11 May 2006
[comics] He say Blade Runner — BeaucoupKevin posts a page from Marvel’s comic adaptation of Blade Runner.
8 May 2006
[film] Top 10 Sci-fi Films — voted by a panel of scientists. Aubrey Manning on 2001: ‘…the brilliance of the simulations – still never done better despite all the modern computer graphics. The brilliance of using Brazilian tapirs as ‘prehistoric animals’. The brilliance of the cut from the stick as club, to the space shuttle. Kubrick declaring that once tool use begins – the rest is inevitable. Hal: the first of the super computers with its honeyed East-Coast-Establishment voice.’
3 May 2006
[comics] But Is It Art? — interview with Dan Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. Clowes on Conceptual Art: ‘I don’t want to come off like one of those Republicans picking on the NEA, like, “Oh this guy pissed on a crucifix and called it art.” That’s not what this is about. But when I was in art school, people literally were bringing in the tampon in the teacup.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
[comics] Superman Returns Trailer … ‘You’re Bald.’
1 May 2006
[comics] Daniel Clowes Talks Confidential — Clowes interviewed regarding Art School Confidential … ‘I figured we’d work on (Ghost World footage) a bit and be done in two weeks. Cut to a year later and we are still struggling and rearranging scenes and changing the music and doing all of these drastic and subtle things. It made me realize how fluid the medium of film was. You can change a film entirely — you can give the two different editors the same footage and they’ll make two entirely different films…. It got me excited about trying to figure out how to edit and change comics after the fact.’
29 April 2006
[film] It Becomes a Self-fulfilling Thing — a discussion between Errol Morris and Adam Curtis … ‘Where people do set out to have conspiracies, they don’t ever end up like they’re supposed to. History is a series of unintended consequences resulting from confused actions, some of which are committed by people who may think they’re taking part in a conspiracy, but it never works out the way they intended.’ [via Kottke’s Links]
24 April 2006
[film] 102 Essential Movies — interesting list from Jim Emerson. ‘… [these] were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”‘
20 April 2006
[films] Film of the Book: Top 50 Adaptations Revealed — a list of best book to film adaptations includes Frank Miller’s Sin City.
15 April 2006
[film] Snakes on a Blog — a blog for the movie Snakes on a Plane … ‘I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane!’
24 March 2006
[ning] Snakes on a Plane Quote Tracker — suggest dialog for upcoming film Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane … ‘Wait… Wait… WHAT’s loose on this motherfucker?’ [via Yoz]
18 March 2006
[comics] The Vendetta Behind ‘V for Vendetta’ — another article on Vendetta and Alan Moore from the NYT … ‘[Moore] resides in the sort of home that every gothic adolescent dreams of, one furnished with a library of rare books, antique gold-adorned wands and a painting of the mystical Enochian tables used by Dr. John Dee, the court astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I. He shuns comic-book conventions, never travels outside England and is a firm believer in magic as a “science of consciousness.” “I am what Harry Potter grew up into,” he said, “and it’s not a pretty sight.” Actually, he more closely resembles the boy-wizard’s half-giant friend Hagrid…’ [via BeaucoupKevin]
[comics] D for Vendetta — Wired News Review … ‘From the start, Larry and Andy Wachowski, the Matrix brothers, pack Vendetta with literary, religious, political and pop culture references: the Sex Pistols and The Girl From Ipanema, The Count of Monte Cristo and Beethoven, Twelfth Night and Benny Hill.’
