It seems to me that their just losing control. There are too many films at once with pressure to make each more visually stunning than the last. The Halmis could probably do better work if they just relaxed a bit.

Timmer...I'll dig around and see if I can find out where Ray lives.
Wouldn't it be so cool if he wound up being your NEIGHBOR?

As to the Hallmark movies, there are the good ones and the bad ones. I did not see this new Jason, nor did I care to. I did enjoy MERLIN, and I liked parts of ALICE (plus I'll watch anything with Tina Majorino and love it, no matter how bad it actually is). The loved the version of ANIMAL FARM on TNT. But I'd have to agree that they are making way too many way too fast. Slow down a bit, people.

There were certain parts of Alice In Wonderland that I enjoyed. Martin Short as The Mad Hatter was inspired, and the sequence with Gene Wilder as the Mock Turtle was also quite good. That's what I find so disturbing about these Halmi productions...they feature a few wonderful moments, couched in FOUR HOURS of film!

I saw a bit of ARABIAN NIGHTS and was rather favorably impressed, it seemed to be more serious in tone than some of the others.

H - I heard John Lithgow was the voice of God in NOAH'S ARK.

had to turn it off because the MUSIC was horrendous! It's not often a score is so bad that I can't stand to watch a show, but GEEZ!

However, I did like Simon Boswell's Herrmannesque score, which I'm hoping receives a release. One theme in particular reminded me of Boswell's fine score to THE WAR ZONE.

I saw "Merlin" too and found it incredible shallow and boring, even with the great cast and an average Trevor Jones' score.

NP: just started BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (FSM release, just came in the mail today -- could've paid forty bucks for the Score LP fifteen years ago, but I decided "I think I'll wait." It was a longer wait than I anticipated, but worth it! The OST AND the score album all in one package. Ah, the miracle of the compact disc.)

NAAAAAH!

Rocco, I love Selick's work, but it's simply an updated version of those old "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" shows...I'm referring specifically to stop-motion utilized in a real-life setting. Tippett worked as a consultant on the "Jurassic Park" films, and his input helped tremendously...but what's he doing with stop-motion?
What's Danforth done since aiding Harryhausen on "Clash Of The Titans"?

Recently I was defending RODAN's special effects at another thread -- pointing out that however unrealistic Japanese SFX may appear at times, it is frequently a DELIBERATE look. Shinji Higuchi is the most prominent and accomplished of the younger SFX guys who apply suitmation -- I've met him a couple of times, and he's absolutely proud to be continuing the tradition, even though computer graphics are increasingly gaining a toehold even in the impoverished Japanese industry. Higuchi has made the most of those a couple of times, too -- there are wonderful CGI shots several times in his most recent GAMERA 3 (1999). But he prefers to use it as decoration rather than the Main Event.

Baker is STILL using suitmation -- witness parts of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, which comprise a seamless blend of suitmation and mechanics (they really DID build a massive Joe robot for some shots -- one which puts the forty-foot Glen Armstrong monstrosity from the KING KONG remake to shame). Baker actually cinched the MIGHTY JOE YOUNG assignment by hiring a dwarf to inhabit what he believes is his best gorilla suit to date (I won't argue). He built it, tucked the actor inside, and brought it to the producers, holding a remote-control device and pretending he was controlling what the "robot" did! Once they were sufficiently awed, he gave up the secret, the whole point of his show being: "This is how good suitmation can be."

(sigh) Boris, I guess I can't really say that stop-motion isn't dying, but the field is more complicated than you might think. Yes, the Harryhausen "look" is pretty well gone -- it's part of the reality of the business, I guess. CGI is somewhat less time-consuming and, as a consequence, increasingly cheaper (if the Japanese can have good CGI effects by now, then you can bet it's getting cheaper). The nature of stop-motion has been evolving for decades anyway -- witness the primitive ancestor of CGI, "go-motion," which beautifully animated Vermithrax in DRAGONSLAYER. A similar process was used for the demon dogs in GHOSTBUSTERS.

Henry Selick is probably the last of the traditionalists, and I wouldn't write off his doing something Harryhausenlike somewhere down the line. We should be grateful we at least have HIM. There sure won't be any more Rankin/Bass specials as we knew them. I question his instincts, however -- I loved NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, but JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH mostly left me cold, not least because I thought it a mistaken interpretation of one of my favorite books from childhood.

Oh yes, besides Shinji Higuchi, there's a new Japanese fellow who seems promising, name forgotten for now, who directed the SFX for the upcoming GODZILLA 2000 (this will actually play in theaters this summer! Amazing.) I am so happy to see SFX director Koichi Kawakita off the Godzilla series, I can hardly tell you. I don't merely dislike him personally, I'm disappointed in him as an artist JUST as much as I am in him as a human being.

(heh, personal politics creeping in ... )

CGI, while it has produced some impressive images, is a relatively soulless procedure. Because of the fact that you CAN show everything, people DO, and that's not neccesarily the best way to make a film. Let's not forget the completely pointless remake of "The Haunting" from last year, filled to the brim with unneccesary CGI graphics (the original film had NO effects and was much, much more terrifying than anything I have seen in recent years, with the possible exception of "The Sixth Sense").

...and let's face it. When somebody did an effective stop-motion sequence, it was an impressive achievement. Fighting skeletons was an amazing image when Ray Harryhausen was doing it. It loses some of it's fun when it's CGI in "The Mummy."