Monday, April 13, 2009

An Interesting Headline I Can't Really Read

elpais.com: Liam Neeson será Zeus en el 'remake' de 'Furia de Titanes'
Liam Neeson? I mean, don't get me wrong: he's a very fine actor. But what makes the original film so delicious is that it's Olivier playing the role—one of the few actors in history equally capable of scaling the highest peaks and plumbing the lowest depths of his profession. That it also has some of the great actors of a generation—Maggie Smith, Burgess Meredith, Siân Phillips and Clare Bloom—in what is, essentially, a B-movie makes it even more fun. I've often wondered how many of them signed on because Olivier was going to do it... and I strongly suspect that Olivier signed on because he thought, "Of course! How utterly appropriate that I should play Zeus!"

For my money, the real reason to see a Ray Harryhausen film is to see Ray Harryhausen special effects. Does anyone remember who played the title role in
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad? Can you name any cast member from Jason and the Argonauts? Of course not: they're Harryhausen films! The stars are the skeleton army, the harpies, the centaur, the cyclops. All I need to appreciate his films are a bag* of popcorn, a cherry coke, and old fashioned movie house filled with 6- to 12-year-olds hopped up on sugar and excitement.

I'm a big fan of Liam Neeson. But he's no Olivier... and I mean that as a compliment.

*Granted, I'm dating myself, but Harryhausen films belong to a time when a bag of popcorn was sufficient.

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