17 March 2006
[funny] Must Love Jaws — what if Sheriff Brody learned to love Jaws?… ‘Love comes to the surface.’ [via BeaucoupKevin]
[comics] Jonathan Ross reviews V for Vendetta: ‘Despite postponing the release date from last November to allow more time for post-production work, the film looks cheap and lacks any sense of time or place. Throw in Matrix veteran James McTeigue’s flat direction and you have a woeful, depressing failure. If it had been called V for Vasectomy I could scarcely have found it a less enjoyable experience…’ [via Haddock]
11 March 2006
[comics] Nostalgic Superman Montage Trailer — looks like part of the build up for Superman Returns. [via Metafilter]
3 March 2006
[comics] ‘$1m a minute to film? No problem’ — Neil Gaiman discusses the relationship between comics and movies … ‘Last week an interviewer asked me whether I thought that the recent success of superhero movies meant that we might see a world in which comics that don’t include the capes-and-tights brigade might also have a chance at making it onto the silver screen. “You mean comics like Road to Perdition, Ghost World, Men in Black, A History of Violence, Sin City, From Hell, American Splendor…?”‘
24 February 2006
[film] Peter Bradshaw reviews Capote … ‘[In Cold Blood] virtually invented the modern genre of reportage. The true-life nature of his subject – the brutal slaying of a farmer’s family in Kansas – had a horrible, unacknowledged sexiness that polite literary fiction could not match; reality gave it ballast and sinew, and Capote awarded himself the novelist’s licence to intuit feelings, ideas, moods. Readers then as now struggled to see how the metropolitan gadfly who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s could have moved on to this. It was as if Audrey Hepburn has stopped singing Moon River and taken a chainsaw to George Peppard. How the heck had this aesthete-weakling armwrestled American reality into submission?’
13 February 2006
[film] Art School Confidential Quicktime Trailer … from Dan Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. [via Pete’s Linklog]
16 December 2005
[movies] Vision of Hell — a Guardian article which asks: What Makes a Great War Film? … ‘It is easy to understand why Jane Fonda abominated The Deer Hunter. The Vietnamese characters are not sympathetic or deep, the American soldiers are, and the movie ends with the survivors sitting around the table, singing God Bless America. But that simplistic summary, and Fonda’s hostility, mischaracterise the subtlety and complexity of Cimino’s feature: the tender slowness with which he describes the home town the conscripts come from, which makes you understand the coldness of the American war machine, the depth of the betrayal involved in hurling trusting young patriots into an incomprehensible nightmare for which their upbringing has not prepared them, and the true, lingering nature of war wounds.’
15 December 2005
[movies] Letters to Walken — amusing Christmas Letters to Christopher Walken … ‘Mr Walken, Please, will you come Dance at my Birthday Party?’ [via linkbunnies.org]
19 November 2005
[movies] Glanced at: Superman Returns Teaser Trailer
18 November 2005
[books] Blink: The Movie — Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink to be turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio?! ‘…we were curious to hear what [Gladwell] had in mind for the movie. He tells us, “It takes a single character from Blink — Silvan Tompkins — and fashions an entirely new story around him, about what it means to be someone who can read other people’s thoughts.”‘
3 November 2005
[soundboard] The Shining Soundboard — yet another flash soundboard using clips from The Shining … ‘Does it matter to you at all that the owners have placed their complete confidence and trust in me, and that I have signed a letter of agreement, a contract, in which I have accepted that responsibility? Do you have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is, do you? Has it ever occurred to you what would happen to my future if I were to fail to live up to my responsibilities? Has it ever occurred to you? Has it?!’
2 October 2005
[film] His ‘Secret’ Movie Trailer Is No Secret Anymore — NYT on the remixed Shining trailer … ‘The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said. Mr. Ryang chose “The Shining,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. In his hands, it became a saccharine comedy — about a writer struggling to find his muse and a boy lonely for a father. Gilding the lily, he even set it against “Solsbury Hill,” the way-too-overused Peter Gabriel song heard in comedies billed as life-changing experiences’
30 September 2005
[film] Shining Trailer — a new family film from Stanley Kubrick … ‘Sometimes… what we need the most is just around the corner.’
21 September 2005
[film] Actress Mirren’s Queen unveiled — BBC News on Helen Mirren playing the Queen … ‘Mirren, 60, is pictured reading news of the death of Diana in the movie, which is called The Queen. Directed by Stephen Frears, it is set in the week following the crash which killed Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed in August 1997.’
