From: donnell@manowar.micro.umn.edu (Your Heinous)
Subject: Re: SF Novels That Would Make Great Films
Organization: none
Distribution: rec
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:08:23 GMT

In article <BvuMz5.I35@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> uhschreg@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Ulrich Schreglmann) writes:
>@apollo.HP.COM (Jennifer E. Levine) writes:
>
>
>>|> In article <22416@venera.isi.edu>, jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan) writes:
>>|> > 
>>|> > We were discussing SF novels or novellas that were by other than the
>>|> > "mainstream" authors (e.g., Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury, etc.)
>>|> > that haven't been made into movies, but would be great.
>>|> 
>
>>I always thought the first book of Anne McCaffery's The Dragonriders of Pern 
>>would make a good movie if they could pull off the Dragon effects well.
>
>I think they could if they cared. Have you ever seen "Dragonslayer"?
>If the F/X were as good as there, you couldn't ask for more. (I heard
>the dragon was a stop motion puppet whose images of movement were then
>blurred by a computer, which made me never notice that SMA was even in-
>volved. This makes me wonder about other, more recent movies which used
>SMA, too, and a high budget. (e.g. RoboCop) But watching those it's
>rather frustrating to see such King-Kong-like features. Does anybody
>know why they don't use computers there to make the motions look real?
>Instead they use the graphics for demonic faces, looking like real
>kitsch! (RoboCop 2) Sheesh!)
>I wonder what Jurassic Park will be like, eventually.
>
>
>May the Cool Finish the Cretaceous!
>
>(C)OOL mcmxcii

I prefer standard Stop Motion animation for its Style, rather than computer-
animation hybrids. Vertithrax looked great in "DragonSlayer" but that is
a rare exception. The fault of "Robo Cop 2" can be laid at the feet of
director Irvin Kershner. He is often lauded for the "Empire Strikes Back",
but the rest of his career is pretty dismal. Ever see "Stakeout on Dope
Street". He made that the classic it is.  

The problems with recent SMA lie more with the people doing it. I see no
new breed of SM animators coming up. Jim Danforth and David Allen both do
excellent work, but they are never gi9ven the kind of control that 
Ray Harryhausen had, and their work is often afforded a cursory 
treatment. <Although Allen did some nice work for "Robot Jox". Too bad
about the movie, though> Stop motion is a dying art that has never been
understood by Hollywood. In their efforts to imitate Harryhausen,
"Jack the Giant Killer" was fabricated. Ended up costing quite a bit more
than the "Sinbad" movie it was imitating, and was vastly inferior.
Still fun though, with Jim Danforth effects, and about 5 different versions
of the film exist, with varying effects, plot, and music. One is even a 
musical!

Spielberg has given us some nice psuedo-SMA imagery, notably in "Young
Sherlock Holmes", but if I have to sit through one more flying bicycle,
I am gonna blow chunks!!!

As for novels that would make good films, I'd like to see some 
Moorcock adaptations, and perhaps more of Harlan Ellison's 
"Blood's A Rover" <The first part became "A Boy And His Dog">, and 
maybe even his "Kyba War" series. <Demon with a Glass Hand was done for
"Outer Limits". ThAt is kind of a conclusion to the saga, I think>

or how about a Robert Anton Wilson adaptation?

					--Judex--