It's been a tough year, really tough for me and everyone else in the world. If you need or know anyone who needs animation, graphic design, motion graphics, editing please, PLEASE get in touch with me to work something out!
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I seem motivated by monsters these days. When I get an idea and the urge to realize it I'm trying just close the door to the studio and work until I'm done. I started this one a day ago but did about 7 hours on it today.
Since we are pretty much all in the slammer this year in solitary confinement, spending the holidays with a few holiday films and specials might be in order. There are in no particular order and as always with recommendations, your milage may vary.
The ultimate outsider, Charlie Brown's famous Christmas special. The deformed little tree, the weird dancing... there is a lot to like in this 55 year TV special. It will certianly bring back childhood memories for some of us but even younger inmates will get a kick form the story and Charles M. Schulz Peanuts characters.
Not technically a holiday story but such of it does take place in winter and, to me at least, it has that seasonal feel to it. The fantastical adventures of a young man born to a witch and the odd villagers of a small northern Quebec village. It's both comforting and touching and you can find a version with subtitles if you don't speak French.
Maybe the gayest thing ever on television. I mean it Has K D Lang, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charo, Joan Rivers, Little RichardGrace Jones singing little Drummer Boy! And a million more! Pee-wee discovers the meaning of of the season as only he can and in the end, shirtless construction muscle thinks build him a playhouse addition of fruit cakes.
I am not a fan of the Dickens story or it's film adaptions. I don't hate them but I will avoid it during the holidays... unless it's this Muppets version which is BEST adaption EVER MADE. I'll fight those who disagree, It really is an amazing, fun and heart warming version of the often over done classic. Michael Cain is a wonderful Scrooge and the muppets are all super in their roles. It's visually beautiful and despite the fact 90% of the actors are puppets they all read as real people and it draws you in like nothing else can.
Otherwise known as King Ghidorah. I had a nice long chat with my my friend Mike today about art and other things and I was inspired enough to do another giant monster poster.I had been planning this for a few days so it didn't just happen out of nowhere, but my ideas came together and I thought I should strike while I was in the mood to create something.
The title took longer than I thought. I tried it in 3D but there were all sorts of problems getting the textures right. (I wanted it to be made of rock for some reason.) In the end I went with just using Affinity Designer and adding more subtle effects to the text. *EDIT: I could not help myself and did more work on the 3D titles and solved the problems I was having.)
I struggled a bit with the lightning rays... should i do them or not. They seemed over the top so in they went. I used the sort of style I did for Godzilla but with three heads, two tails and wings Ghidoraj was much more dynamic. Again I went through movies to find references but I also discovered some of the toy figures and studio publicity photos had ideas I could mix and match.
This looks like comic book cover to me but I think it makes a good poster as well.
One of a series (most likely) of giant monster posters. I went through the film to find good references and drew the King go the Monsters as he appeared in the original film. These will not be as clean and start at my Star Wars poster series but not too far off from that. I like to keep it simple.
The reusing of cast and techniques is where the similarities end for the most part... at least terms of quality. The story is a mess, but a fun mess with Mathews as the handsome farmer saving the process from the evil over the top Thatcher from second rate stop motion monsters, bad matte paintings and sub-par animations. Mathews has a lot of charisma and does his best to sell it all but it's not enough to get thorough some of the slow parts of the story. The time and place is some fairytale old England but it might as well be the Arabian nights worlds of Sinbad, so much so they turned this film into a musical(!) on release to avoid being sued. Luckily the version I saw on Tubi was a later release with no music.
Jim Danforth is credited with he stop motion animations and this is pretty obviously one of his first attempts at the process - he did get much better later on. The first effects scene with the princess dancing with a tiny figure from a dollhouse is well done and choreographed but after that... well each following monster looks more and more like a stuff dog's toy.
Was it worth the 46 year wait to see it? Sure. Why Not. It's not good but it is amusing in points with the weird-ass rhyming leprechaun character in a bottle and the villain over acting and chewing all the scenery. There is a certain lost charm to the animated puppets, at least for me that kept me watching until the very end.
* a side note* Torin Thatcher seemed to be limping throughout the entire filming of this movie - what was up with that?
Even though this is silent film, one everyone seems to think they know, I won't spoil it much. There are twists and turns you might not suspect for such an old movie and as familiar as people are with the imagery from this film, few really know what happens in it. I have seen it several times and was surprised at how much I forgot, including that there is more than one twist at the end.