11 September 2005
[film] Interview with Dave McKean — Guardian Online interviews the comic creator and director of MirrorMask … ‘Q: Can you instantly tell if you’re watching computer generated images in a movie? A: Yes, although the integration is sometimes so clever it is hard to be sure. I think some images that are unashamed to look fabricated can be fascinating in their own right, especially as many make use of what computers can do very well, creating complexity, adding complex systems to manmade simple basic building blocks.’ [Related: MirrorMask Trailer]
27 August 2005
[film] Don’t Let Yourself Get Attached To Anything — a lookback at Michael Mann’s Heat … ‘McCauley is perhaps the part that De Niro played that is closest to the actor’s own personality: a screen, a cipher, depthless, icily professional, lacking in reflexivity, stripped down to pure Method (‘I do what I do best’). When McCauley meets the love interest, Eadey, he is reading a book on metals.’ [via Blackbeltjones Links]
22 August 2005
[film] Interview with Errol Morris … from the Huffington Post .. On Robert McNamara and The Fog of War: ‘When people say to me, this is just some self-serving account that McNamara has provided, part of my feeling when I hear that is, “Well, yeah, of course it is!” But that’s not all it is. It’s not just a self-serving account, it’s a complicated account. We all have narratives about ourselves, about who we are and why we do what we do. We have accounts of ourselves for ourselves and we have accounts of ourselves for other people to try to convince them about who we are and our underlying motivations. Part of the premise here is that people reveal themselves through their use of language, through talking.’
11 August 2005
[comics] Interview with Dan Clowes — mainly covering his new film Art School Confidential … ‘I had a revelatory moment as a child when I was drawing Superman. He had that insignia on his chest, and I was studying it for hours (I think I was 4 or 5). I saw the negative shapes that define the S, but I didn’t get that it was a letter. I would draw those shapes over and over. Then one day I realized, “It’s an S!” It all fit together. “S for Superman, of course!”‘
28 July 2005
[movies] V for Vendetta Trailer — it doesn’t look as bad as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… Alan Moore on the V for Vendetta Shooting Script: ‘They don’t know what British people have for breakfast, they couldn’t be bothered. ‘Eggy in a basket’ apparently. Now the US have ‘eggs in a basket,’ which is fried bread with a fried egg in a hole in the middle. I guess they thought we must eat that as well, and thought ‘eggy in a basket’ was a quaint and Olde Worlde version.’ [via Pete’s Linklog]
15 June 2005
[film] ‘He’s not a god – he’s human’ — Christopher Nolan discusses Batman Begins … ‘So what is his take on the material? With the polished ease of a man who has been through a thousand pitch meetings, Nolan explains his idea. “The origin story was the bit that had never been told. I wanted to try to do it in a more realistic fashion than anyone had ever tried to a superhero film before. I talked a lot about films I liked, particularly the 1978 Superman, which is the closest thing to what I proposed. Obviously, some of it is dated, but it’s an epic film, with a certain realistic texture. I wanted to make the Batman epic you expected to have been made in 1979.”‘
13 June 2005
[comics] The Mindscape of Alan Moore Trailer … ‘I believe that our culture is turning to steam.’ [via Alan Moore Fan Site]
27 May 2005
[film] Black and white and Bloody — interview with Frank Miller on Sin City … ‘Sin City has little in common with the garish, effects-driven superheroics now associated with the genre. It plays more like the film noir equivalent of Pulp Fiction; a trio of macabre, interlinked tales set in a stylised world where men are honourable brutes, women are deadly lingerie models, and the only proper way to deal with a paedophile is to shoot his nuts off. It’s not what you’d call politically nuanced, but Miller is unashamed and unapologetic. “Cartoonists’ dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw,” says Miller.’
