This is a list of sovereign states giving an overview of states around the world with information on the status and recognition of their sovereignty.
The list contains 204 entries, . The states are divided using two distinct methods: # The membership within the United Nations system column divides the states into three categories: 193 member states of the United Nations, two states that are not UN member states but are either a UN observer state or a member state of a UN specialised agency, and nine other states. # The sovereignty disputes column divides the states into two categories: 13 states whose sovereignty is disputed and 191 other states.
Compiling a list such as this can be a difficult and controversial process, as there is no definition that is binding on all the members of the community of nations concerning the criteria for statehood. For more information on the criteria used to determine the contents of this list, please see the "criteria for inclusion" section below.
The French Republic also includes the overseas territories of: (includes the Antarctic claim of Adélie Land). Clipperton Island is a possession of the government. French sovereignty over Banc du Geyser, Bassas da India, Europa Island, Glorioso Islands, Juan de Nova Island, Mayotte, and Tromelin Island is disputed in part by Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and the Comoros. |- |valign=top| – Gabonese Republic French: – |A UN member state |A None |- |valign=top|Gambia – Republic of The Gambia
The designation "Netherlands" can refer to either one of the Kingdom's constituent countries or to the short name for the Kingdom (e.g., in international organizations). The Kingdom of the Netherlands as a whole is a member of the EU, but EU law applies only to the Netherlands proper. |- |valign=top|
Cook Islands and Niue are sovereign subjects of international law. UN recognized the full treaty-making capacity of the Cook Islands in 1992 and that of Niue in 1994.
Cook Islands and Niue are members of UN specialized agencies without any specifications or limitations. Cook Islands is member of FAO, ICAO, IFAD, IMO, UNESCO, WHO, WMO and Niue is member of FAO, IFAD, UNESCO, WHO, WMO.
New Zealand also has the dependent territories of: The Tokelauan government claims sovereignty over Swains Island, part of American Samoa, a territory of the United States. New Zealand does not recognize the Tokelauan claim. |- |valign=top| – Republic of Nicaragua Spanish: – |A UN member state |A None Nicaragua contains 2 autonomous regions, Atlántico Sur and Atlántico Norte. |- |valign=top| – Republic of Niger French: – Hausa: – |A UN member state |A None |- |valign=top| – Federal Republic of Nigeria
|A UN member state |A None Pakistan is a federation of 4 provinces, 1 capital territory, and tribal regions. Pakistan disputes Indian sovereignty over Kashmir. It exercises control over some areas, but does not explicitly claim any part of it, instead regarding it as a disputed territory. The portions that it controls are divided into two polities, administered separately from Pakistan proper: |- |valign=top| – Republic of Palau Palauan: –
In addition, there are uninhabited possessions of the United States in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea: Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Navassa Island (disputed by Haiti), and Wake Island (disputed by the Marshall Islands). According to some sources, the United States also claims Bajo Nuevo Bank and Serranilla Bank as territories. |- |valign=top| – Eastern Republic of Uruguay Spanish: – |A UN member state |A None |- |valign=top| – Republic of Uzbekistan Uzbek: – → |A UN member state |A None Uzbekistan contains 1 autonomous region, Karakalpakstan. |- |valign=top| – Republic of Vanuatu Bislama: –
Note that in some cases there is a divergence of opinion over the interpretation of the first point, and whether an entity satisfies it is disputed.
On the basis of the above criteria, this list includes the following 204 entities:
τ *Sovereign states Sovereign states
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Coordinates | 52°5′0″N21°11′53″N |
---|---|
name | Toby Keith |
background | solo_singer |
birth name | Toby Keith Covel |
birth date | July 08, 1961 |
origin | Clinton, Oklahoma, U.S. |
instrument | Vocals, guitar |
genre | Country |
occupation | Singer-songwriter, record producer, actor |
years active | 1993–present |
label | Mercury Records NashvillePolydorA&M;DreamWorks NashvilleShow Dog-Universal (formerly of Show Dog Nashville) |
associated acts | Carter's Chord, Scotty Emerick, Lindsey Haun, Mac McAnally, Bobby Pinson, Trailer Choir, Stephen Cochran, Willie Nelson |
website | TobyKeith.com }} |
Signed to Nashville DreamWorks in 1998, Keith released his breakthrough single "How Do You Like Me Now?!" that year. This song, the title track to his 1999 album of the same name, was the Number One country song of 2000, and one of several chart-toppers during his tenure on DreamWorks Nashville. His next three albums, Pull My Chain, Unleashed, and Shock'n Y'all, produced three more Number Ones each, and all of the albums were certified multi-platinum. A second Greatest Hits package followed in 2004, and after that, he released Honkytonk University.
