Art comparison

It's quite obvious that the designer of this cover for a omnibus edition of Meg Cabot's Mediator series was very fond of The girl with the dragon tattoo.

I'm very likely way off with my assessment, but if asked, I would say we are looking at the work of the same design team here.

Yeah, yeah ... filling space by pointing out the obvious. Sue me.

La Linea

Simplicity is an art.

The What's love got to do with it poster, for which the artist captured Tina Turner with a few simple brush strokes is among my favoureds. Roger Rabbit is everybody's fave and it's a great poster, too, fitting for this lovely comedy.
Gaby, while not really mine its an interesting concept along the same line (tee-hee). If only I could warm myself to these flower artworks.

Year of the Rat

Even though Willard was in my opinion a disappointment to watch, it was my first exposure to a specific branch of horror movies and it no less initiated my love for rats. Indeed the sequel Ben was a better movie by far, but I can forgive Willard falling short of my expectations, for it still paved the way that led me to appreciate the wonderful world of animal horror in general and “ratty” horror in special (I actually did see the brilliant Phase IV before I got to see Willard, but that is SF).


A few years later a friend recommended James Herbert’s The Rats trilogy to me, the first book of which, The Rats, got very loosely adapted to the screen under the title Night Eyes (re-titled in Germany to Deadly Eyes by the way, those crazy buggers love to think up new English titles).. I still hold this series to be the best, most entertaining work in the field despite a few major flaws in the writing,





closely followed by King’s excellent short story Graveyard Shift, which got adapted for the screen, too, under its story name and counts in my book as an unfairly overlooked, entertaining entry to the genre. As an aside, Lair, the second book in Herbert’s Rat trilogy seems to have been largely inspired by Ben, or maybe there is only so much you can do with the topic

Another genre favourite is the Italian production Rats – Notte di Terrore. One of the more original entries to the Post Apocalyptic genre. If one, as I like to, compares Herbert’s second rats novel Lair to Ben then the last book in Herbert’s cycle, Domain, should be compared to Notte… if only because they share a post world war setting. In terms of story both are refreshingly original, albeit Herbert shows a tendency to overuse similar character arcs for his books, and both are a treat for horror fans and fans of the Post Apocalyptic genre alike.

However, despite a obvious audience demand for more of these kind of movies (how else could one explain that one of the more boring entries became enough of a cult to regard a remake, namely speaking of Willard here? Too bad it seems not to have made enough money to justify a remake of Ben, too) the output in recent years was definitively meagre and mostly let to movies that got advertised with artwork showing far more promise than the movies hiding behind them could ever hope to muster up.


Or so,
at least, goes my opinion, I actually love Of unknown origin, although the movie fared so bad both among fans and critics that one shouldn’t talk to loud about that (I trust you not to rat me out), but found myself bored witless by the latest, praised independent horror escapee from the After Dark Horrorfest: Mulberry Street, a movie that promises with its zombie rat infection theme to revive the gory fun of Hell of the living dead, a classic opening sequence if there ever was one, but what we get is a dialogue heavy pseudo Shawn of the dead shakes hands with 28 Days later over Ben’s dead and vastly un-resurrected body.



If the above sounds like ranting to you then let me assure you it is because I am ranting.
Anyways, let’s leave on a positive note, like this promotional sketch for the poster artwork to The secret of Nihm, doesn’t it remind one a lot of the poster for the same year movie The Dark Crystal?In swear in terms of movies goes for the 80’s that “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”

*I realize we are not in the Year of the Rat, but what are you going to do? Sue me?

A Gallery of sorts:




















































































A few notes on the used images:
Revenge of the Rats is the french DVD release of German made for TV thriller Ratten 2 I actually like both this and the original German design which its visual play on the "Pied Piper of Hamelin"; Die Stunde der Ratte is the German DVD release of Food of the gods, you sure noticed how it takes elements of both the artwork from part 1 & 2 to create a free melange that reminds of a particularly famous zombie movie by Lucio Fulci; For Night Eyes I used a UK DVD cover design, hence the title The Rats; And Unheimliche Begegnung (which would loosely translate to "Eerie Encounter") is naturally the German VHS cover for Of unknown origin, love that image.

The Day of the Ant

In honour of those little buggers that worked their way through an outer wall into my bathroom: Ants!

I managed to thwart their attempt at taking over my living spaces, but can’t shake the feeling that those scouts that tend to still appear, single or in small groups, are supposed to divert my attention from the main force; hiding somewhere, secretly plotting away on a miniature version of D-Day, only will they call it Ant-Day.
I swear I can sense them lying in wait for the Fuhrer to sleep, so that they can invade headquarters
…should I vanish from the blogsphere, just assume that I got nibbled to death.


