"Culbard's pulpy, golden-age illustration style complements Edginton's sharp eye for pacing to great effect"-Cory Doctorow
BUY 'AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS'
"Gorgeous, thrilling... enthralling" -FPi "his best work to date" -GS "Culbard has had conversations with dead men."-BH
BUY 'THE SIGN OF THE FOUR'
"Both Holmes and Wilde have been sexed and revved up recently in a superficial, flashy Hollywood remake for mall kidults, whereas this graphic novel stays mostly respectful to the original... I was soon won over." -Paul Gravett.
BUY 'A STUDY IN SCARLET'
"As the great detective himself might have said, 'The game is afoot!' as the first ever Sherlock Holmes adventure is brought to life brilliantly in this stunning graphic novel." -Mark Billingham.
BUY 'THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES'
"Holmes enthusiasts will be pleased and relieved by Edginton & Culbard’s back-to-basics approach, retaining the authentic tone and character of Conan Doyle’s original stories; hence no bumbling Doctor Watson nor deer stalker as added in later cinema and theatre versions." – GOSH!
BUY THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
"Films and graphic novels have a lot in common – indeed I could have used much of this as my storyboards. It's terrific to see Wilde's work in this form and it's a great way to reach a wider audience. The visuals are bold and striking and the text very skillfully abridged." - Oliver Parker, director of 'The Importance of Being Earnest', 'An Ideal Husband' and the forthcoming 'Dorian Gray'.
A while back I posted about Hans Fisherkoesen's Verwitterte Melodie (Weather-beaten Melody), well here's some more from Hans Fisherkoesen. The first film here is The Snowman which again shows off some very early 3D techniques as Verwitterte Melodie did.
And here are some of FisherKoesen's commercial, from which the Philips light bulb commercial is perhaps my favorite. Enjoy!
Hell is the second song from The Tiger Lillies album "Births, Marriages and Deaths". The Tiger Lillies are the greatest. My wife and I were fortunate enough to catch "Shockheaded Peter" when it was on at Drury Lane. An amazing spectacle it was too. They're a three piece from London who cite Gypsy music, Russian music, Greek folk, Blues, Italian Opera, Kurt Weil, 30's Berlin cabaret, French chanson, Flamenco as their influences. Their songs are about blasphemy, murder, criminals, prostitution etc, all delivered with darkly comedic aplomb.
The New York Times has the first image from "The New Frontier", a straight to DVD animated adaptation of Darwyn Cooke's funny book mini series of the same name. Due to be released in February 2008 and previewed at the up coming San Diego Comic-con.
According to the original article neither Wonder Woman nor Lois Lane (who make prominent appearances in the comic) were in the first three drafts of the adaptation. So the above image is somewhat reassuring, as is the following from Mister Cooke himself.
“It’s much more complete than I would have thought,” Mr. Cooke said. “Even things we dropped, we reference in scenes. It won’t interrupt the story for people who don’t know, but for someone who has read the book, it’ll hit that trigger and be there for them.”
Lucy Lawless stars as Wonder Woman, Steven Blum as Batman, David Boreanaz as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, Kyle MacLachlan as Clark Kent/Superman.
Superman: Doomsday, the first of three straight to DVD animated adaptations (of which "The New Frontier" is the second) is due out in September 2007 and features the voices of Adam Baldwin as Clark Kent/Superman, Anne Heche as Lois Lane and James Marsters as Lex Luthor.
The third film in the line "Teen Titans: The Judas Contract" is set for a 2008 release.
I am back after a week long holiday with my wife and son by the Norfolk coast. We managed to catch some sun! Feeling slightly shattered now after driving through torrential rain. It's good to be home.
First thing this morning I thought I'd stroll by the Indiana Jones front desk to check out any stirrings and sure enough, they've posted a clip of Harrison Ford as Doctor Jones. All tremendously exciting stuff, naturally, seeing Harrison Ford donning the hat again, but much more exciting than any of that, and something that had me spitting out my cereal in surprise was to see George Lucas wearing a Han Solo t-shirt designed by JAKe Steel!! A "Han Shot First" t-shirt no less!
Often referred to as the 'fuzzy felt Moomins', this was the third production of five to make it to TV screens. It was made in Poland (Opowiadania Muminków) by Film Polski for Polish, Austrian and German television and later sold to the UK (among other places) where I think it really benefited from another integral ingredient, the voice of Richard Murdoch.
The series has been collected onto DVD. There are a 100 English episodes in all, edited down into 5 minute episodes from their original 78 x 30 minute episodes but you can watch the original episodes also (in German and sans Richard Murdoch's wonderful voice).
For more on Tove Jansson's Moomins I recommend you visit Brian Sibley's Ex Libris blog where he's written a wonderful piece about the books and their author.
The Big Story. This brilliant short film was carried with the screening of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction upon its theatrical release in the UK.
Tim Watts (one of the directors and animators of the film) , a fellow Kingstonian alumni, came back to Kingston when I was studying there and gave a talk about his work, which included The Big Story. We even got to see pencil tests for the film which you can view by clicking this link.