When Dreamworks closed in 2005, Keith founded his own label, Show Dog Nashville, which became part of Show Dog-Universal Music in December 2009. He has released five studio albums on this label: 2006's White Trash with Money, 2007's Big Dog Daddy, 2008's That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, 2009's American Ride and 2010's Bullets in the Gun as well as the compilation 35 Biggest Hits. He has also signed several other acts to the label, including Trailer Choir, Carter's Chord, Flynnville Train, Trace Adkins, Mac McAnally and Mica Roberts. Keith also made his acting debut in 2005, starring in the film Broken Bridges and co-starred with comedian Rodney Carrington in the 2008 film Beer for My Horses.
Keith has released thirteen studio albums, two Christmas albums, and multiple compilation albums. He has also charted more than forty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including nineteen Number One hits and sixteen additional Top Ten hits. His longest-lasting Number One hits are "Beer for My Horses" (a 2003 duet with Willie Nelson) and "As Good as I Once Was" (2005), at six weeks each.
Keith graduated from Moore High School and worked as a derrick hand in the oil fields. He worked his way up to become an operation manager. At the age of 20, he and his friends Scott Webb, Keith Cory and Danny Smith, with a few others, formed the band Easy Money, which played at local bars as he continued to work in the oil industry. At times, he would have to leave in the middle of a concert if he was paged to work in the oil field.
In 1982, the oil industry in Oklahoma began a rapid decline and Keith soon found himself unemployed. He fell back on his football training and played defensive end with the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers while continuing to perform with his band. (The Drillers were an unofficial farm club of the United States Football League's Oklahoma Outlaws; Keith tried out for the Outlaws but did not make the team.) He then returned to focus once again on music. His family and friends were doubtful he would succeed, but in 1984, Easy Money began playing the honky tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas. The band cut a single titled "Blue Moon", which received some airplay on local radio stations in Oklahoma.
Fortunately for Keith, a flight attendant and fan of his gave a copy of Keith's demo tape to Harold Shedd, a Mercury Records executive, while he was traveling on a flight she was working. Shedd enjoyed what he heard, went to see Keith perform live and then signed him to a recording contract with Mercury. His debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy" (1993), went to number 1 on the Billboard country singles chart, and his self-titled debut album was certified platinum. Other hit singles included "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action" and "Wish I Didn't Know Now".
Keith was moved to Polydor Records and released his next album, Boomtown (1994), then was moved to A & M Records Nashville, as those two labels merged and released Blue Moon (1996). The albums went gold and platinum, respectively. In 1996, Keith was also featured on the Beach Boys' now out-of-print 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 performing a cover of their 1963 hit "Be True to Your School" with the Beach Boys themselves providing the harmonies and backing vocals.
A & M decided to fold their country division and Keith moved back to Mercury Records (now called Mercury Nashville), and released his fourth album, Dream Walkin'' (1997). The album featured a duet with Sting, "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", which had previously been a hit for Sting himself.
The first single off How Do You Like Me Now?! failed to make the Top 40 on the country charts. However, the follow-up single, which was the album's title track, went on to spend five weeks at number one, helping boost the album's sales to double platinum.
In 2002, he released the Unleashed album which included hit singles, "Who's Your Daddy?", "Beer for My Horses", and "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue".
On November 9, 2004, Keith released a remake of James Taylor and Carly Simon's "Mockingbird", a duet with his daughter, Krystal. They performed the song on the 2004 Country Music Awards. The song reached top 25 on the charts.
Keith was the subject of the January 2005 issue of Playboys Playboy Interview. That year, Keith toured with rock guitarist Ted Nugent, whom Keith met in Iraq while they were both performing in USO-sponsored shows for the coalition troops.