23 May 2005
[movies] 2001 at 25 — a lookback (from 1993) at Kubrick’s 2001 from Omni Magazine … ‘Clarke had provided a framework of childlike wonder, of travel to the far planets and meetings with benevolent creatures from another world. He had redefined the possibilities of mystical experience for a jaded era. But Kubrick flavored this hopeful scenario with a discomforting reminder that such adventures could cost us more than we bargained for. The triumph of our intellect, he seemed to say, might actually cost us our humanity itself. Kubrick’s cynicism about modern condition–his ghastly spacemen with their chilling lack of communication–stood in contrast to the chatty, fussy genius of HAL 9000, a computer considerably more human than his zombified masters.’ [via Mefi]
21 May 2005
[film] Watchmen – Will we be watching it after all in 2006? — Filmrot on the problem of bringing Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen to the screen … ‘Unlike Alan Moore’s other notable ‘superhero’ comic The Extraordinary League of Gentlemen, Watchmen is not a romp. It is rich in the superhero tradition and has a sense of humour that happily makes fun of the genre but just as the iconic cover image is a smiley face, it is a smiley face with the blood of a hero smeared across it.’ [thanks Stuart]
18 May 2005
[documentary] The film US TV networks Dare Not Show — the Guardian on Power of Nightmares being shown at Cannes … ‘The film is […] incendiary for its analysis of what Curtis controversially insists is the largely illusory fear of terrorism in the west since 9/11. Curtis argues that politicians such as Bush and Blair have stumbled on a new force that can restore their power and authority – the fear of a hidden and organised web of evil from which they can protect their people. In a still-traumatised US, those with the darkest nightmares have become the most powerful and Curtis’s film castigates the media, security forces and the Bush administration for extending their power in this way.’
2 May 2005
[tv] Cannes to screen BBC’s Nightmares — the BBC documentary Power of Nightmares is to be remade as a film … ‘The BBC Two series questioned whether the threat of terrorism to the West was a politically-driven fantasy, winning a Bafta TV award among other prizes. Its three one-hour episodes are being edited into a single two-and-a-half hour movie by producer Adam Curtis after the festival asked to screen it.’ [via Haddock]
24 April 2005
[movies] Sin City Expands Digital Frontier — Wired Reviews Sin City … ‘While [Sin City] could induce nightmares, it is also, in its own way, sweetly nostalgic. This is a film that loves artifice the same way that Singin’ in the Rain did. Singin’ in the Rain, along with many films noir and various other stage-bound Hollywood movies, used two-by-fours and gallons of paint to build its glorious unrealities. Sin City instead uses pixels…’
23 April 2005
[comics] Warren Ellis: ‘I fully expect the film version of WATCHMEN to be a fucking musical.’
16 April 2005
[movies] The Man Who Shot Sin City — Wired Magazine on how Robert Rodriguez brought Sin City to the screen. ‘…small details like Sin City’s signature “white blood” proved to be an effects challenge. Regular movie blood didn’t cut it. Instead, the crew used fluorescent red liquid and hit it with a black light. This allowed Rodriguez to turn the blood “white” in postproduction. Likewise, the novel’s few splashes of color proved troublesome. Yellow and green react with green screens, causing color to spill into the background and making them impossible to separate. So during shooting Rodriguez painted the villain, Yellow Bastard, blue – and then colored him yellow in post.’
1 April 2005
[comics] Sin City Comic-to-Screen Comparisons — Compare Frank Miller’s comics with the upcoming Movie … ‘Not an exact match by any stretch, but the mood is there…’ [via Waxy]
30 March 2005
[film] Aliens at the Abbey Road Film Festival in London (31/3) — fancy a free ticket? Sashinka’s got some up for grabs … ‘I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.’
4 January 2005
[documentaries] True Films — a list of documentaries recommended by Kevin Kelly. On The Thin Blue Line: ‘The film hypnotically plays out his alleged murder of a cop over and over, each time according to different witnesses, until the “evidence” of the crime collapses under the tainted weight of so many versions. This was a new form of nonfiction film and it helped free an innocent man from prison. How many films can claim that?’
10 December 2004
[film] What Stanley Didn’t Say — The Inside Story Behind a Fake Interview with Stanley Kubrick … ‘After Stanley’s death the volume of [press] clippings doubled, and tripled, then quadrupled. There were obituaries, memorials, recollections, assessments and so on. These were too important merely to box, so I decided to file them in date order in Swedex four-prong binders (always a favourite with Stanley: “Those Swedes sure know how to make a functional, sexy binder!”).’