Tim told us that originally they'd tried to contact Kirk Douglas himself to get him to do the voices but eventually got through to one of Kirk's sons (I cannot recall which) who said Kirk wasn't available to do the voice, but all was not lost. Tim and David where advised by one of Kirk's sons to get hold of Frank Gorshin and get him to do it because apparently, according to them Frank Gorshin could do a better Kirk Douglas than Kirk Douglas. As was testimony in a short clip Tim showed us of one of Gorshin's impersonation routines where he pretends to be both Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. For an example of Gorshin's talents outside of playing the Riddler in the Batman TV series watch the following clip.
Right now, the internet is abuzz with news of JJ. Abrams monster movie Cloverfield, a Blue Harvest smoke screen title for a movie barely anyone knows anything about. The movie has an estimated budget of $30 million and began filming last month in New York. A teaser trailer appeared before Transformers and a viral campaign is under way in order to build hype. There's also a puzzle website which presents you with 5 puzzles that unlock a series of video messages and then leaves you with a code you can use on August 1st when I'm guessing more stuff will be revealed (the puzzles are all relatively easy, it's just the interface makes it all look like hard work).
The teaser trailer is a heck of a tease, showing a group of people at a party when a thunderous roar outside halts celebrations. News channels are seen reporting the disturbance. Revelers spill out onto the street and see a large rolling ball of flame down town and the statue of liberty's severed head lands in the street as people scatter. It's noted on some sites that the ball of flame is an explosion but to me it looks like a rolling ball of flame, like an abstract monster from H. P. Lovecraft's mythos (there's a lot of talk that this all has something to do with Great Cthulhu, but he wasn't available for comment when I called). That's the great thing about this teaser, you don't really see a great deal of detail, and really you're at the mercy of the panicked camera operator given as the whole teaser appears to have been filmed on a mobile phone-camera. So you're left to fill in a lot of the gaps and that's the best bit. It's terrific.
There's also this site (click the link), which is basically the film's release date, and it has snap shots from what I can only assume is the party in the teaser. I read somewhere online that someone had checked the registration for the site and it belongs to the Freemasons and one Albert Pike. Which sounds like the people in charge of this campaign are either incredibly clever and that there's a wealth of information if anyone cares to dig deep enough, or people are reading too much into what little information there is out there. Some people have even taken the photo of the two frightened young women that appears on the 1-18-08 site and spliced their faces together in the hope that this is some sort of clue, and others are seeing the devil's face inbetween the two women. I think its more of a coincidental simulcrum myself, but it goes to show what an effect this pre-movie buzz campaign is having.
The problem with a lot of stuff like this is that the 'mystery' can often be greater than the truth. And it's largely because people build in their own conclusions. They imagine a far greater payload than the initial idea can deliver and so when the initial idea reveals its payload it usually doesn't reach spec. VAL LEWTON WAS RIGHT. Never show the payload (or in Lewton's case, never show the cat people). The mystery is the monster.
Yet another 'interpreted' rumor going around now is that the monster of the movie (which has been referred to as "the Parasite"), is in fact a Lion. If you listen carefully, just after the scene on the staircase as people spill out onto the street, you'll hear someone say, very quickly "I saw it, it's alive, it's huge". At least that's how I hear it. But some people are hearing the words "a Lion" in place of "a live", and drawing the conclusion that the monster is some sort of lion.
"Nice thinkin', Ray."
UPDATE PART DEUX: The rumor mill concerning JJ Abrams' untitled film thunders on. This time in JJ Abrams drops Harry Knowles a line over at Aintitcool.
So according to JJ Abrams, the Ethan Haas puzzle site has nothing to do with his film. The Ethan Haas puzzle site certainly has all the trappings of a video game. At one point I even suspected it might be the launch for a new MMORPG as the mysterious video message guy says "What role you will play, and how you live or die, is completely up to you." Time will tell. UPDATE PART III: Ethan Haas Was Right, it turns out, really isn't marketing for JJ Abrams Cloverfield. It's marketing for a game called Alpha Omega by Mindstorm labs, which is an RPG. So there you have it.
With regard to JJ Abrams Cloverfield, it's also been said that it is not "a sequel or a remake". Which rules out "Zombie Kong"!
I love this film. I saw this film when it was on the BBC many MANY years ago. Cannot recall precisely how old I was at the time (though I'm guessing it was the early eighties given when the film was dubbed into English by the BBC, so I would have been about ten or eleven years old) but it left an indelible impression upon me. I no longer own a video player, so I've not seen this film for a few years). From time to time (once or twice a month) I've been logging in to You Tube and searching for this just to see if anyone would post this, and bingo, here it is at long last. I've also since found that it is available on DVD from China (with English subtitles), so this is one I will definitely be adding to my reference library.
Spotted this over at Drawn! Just had to post this here because it is just too beautiful to miss. The great thing about this morphing technique is how there appears to be a constant in motion, as though all these faces were just one woman turning her head from side to side whilst shaking off thinly veiled disguises (though it does get considerably more abstract towards the end). The amount of emotion conveyed is simply wonderful. It's a work of art in itself. Enjoy.