I probably shouldn't like that design for The Naked Jungle as much as I do, one could see a racist notion in how the people on the bottom are portrayed as ants.
Personally I think it adds to the concept, there's something "human" to the way ants organize themself.

That Them! easily counts as one of Sci-Fi's masterpieces goes without saying, the German poster (Formicula) doesn't do this awesome movie justice, still the artwork is worthwhile.



















It's Dynasty's own Alexis (Joan Collins) getting eaten by giant ants. Sounds like you can't go wrong with that movie, no?
Never saw it though.

Phase IV is among my alltime faves, as a kid the movie scared me, but so did It Happened at Lakewood Manor only that I don't expect that I would still like that one, or be still as intrigued by it as I'm by Phase IV. Love the US poster for Phase IV, that particular scene creeped me out for years, I also like the more artsy (or should I say antsy?) German version, after all it is more than "just" a further animal horror movie.




















































The Danish(?) DVD cover for The Hive gives us a carbon copy of Phase IV, which is both true and unfairly deceptive, The Hive did glean most of its ideas from Phase IV, but it is a thoughtless piece of CGI rubbish that has nothing on its peer, apart from featuring world domination bend ants.

Glass Trap and the French DVD cover for It happened look remarkable similar and remind both strongly of Phase IV which further illustrates the importance of that movie for the genre.

I close with King of the Ants because it ties in so nicely with my last post.


Coming up when ever I can be bothered: Rats!

Bande Dessinée

I'm always getting a nervous itch when an American director tries his hand at an established piece of European culture.
So with the threat of Spielberg’s version of Tintin looming ahead, let’s cast a glance at how the French* fared in their own treatment of their comic-art heritage:

Blueberry is a highly successful Wild-West comic that comes in different cycles: Lt. Blueberry, Marshall Blueberry, Mr. Blueberry and Young Blueberry (for a timetable see here: Click). The movie Blueberry is a very loose adaptation of the comic, that after a promising start which reminds us that Europe once had a thriving Western movie industry, slowly succumbs to a convoluted new-age mystery plot. At the end there’s so few left of the original figure that one can only assume that all the makers were interested in was a popular name to tag on a otherwise completely mediocre story.



Working our way up from there we meet another French comic institution, Michel Vaillant.
A surprisingly entertaining, more faithful movie than Blueberry. There are times when the makers sacrifice realism in order to give their character a bigger than life appearance but nothing that would seriously hurt the story flow. My only real gripe with the movie was the drastic changes made to the character of Julie Wood, a fairly prominent secondary figure from the comic strip.




Going up in time and quality we come to Largo Winch. A fine example of how action movies have to be constructed. We get a continuous build-up of suspense and a story that gains both speed and depth over its runtime, right up to the not completely surprising but logical conclusion.
Largo Winch is a highly welcome deviation from the Bay school of movie making that doesn't simply rely on throwing money at something but actually builds on characterization.

To be counted as best comic to movie adaptation is most likely Les chevaliers du ciel, the movie by Taxi director Gérard Pirès is in all but name a mostly faithful take on the popular military adventure comic series Les aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure.

The fact that it doesn't say at any point that it is related, grants the movie a right to take liberties with its heroes that others can not claim. It is exactly this freedom that makes Les chavaliers shine where other comic to movie projects are most often bound to disappoint.


Finally we come to what looks already most promising to me, and by far outshining the mystery adventure comic title it was adapted from:
Luc Besson’s Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec.
The comic strips alwas looked to be a tad on bland side, but much the same can be said about Tintin's ligne claire style, and you simply have to love that poster. *Le sigh*
Besides, with Luc Besson we have a director at the helm that I'm bound to put much more trust on than I do on either Spielberg or Jackson.


We have to see how Tintin will play out, but it is always daring to try to adapt European comics which other than their American brethren tend to follow a more strict characterization. It's not like in the Superhero market which sees a new version for each new decade, or much rather every year by now, complete with "earth shattering" changes that will only last to the next re-launch, if that long...
European comic book characters evolve over time, they grow in character, they age, they ain't caught in an unfortunate, perpetual state of limbo that occasionally calls for plot twists which make Bobby Ewing's infamous return from the dead pale in comparison.
Franco/Belgian comics are grown up entertainment for grown-ups and kids alike, without having to resort to sex and senseless violence in order to appear adult.


*I know, I know, Tintin is actually Belgian, but that’s much the same market, if not he same style.

Art comparison

Splinters of the Minds Eye

















Squint...

















What's in your head, in your head.