On August 31, 2005, Keith parted ways with Universal Music Group — which had since bought DreamWorks — and launched his own record label, Show Dog Nashville. Its first release was Keith's album White Trash with Money, followed by the soundtrack to Broken Bridges. Big Dog Daddy, which featured his single "High Maintenance Woman", was released on June 12, 2007. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 charts, his third album to reach this feat, after Unleashed and Shock'n Y'all.
He recorded a duet with Jimmy Buffett, "Piece of Work", which was featured on Buffett's album License to Chill.
In 2008, Toby Keith completed his Biggest and Baddest Tour. On May 6, 2008, he released his 35 Biggest Hits 2CD set. The set was certified Platinum in August 2008.
In July 2008, Toby Keith released his new single, "She Never Cried in Front of Me". A new album, That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, followed on October 28, 2008.
In 2009, Keith toured the U.S. with fellow country star Trace Adkins on a tour known as America's Toughest Tour. The concert series was kicked off on June 18, 2009 at PNC Bank Performing Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. Keith did a free show earlier in the day at Asbury Park's famous Stone Pony.
Keith's thirteenth studio album, American Ride, was released on October 6, 2009.
In 2010, Keith performed on another USO tour, this time in South Korea.
A new studio album, Bullets in the Gun, was released on October 5, 2010.
Keith made an appearance at the very first Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (then NWA-TNA) weekly pay-per-view on June 19, 2002, where his playing of "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett. He would later enter the Gauntlet for the Gold main event, suplexing Jarrett and eliminating him from the match. A short video of the suplex is seen in the clip package when he goes onstage. He would appear the next week, on June 26, and help Scott Hall defeat Jarrett in singles action.
Toby Keith received the "Colbert Bump" when he appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. He holds the distinction of being the only musical artist to have received a five star rating from Stephen Colbert on iTunes. Keith furthered this connection when he appeared in Colbert's 2008 Christmas Special as a hunter.
Keith wrote and starred in the 2008 movie Beer for My Horses, which is based on the 2003 hit song of the same name recorded by Keith and Willie Nelson.
In February 2010 a new Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill opened in the Winstar World Casino, exit 1 on Interstate 35 in Oklahoma. The Capri Restaurant Group opened two locations in 2010 in Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills, Michigan and in the Shops at West End in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Expected to open in late 2011 is the location at The Shops at Oyster Point in Newport News, Virginia.
Keith also established a line of clothing, "TK Steelman", in early 2009.
Toby Keith also supports Ally's House, a non-profit organization in Oklahoma designed to aid children with cancer. Of the charity, Keith said:
In 2011 Toby Keith also started showing his love for the flavors of Mexico by introducing a new drink named “Wild Shot". At first it was only available in Mexico, but now is sold and served in America. It is also a featured drink in his restaurant chain "I Love this Bar and Grill".
In 2004, Keith called himself "a conservative Democrat who is sometimes embarrassed for his party". He endorsed the re-election of President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election and performed at a Dallas, Texas, rally on the night before the election. Keith also endorsed Democrat Dan Boren in his successful run in Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district and is good friends with former Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. In a January 2007 interview with Newsday, Keith was asked whether he supported the Iraq War. He responded with "Never did," and said he favors setting a time limit on the campaign. He also said, "I don't apologize for being patriotic... If there is something socially incorrect about being patriotic and supporting your troops, then they can kiss my ass on that, because I'm not going to budge on that at all. And that has nothing to do with politics. Politics is what's killing America."
In April 2008, Keith said that Barack Obama "looks like a great speaker and a great leader. And I think you can learn on your feet in there, so I don't hold people responsible for not having a whole bunch of political background in the House and Senate." At the same time he remarked, "I think [John] McCain is a great option too." In August 2008, he called Obama "the best Democratic candidate we've had since Bill Clinton".
In October 2008, Keith told CMT that he had left the Democratic Party and has re-registered as in independent. "My party that I've been affiliated with all these years doesn't stand for anything that I stand for anymore," he says. "They've lost any sensibility that they had, and they've allowed all the kooks in. So I'm going independent." He also told CMT that he would likely vote for the Republican ticket, partially because of his admiration for Sarah Palin.