In some ways the fantastical look of the sets and characters takes away from the story telling and in other ways it IS the story telling. It could be argued that its twisted streets and bizarre characters are hints as to what is really going on. This is one of the few pure expressionistic films made that influences film makers still this day. Not a fan of remakes, this one might be interesting if it could be done with no commercial considerations in mind as a pure experiment, maybe even as an animated project that could push the look and abstractness to levels not dreamed of in the silent era. I might even try a shot or two myself because it is such a challenge.
Silent films are not for everyone, but they are for students of cinema and there is a lot for this film to teach us still.
The basic story can be boiled down to a guy who discoveres he is the father to a deformed child and has to take care of it. As in most of Lynch's films, this does not even come close to covering what the film transmits to the viewer. The plot is almost superfluous in this movie while the feelings of dread, loneliness, alienation and confusion take centre stage and lead the viewer from start to finish but with no answers to any questions that may have come up along the way. It sorts of drags you along with the protagonist who is as bewildered by what is going on as we are.
Visually and sound-wise the film is a tour de force of weirdness. It plays with horror, particularly gothic horror tropes and presents them as a sort of no man's land, post apocalyptic world with no meaning left in it but all the horror remaining. It's film you have to watch to understand and come to your own conclusions about.
The effects, particularly of the "baby" are haunting in their realism.
Mother: There’s a baby. It’s at the hospital. And you’re the father.
Henry: Well, well that’s impossible! It’s only been…
Daughter: Mother, they’re still not sure it is a baby!
Filmed over period of years on American Institute's Centre for Advanced Film Studies campus and financed by grants and Sissy Spacek, Lynch took his time with the production and released it to a 25 person audience in a short run which led to midnight showings where the film found it's true audience and defined what cult movies are. The poster was a punk staple to people who had not even seen the film and its influence on Lynch's further work and the works of other director's has been felt since its release.
How on earth his film has never been highlighted here in the Slammer by me or any of the previous inmates is beyond comprehension. It's a midnight movie classic made by someone whose filmography I imagine most of our readers know inside and out.
This film follows the life of Touko Laaksonen, more commonly known as the gay erotica artist, Tom of Finland. It follows him though his war years and through the time he used his pseudonym to spread his art around the counter culture leather gay scene until he is finally realized as an important artist for that community and achieves a certain level of fame and respect.
Nicely filmed and well acted, the film does give a good impression of the passage of time and the issues of problems that came up for Tom and his art in each decade. The aging makeup is top notch and natural looking. I am not a big fan of his style, but I would think anyone can see there is a talent and passion in it, transcending the "just dirty drawings" label it was often given in his earlier years. Sure, the bodies are overdone and fantastical in some ways but the faces are honest and bring personality to each character. His work exposes a hidden culture, hidden even to most gay people in a humanizing and positive way.
I found the AIDS era stuff very compelling - and hard to get through - as I remember it too well but I am glad its in there and I'm glad they cover it. Tom's erotic art was partially blamed for the epidemic by many people and he stopped drawing for a time because of his guilt. Luckily, he rose above that and continued on, providing a positive example of love and sex in a time when those things were being demonized. His influence and art is often copied and parodied but his legacy is one many artists would be happy to have for themselves.
The director's next film was "Tolkien" and seems to examine war and its effects on a very different artist and this movie makes me want to check that out as well some day.
This film does harken back to the earlier, and much better, Cronenberg film Videodrome and the bio gun here seems to be a direct reference to that movie. While this project has a great cast, they sort of sleep walk their way through to film I thought, maybe in an attempt to make it harder to figure what real and what's part of the game. It's not poorly made, the visuals are nice but lack the sexual perversion that made Videodrome transgressive while this comes across as a standard story in a story or dream within a dream that didn't leave me satisfied or even mildly surprised at the end. The gameplay in the story does not come across as credible - I am not a big video game player but this makes me wonder if anyone involved ever played an immersive game or only just heard about them second hand.
I do love Cronenberg as a director but this one misses where it should hit and he seems to be playing off his own tropes in a way that oddly makes it predictable and a little dull. It has a pretty low budget for such a tech oriented film and still did not make a fraction of it back at the box office.
