Footloose (2011)

A silly idea inspired by a delightfully savage review of the "Footloose" remake on Pajiba.com. It occurred to me that this blistering sentence could be excerpted out of context to make the most misleading pull-quote in history. Once I thought of it, I couldn't resist the idea of making a fake poster out of it.

Lucas, Ford & Spielberg

A bit of silliness inspired by the news that a fifth "Indiana Jones" film is heading into production--for some reason--and by the photo below of George Lucas, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg celebrating the premiere of the godawful Indy 4 in 2008.

It's an article of faith at this point that everything bad, pointless, or desperately unfunny about "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is attributable to George Lucas' influence. As with his Star Wars franchise he insists on playing big daddy, despite the decades' worth of evidence that he's lost the thread and should really leave it to more capable hands.

Once I started doodling the faces in the photograph, the scenario in the cartoon suggested itself right away--George as a big, goitered boulder rolling over the other two. (That's supposed to be Spielberg dressed in Connery's duds from Indy 3). The face in the crystal skull is that of Frank Darabont, who is said to have written a brilliant early screenplay for Indy 4, beloved by Ford and Spielberg, that is until Lucas got his hands on it and had his Lucasy way with it.

Andy Serkis

Artist's interpretation of what happened when Andy Serkis learned of the new Godzilla reboot in development.

"Robin Hood" Illustration

I was hoping to post a link to a film blog that was going to run this illustration next to their review of the film from Cannes. Well the review's up, they didn't run the piece and I haven't gotten so much as an email back. It's not like I was even trying to get paid. I guess the takeaway here is that when I venture out of storyboarding I literally can not give my work away, but I had fun doing it anyway.

I succumbed to the urge to paint over the drawings a lot in Photoshop, and I may have overworked it and lost a bit of the 'zing' of the marker sketches. One problem with using a Cintiq is that it becomes devilishly easy to give way way too much attention to every little highlight on Russel Crowe's nostril.

Robin Hood sketches

Sketches for a second piece I did for Obsessed With Film, we'll see if the final makes it in this time. If not I'll just post it here.

Iron Man 2

I did this for a movie blogger who expressed interest in adding my stuff to his site. I was into it but unfortunately a bunch of paying work hit at the same time, which I had to prioritize, and I didn't get it done before the review went up. I actually could have gotten it done a lot quicker, but I succumbed to the pitfall of trying to find just the "right" image, and thus did a boatload of sketches when it probably would have been just as well to do something simple off the cuff. I have to break myself of this tendency.

I hid a little easter egg on War Machine's armor-- on the shoulder where there's some letters & numbers I instead spelled out the name of my old-time Marvel colleague Len Kaminski (I spelled his last name in 'leet'). My understanding is that Len was the person who came up with War Machine back in the early '90s. But because he was a staffer, War Machine was technically the creation of the 11th floor of 387 Park Avenue South, and long story short he gets no credit on the film. That's showbiz, folks.

Megan Fox in "Jennifer's Body"

So are we all still in love with Megan Fox, or are we deep into the backlash yet? I can't keep track. A couple of months ago all I read was nice things about her, but now apparently everybody hates her. Somehow over the summer she went from being universally adored to being some kind of enemy of the human race.

We males supposedly see attractive women only as sex objects, but that's clearly not true. Eventually we look past that to appreciate a woman's character. Specifically, our feelings of attraction to a famous woman we're never going to meet can result in feelings of shame and inadequacy, which then have to be medicated with scorn and derision. So in a short period of time we go from, "Dude, that Megan Fox is so hot" to "Dude, that Megan Fox is a total bitch".

What complex, enigmatic creatures we are!

Time: 1 hr.

Ryan Reynolds

This is just a practice drawing. I don't have anything to say about Ryan Reynolds. Although according to a lot of websites I apparently am supposed to be a fan of his. Because he is currently featured in some horrible movie that's based on some kind of illustrated periodical fiction which I used to shell out money for when I was a stupid kid. Apparently I have no choice in the matter, I dearly love all this dogshit.

