Monday 23 August 2010

May the Force be with you

I had an amazing afternoon yesterday. I went to the London Film Museum at County Hall on the South Bank. The reason I went was to see the Ray Harryhausen exhibition. As you may or may not know, he was a special effects master, a pioneer of stop motion animation. I'll come back to his exhibition in a moment.

Basically, as a huge film fan, I spent the afternoon in seventh heaven. Amongst other things, I saw....

1, Armour from Excalibur
2, A monkey head from 28 Days Later
3, Christian Bale's Batman suit
4, Two Daleks from the 1960's films
5, Shields from Zulu
6, A full size Alien, (shudder! I kept expecting it to move!)
7, Little Nellie from You only Live Twice
8, Mars money from Total Recall
9, Nick Frost's T Shirt from Shaun of the Dead
10, The sculpture of Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

WOW!!! There was also a set of the corridor on Princess Leia's ship from the opening moments of Star Wars where you could get a photo of yourself and friends posing with light sabres. I did the classic "inserting disc in R2D2 " pose. (He was there with C3PO.) I also took up a fencing stance with a light sabre. Oh yes. I used the Force:) For 5 seconds, I was a Jedi warrior. Needless to say, that's the picture I kept.

There was also a fascinating Charlie Chaplin exhibition with a map of the places he lived as a child. Most of them were within 2 miles of the South Bank.

Finally, the highlight of my visit. The Harryhausen exhibition was awesome. He was making films in the 1960's, painstakinly moving tiny plasticine models of skeletons to create a thrilling fight sequence in Jason and the Argonauts. I saw the bronze giant, Talos, in his resting position and a life size model of the Medusa from Clash of the Titans. (Eeek. Technically, I should be stone. She was looking right at me!) Then there was Kali, and the Minaton, and the Roc, and the Cyclops..... amazing.

I am so going back to this museum. I'm going to take my american friend, TJ, when he visits London in a few weeks time and we're going to fight a light sabre duel.....

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