---

Jack Bauer is officially back: Fox has confirmed its plans to bring "24" back to its airwaves next year.

The show will return in the summer of 2014 as an event series called "24: Live Another Day." Kiefer Sutherland has signed on to play Jack Bauer again, with the story picking up several years after the last season, which aired in 2009. There's no word yet on any other casting.
"Live Another Day" will run for 12 weeks and keep its real-time format, but Fox Entertainment Chairman Kevin Reilly says it may skip hours here and there.
"As [executive producer Howard Gordon] would design the season, the spine of the 24 episodes was really about 12 hours. Those were where the big events occurred, and then there were little twists and connective tissue in between," Reilly told reporters on a conference call Monday (May 13). Each episode of "Live Another Day" will still unfold over the course of an hour, but »
- editorial@zap2it.com

---

---

Ray Harryhausen, the FX wizard whose early movie magic inspired directors for years to come, died today at the age of 92. Harryhausen created the special effects for films like 1963's Jason and the Argonauts, drawing inspiration from King Kong in a prophetic career long before the dawn of CGI — and it's obvious that his influence runs deep through the rise of digital cinema.
On his foundation's Facebook page, alongside notice of his death, stand tributes from some of the most famous names in the world of sci-fi and fantasy movies. George Lucas said that without Harryhausen "there would likely have been no Star Wars." Peter Jackson added that Lord of the Rings is his "Ray Harryhausen movie," and James Cameron noted that "If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn't be who we are." But it was the digital technology that these directors pioneered that slowed Harryhausen's own work.

for Harryhausen notes that his influence is also recognized in modern-day animators' nods to their predecessor.
Though Harryhausen was known for animation, the Times obit from Patrick J. Layons explains that Harryhausen's creative influence went beyond that as he "frequently proposed the initial concept, scouted the locations and shaped the story, script, art direction and design around his ideas for fresh ways to amaze an audience."
Perhaps Harryhausen's most famous work is the skeleton battle scene from Jason and the Argonauts, which according to Adam B. Vary writing for Entertainment Weekly was one of the sequences that "revolutionized how actors could interact with stop-motion effects, a process Harryhausen called 'Dynamation.'"

---