May 2009 Archives

Filling in the Blanc

It is hard to imagine that someone else could take Mel Blanc's crown as the voice-over king. Blanc was born on 30th May 1908 and after a successful career on radio he first voiced Porky Pig in 1937. He kept doing voices for cartoons till his death on July 1989.

It would be crazy to try to list all his achievements as a voice actor so here's a partial list of characters we can attribute his voice to; Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Yosimite Sam, Pepe Le Pew, Sylvester the Cat, Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk, Marvin the Martian, Elmer Fudd, Wile E Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Tasmanian Devil, Barney Rubble, Dino, Mr. Spacely, Secret Squirrel, Speed Buggy, Deputy Droop-a-Long Coyote, Captain Caveman and Twiki (from Buck Rogers).

And if you know some of these voices (and you should) it is amazing to think that the voice of Tweety is the voice of Foghorn Leghorn and the voice of Speedy Gonzales is the voice of Barney Rubble

It is the hundredth anniversary of the man who was both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, including when they appeared in Who Framed Roger Rabbit in '89. It is fitting to remember one of the most important figures ever in the history of cartoons.

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Birds Of Britain

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Wild Things Set Free

Where the Wild Things Are was first published in 1963 and from there has become perhaps the most beloved children's picture book. Certainly, it remains a fond favourite for children who've become adults and reread those ten special sentences to their own children.

But, it's not just those ten sentences that make this book so extraordinary, it is the images that famed designer / illustrator Maurice Sendak has put with them. They may seem simple, well-drafted children book images but they go beyond that. Those simple lines evoke a rich world and dynamic actions, actions parents and children enact as they share the story together.

Being a wild thing. Grrarr!

If you are like me, you are waiting for the Spike Jonze directed, David Eggers written adaptation. But while you are waiting you can check out Terrible Yellow Eyes. It is a site for displaying the works of artists and designers paying tribute to Sendak's original work. Gory Godbey is the administrator of the site and he's doing an excellent job as his tribute is shared by many a talented artist.

Do visit Terrible Yellow Eyes not just if you are a fan of Sendak but if you appreciate modern pop art, cartoon art and the kind of stuff Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose like to display.  

It jumped out of an egg and facehugged John Hurt before bursting out of his chest, skitting off, "like a penis on a skateboard", got big and took out Harry Dean Stanton with an excellent head-shot before fucking up the rest of the crew of the Nostromo 30 years ago.

Yep, it's been that long since things first got Gigeresque on our pop-arses.

You have to be impressed.

Firstly, with Ridley Scott's film of Alien and what it established. That being a new future visual, the workman like world of grunge space. Also it established or, more fairly, reestablished a style of haunted house horror and in the process elevated its stature to mainstream Hollywood. And most importantly, it was the first serious vehicle of Scott's efforts to almost single-handedly create a new film aesthetic.

The second thing to be impressed with?

H R Giger's Alien, of course.

It isn't hard to see it as a guy in a suit, but Giger with Freudian finese and a damn lot of latex and spraypaint, made it transcend such cheap filmmaking notions and become and remain a major pop-cultural icon of symbolic horror and death fetishism. A mascot for what lurks menacingly in the dark in the world of Cinema Ephemera.

Giger's Alien, we salute you.

Now please, don't stick your scary jaws in my skull.

What's a pulp classic?

Well, Samuel Fuller's 1963 flick Shock Corridor certainly constitutes one.

This extraordinary pic came out in that key time of pre-Vietnam, post-Korean War and is one of the best examples of a cheap, sleazy, violent, surrealist melodrama with a brain.

It begins with a success hungry journalist convincing his stripper girlfriend to pretend to be his distraught sister who then commits her pretend brother to a violent mental hospital cause of his pretend incestuous advances. Does that sound pulpy? Anyway, once he's in there he's in a pot-boiler analogy of things deeply wrong with the U.S. of A.

The journo is looking to solve a murder and the three witness are in there with him. The first is a cowboy who thinks he's in the civil war. He was an ignorant farmer's son as played by some young experimental theatre actor who'll one day be Sheriff Rosco in Dukes of Hazard. He gets the line of the movie; "Everyday my parents fed me bigotry for breakfast and ignorance for supper". It's as a prisoner to the commies that he gets his first taste of political thought and naturally he goes over to the Red's side. But when he wants to come home both sides think he's a traitor and so his brain goes pl'nk.

The second is the first African-American to go to a white school, but he couldn't deal with the racist protesters and he flunked out. Now he thinks he's the founder of the Ku-Klux-Klan. The third is the inventor of the intercontinental nuke and he deals with the guilt by becoming a six year old.