Oh, I'm told I'll also want to see him when they spin his character off into another horrible movie a few years from now, despite the fact that his character in the movie has nothing to do with the awful character from the periodicals that it's allegedly based on. So now I'm all up to date on that.

Who hates on the Watchmen?

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Jason and the Final Girl

Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween
(NOTE: NOT ACTUALLY A GOOD DRAWING OF JAMIE LEE CURTIS)

Bunche had a post on his feelings about the new Friday the 13th reboot, which sent me scurrying around the nets reading all about the series. (Weird fact about me: I'm often more interested in reading about movies than in taking the time to sit down and watch them.) Thanks to good ol' Wikipedia, I learned about the theory of the "Final Girl", the last survivor of a typical slasher film, usually a female who conforms to a certain set of characteristics. Partly due to derivative scripting, no doubt, but even higher-caliber stuff like Alien and Silence of the Lambs fits the model very closely.

What I found really interesting in the theory is that the audience identification shifts over the course of the movie. The typical (male) audience for a slasher film more or less starts out identifying with the killer in a vicarious way. But by the last reel the audience is usually persuaded to shift focus to the "final girl", and root for her to defeat the killer. It's a feminist theory, and there's supposedly all these gender politics associated with the shift in identification from male killer to female victim (The killer is a male whose masculinity is in crisis, the final girl is a viginal type who becomes "masculinized" through taking up a phallic weapon, yadda yadda yadda). But I think it really demonstrates something fundamental about the three-act dramatic structure. It shows how the third act of a film is a very different animal from the first act.

The first act of the film belongs to the killer, because the killer is the 'gimmick', the hook that gets you into the theater. The gimmick is what usually dominates the first act, no matter what kind of movie it is--serial killer, spaceships, Indian TV game show, what have you. But it's our nature that the gimmick isn't enough to sustain our interest for the run time of a film--even a film with expectations as low as that of a "Friday the 13th" film. Unless you're a hard-core fan of the genre, your interest is going to start to wane by the end of act one. We start to fatigue of the cheap thrills, therefore dramatic complications have to set in that can persuade us to stick around for act two. By the time we're in act three, we've become invested in the character drama, as thin a gruel as that might be.

What this means is that even in a cheap slasher film, we demand some kind of character arc. We demand identification with a character with recognizable vulnerabilities, who experiences fear and uncertainty that we can relate to, and who grows and evolves in order to overcome an apparently insurmountable challenge. As awesome as the crazed killer might be, he's too one-dimensional to carry the audience identification past act one. At least 'til the next sequel.

THE FOUNTAIN (2006)

If you've seen The Fountain, chances are you either found it a work of genius or, like I did, an interesting failure. It's a love story between a man, a woman, and a tree; with the characters somehow living three separate lifetimes: past, present, and future. Darren Aronofsky has indicated that only the present-day storyline might be real; the past story is the book that Rachel Weisz' character is writing, and the future might be a fantasy or some kind of astral projection. But of course it's one of those films that's open-ended enough to have room for different theories on it.

I personally found it intriguing but ultimately disappointing, until my brilliant wife rescued it for me with a completely different take on the story. She watched it and saw a single timeline with the same characters over hundreds of years. Which is slightly wackier, but as it turns out I like her version better. Aronofsky's version, a letdown. Faith Fennessey's version, one of the greatest sci-fi films I've ever seen.

If you'll be so kind as to follow me to the comments section, I'll break it down and you can see if you agree. (Spoilers ahead. But go ahead and read it, it's not like I can stop you. Ruin the movie for yourself if you want, tough guy.)

PRIMER (2004)

Think of what the word "scientist" usually means in the realm of movies. As often as not it's some cackling maniac in a lab coat, pissing in his pants and polishing his ultimate death ray. Now imagine a mad scientist movie that didn't feel like watching a movie at all--that feels like it could be happening right next door.

