I didn't know who Ray Harryhausen was until about five years ago. But I remember the movies. I remember Jason and the Argonauts fighting the skeletons. The ogre thingy fighting the sabre tooth tiger. I remember cursing Clash of the Titans for getting the mythology wrong. And then seeing the more recent once, and taking my years of resentment for the original back.

But Ray Harryhausen was the man that made the skeletons fight, gave life and character to the ogre thingy, and made Medusa stone-turningly ugly. With a great rack.

And I remember watching these movies, when I was younger, and thinking that there were so many movies with better effects out there and they looked kind of hokey. And they did. But my first mobile phone compared to today's standards was a brick. My first car didn't look as... actually, it looked better. 1971 MGB, and for my money, most cars today just don't look as cool (mine had a roll bar). But my first computer was a brick, with another brick to display the images, and another brick to put a disk in and play a game where bricks dropped on a blocky impersonation of a person.

So progress should happen, and can happen, and I welcome it. And if it weren't for Mr. Harryhausen's effects we wouldn't have progressed to a Star Wars that seemed real; an ET we believed was alive; a Jurassic Park that even today looks more authentic than any other film out there. And for us jaded Gen...whatever the hell most of us are, I have no idea what generation I'm supposed to fall in to.. we need to re-watch those films, rediscover the artistry and passion and ingenuity that went into creating them, and maybe, just maybe, we'll end up with something that people to watch.