15 October 2004
[film] Feeling Listless on Clerks X: ‘To some degree it’s a depressing experience because I’ve seen this film so many times that it’s lost that shock of the new. It’s the kind of piece which people are still discovering and I wish I still could. Even at student age I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the melancholic desolation which seeps through the cracks of the comedy. Like the best film with longevity it changes each time we revisit because we are older and our perceptions change. Which is the film’s real achievement – that something could cost that little money, be made under those production limits and still be have that value.’
11 October 2004
[comics] Christopher Reeve Obituary: ‘Of playing Clark Kent, Reeve reckoned that “there must be some difference stylistically between Clark and Superman. Otherwise you just have a pair of glasses standing in for a character.” Reeve, though he played the two roles straight without any sign of camp, revealed a deft Cary Grant-inspired comic timing. Unfortunately, the three sequels were a matter of diminishing returns and, after Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987), Reeve, determined to ‘escape the cape’, explained: “Look, I’ve flown, I’ve become evil, loved, stopped and turned the world backward, I’ve faced my peers, I’ve befriended children and small animals and I’ve rescued cats from trees. What else is there left for Superman to do that hasn’t been done?”‘
19 September 2004
[film] Michael Mann’s Dark World — Brief BBC News profile of the director of Collateral … ‘Collateral displays all the classic Mann themes – the exploration of the male psyche, the blurred lines between good and evil and the disaffection that comes from living in the big city.’
13 September 2004
[movies] Sin City Preview Trailer … ‘A hardtop with a decent engine and make sure it’s got a big trunk.’
Click Image for Stills from Sin City.
Click Image for Stills from Sin City.
26 August 2004
[films] Hope Springs Eternal — interesting essay about Shawshank Redemption from Mark Kermode. ‘…the symbolism is implied rather than announced, with the falsely convicted Andy resembling a latter-day Christ figure who, at one point, seems to vanish from his tomb-like cell only to be reborn in the baptismal waters of a nearby creek, causing Norton to scream: ‘Lord, it’s a miracle!’ And of course, the most famously iconic image from the film is that of a stripped Andy standing with his arms outstretched, his head turned heavenward, in a moment of agony and ecstasy clearly resembling the crucifixion. The deeper one delves into The Shawshank Redemption, however, the more the search for such religious symbols becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy…’ [via Mad Musings of Me]
25 August 2004
[blogs] QT’s Diary — allegedly Quentin Tarantino’s Weblog … ‘QT here. I’m typing up this bastard of a diary entry myself because my typist isn’t around. Sorry if there are any typos, cause frankly I don’t give a fuck.’ [thanks Kabir]
11 August 2004
[movies] Five Things You Probably Didn’t Notice in The Shining — interesting commentary on Kubrick’s Horror Film … ‘Kubrick deliberately undermines all the most frightening moments in the book. He’s still trying to scare you, but not the way it’s usually done. Jack Torrence is trying to kill his wife with an ax. Isn’t that frightening enough? Isn’t violence terrifying all by itself? Kubrick feels no need to cheat you by not showing what’s on the other side of the door. To Kubrick, Ozzie and Harriet is the ultimate snow job, and a man, woman and child trapped alone together is the most horrifying prospect imaginable.’
25 July 2004
[comics] ‘Watchmen’ unmasked for Par, Aronofsky — details from Hollywoodreporter.com … ‘”Watchmen,” the seminal DC Comics limited series, has landed at Paramount Pictures. Darren Aronofsky will develop and direct the project, which is being written by David Hayter.’
27 June 2004
[comics] Batman on Film — latest news and rumors about the Batman films … ‘BATMAN ON FILM is the voice of the Bat-fan as we lobby for the production of the ultimate BATMAN movie. We’ve been doing this since June of 1998…’
23 June 2004
[film] Unfairenheit 9/11 – The lies of Michael Moore — Chris Hitchens on Fahrenheit 9/11 … ‘I have already said that Moore’s film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it’s much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” and the use of “spin” in the presentation of our politicians. It’s high time someone had the nerve to point this out.’