Our scientist character doesn't labor alone in some fortress, he works in an office park, maybe sidelines after hours in his garage. He doesn't mutter about how the establishment laughed at his brilliant theories, but he does sweat the fact that his engineering firm is likely going to put him out to pasture by age 40. He's not a megalomaniac, he's a bright guy with an ordinary level of vanity, an ordinary level of ethical blindness. He doesn't go around coldly stabbing his friends in the back to get what he wants, but he might experience a tragic failure to trust at a crucial moment. He's not out to conquer the world, he's someone who dreams of being a hero but looks in the mirror and sees an average schmuck. Then quite by accident he invents something that he could use to fix his life. And just like that he's on the road to hell.

First-timer Shane Carruth brought an engineer's merciless efficiency to writing and filming a sci-fi film for a mere $7000. His special effects amount to little more than some wonderfully believable technical dialogue. He refuses to spoon-feed you any exposition, he lets you listen in on scientists talking scientist stuff. The film starts out nearly impenetrable and only gets more so as events accelerate faster than the characters can understand them. But it's one of those films where the sense of disorientation it creates is part of the fun.

Marisa Tomei

Lots of websites are probably running these hubba-hubba pics of Marisa Tomei from The Wrestler. Those other sites are just exploiting the prurient interest in seeing a famous woman naked. But this site? Art.

Daniel Craig 3

Around the time of Casino Royale I read a fascinating little book called The Man Who Saved Britain, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in James Bond and/or the history of England. Not just an inquiry into who Ian Fleming was and what forces positioned him to create his astonishingly successful little spy novels; not just a howlingly funny memoir of the author's own fevered adolescent Bond obsession; but a comprehensive analysis of the cultural and historical context of post-WWII England that Bond fits into.

Put simply, 1950's England was in the grip of an existential crisis. Their long period of world dominance was coming to a swift, shocking end, their military might was exhausted and their economy was terrifyingly circling the drain. Sound familiar?

Simon Winder argues that Fleming's creation caught on because it created a persuasive alternate reality, a secret unseen world in which the British still dominated the course of world events, when in reality they increasingly found themselves without even a seat at the table. He further argues that Bond gave the British a vessel in which to keep their sense of national identity out of disgrace as they slogged through the tough times and eventually rebounded.

Reading this history of the fall of another recent world empire gave me a few gut-churning moments, I don't mind telling you. But it goes to show why the Bond of Casino and Quantum is the Bond for our time, aside from the brutality and the more contemporary subject matter. Like his post-9/11 American counterpart, Jack Bauer, he offers us a reassuring suggestion that there is something inherently worthwhile in the Western character; a courageous, resourceful spark that will somehow see us through in a world that no longer makes sense. It might be the purest bullshit, but it might be all we've got to go on right now.

Daniel Craig 2

One thing I appreciate about the new-jack Craig Bond is that the filmmakers seem to understand that the 'gadget' motif has exhausted itself. We live in a gadget world now, and our fascination with clever little doo-dads has been fed in no small part by the Bond films themselves. But we're now living in science fiction and it doesn't make you unique or special to be carrying around a spy cam, or enough computer power to command an army. In the 60's your iPhone would have made you a superhero, but today it makes you one of the sheep. 

In a consumer world focused more and more on comfort, security and luxury, what sets a man apart is the ability to disregard all that. What distinguishes Craig's Bond is simply his raw ability to mix it up. Sad to say, what's science fiction in today's world is that a man can actually be a man.

Daniel Craig 1

I dearly loved Casino Royale, so much so that it make me rethink my opinion of the rest of the series. I think I'm now willing to throw out the entire original Bond canon except for the first six. When I finally getting around to buying the DVDs, it'll be just the first five Connerys plus my previous favorite, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I consider Diamonds are Forever to be a Roger Moore film.

I'm hearing extremely mixed things about Quantum of Solace, but as long as they haven't completely reverted to the old formula I'm probably going to like it. As long as it doesn't start off with Bond pretending to flirt with an aging Moneypenny, and end with a shootout in some big mad scientist lab with army guys and ninjas, and then ten seconds later he's somehow in a boat humping some girl over the end credits, as long as they don't do that I'll probably go home happy.

