Jeremy Irons Is The Fucking Man

So I've been improving my mastery (or basicstery, really, but that's not a word) of the mainstream open-source imaging softwares (GIMP being awesome for painting and all but my tablet screen being possibly wonky, time to branch out); meaning Inkscape, Scribus, and the various charting capabilities of Libreoffice. It is by the way, slow as hell going. My InDesign/Illustrator experience was marred by, well, let us say a youthful inability to sit still for two minutes and learn the environment. This is proving less trying this time around.
I've started giving myself prompts to design towards, one of which is doing some Lion King posters (because uh, it's there, I guess?). Here's a preliminary layout for one (two maybe color schemes)....

Obviously I'm not going with the right hand one, the ideal palette is in yellows and greens (I've always thought Scar's best scene is the fascist musical number, so we'll be grabbing our colors from that..), I just wanted to test Scribus's ability to shift colors.

Also, I really do like these two programs, so tutorials or walkthroughs are probably gonna happen, I just might want to get a tighter grip on them first.... 

The Greatest Movie Never Made

Ok, no new sketches today. I did start working on my Doctor Doom mask though, so posting a finished version of that before Halloween, or changing my costume to "Guy Dressed as Half-Assed Doctor Doom or Possibly White MF Doom".

But this... I, I need to share this, the world must know. It's... it's beautiful.

A script treatment for a sequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, featuring -among other things- MacReady teaming up with a seven foot tall alien bounty hunter named Gotha. They fight crime together. I am not joking.

"Near the dome, two figures stagger their way toward the front gate. Mac and Gotha, a seemingly drunken pair, approach the guardhouse to give themselves in. With the guards in a state of comfort with their appearance, Mac and Gotha let lose on the guards and take them out quickly."

Read it here. Read it, the world must know.

Zack Snyder: Not Done Fucking Up Comics

Zack Snyder, the visionary director who ruined Watchmen and made 2,500 year old history into good ol' American patriotism with 300 is now helming the newest Superman movie, set to come out holidays 2012! Hooray!

I'm 100% behind this, and in fact thought I could help Zack out with some possible tag lines for the movie, see below (It helps to imagine them read in as gruff a baritone as possible).

Faster than a speeding bullet. Then really slow. Then fast again.

Because there weren't tits in the Bryan Singer version.

Ever wonder what Lex Luthor's kidneys would look like? This shit's gonna be violent.

Red and Blue. Coming 2012: Sepia and Black.

The Man of Steel. Not in a gay way. Ok, it's gay.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way, as interpreted by a violent, hyperactive 15 year old.

Zack Snyder's Superman: People are actually going to pay to see this.

Holidays 2012: It could be worse, at least Frank Miller's not doing it.

For Your Consideration

So I recently rediscovered the National Lampoon Radio Hour. If you are a fan of hilarity this is fairly essential listening, up there with Beyond the Fringe and Woody Allen's lone album as a standup comic: Standup Comic.

National Lampoon Radio Hour is every funny person working from the early 70's through the mid 80's, all before they were famous and/or dead. Belushi, Radner, Chevy Chase (back then Chevy Chase, not current Chevy Chase), two Murrays, Harold Ramis, Harry Shearer, Richard Belzer, and Michael O'Donoghue, among others. I remember listening to the program as a youngling (from CDs, I'm not old enough to have heard broadcast) and recognizing all of these guys from SNL and other projects. What I didn't realize though is that the cast also included Christopher Guest, who in addition to doing voices also did all of the spot on musical parody interludes. It's easy not to recognize him, and a few people I've talked to didn't. The impressions are so good you assume that it's actually James Taylor, Dylan, or a quartet of whalers from the Shetland Isles.

After working with this group he moved on to theater and assorted projects for a while before moving to SNL for a year during the '84-'85 season, where he did some crazy weird work with Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It says a lot that their sketches are the only good work done during six years of Lorne Michaels's absence.Probably the best of these is Men's Synchronized Swimming, which has all of them.



Apparently the sport is now on the docket for the London 2012 Games

After that it was a few more years of slogging through crap (Princess Bride is also in there, so not too bad), until 1996 and Waiting for Guffman, after which he made the 'mockumentary' format redundant for everyone else.

