rock" is basically a laboratory "rock", not an
out-in-the-woods "rock". DREAM PARK has hologram images appearing
between the viewer and his immediate landscape -- the grass and dirt
he's kicking as he's walking through it -- and between the viewer and
other character's bodies. I stick with my claim that this is
hologram-as-hyperspace. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book.
Bob
------------------------------
Date: 15 JUN 1981 0928-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: holograms, fact and fancy
If that's what Niven and Barnes have in DREAM PARK, they are
hypergrams, not holograms.
Bob Forward
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1981 0955-MDT
From: Spencer W. Thomas <THOMAS AT UTAH-20>
Subject: CEoTK
Translate please??? =S
[ CEoTK = Close Encounters of the Third Kind. -- Jim ]
------------------------------
Date: 15 June 1981 17:58-EDT
From: Daniel G. Shapiro <DGSHAP AT MIT-AI>
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #151
Alright, here's my 2 cents.
Pico-review: sucks dead bears, plan on seeing only half of it
Micro-review: foul beyond belief, don't go unless you are forced at
gunpoint
Mini-review:
Clash of the Titans has got to be the most misbegotten pile of
trash to be plastered onto a movie screen since "attack of the killer
tomatoes." FOUL as a description, is generous.
The acting was absolutely disgusting. They must have hired Perseus by
stripping a flat full of extra's to the waist (to examine their
pectorals) and asking them to stare intently off into the distance.
Perseus won. And he spends the entire movie doing exactly that. (I
think it's because his eyes are close together.) The woman (girl) who
plays Andromeda was so poorly cast that they had to use a stand-in for
the bath scene. (Talk about ambarrassing!) And the cast of thousands
was the most uninspiring bunch of Hollywood locals you have ever seen.
At the very end of the film, when Perseus single handedly defeats the
500ft tall monster with a craving for human flesh, the villagers clap
(singular) with appreciation and cheer, "oh yay, not bad, nice."
Vile, vile, vile and dumb. The also-rans were pretty notable.
Imagine being a Greek soldier (destined to die) who's boss climbs into
the ferry piloted by a living skeleton, death's left hand man, Charon
himself. What do you do? Quake with fear? Turn and run? NO! You
plod onto the boat and take your seat with everyone else, thinking,
"wher' we goin? Isle of Death? Yeah boss, right, you bet."
And the special effects were spotty as well. A good medusa, a mostly
nice pegasus (although some of the flight scenes were clearly taken
with Perseus astride a bench with a beating wing-machine in the
background), an acceptable cereberus, a lousy kraken (same scenes
shown of its release several times) and a worthless vulture. Why
bother?
I had one interesting observation tho.. CLoT is the first movie I have
ever seen which pays alot of attention to detail, and has absolutely
no concern for the larger scale, like plot, photography, sets and
acting. I wonder if this is a new trend.
Dan
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 2201-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
Subject: Film column
By RICHARD FREEDMAN
Newhouse News Service
NEW YORK - The ads for ''Clash of the Titans'' boast such big
box-office glamor names as Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire
Bloom and Ursula Andress.
They're all in the film - briefly - but the real star of this
colorful fantasy on Greek mythological themes is a jovial, bald,
60-year-old man named Ray Harryhausen.
Ray who?
Ray Harryhausen is the special effects genius whose handmade
monsters, filmed by a technique called stop-action animation, have
enlivened the extravaganzas ''It Came From Beneath the Sea,'' ''The
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad'' and ''Jason and the Argonauts'' - which
some Harryhausen devotees consider his masterpiece because of a scene
in which the legendary hero battles a whole army of animated
skeletons.
To honor his unique career in creating special effects, the Museum
of Modern Art has mounted an impressive Ray Harryhausen retrospective
featuring drawings and the actual working models for such engaging
creatures as Pegasus the winged horse; Budo the wise owl; the
fearsome, two-headed dog Dioskilos; the Kraken, who rises from the sea
to terrify everybody; and - Harryhausen's personal favorite - the
Medusa, whose hairdo, consisting of 12 writhing snakes, can turn a man
to stone just by glancing at it.
They're all from ''Clash of the Titans,'' but earlier Harryhausen
creations are on display as well.
''When I saw the retrospective I shuddered because I realized all
the things I should have done,'' the modest artist says.
''We had to do the best we could within the limitations of a
budget and bad weather. Reality, I learned, is carting 100 people
around four countries at the mercy of the weather.''
Harryhausen was turned on to special effects when he saw the
original ''King Kong'' as a boy of 14 at Grauman's Chinese Theater in
Hollywood.
''It was such a startling revelation to see these things move,''
he recalls. ''You knew they weren't real - and yet they looked real.
It was the illusion of a lifetime.''
Inspired, the boy went home to create a bear, using what he hopes
was an old fur coat of his mother's for its realistic pelt.
From there he went on to study anatomy, sculpture and animation
techniques until, in 1946, he was able to join his idol, Willis
O'Brien, who created King Kong, as an assistant on ''Mighty Joe
Young.''
The technique he perfected involves filming his monsters a frame
at a time, while he moves the serpents, tentacles or whatever a
millimeter at a time. It involves immense patience, of course.