The film is in black and white, but our loonies dream in other-worldly colour (bizarre home movie images of a Japanese Buddha and African natives in mud masks). Dreaming in colour will make you temporarily sane. The real world is in black and white. I think you can catch the film's drift.

This is a bold exploitationer full of striking images, like rain in the corridor of the film's title, and bizarre characters, like the fat man who keeps waking the hero up with opera then making him eat gum. But what is most wild about this picture is that in all its ultra-cheap burlesque tawdriness - which includes a room of literally man-hungry women and a hero's nightmares of a girlfriend considering the freedom to be unfaithful as shown by a miniature version of her in showgirl outfit tickling his ear with a feather boa - this is a film about the failure of the American conscience.

But no way can you just go out and say that, certainly not as yet in the early '60s. So Fuller makes the truth - well, his truth - come out of the mouths of madmen. He makes reality of the early sixties come out of the frame of a surrealist art-house picture masquerading as, while still legitimately being, a cheapo shocker for the cinematic insensitive. Now that couldn't have been easy.

Naturally, at the time, Shock Corridor was hated and reviled and considered a sicko, non-nonsensical mess. But do feel good to know that Samuel Fuller lived long enough to see his Hollywood cheapies become key contributions to American maverick cinema and for him be acknowledged as a mentor for go-it-alone filmmakers, such as Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmush, David Lynch and Hal Hartley. He appeared as himself in Wim Wender's End of Violence (at the age of 86) and it should come as no surprise that the Europeans were onto him long before his home country decided he was a groundbreaking hero of decadent cinema with clandestine messages for the brainwashed masses.

For the average person who would read this blog it would likely be known that the Watchmen movie was for some a rather anticpated event. I'm safely guessing, though, for the average movie going punter they had to be told, via the marketing, that they were supposed to be anticipating it. Still, that means that there were a fair number of people ready to not just watch it or review it but analyse it in depth and detail and reflect upon it the original text, namely Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' best-selling graphic novel (which was first a twelve issue comic event, at least in comic circles, from Sept 86 and Oct 87).

Watchmen still remains the best comic / graphic novel work I've read. It truly deserves the status as a novel. And ever since there had been talk of a movie, and there has been lots for a long time, I was always doubtful of what would be the eventual outcome. Regardless, I was curious as to the final result.

So too were many Planet staffers. Each came into work the night after seeing Watchmen and shared their thoughts with the rest. What struck me was not how varied their opinions were but the arguments put forward. So I decided to invite them to let me put this in the blog. Some took me up on the offer and I now invite you to check them out.  Emily / Rental - I enjoyed the Watchmen movie; it was probably as well done as could be expected given the source material. Most of the performances were well done as well. However, Snyder has tried to cram so much material in, it doesn't really give the scenes any sort of gravity. It helps with the pacing, sure, but with the comic you were able to digest things in full. The slow-mo and the sex scenes were a too prevalent for my tastes, too.

Sam / Books - It's prettier, it's louder, it's shorter and less nuanced, Snyder's adaptation is visually excellent with inspired casting but was doomed from the outset to underwhelm. When Richard Linklater directed the film adaption of A Scanner Darkly he was free to bring fantastic new ideas to the text and made the film a work of art in it's own right. Snyder, however, has no such freedoms; the characters and sets mirroring their graphic novel counterparts to the extent that watching the film feels like I'm reading the graphic novel for a third time and skipping all the parts that turned a great story into a great world. Like all graphic novel adaptions this could have gone two ways; an insult to it's origins or so accurate that it becomes redundant. I'm pleased it became the latter, but not so much that I'll be watching it again.

Keir / Rental - Having not read the graphic novel, I went into Watchmen with no knowledge of the story why it was so popular. I left the cinema with much the same feeling. Watchmen felt like two and a half hours of exposition, building to events that never came. The dialogue should have stayed on the pages of a comic book because when delivered by actors became laughable. I could never really work out if the Watchmen were ordinary people who took on roles of crime-fighters or whether they all had super powers and the line between factual and fictual political history was blurred. Overall I was very disappointed. Pretty pictures do not a good film make.

Ethan / Rental - Here's what I liked about the film...It looks great, it sounds great, and that's about it. I did not care for any of the characters, Rorschach came closest to the one I could 'side with'. The plot was constant back story and structurally it felt very disjointed. And then the rest of my grievances were simply continuity debacles such as 'Why is Dr Manhatten's glistening wang out in some scenes and not in others? He has the undies. We saw him wear them in another scene' and...'Why is Rorschach so tough? At least when Mickey Rourke takes a beating in Sin City my brain can justify it by the fact he's a big mother f%#$er, and he shows pain after, Rorschach was a runt with an illogical psychedelic mask, oh his mother wanted to abort him...Still makes no sense'...and during the sex scene 'Where are all their god damn bruises! They just got in a vicious alleyway fight recently!'