In March 2009, Keith received the Johnny "Mike" Spann Memorial Semper Fidelis Award during a New York ceremony held by the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The trophy is named for the CIA operative (and former Marine Corps captain) who was the first U.S. casualty in the war in Afghanistan. "Spending time with our soldiers around the world is something I've always regarded as a privilege and honor," he said. "I'm certainly happy to accept this award, but I won't forget for a second who's really doing the heavy lifting to keep this country safe. And that's why I'll keep going back and spending time with those good folks every chance I get."
In April 2009, he voiced support for Obama on Afghanistan and other decisions: "He hired one of my best friends who I think should run for president someday...Gen. James Jones as a national security adviser. He's sending troops into Afghanistan, help is on the way there. And I'm seeing some really good middle range stuff. I'm giving our commander in chief a chance before I start grabbing. So far, I'm cool with it."
ABC invited Keith to sing "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" on a 2002 Fourth of July concert it was producing, then rescinded the invitation after host Peter Jennings heard the song and vetoed it. Jennings said the song “probably wouldn’t set the right tone.” "I find it interesting that he's not from the U.S.," Keith said of Jennings, who was Canadian. "I bet Dan Rather'd let me do it on his special."
In August 2003, Keith's representation publicly declared he was done feuding with Maines "because he's realized there are far more important things to concentrate on". Keith was referring specifically to the terminal illness of a former bandmate's daughter, Allison Faith Webb. However, he continues to refuse to say Maines' name, and claims that the doctored photo was intended to express his opinion that Maines' criticism was an attempt to squelch Keith's free speech.
In an announcement in April 2008, a commercial spot to promote Al Gore's "We Campaign" involving both the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith was proposed. However, the idea was eventually abandoned due to scheduling conflicts.
On March 24, 2001, Keith's father was killed in a car accident on Interstate 35. On December 25, 2007, the Covel family was awarded $2.8 million for the wrongful death of H.K. Covel. Elias and Pedro Rodriguez, operators of Rodriguez Transportes of Tulsa, and the Republic Western Insurance Co. were found liable as they failed to properly equip the charter bus with properly working air brakes.
Billboard
American Country Awards
Category:1961 births Category:Actors from Oklahoma Category:American baritones Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American record producers Category:DreamWorks Records artists Category:Living people Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:People from Custer County, Oklahoma Category:Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Show Dog-Universal Music artists
cs:Toby Keith da:Toby Keith pdc:Toby Keith de:Toby Keith et:Toby Keith es:Toby Keith fr:Toby Keith no:Toby Keith pt:Toby Keith ru:Кит, Тоби simple:Toby Keith sv:Toby KeithThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Coordinates | 52°5′0″N21°11′53″N |
---|---|
name | Ray Harryhausen |
birth name | Raymond Frederick Harryhausen |
birth date | |
birth place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
occupation | Stop motion model animator |
spouse | Diana Livingstone Bruce (1963 - present) |
influences | Willis O'Brien |
influenced | Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren |
academyawards | Gordon E. Sawyer Award (1991) |
awards | Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards (2006) }} |
Ray Harryhausen (born Raymond Frederick Harryhausen on June 29, 1920 in Los Angeles, California) is an American film producer and special effects creator. He created a brand of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation."
Among his most notable works are his animation on Mighty Joe Young (with pioneer Willis O'Brien, which won the Academy Award for special effects) (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (his first colour film) and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors.
The work of pioneer model animator Willis O'Brien in King Kong inspired Harryhausen to work in this unique field, almost single-handedly keeping the technique alive for three decades. O'Brien's career floundered for most of his life—most of his cherished projects were never realized—but Harryhausen was the right person at the right time, and achieved considerable success.
Harryhausen draws a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are completely animated such as the films of Tim Burton, Nick Park, Henry Selick, Ivo Caprino, Ladislav Starevich and many others (including his own fairy tale shorts) which he sees as pure "puppet films", and which are more accurately (and traditionally) called "puppet animation".
In Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as "animation", which is different from the more obviously "cartoony" and stylized approach in movies like Chicken Run and The Nightmare Before Christmas, etc.
