Okay, so I saw a Monkeybone advertisement that claimed that this is the FIRST full length feature film to contain stop motion and live action in a single frame.
Did I hear this right? Any other dopers out there hear this commercial? Don’t “King Kong” and “Jason and the Argonauts” count for anything?
(And on an ethical question/an aside , isn’t it just a little bit misleading to say “from the director of Nightmare Before Christmas?” I know it’s true, but couldn’t they say, “from Henry Selick, the director of Nightmare Before Christmas,” so the uninformed don’t assume Tim Burton directed it.)
Eh, King Kong I’m not sure. Wasn’t Fay Wray actually in separate shots from the stop-motion? But “Jason & the Argonauts”, definitely. And a number of others whose names will undoubtedly pop into my head in the middle of the night tonight. “Sinbad and the golden something or other”? What was the truly awful one from the early 80s with Laurence Olivier and Harry Hamlin and Ursula Andress? Somebody go look up Ray Harryhausen…
Either (a) you mis-heard it, or (b) the copywriter was an idiot who didn’t know his movie history.
“The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” wasn’t it? I’ve got the video somwhere. The sword-wielding multi-armed chop-a-matic deity was totally cool. Supposedly, that was the film that got Tom Baker cast as Dr. Who.
With “King Kong,” it depends on how you define it. There are certainly scenes where there is stop motion and live action. For instance, after they kill one of the monsters (a tyrannosaur?), the explorers walk past it and the body moves and twitches. It seems to be a matte process, but they are onscreen together.
IMHO, I thought it rocked. A lot of the complaints I read beforehand said that it was too disjointed, the artistic styles were too different to work together…nonsense.
It’s not a deep movie by any means, and there are some problems with the sinister subplot (it’s not entirely necessary, if you ask me), but overall it’s a fun, funny movie that holds together very well. A neat package that will play well on Fox in two years.