Let’s try this again…

COLIN

Went to a preview of this supposed £45 zombie film at the BFI for Halloween. The director, Marc Price, was a really lovely, humble guy and I hope he gets the success he deserves. The film was good, the microbudget shows but the passion and story shine through the short comings. Like the zombie main character the story meanders and slightly outstays its welcome, it is also extremely hard to feel sympathy for a zombie and the film struggles partly to muster any kind of empathy and emotion for its main character. It flits from individual vignettes as the zombie travels the streets, to the overarching story of Colin himself – and the mix can be a little jarring  (when we move to another scene debating the point of the previous). However all this said, it’s a good little movie with some fantastic scenes. Definitely catch it if you get the chance on its limited cinema run.

Screen legend Paul Newman passed away today after a long battle with Cancer. He was truly one of the great screen actors of all time and if you haven’t explored his career you really should – he provided legendary performances in many classsic films and will always be remembered as one of the greats. In fact, I’ll let his performances do the talking, do “Cool Hand Luke”, “The Sting”, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Towering Inferno” ring any bells? He was also on Richard Nixon’s list of enemies! What more could you want?

Just an update to say the very awesome looking “In The Fall of Gravity” is having its premiere at the “NYIIFVF” New York film festival, on the 24th of September at 8.00 AM – you have to book in advance but if you are around the area I am sure it will be worth it. Looks like a really awesome and innovative project! Good luck to Ron Cole the creator, I hope it goes well. Check out my previous post for a little bit more infomation on the project.

You may not know his name but you know his voice – the king of trailer voiceover has passed away. Don LaFontaine IS that awesome husky voice on the trailers, he came in to the industry completely by chance and effectively changed the way trailers were made by becoming the first in a long line of “deep authorative voiceovers” that are now the staple of most big budget trailers. If you want to be reminded of some of his classic trailers just youtube him, and if you want to find out a little bit about the man behind the voice check out this video. He may be gone but his voice will not be forgotten.

Koji Morimoto is one of my favourite directors and animators. You may not recognise his name but if you have a remote knowledge of Japanese animation I’m sure you would recognise his work (Akira ring any bells?). While he is perhaps most famous for animating on large anime films and series I am personally most fond of his work as a director – he directed “Magnetic Rose” by far the best film on the “Memories” anime shorts DVD, and directed “Beyond” on the original “Animatrix” DVD (again my personal favourite of the collection). As a director his films have a distinct style, inhabiting dreamy scifi worlds not far removed from our own (and, of course, the animation is always phenomenal). Anyway, I heard there was an artbook of his lurking around so after much hunting I managed to get myself a copy, and it didn’t disappoint.

His “Orange Scapbook” is absolutely packed with artwork, mostly consisting of concept art and illustration. It includes a lot of strange urban landscapes, and a lot of weird and wonderful characters often combining the two to make more polished standalone images. The print quality is excellent with a lot of full page prints, even occasional double page prints – there are also plenty of pages that look (and even feel) like the pages of a sketchbook, with character doodles and even what looks like some observational drawing. Photography occasionally creeps in, even some storyboards and a couple of pages of film stills (thankfully, not a big fan of film stills – If I wanted film stills in an artbook I would have just bought the film!). My favourite part of the book is where they have printed coloured images on to a translucent paper (like tracing paper), each image is part of a city and the pages build up in layers to create this incredible scene – really amazing and I’ve never seen anything like it in a book before. At the back of the book there is also an index giving information about many of the images in the book (with English translation!) which is quite interesting.

There is no question that if you liked Tatsuyuki Tanaka’s “Cannabis Works” then you will like this (and vice versa) as the two books share some similar cyberpunk themes and landscapes. Morimoto’s worlds are a far more colourful affair than Tanaka’s, replacing the grey/green palette of “Cannabis Works” with vibrant reds, yellows and (fittingly) oranges. Morimoto’s work also contains some slightly more futuristic and “clean” concepts, vehicles and machines that look a bit more utopian than the distinctly grimy world of Tanaka.

As mentioned previously reviewing an artbook like this is quite difficult, but basically if you enjoy the work of Koji Morimoto then I can’t conceivably imagine you would be disapointed by this book. It really is packed with stuff – If I had to criticise I guess it could be seen as slightly repetitive and there is SOME filler in there but if you took out that repetition and the filler then you’d still have an awesome book left over! Check it out if you can.

My last post was about 2D and 3D animation, well here is a short film that combines the two to an enchanting degree. It’s a couple of years old now but still looks absolutely fantastic.

I watch a lot of short films on youtube and this one really blew me away. The story isn’t particularly fantastic but visually it is just beautiful with some charming character animation to boot. 3D elements have been frequently implemented in to 2D animation (see “The Iron Giant”, “Futurama” or even “Spirited Away”) but this takes it to a new level, embracing the combination rather than trying to hide it.

As you may or may not have gathered from the posts of this blog so far one of my greatest passions is animation and animated film. There has been some really great stuff out already this year (“Kung Fu Panda” and “Wall:E” specifically) but every time I go to the cinema I am dismayed by the complete lack of 2D animation coming to our screens. It would certainly be wrong to say 2D animation is dead but I definitely find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the sparse upcoming projects from this fading school of animation.