Springing from O'Brien's groundbreaking work, Harryhausen continued bringing stop-motion into the realm of live action movies, keeping alive and refining the techniques created by O'Brien that he had first developed as early as 1917. Harryhausen's last film was Clash of the Titans, produced in the early 1980s. Recently, he was involved in producing colorized DVD versions of three of his classic black and white films (20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and It Came from Beneath the Sea) and a film from the producer of the original King Kong (She).
Paramount executives gave Harryhausen his first job, on George Pal's Puppetoons shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from an abortive project called Evolution (an homage to a similar Willis O'Brien project called Creation which was never finished).
During World War II, Harryhausen was also employed by the Army Motion Picture Unit, animating sequences educating soldiers about the use and deployment of military equipment when that equipment was unavailable for shooting in live action. From this work, he salvaged several rolls of discarded surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale-based shorts. His commander was Colonel Frank Capra, and he also worked with Ted Geisel ("Dr. Seuss").
One of Harryhausen's most long-cherished dreams was to make H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. After World War II, he shot a scene of an alien emerging from a Martian cylinder; it is from the story's ironic climax, showing the fearsome being from Mars fatally succumbing to an earthly illness, contracted from the air the natives breathe harmlessly. It was part of an unrealized project to adapt the story using Wells' original "octopus" concept for the Martians.
Harryhausen also produced a variety of other short animation demos during the post-World War II 1940s. He put together a demo reel of his various projects and showed them to Willis O'Brien, who eventually hired him as an assistant animator on what turned out to be Harryhausen's first major film, Mighty Joe Young (1949). O'Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the film, leaving most of the animation up to Harryhausen. Their work won O'Brien the Academy Award for Best Special Effects that year.
It was on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used a technique that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate pieces of film. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, rephotographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene. Many shots were embellished with additional elements painted on glass, also sandwiched in between the rear screen and camera, as O'Brien had done on his films.
Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were usually done without resorting to expensive and time-consuming optical printer work. Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector dramatically reduced much of second generation degradation common in most usage of back-projection. His use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed them to match the soft background plates far more than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this miniature set wizardry himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full technical control to achieve a variety of superior and convincing special effects techniques.
A few years later, when Harryhausen began working with color film to make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, color-balance-shift problems required more use of opticals than rear projections. Ray's producer/partner Charles H. Schneer coined the word Dynamation as a "merchandising term" (modifying it to "SuperDynaMation" and then "DynaRama" for some subsequent films).
While Schneer and the film's line-producers organized the film's live action production and hired various directors to develop the film's live action characters, Harryhausen concentrated mainly on the shots that involved model animation, visiting the sets only to supervise the filming of the live action background elements (called "plates" in the film effects industry) into which he would later add animated creatures.
However, Harryhausen was heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film's story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of the his films, as much as any auteur director would have on any other film, which any "director" of Harryhausen's films had to understand and agree to work under. Only the complexities of Director's Guild rules in Hollywood prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.
Throughout most of his career, Harryhausen's work was a sort of family affair. His father did the machining of the metal armatures that were the skeletons for the models while his mother assisted with some skin textures. After Harryhausen's father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted his armature work out to another machinist. An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen's miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for all his films, until he hired protege model animators Steve Archer and two-time Oscar-nominated Jim Danforth to assist with major animation sequences for his last feature film Clash of the Titans (1981).
The same year that Beast was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled The Sea Around Us, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature film of that year. Allen's and Harryhausen's paths would cross three years later, on Allen's sequel to this film.
Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer, who was working with the Sam Katzman B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures. Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), set in Washington D.C.--one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 50s, and also a box office hit.
In 1954, Irwin Allen started work on a second feature-length documentary film, this one about animal life on land called The Animal World (completed in 1956). Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O'Brien to animate the dinosaurs, but then gave him an impossibly short production schedule. O'Brien again hired Harryhausen to help with animation to complete the 8-minute sequence. It was Harryhausen's and O'Brien's first professional color work. Most viewers agree that the dinosaur sequence of Animal World was the best part of the entire movie. (Animal World is available on the DVD release of the 1957 film The Black Scorpion. The Black Scorpion used some previously shot special effects footage and much new footage by Willis H. O'Brien to create a story similar to another sf film of the era, Them! from 1954.)
