Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen - The Most Engaged Employee Ever?
by Matthew Stollak on Thursday, May 9, 2013
 |
| © Rex Features / Chaz Gerretsen |
It was with great sadness that I read this week about the passing of Ray Harryhausen, one of the icons of my youth.
If the name is not familiar to you, you might at least be familiar with his special effects work in such films as Mighty Joe Young, It Came From the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Mysterious Island, One Million Years BC, and Clash of the Titans. My personal favorites that I cherished as a youth were Jason & the Argonauts and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
And what makes him the most engaged employee ever? He was a pioneer of stop-motion filmmaking. Unlike the CGI work today, stop-motion filmmaking was a painstaking process requiring you to stage a scene and take a picture. Then, you move an arm, and/or a leg, and/or a sword, and take another picture. Repeat. Given that the typical film speed is 24 frames per second, the ability to turn those micromovements into the illusion of motion is extremely time-consuming.
Take, for example, his work in the aforementioned Jason & the Argonauts. To create the battle with the skeleton army, it took Harryhausen nearly four months, working seven days a week, mostly alone, to create the scenes. Some days, he was only able to get 13 entire frames, less than a second of film, completed.
So, the next time an employee is complaining about the difficulty of their job. Point him or her to the work of Mr. Harryhausen, and see if he/she will continue to be upset about his or her work.
Rest in peace.
- Leave your comment • Category: #popHR, Engagement, movies, Ray Harryhausen
- Share on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Reddit
2012 Pop Culture Year In Review #pophr #HRMusicShare
by Matthew Stollak on Thursday, December 20, 2012
With 2012 coming to a close, its time to look back on the year in movies, TV, books, music, videogames, and food. Over the course of the year, I viewed 107 movies, read 55 books, watched countless hours of TV, played countless hours of Angry Birds, listened to a lot of music, and ate a lot of food. So, what tops the list in 2012?
Sight
The Best Things I Saw In 2012
- Sherlock: Season 2, Episode 1 - A Scandal in Belgravia - The most exhilarating hour and a half of viewing this year. Well-acted, great script. Well-worth your time
- Key & Peele: East/West College Bowl - I've seen it well over 30 times and it never fails to make me laugh out loud each time.
- Bill Clinton, Democratic National Convention - One of the best speeches I have ever seen.
- Argo - Excellent effort from Ben Affleck
- Moonrise Kingdom - A return to form from Wes Anderson
- Cabin in the Woods - Forget "The Avengers," this was the better Joss Whedon film
- Sherlock Season 2
- Justified
- Louie
- Breaking Bad
- Parks and Recreation
- Mad Men
- Boardwalk Empire
- Game of Thrones
- Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn - Page turner featuring two despicable people at odds in their marriage
- Ready Player One - Ernest Cline - Science Fiction/Quest novel based on video games (like Zork) and nostalgia for all things pop culture in the 1980s.
- Back in Blood - Tom Wolfe - A bounce back from the disappointing " I Am Charlotte Simmons"
- Bad Girls - M.I.A. - the best hook from 2012
- Bad Religion - Frank Ocean - his performance on Jimmy Fallon was amazing
- Under the Westway - Blur
- Speed the Collapse - Metric
- Distractions - Orbital
- Pyramids - Frank Ocean
- Beezledub - Orbital
- Flesh and Bone - The Killers
- Popular - Saint Etienne
- Gaz Coombes Presents Here Comes the Bombs - the most consistent album in 2012 from the former Supergrass lead singer
- Synthetica - Metric
- Words & Music - Saint Etienne
- Wonky - Orbital
- Channel Orange - Frank Ocean
- Charburger with Cheese at Edzos in Evanston, IL
- Wiseguy Pizza at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, AZ
- Cheeseburger at Redamak's in New Buffalo, MI
As a culture, we have always embraced the bad boy, the anti-hero.
In the 1950s, Marlon Brando was a consummate bad boy in “The Wild One. When asked “What're you rebelling against, Johnny?” he replied “Whaddya got?”
In the late 1960s and 1970s (heck, even today), Jack Nicholson captured this role in several films, such as “Carnal Knowledge” and “Five Easy Pieces.” Just look at this scene when he tries to order toast.
Today, you turn on the TV and look at the protagonists we are suppose to root :
Walter White on Breaking Bad? Producer and seller of methamphetamine.
Don Draper on Mad Men? A man who leaves the Korean War by assuming another man’s identity, often drinks to excess, and cheats on his wife.
Omar Little on The Wire? This breakout character was a renowned stick-up man of drug dealers.
….the list could go on…and this is just fiction. Look at reality TV: Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramsey, Russell Hantz, Omarosa, etc.
How about in books? The most compelling character in years is Lisabeth Salander - an antisocial hacker - in the Steig Larsson trilogy. Team Jacob and Team Edward in the “Twilight” series? Ummm…they are a werewolf and a vampire.
The movies? We watch “The Dark Knight,” not for Batman, but for Heath Ledger’s Joker.
So, given the fascination we have with the dark side, what has prevented HR from becoming the same bad boy? What will transform it from a perceived villain to that anti-hero that the public loves?
