Cinefantastique Online

LAWRENCE FRENCH celebrated his 20th anniversary as a contributor to Cinefantastique Magazine with his cover story on the making of THE RETURN OF THE KING. As Cinefantastique’s longtime San Francisco correspondent, he has written numerous stories about Pixar and Lucasfilm, and interviewed such genre stalwarts as Vincent Price, Tim Burton, Ray Harryhausen, John Lasseter, Phil Tippett and Ray Bradbury. He is also the editor of the highly regarded website on Orson Welles, Wellesnet.com. His book as editor of Richard Matheson’s Edgar Allan Poe scripts for THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM was published by Gauntlet Press in 2007, with a second volume on TALES OF TERROR and THE RAVEN due out in the future. For Cinefantastique Online, he currently writes the regular column Supernal Dreams.

Watch the Video of the BFI and BAFTA special achievement award presented to RAY HARRYHAUSEN on the occasion of the master animator’s 90th birthday. This fabulous 42 minute minute video includes comments from James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Nick Park Frank Darabont, John Landis, and more.

As I’ve suggested for the last two years, limiting the Academy Award for “Best Visual Effects” to only three nominees seems quite unfair, since all the other categories (except make-up) have five nominees. Given the overwhelming number of films that feature superlative effects work these days, it has become increasingly obvious that this is a change that has been long overdue.

Probably the biggest challenge for Pixar in making TOY STORY 3 was turning the third film into more than just a rehash of ideas from the first two stories. But having a central core of well-loved toy characters who were already familiar to audiences from the first two movies, freed the Pixar story team [...]

Christopher Lee as Saruman the White in LORD OF THE RINGS
In Tim Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND  Christopher Lee has a brief one line “cameo” as the voice of  the dragon-like Jabberwock, so it was interesting to note that Lee himself  has recently suggested  he might play the voice of Smaug, the dragon,  in the upcoming [...]

My friends over at The One Ring Net posted this shocking news at their site today:
Guillermo Del Toro announced today that he is no longer directing the two movies based on J.R.R Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, but will continue to co-write the screenplays. Out of respect to the legions of loyal Tolkien fans, [...]

Cinefantastique celebrates the horror stars’ birthdays with retrospective interviews regarding their work together on HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, THE OBLONG BOX, and SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN.

In this article, taken from the book Fritz Lang (Oxford University Press, 1977) by Lotte Eisner, the sculptor Walter Schultze-Mittendorf reveals how he created the iconic “false Maria” robot for Metropolis.
The Birth of the female robot in METROPOLIS
By Walter Schultze-Mittendorf
Problems of form? No! Expressionism lived. Technological form had been discovered as motif for painting [...]

Brigitte Helm as Maria
Fritz Lang discovered the 17-year old actress Brigitte Helm for the double-role of  Maria and her robot counterpart in METROPOLIS and she gives a remarkable performance in the film, convincingly portraying both angel and whore . In this 1927 article she discussed the rewards and difficulties of working with Fritz Lang, a [...]

In this 1927 article written by cinematographer Gunther Rittau, he discusses the many groundbreaking special effects that were devised for the film.  Metropolis took an astounding 310 days to shoot in 1926, requiring the services of hundreds of technicians, and Gunther Rittau shared the camerawork with Karl Freund, who like Lang came to Hollywood where [...]

The best film of the year is easily the newly restored version of  Fritz Lang’s science-fiction masterpiece, METROPOLIS which features twenty- five minutes of missing footage that hasn’t been seen since the movie had it’s premiere in Berlin, 83 years ago.  This new footage restores important subplots and makes it clear just how badly METROPOLIS had been [...]

The Great Mouse Detective also marked the first and only time Disney asked Vincent Price to voice a character in one of their feature animated films. Originally Ratigan had been designed as a thin and wiry rodent, but as Glen Keane notes, Vincent Price’s magniloquent rendering of Ratigan’s voice led the filmmakers to turn the part into a much larger and more powerful character.

With the re-make of Clash of the Titans hitting theaters this week, Warner Bros. has released the original 1981 film on Blue-Ray disc. To celebrate, here is part V of my interview with Ray Harryhausen, discussing his hand-crafted approach to creating the film’s special visual effects.

The talented fantasy writer Charles Beaumont died tragically young at the age of 38 in 1967. He is now the subject of a fascinating new documentary film titled “Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man.” The doc features interviews with numerous people who worked with Beaumonth, including author Richard Matheson, who shares some stories with CFQ about his good friend and sometime collaborator.