Harryhausen then returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), about an American spaceship returning from Venus that crashes into the ocean near Italy, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore and soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian Ymir model, creating yet another international box-office hit film.
Schneer was eager to graduate to color films. Reluctant at first, Harryhausen managed to develop the systems necessary to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in his greatest masterpiece (and biggest hit) of the 50s, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), a major inspiration for Dennis Muren, decades later a long-time multi-Oscar-winning head of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic special effects company. The top grossing film of that summer, and one of the top grossing films of that year, Schneer and Harryhausen signed another deal with Columbia for four more color films.
Harryhausen next made First Men in the Moon (1964), his only film made in the anamorphic widescreen process CinemaScope, based on the novel by H. G. Wells.
Amazingly, Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason, and First Men in the Moon were all box office disappointments at the time of their original theatrical release. That, plus changes of management at Columbia Pictures, resulted in his contract with Columbia Picture not being renewed. Also, as the 60s counter-culture came to influence more and more and younger filmmakers, and failing studios struggled to find a new audience, Harryhausen's love of the past, setting his stories in ancient fantasy worlds or previous centuries, kept him from keeping pace with changing tastes in the Sixties. Only a handful of Harryhausen's features have been set in then-present time, and none in the future. As this revolution in the traditional Hollywood movie studio system, and the influx of a new generation of film makers sorted itself out, Harryhausen became a free agent.
Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Film Productions to animate the dinosaurs for One Million Years B.C., released by 20th Century Fox in 1967. It was a box office smash, helped in part by the presence of shapely Raquel Welch in a cavewoman bikini, in her second film.
Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, The Valley of Gwangi. The project had been developed for Columbia, which declined. Independent producer Schneer then made a deal with Warner Brothers instead. It was a personal project of Harryhausen, which he had wanted to do for many years, as it was story-boarded by his original mentor, Willis O'Brien for a 1939 film, Gwangi, that was never completed.
Scripted by William Bast, The Valley of Gwangi is set in 1912 Mexico, in a parallel Kong story—cowboys capture a living Allosaurus and bring him to the nearest city for exhibition. Sabotage by a rival releases the creature on opening day and the creature wreaks havoc on the town until it is cornered and destroyed inside a burning cathedral. The film features a roping scene reminiscent of 1949's Mighty Joe Young (which was itself recycled from the old Gwangi storyboards) and is the technical highlight of the film, which many Harryhausen fans are now rediscovering as one of his best films. The film was released in 1969 but was not a financial success, supposedly since it did not appeal with the counter-culture audiences of that era. But another more likely explanation is that Warner Brothers released the film as a double-bill with a biker film, trying to quickly cash in on the surprise success of the film Easy Rider, and thus Gwangi missed an advertising opportunity to find its rightful audience. Reportedly this decision was made after Kenneth Hyman of Seven Arts Productions — which had merged with Warners at the time and was involved with One Million Years B.C. — was released from his contract with the studio. Warners then threw the film away to second run neighborhood theaters, where kids in these small theaters discovered it, slowly growing up to become fans of the film as adults when the film was finally released to video in the 1980s and DVD in '90s.
Schneer and Harryhausen finally were allowed by MGM to produce a big budget film with name actors and an expanded effects budget. The film started out smaller but then MGM increased the budget to hire stars such as Lord Olivier. It became the last feature film to showcase his effects work, Clash of the Titans (1981), for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Special Effects. Harryhausen fans will readily discern that the armed-and-finned kraken (a name borrowed from medieval Scandinavian folklore) he invented for Clash of the Titans has similar facial qualities to the Venusian Ymir he created twenty-five years earlier for 20 Million Miles to Earth.
Perhaps due to his hermetic production style and the fact that he produced half of his films outside of Hollywood (living in London since 1960), reducing his day-to-day kinship with other more traditional, but still influential Hollywood effects artists, none of Harryhausen's films were ever nominated for a special effects Oscar.
In spite of the relatively successful box office returns of "Clash of the Titans", more sophisticated technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen's production techniques. and so MGM and other studios passed on funding the making of his follow-up story, Force of the Trojans, causing Harryhausen and Schneer to retire from active filmmaking.
