(Thanks, SidCaesarCom!)
Do yourselves a favor, class. Hit up Google (or whatever search engine you use) and YouTube, type in Sid Caesar and prepare for an education. Without him and a bunch of other dearly departed funny people, you have no sketch comedy, no Saturday Night Live and quite a few other shows and folks making us all laugh to varying degrees. What few episodes of Your Show of Shows I’ve seen made it for me one of the funniest live sketch shows ever created, and while “tame” by today’s standards, the writing team (Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, Danny Simon, Mel Tolkin and Larry Gelbart among others) plus the cast managed to pull off some nicely subversive and just plain timeless routines.
(Thanks, shawmk!)
I’m kind of bummed out a tiny bit because too many younger folks don’t know the man’s work and probably know less about how he and his team revolutionized on a few fronts, but that’s what the internet is for, I suppose. Anyway, here are three routines to start you on your trip. I’ll leave it to you to find more (and believe me, there are PLENTY of clips to go around from this show and others Sid did). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do a little research myself – I could use a good laugh today…
(Thanks, Fuzz Tone!)
From the moment you hear Bernard Herrmann’s outstanding main theme that sets up the thrilling adventure ahead, director Nathan Juran’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad sets itself squarely in fantasy film history as a true classic. Of course, having Ray Harryhausen on board and in full charge of the film’s effects work at the height of his talents makes this one an absolute must-see as well as one of the best genre films ever made. It’s a perfect blending of talents by all involved and it’s probably the one film Harryhausen worked on I’ve seen the most times as have many who’ve been influenced by it over the decades. This film was yet another hit for Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer and also introduced the word Dynamation into the movie lexicon (later rechristened “Super DynaMation” and later, “Dynarama”), which amusingly enough, ONLY refers to the stop motion technique the master perfected over time and became an immediate means of letting his fans know who was behind the visual effects in that latest cinematic treat they wanted to catch…
While it has some great creature and scenic effects, some terrifically lousy acting and ridiculous dialog plus a few plot elements nearly sink 20,000,000 Miles to Earth like the doomed spacecraft that brings the Ymir into movie monster history.
Without Ray Harryhausen’s still impressive special effects, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers would probably have been just another 1950’s “B” movie lost to the ages, only popping up on one of those cheapo compilation DVD’s you see as impulse items at some big box stores. However, thanks to those awesome saucers and some fine destruction of federal property by some rather cranky aliens, the film has been a favorite as well as an inspiration for other flicks from Independence Day to Mars Attacks! and more. The somewhat clunky acting and use of WWII stock footage don’t hurt the film one bit because they’re usually only a few minutes from one of Harryhausen’s cool animated saucers blowing the heck out of something or simply flying across the sky…
Forget about today’s overblown CG effects, many of which make modern movies worse than better. Ray’s best work was all about blending fantasy into the assorted realities of the worlds he created and transporting viewers to places and making them forget about the outside world for about an hour and a half or so.
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