We’ve got Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” which fairly recently come out in Japan. Now Miyazaki is one of my all-time favourite directors, who has churned out some fantastic fantasy films with absolutely stunning animation, design and attention to detail but what little I’ve seen of his new film just doesn’t seem to excite me like the trailers of “Spirited Away” or “Howl’s Moving Castle” once did. It seems like a much more humble film, which certainly isn’t a bad thing, and I’m sure when I get the chance to see it I will enjoy it – but I can’t imagine it will inspire me to the extent of Miyazaki’s incredible back catalogue. I will certainly attempt to reserve my judgement before I see it and who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Then there is “The Princess and the Frog”, Disney’s return to 2D animation. Disney’s last 2D feature film was “Home on the Range” and with that film it was announced that Disney would no longer be producing 2D animated film – however like most grand statements made by big corporations they were talking bollocks and have already gone back on their word. And great! Let’s hope it’s a return to form for Disney but we have well over a year to wait for it – with it’s release date slated for late December 2009. Potentially this film could mark a rebirth for 2D animation but there are so many things to consider, will the generation of kids watching 3D animated films turn their nose up at anything with less than three dimensions? Will the minor controversy already surrounding the film grow in anyway?

Part of me thinks that if “The Princess and the Frog” fails, the main contributing factor is that it will seem dated, and not because of the medium of animation but because of its content. Pixar has completely changed animated film, through its intelligent parody of pop culture and modern life, through its detailed and complex characters, through its enthralling stories and inventive story telling. Can a Disney film made by the creators of “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid” match up to this, has the world of animation moved on without them? Disney’s 2D animated films certainly weren’t at their height with “Home on the Range”. “The Princess and the Frog” seems to run the risk of being another tired rehash, I mean it already has talking animals and a princess protagonist? Of course these things are impossible to predict and it is unfair to judge the film before it has come out. Despite these thoughts I am still fairly hopeful, I think if anyone can instigate a rebirth in 2D animation then it is the corporate behemoth Disney, and I am willing to sell my soul and back them if it means a revival of one of my favourite forms of film!

I’ve rambled a bit on this one but I think it has at least been interesting! Of course 2D animation will never really die, I think “Persepolis” has recently proved this, but I can’t see it ever stealing back its seat in big budget mainstream cinema from 3D animation. Shame they just can’t share it!

Check out this tailer for a short film called “In the Fall of Gravity”.

This is being made by a guy called Ron Cole, who is basically reinventing stopmotion animation by implimenting cable control to his stop motion puppets. This gives the puppets a really unique look, with facial animation that is more expressive and realistic than anything seen in stopmotion before! Really impressive and inspiring stuff.

Just to prove I’m not dead I thought I’d post an absolutely insane trailer for a crazy upcoming b-movie called “Tokyo Gore Police”. As you may have guessed it contains A LOT of gore, with quantities of fake blood to rival Peter Jackson’s record breaking “Braindead” and some pretty inventive gore effects (that sadly don’t cover up the film’s obviously low budget). This film looks to embody the b-movie spirit in it’s trashiest, campest form. There’s a little bit more information about the film on the link provided.

Okay “Stardust” FINALLY came out in the UK this week – a film I have been extremely anxious to see due to my love of the source material on which it is based. I’ve always been a big fan of Gaiman’s work, and his original novel “Stardust” was no exception – I just fell in love it, an epic fairytale that quickly became one of my favourite books. And so when I found out a film adaptation was on the way that actually had Gaiman’s blessing (with Gaiman even involved with production) I was very intruiged. Could it possibly do one of my favourite books justice?

I read somewhere (possibly in his own blog) that Gaiman has learnt to form “realistic expectations” for adaptations of his work. You have to remember when judging an adaptation that you can’t expect too much – a perfect 100% faithful adaptation of a peice of literature to film could never work, because the two things are different mediums, a direct transfer like this would just be a mess. The work has to change in order to make that shift from book to film, so you can’t expect too much or you are destined to be dissapointed by film adapations. What is important is that the film remains true to the spirit of the book.

I tried to keep these “realistic expectations” in my mind when going to the cinema – and, as a result, I was pleasantly surprised. Sure there were ALOT of changes from the book – many things were cut, but the cuts seemed necessary (wikipedia tells me that an audio version of the original novel clocks in at 10+ hours). The journey from the wall to finding the star for example had been completely removed, and the adventure was set over a single week rather than the extended period in the novel.

I’ll get the complaints over with first – by and large what I disliked wasn’t what was removed, but what was added in. In the book Tristan and Yvaine do fall in with a crew of sky pirates, and there is a captain with which the two become friends with HOWEVER he is not a camp transvestite. This just seemd like a horrible and heavy-handed way to add some extra humour to the fairytale, and for me just came off as utterly cringeous (although there was a fair amount of giggling from the audience). Most of the book’s humour (and Gaiman’s in general) was very dark, and a lot of this was lost in an attempt to garner a PG rating and rake in the family audience – I can’t really complain about this as I have no doubt that if the humour and violence were portrayed as it is in the book the film would have never got produced (adult fantasy films are far and few between). There were many other changes in the book, the climax for example was very different – alot more action packed, but this really didn’t bother me.

As mentioned the film did stay true to the spirit of the book – the only thing that was really lost was some of the darker humour, and still a lot of this was retained (and I can tell that the writers made a real conscious effort to walk the PG line, keeping as much of the dark humour in as possible). In conclusion this, for me, was a very succesful adaptation – with some well chosen neccesary changes and a few regrettable ones! Nice job.