In the early 1970s, Harryhausen had also concentrated his efforts on authoring a book, Film Fantasy Scrapbook (produced in three editions as his last three films were released) and supervising the restoration and release of (eventually all) his films to video, laserdisc, DVD, and currently Blu-ray. A second book followed, An Animated Life, detailing his techniques and history, and then The Art of Ray Harryhausen, featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects, some of them unrealized. More books, interspersed with many world-wide tours, appearances, dedications, and career salutes are anticipated.
Harryhausen continues his life-long friendship with Ray Bradbury. Another long-time close friend was "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J. Ackerman, who loaned Harryhausen his photos of King Kong in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time. Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his long-time producer, Charles H. Schneer, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the USA (a few years later, in early 2009, Schneer died at 88 in Boca Raton, FL); and with model animation protege, Jim Danforth, still living in the Los Angeles area.
Harryhausen and Terry Moore appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young, and he has also provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the Will Ferrell film Elf. He also appears as a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III, and as a doctor in the John Landis film Spies Like Us. In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in Burke and Hare, a British film also directed by Landis.
The work of Ray Harryhausen was celebrated in an exhibition at London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in 1990.
Near the turn of the 21st century, Harryhausen was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Inducted to the Monster Kid Hall Of Fame at The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.
In 2005, Harryhausen released a 2-DVD set of a complete collection of all his non-feature film work, including all his tests, demos, military work, a re-edit of all the biographical material that had been released in the mid-90s to VHS video under the title Aliens, Dragons, Monsters, and Me, and his entire set of fairy tales, including "The Story of the Tortoise & the Hare". The second disc profiles a making of documentary, behind the scenes and interviews with Harryhausen, Walsh, Caballero and narrator, Gary Owens. During this time he also provided commentary for the DVD releases of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and was extensively interviewed for documentaries included in the DVD release. He was at the New York Premiere of the 2005 remake of King Kong and was disappointed that some scenes from the original did not make it into the final film. He was happy again when the Deluxe Extended Edition was revealed.
Harryhausen and a producing partner, Arnold R. Kunert worked on a series of animated shorts based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the first of which was "The Pit and the Pendulum" in 2006.
Harryhausen also worked with Legend Films to reissue some of his early feature films on Blu-ray in a series of colorized versions using an improved colorization process. According to Legend Films president Barry Sandrew, the filmmaker told him that his original vision was to do them in color, but both limited budgets and limitations of color film stocks back then made it hard for him to do backgrounds and keep them color-balanced the way that was needed to maintain the films' realism. The finished Blu-ray 4-disk boxed set was released in 2009, and includes Harryhausen's first four films for Columbia Pictures, including "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad". There's also all new commentaries with Harryhausen and a variety of guest special-effects producers who were influenced by Harryhausen's work, an on-camera interview by Tim Burton, plus much in the way of other new bonus features. Other digital clean-up and restoration techniques were performed on this Blu-ray edition, including a feature that allow you to see the first three films colorized, or in the original black and white form. Other Columbia Harryhausen films will be released in Blu-ray, starting with "Jason and the Argonauts" released in 2010.
Harryhausen was also involved in the process of colorizing She, produced by Merian C. Cooper, who had originally intended to shoot the film in color, but at the last minute the budget was cut by RKO, forcing Cooper to shoot in black and white. As a tribute to Cooper, Harryhausen color designed the film in a manner in which he feels Cooper would have wanted it exhibited. The colorized DVD includes an audio commentary by Harryhausen and Merian C. Cooper expert Mark Vaz who discuss the film and color choices. The colorized trailer for She premiered at the 2006 Comic-Con. Harryhausen also helped design the color on two further Legend Films releases, Things to Come and The Most Dangerous Game.
