25 January 2007

Movie Monsters

Last week, hubby and I managed to see Pan's Labyrinth. You've probably seen Pan, the bluish creature with the big horns, in all the promos and while clearly they spent big bucks to make him real, the true monster in the film is a human. Whether you like your monsters human or otherworldly, I highly recommend the film; I also wrote a full review for The MediaNook.

... via Drawn! I direct you to the Ray Harryhausen Creature List. Oh, WOW. Not only are the creatures itemized, but clicking on its name brings up a short film clip of the creature in action.

... and while not quite monsters, the creatures in Michael Mills' classic NFB* animated short, Evolution (1971) are not of this earth either. I was happy to watch it in its entirety today on YouTube, though I'm not sure the NFB would be happy to find it there. [While at the NFB, I found a bunch of their short films are available online so I watched another favourite, The Cat Came Back.]


*that would be the National Film Board, well known for producing Oscar®-winning animated short films, among other things.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great links. I haven't seen those in so long; I'd forgotten all about them.

I am so far behind in so many things, will have to save Pan and Ray for the weekend . . .

davidd said...

"The Cat Came Back." Is that, like, Canada's greatest contribution to the art of film or something. I remember seeing it when it aired on American television when I was a little kid. The song pretty much stuck in my head... forever. Years later, they showed it to us in a media class in college. Because the instructor said it was great, the sycophantic hordes practically slobbered all over the film, gushing at how original, creative, and brilliant it was.

Granted, it's memorable; at least, the earworm of a song is (coincidentally, I caught myself humming it in the car on the way to work just this past week).

But, like, it's gotta be thirty years old now. Hasn't Canada produced anything worthwhile or memorable in the meantime? Other than "The New Red Green Show," I mean?

Gosh how I miss Possum Lodge.

I'll have to check out your "Pan" review and the Harryhausen site. I hope it has the sequence where the Ymir from Venus fights the elephant. As a kid I always thought that looked so amazingly real. I wonder if it holds up?

I'm sure you'll now regret having linked to your blogger sites from LJ. ;-)

(I think I have a blogger sign-in... I'll have to see if I can remember it).

-davidd