THE SPIRIT

So, Frank Miller has made what appears to be a horrible movie of Will Eisner's The Spirit. 

Since Will Eisner and Frank Miller were my two favorite cartoonists as a lad, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about this. On the one hand, nobody needs to prove their Eisner-fan stripes less than Frank Miller does. I wouldn't even know who Will Eisner was if not for Miller. This is a guy who used to take up space in his top-tier Marvel book to plug a strip that had been defunct for 30 years. It's just disappointing that he appears to have made a movie that's less about the Spirit comic than about Frank Miller's late-period preoccupation with boobs, blood and bad dialogue. Like practically everything he's done post-1980's, the trailer leaves me scratching my head; it seems like a bad parody, and I can't tell if he's joking or not.

I should have known it might turn out like this after having read Eisner/Miller, the book-length cross-interview that Dark Horse published a few years back. In parts you just had the sense that the two of them were on separate wavelengths. Like the following passage where Miller is about to talk about Sin City: Family Values.

EISNER: The book I'm working on right now is about a family that immigrates from Eastern Europe in the 1930's and struggles to make a living in the garment district while keeping their traditions alive.

MILLER: Oh yeah, my book deals with a lot of the same themes. These two hot chicks get it on with each other and then go around shooting everybody with uzis.

Okay, I might not have exactly transcribed that word for word, but it's not far off.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

I finally caught this on DVD. (I don't get out that much. A trip to the video store is a big event around my house.)

I had heard that the movie is great up until the ending, which I heard described as confusing and pointless. I can understand the confusion, because the movie fakes you out. It's pretending to be a certain kind of film that you've seen a million times. The kind that only flirts with existential dread. When Tommy Lee Jones showed up early on, I actually said to my wife, "Oh, it's Tommy Lee Jones, everything's going to be all right now". Which is exactly what I was supposed to think.

Like the motorist pulled over by the police cruiser in an early scene, you respond automatically to certain signals that reassure you that a safety net is in place. But the safety net hasn't held, and the tent around you is on fire. The film leaves you standing, slack-jawed and dull-eyed like cattle, watching the bolt aimed at your brain but failing to understand its purpose until it's too late.

The Dark Knight

"A vision of the failure of our idealism before the inexorable tide of entropy... a Sartrean paranoia of no hope for escape, no possibly of exit... the dreamlife of mice in their sterile maze that is this sprawling microcosm of all of the miseries and suffering of the world."


"The failure of reason is the great bogey of this modern day... The dam's broken and you can't put the water back; and though it's not obviously an allegory for them, suddenly the film functions as stark reflection of our anxieties that we might be too late to save the planet, too uncertain of the terms to win the war."


"Midway through, I realized that the picture was genuinely upsetting me, that I was actually terrified by the places it was allowing its Joker to go. This Joker isn't carnival sideshow, he's not Jack Nicholson crazy--this Joker is cross-the-street crazy. The glittering beauty of it is that the character is scary because his madness is born of sadness and possibility."

-All quotes from Walter Chaw, filmfreakcentral.net

"CLONE WARS" REVIEW

Ha ha, just fucking around. I'm not going to go see that garbage. 

In honor of George Lucas' latest disappointing piece of film, I've been poking around a site called "The Secret History of Star Wars", which devotes several articles and an e-book to asking the question, where and why did Lucas go so wrong.

The surprising short answer is, he didn't. The new stuff is actually representative who he is when left to his own devices. He's never been much of a writer. The first Star Wars was created through a tremendous effort (by himself and others) to overcome his own limitations. He labored for years like a mad genius, absorbing any sci-fi or adventure he could get his hands on in the service of his vision, constantly rewriting and hating himself for not being better at it. It didn't hurt that he had a support system of film-school pals with names like Spielberg, Coppola, Scorcese, Milius, and Kaufman. But nobody but him could have come up with the concept. 

Strangely enough, digging in to this history actually has the effect of re-awakening my admiration for the man.

PICTURED: O.G.-WAN KENOBI