A background design for nothing-in-particular. Complete with flocks of birds and red buoy. I think I was trying out water effects in photo-shop at the time. This was going to be a follow up to Zombie Kong with Zombie-Zilla rising out of the sea headed for the city but I really liked the buoy and the water's surface and got kind of distracted. So, technically speaking, this is a Zombie-Zilla picture only Zombie-Zilla's running a little late.
Over the weekend, I got around to watching The Station Agent, which I got as a present from my sister ages ago. It stars Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale as three strangers who become friends and the film focuses largely on the cementing of that bond between three very different people. Joe (played by Bobby Cannavale) plays man's-best-friend in this trinity. He loves life, hates being alone and just wants to have fun. Fin (Peter Dinklage) is quite the opposite, and for a while the relationship between these two men is akin to a dog (Joe) and a person who's not particularly fussed about the company of dogs (Fin). Most amusing. Joe follows Fin around asking what he's doing, what he'd like to do later etc, while Fin just wants to be left alone. He's inherited land with an old train depot on it in (making him The Station Agent of the title). Then there's Olivia (Patricia Clarkson) who's a lonely, divorced woman grieving the death of her son. Hers is quite a different need for social isolation to that of Fin's, for entirely different reasons. The endearing Joe serves as the cathartic dog, bringing Fin and Olivia out of their respective shells.
I usually avoid films with the word "uplifting" in the review because that, to me anyway, usually means depressing. Certainly true of quite a few films with that dreaded word in the review quotes. The Station Agent isn't "uplifting". It's life-affirming.
Great looking film. Out this summer. Jemaine Clement is one half of Flight of Conchords (Bret McKenzie being the other half of Conchords, who Lord of the Rings fans may recognize). They have a 12 part TV Series coming from HBO. You can watch the pilot here.
Here's a clip from a live performance of a great song of theirs, "Jenny".
What sold me on Philip Glass was the incredible soundtrack he produced for the Universal horror classic, Dracula (performed by the Kronos Quartet). It's a score which provides the film a sense of longevity Renfield could only long for (the above clip doesn't include Glass' score unfortunately). There's a genuine sense of foreboding when Renfield (a stunning performance by the excellent Dwight Frye) first arrives at Dracula's cobweb riddled, rat infested manse. The scene where Renfield and Dracula first talk and Renfield cuts his finger is accompanied by a score of such sinister intensity; repetition complemented by soft, ebbing strings. There is also a scene where Renfield pleads with Dracula from behind bars not to go to Mina's room that night. The music here again is utterly breathtaking, not so much feeling modern as feeling utterly timeless.
There is nothing cliché about Glass' score. It somehow manages to re-cut the film without leaving a single foot of film on the cutting room floor, offering an entirely different sense of pace to what has gone before and bringing new meaning to a classic.
This story is all over the place. An Animated promo for the 2012 Olympic Games has been taken off the organisers' website after it apparently triggered epileptic fits. Heard about this on the news last night and as soon as I did I raced to the batcave to see if I could catch a glimpse of it before they took it down so I could see for myself what it was that they'd done to it. But I was too late.
Rules on strobing in animation are pretty strict for obvious reasons. First off, there's certain frame rates you avoid - couple that with the percentage of the screen that's altered by the effect, there's definitely a clearly delineated no-go area that you should be aware of before you even start making stuff like this.
Images are tested through the BACC (a lot of the work I do goes through them I believe) or a Harding FPA before they go on air in order to ensure they comply with OFCOM regulations. So, how this got through in the first place is beyond me. Draw your own conclusions.
A very similar thing happened with a certain Japanese TV series called Pocket Monsters (Pokémon), when in 1997 more than 635 kids in Japan were taken to hospital with epileptic seizures caused by watching an episode of the show in which there was strobing blue and red color patterns. The publicity of course did the show no harm at all as most bankrupt parents can likely testify.
Now then, back to the Olympics. On the official website there's a sidebar that has a picture of Joanna Lumley in it with the title "Backing the Bid: Joanna Lumley" and a quote from her saying:
"Anything that helps young people become more involved in the arts, culture, sport and the spirit of personal achievement excites me. The Olympics isn't only a sporting feast - it's a celebration of culture and creativity too - and that gets my vote."
Well, here's the stinger. The arts are going to suffer because of the Olympics thanks to future PM and present chancellor, Gordon Brown. And here is why. There's currently a petition to stop this happening and the petition itself probably best describes what's going on, so I'm quoting it and, for your convenience, you can click the quote and that will take you to the petition itself (which is a very simple form to fill in):
Over in Japan they're making babies ... robot babies - and they sound a lot like Anne from Little Britain.
The crazy thing about this is it has the intelligence of a 1-2 year old (which I guess must mean it's learning to walk and talk). It can sense light, has a sense of hearing and touch. The scientists are going to be developing the robot to three year olds intellectual level, which basically means it should have speech and walking down to a tee in four years time.
Quite scary. Are you scared? I'm scared. If this baby grows up to look like Haley Joel Osment, I'm outta here!
