This is nominally a sci-fi based site – but sci-fi and fantasy are essentially the same thing, it’s just the mechanics that differ. Sci-fi has lightsabers, force fields and slave girls in metal bikinis. Fantasy has swords, magic spells… and slave girls in metal bikinis. As Arthur C Clarke famously wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. So it’s not surprising that we’re both fans of classic fantasy films, as well as sci-fi.
Assuming that at least some of our readers will fall into that same intersection in the genre Venn diagram, I thought I’d post this link to an interview with Ray Harryhausen, stop-motion animation genius.
(And yes, I do know that Harryhausen also had a hand in some sci-fi flicks – but it’s the fantasy films with which he’s probably most synonymous)
It would have been nice (and appropriate) if the author of the Harryhausen article had mentioned that Ray was given an Honoray Oscar in 1992 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. Both of these “rewards” were the result of long and heartfelt campaigns by one of Harryhausen’s US admirers, Arnold Kunert, who would become Harryhausen’s agent and producer in 2004.