A lot of people talk about how the films he's made since have affected the ever more popular look-at-me-I'm-just-talking-into-a-camera-we-don't-need-to-hire-a-cinematographer-style movies and television, which I think is a little ridiculous. What's still the most striking when you watch any of Guest's movies isn't the format, it's how much his repertory players -himself especially- disappear into the people they're playing. The Office, Cloverfield, etc. all play out with a wink and a nod to the camera, in the case of the American Office this is done literally, not to mention infuriatingly. Guest's movies could be mistaken for reality TV; which is to say that the people in them are so involved with living their ridiculous lives they don't have time to acknowledge the camera outside of talking head interviews.

This is sort of what he's been doing for forty years, it's the same reason I never recognized his voice on Nat. Lampoon as a kid. He's so dedicated to he character he's playing that there's never really a Christopher Guest on the screen to latch onto.

Also, yes, I have been watching all of his movies and mainlining acid recently, why do you ask?

Fuck Dune

Last night I watched Dune. The 1984 David Lynch one. Actually, watched might not be the right term, this is more a movie that inflicts itself on you.



It's unbelievable what a trainwreck it is. Nathan Rabin has a great writup over at The AV Club which is the perfect analysis of this film's fuck-ups. I did, however, want to add one thought. This movie clearly got away from everyone involved. Lynch isn't always the best straight-narrative film-maker (I can't really picture what about Eraserhead or The Elephant Man would convince people he should make this movie) but he's got a great flair for atmosphere and visuals; which makes the movie's lack of both especially depressing. There are a few striking images, the 80's washed-out look of Fremen standing semi-circle in the desert or the cutaways to Paul's unborn sister in the womb come to mind, but not too much more. Also, this is the only movie I've ever seen with clumsily handled exposition in literally every line. But my bigger complaint is actually about the actors.
This movie has an all-star cast, and by that I don't mean Shia LaBeuof, Megan Fox, Guy-from-James-Caan-Vegas-show, and both John Turturro and Jon Voight needing boat-payment-money, I mean a real all-star cast. It's jam-packed full of awesome character actors who are all the best parts of other movies. The problem is none of them seem to realize what the movie they're in is going to look like. For some this is a fun scream-fest chance to get really nuts: Sian Phillips, Brad Dourif, Sting, Kenneth McMillan, and Jack Nance fall into this category. Others, Jurgen Prochnow, Kyle MacLachlan, Jose Ferrer and Francesca Annis spend the entire movie looking over-serious and whispering very quietly. It's as if Lynch treated the actors like they were all making different movies, and for these five it was some kind of silent pictures-era Lifetime movie. Others are just totally lost looking or their talent is wasted. It's kind of surprising it's not a film written, directed, produced by, and entirely starring Alan Smithee's.

Fuck Dune.

I'm gonna give the 2000 TV movie a try next week.

Still....Fuck Dune.

Excuses, Excuses

Watching Ghostbusters marathon. Which means I'm not making art. Instead I'm being struck by how little chemistry Murray and Ripley have in this movie. How many young men of my generation have had their capacity for dating damaged by imagining women are charmed by acting like Venkman?

Today, as the first in blog thingy's new series Awesome Sequels to Boring Old Person Movies, we'll feature the sequel to Martin Scorsese's epic 1995 crime drama "Casino", 1997's "Casino 2: Return to Lake Whanatakapee"! Everyone on the team is really excited about this new feature.

From IMDB:

Nick Santoro (Joe Pesci) and Ace Rothstein (played this time by Joey Travolta) are back! This time the two friends team up again after returning to their old summercamp as counselors, only to find that Camp Bumberpants is in trouble! The real-estate developer father (Eric Roberts) of one of the blue bloods from the rich kids camp across the lake wants to turn Bumberpants into a mall parking lot! The gang has to team up with nerds, dweebs, and the other 'uncool kids' and win the End of Summer Inter-Camp Olympics in order to save Bumberpants and make Lake Whanatakapee safe for all the outsider kids! Will they make it in time? And will they learn the secret of the old hermit in the woods (Eric Estrada) (who just might be Booger from the original Casino all grown up)?



Sorry about the image, it's the biggest version of the poster I could find online.