Cassie / Books - I really enjoyed Watchmen, it felt like a real treat, that Snyder had made the film just for us fans who'd been waiting forever for this adaptation. I loved seeing the characters on screen, Rorsharch and Comedian put in great performances and I delighted in the mise en scene and costume. It was infinitely better in all ways than most superhero movies, and while it wasn't as stylistically cogent as Dark Knight, it was a far more interesting and complicated film. I went specifically to see a giant many-tentacled entity but alas they thought Dr Manhattan needed a bigger role so I had to make do with a single tentacled entity...

Nick / DVD retail - I'm still kind of torn as to how I felt while watching Watchmen. On one hand I want to congratulate Zack Snyder for delivering such a faithful adaptation. In some ways, though, it's painfully faithful, to the point of mimicry - I'm really not sure what Snyder really brought to the table here. I mean, the storyboard and script were already written, right? All he had to do was get costumes and cameras and get to it!  On the other hand, the very small adjustments that were made seem completely pointless, and leave me baffled.

I think I probably need to watch it again to formulate an opinion on the movie, AS a movie, but the truth is I can't differentiate the movie from the book, and I don't want to watch it again. I can't watch the movie and appraise it "just as a movie." Why? Because the real problem is that it was made at all. In 2002, after the From Hell movie, Alan Moore spoke of "the fallacious modern notion that making a movie of something somehow validates it." The one thing that Watchmen, the movie, makes extremely obvious, is just how unnecessary it was in the first place.

Chris / Rental - I loved it. Visually the film is stunning - menacingly dark in places, contrasted with vivid splashes of colour from the Watchmen costumes or the splash of blood. The costumes are suitably outlandish enough for comic book heroes but also somehow real enough to make them believable in the alternative reality being created for us. As for the story, the film makers have been pretty true to the original, with time constraints mostly dictating what was left out of the film. There will be some opposition to the minimal differences in both texts, but what is important to remember is that they are both different texts - they should stand alone. The film is an adaptation, yes, but it needs to be remembered that the mediums of graphic novel and cinema, while they have many similarities, are still very different in how they are made, viewed and, perhaps most importantly, intended to be viewed. The makers of both mediums should be utilizing the best aspects of those mediums, not simply trying to fit one into the other. With the Watchmen graphic novel and film, I think you come very close to having the best of both worlds.

And my thoughts - On the whole I give it a thumbs up. But yes, with some minor reservations, largely with narrative structure. I find many friends and associates (some mentioned above) who have issue, albeit personal critique issue, with graphic novel purity and the valid argument that it adds nothing new. Some (not included in the above) just didn't get the politics stuff. Understandably, cause when you go to a superhero movie you've more often than not been trained to expect an Iron Man or X-men style of film. My opinion is that what narrative flaws there are (including some bad music choices) were all overshadowed by good filmmaking and a sincere attempt to tell a good story and honour the source material. In short, you have to disregard the nature of  Hollywood and the practical systems of general filmmaking to not appreciate that it is a miracle Watchmen is as good as it is.

But I have one final view to put down here. I asked a senior manager, one I knew was a big fan of the original comic mini-series, that when he saw Watchmen, can he give me an opinion. He told me he had no intention of seeing it. Why? Because the original work has come to be an integral part of a memory of a particular time in his life that whether the film is good or bad he has no want to have it alter the way he remembers it in his mind's eye. And you know, it was very easy to respect that.

Sacha Feiner is a fan of the '80s Gremlins movies. Boy is he. Off his own back, for no profit, he has produced a new insert sequence for the "film break" scene in Gremlins 2. To recall, in this Gremlins sequel there comes a point where the film appears to break while audiences are watching it in the theatre and the gremlins invade the projection booth. They did an alternate sequence for the video release, not that I can remember it, but for the dvd release they went back to the theatrical scene. In his home, Feiner has produced a segment suited to the digital editions where the gremlins invade other flicks. It's fun and impressive and worth checking out. 

Feiner must have suspected he'd get enthusaistic web attention for this project as he has followed it up with his own Making of and I found that pretty cool too if you are interested in how to produce such neat effects on little or no money.

I'll be most interested in what Feiner does in the future. And I bet that if his little film gets more and more attention don't be surprised you hear of a new Gremlins film in the works.

Thanks to Rob Hood and his excelllent monster/zombie movie news/critique blog Undead Backbrain for drawing my attention to Sacha Feiner's geek-cool work.