In July 2006, it was announced that Harryhausen has licenced Bluewater Productions to create six comic book follow-ups to some of his most famous movies. The first three are "Sinbad: Rogue Of Mars", "20 Million Miles More" and "Wrath Of The Titans", which were realised in May 2007 followed by a further three: "Jason And The Argonauts: The Kingdom of Hades", "Back to Mysterious Island" and 10th Muse. Harryhausen will furnish new artwork, but not scripts. All will be five-issue miniseries. A one-shot, "10th Muse/ Shi crossover", is said to be released later this year. A full podcast interview with Ray Harryhausen can be heard at http://animationpodcast.com/archives/2007/08/19/ray-harryhausen/
Ray is currently serving as a producer on the Movie War Eagles which is slated to be released in 2010 per IMDB and Jim Dee on Take Two-The Movie Program. In the late 1930s, while at MGM, Merian C. Cooper (creator of King Kong) promoted a color film epic that would utilize stop-motion and the creative talents of Willis O'Brien to animate giant prehistoric eagles. The project was sadly abandoned. Bob Burns and other "Kong" experts discussed the "lost" War Eagles pitch to fans, he found typewriter documents and even a rough screenplay of War Eagles, and years later an author named "Carl Macek" marshaled the evidence into a book called War Eagles. The first copies were given to Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury (Harryhausen's biggest friend). They thought the adaptation of it was splendid, and so began the working of Mr. Cooper's & Willis O'Brien's lost drafts into the upcoming project.
Fan and film maker tributes to Harryhausen abound in many forms, including a variety of model animation experiments posted on YouTube.
A clay animation short film by Sub-Genius Church founder Ivan Stang, "Martian Peen Worm" (the short title of that film) makes several whimsical Harryhausen references.The ABC TV 90s children's puppet animation series "Bump In the Night" makes a variety of veiled tributes to Harryhausen, also.
The Mythos Games/Virgin Interactive Entertainment computer game Magic and Mayhem (1990) features over 25 stop-motion mythological creatures that were directly inspired by Harryhausen's work. Constructed by special effects expert and stop-motion animator Alan Friswell, the various characters include a dragon, a centaur, a griffin and a fighting skeleton. For the griffin's wing animation, Friswell studied the griffin from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974).
The 2001 Pixar film, Monsters, Inc. pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where characters Mike Wazowski and Celia Mae visit a restaurant named "Harryhausen's".
The 2005 Warner Bros. film, Corpse Bride also pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where character Victor Van Dort is playing the piano in the Everglott's home. The brand of the piano being played is a "Harryhausen".
Tim Burton considers his satiric science fiction movie, Mars Attacks! (1996), to be a tribute to Mr. Harryhausen, especially in a scene in which one of the hostile alien's flying saucers chops down the Washington Monument by crashing into it, just as Harryhausen had done in his movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers in 1956. Burton's movie, and this scene, initially gathered mixed reactions from Mr. Harryhausen, who has a habitually more subdued sense of humor. These differences were congenially resolved in subsequent meetings between the two film-makers for the Blu-ray boxed set bonus features.
A new big-budget version of Clash of the Titans, with all-CGI special effects, appeared in movie theaters in early April 2010. With Harryhausen initially expressing surprise and wondering why it was even felt that there was any need for a remake of his movie, its fans currently await Harryhausen's reaction to the film itself.
Ray Harryhausen now lives in England. As a ninetieth birthday tribute, he was featured on the BBC flagship current affairs programme Newsnight on Thursday, June 24, 2010, talking about his life's work. In 2010, he had a cameo as one of 'The Distinguished Gentlemen' in Burke and Hare, the British black comedy directed by John Landis. The film is about the notorious Ulster murderers in Edinburgh in the late 1820s.
In June 2010 it was announced that the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation had agreed to deposit the animator's complete collection of some 20,000 pieces with the National Media Museum in Bradford, England.
Anglo/Swedish pop band, the Hoosiers, dedicated their first single, Worried about Ray, to Ray Harryhausen. The music video features a character called "Ray" making films, and includes a Harryhausen style monster, which is killed after Irwin Sparkes uses his guitar to fire a drum stick into the monster's single eye.
Category:1920 births Category:American film producers Category:Living people Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Special effects people Category:Stop motion animators Category:Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor
ca:Ray Harryhausen da:Ray Harryhausen de:Ray Harryhausen es:Ray Harryhausen fa:ری هریهاوزن fr:Ray Harryhausen hr:Ray Harryhausen id:Ray Harryhausen it:Ray Harryhausen nl:Ray Harryhausen ja:レイ・ハリーハウゼン no:Ray Harryhausen pt:Ray Harryhausen fi:Ray Harryhausen sv:Ray HarryhausenThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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