''I work in my studio at home in London, where I've lived since
1959,'' he tells an interviewer over lunch during which he passes up
the soft-shelled crabs because ''I've made so much money from animated
crabs I'd feel I was eating my children.''
''The Medusa sequence took two or three months to film,'' he says
of ''Clash of the Titans.'' ''I made the snakes different colors so
I'd know which ones I'd moved and which I hadn't. My great nightmare
is being interrupted by a phone call and forgetting where I've left
off.
''For Perseus' fight with the Medusa I first cast it in bronze to
help the director, Desmond Davis, show the actor, Harry Hamlin, how to
react. Then I modeled the Medusa herself in clay, with liquid rubber
around it. I even gave her hairy armpits ... for Continental
audiences.''
Frequently Harryhausen will first make elaborate, gloomy drawings
of his creatures that resemble the doom-haunted dungeons of Piranesi
or the Dante illustrations of Gustave Dore.
''I can't draw in any other way,'' he says in acknowledging the
influences. ''I'm a great admirer of Dore's, and recently found two
rare oil paintings by him. Did you know that several of his paintings
are supposed to have gone down with the Titanic?
''I also love Piranesi's gigantism. I think he and Dore are coming
back in fashion because people are getting tired of looking at gunny
sacks pretending to be art.
''The drawings are mostly to raise money for making the movie. But
they should help the director visualize the set, as well. It always
amazes me that certain directors can't judge from the drawings. Then
they see the completed set and say they don't like it.
''Sam Goldwyn once said: 'Start with an earthquake and then build
to a climax.' That's always been my motto in dreaming up my creatures.
''But we're not in competition with God. We want the audience to
know they're watching animated creatures and not the real thing,
because with most of my monsters there is no real thing - thank God!''
Harryhausen's hobby, when he isn't inventing, constructing, and
laboriously moving his monsters for the camera, is collecting film
scores, about which he has some pungent ideas:
''Did you know Max Steiner's score for ''King Kong'' was the first
original movie score? It's still a masterpiece. Too much movie music
in the last 10 years has been degraded to a pop-rock beat, and a lot
of the young audience really hates it. They just don't know any
alternative because not one radio station these days plays sane music.
''But television at least gives youngsters a chance to hear those
wonderful old Warner Brothers scores - Steiner's for Bette Davis' 'Now
Voyager,' for instance. Laurence Rosenthal's music for 'Clash of the
Titans' is in the grand romantic tradition.''
Strolling up Fifth Avenue to his suite at the Plaza Hotel after
lunch, Harryhausen stops to peer in the window of Steuben Glass to
admire a toy trian. Then he enters the F.A.O. Schwartz toy emporium to
check on whether they've got models of his ''Clash of the Titans''
creatures in stock yet.
They don't, and he registers a child's disappointment.
''I'm especially interested in Bubo, the computerized owl,'' he
says. ''It's a development of Athena's wise old owl, but a real owl is
so untalented it would be boring to watch stretched out through a
whole picture.
''So I had Hephaestus, the craftsman of the gods, construct this
robot owl; you know there have been robots throughout all mythology.
A good robot should be slightly menacing. What influenced me most
after 'King Kong' was Fritz Lang's Metropolis,' which has a woman
turned into a robot.''
Arrived at his suite to show off the foot-high models for his
creations, Harryhausen chuckles at the hard time he had getting them
through U.S. Customs, which didn't quite know what to make of them.
Then his eye lights on a necktie his Scottish wife Diana Bruce has
bought him during a morning's shopping expedition.
The tie is lying in its gift wrapping on the coffee table. Its
pattern is an elaborate assortment of lovely pastel monsters, all
writhing together.
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1981 15:25:33-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: more memory fragments
That show W. Martin was asking about-- I think it was the
``International Animation Festival'' I used to watch it on PBS in the
NYC area on Sunday nights right after (before?) Monty Python. It was
certainly worth seeing.
I've been waiting for someone to mention Space Angels. Wasn't the
heavy sidekick's name Taurus? I recall that there were three crew,
two men (including Taurus) and a shapely woman. Finally the seats in
the rocket pitched so that our heroes (oops that's another show) were
always upright w.r.t. the camera, whether the ship was vertical
(take-off and landing) or horizontal (flying through space).
Lastly, a bit of song (not from SA):
When he gets in a scrape,
he makes his escape
with the help of his friend
a great big ape!
Then away he'll schlep
on his elephant Shep
when Ursula and Andrea(???) stay in step. .
David Ungar
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1981 1704-PDT
From: Craig W. Reynolds from III via Rand <REYNOLDS AT RAND-AI>
Subject: International Animation
The animation anthology show Will Martin referred to is "International
Animation" hosted by Jean Marsh on PBS stations. [ Thanks also to
Andrew Tannenbaum (TRB@MIT-MC) for identifying this series. -- Jim ]
It is a must-see for any animation fans out there. Many (most?) of the
classic animated shorts can be seen on this show. A very wide
selection of styles, periods, and countries of origin are presented. A
lot of material from eastern Europe was shown, especially the Zagreb
(?) studio's work. I also like the theme animation of the show.
Pickiness: "cartoon" is a style of drawing (eg "a political cartoon"),
"animation" is something that moves, or seems to (eg "clay
animation", "computer graphic animation")
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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