Vamps not Vamps

So Vamps (movie) has bugger all to do with Vamps (comic)?
You could've fooled me there...

Art comparison

The truth is out there...

Whish you were here - if it wasn't for the weather.

















There's not much variety in dance movies is there?
But then again, what more are we looking for than a soft body to hold?

Art comparison

Every single time I see this poster for Black Swan I feel like looking at a V for Vendetta escapee. Must be because Natalie Portman plays a lead in both, surely.

















De vrais mensonges and Io sono l'amore are fine examples of implementing titles, how to and how not to.

















I guess the more elderly among us will remember here Sierra's Gabriel Knight.
But isn't it amazing how popular shopping bags are within horror?
I'm tempted to say that they are the ultimate symbol for the fear of the unknown in today's society; who knows what evil lurks in the shopping bags of men?

Marvel at the Movies (Necrosha edition)

Marvel at the Movies (Deadpool edition)

Where is this headed?

Sucker Punch looks delicious, from flawless artwork, to tantalizing plotline, to a trailer that has me positively hooked.

But three’s a row, and in the face of a row of titles like Kick-Ass; Bitch Slap and Sucker Punch I simply have to pose the question where we are bound with those.

All good things...

…come in threes; but this is not true for Hollywood, here we rather seem to be dealing with an unwritten third time’s not the charm rule.
Blade Trinity is a prime example for that.
What started out as fast paced, entertaining new take on movie vampires proved to probably having been too fast paced for its own good, by reaching the third part it already had ran itself to death*. It’s excruciating to watch decent actors struggle their way to this mess of a script the movie was build on, and to add insult to injury the only visible attempt to salvage this mess at least financially was by cranking up the PPM** rate to a maximum in hopes to at least appeal to a large enough crowd of kids that still find the mention of body parts and bodily functions to be a hoot…

And what again had the man himself, David S. Goyer, to say about sequels:

“…New Line, and Wesley, and a lot of people involved hope that Blade will spawn […] other sequels or, you know, Tv-Show or who knows what. The Big question to me will be, I mean Blade is a very graphic violent, dark movie, and the big question to me will be, if a second film is made will it be more user-friendly, will it go down the Batman road. I mean, I was very disappointed with the Batman films, I thought they got successively worse. You know, if there’s gonna be a Blade Happy Meal in five years from now we are in trouble.”

Blade Trinity's feeble charms could be found summed up in its run of teaser posters.

*Actually I thought that the TV-Series marked a huge step-up again in story, but no less it was too little too late.
** PPM = Profanities per minute.

Who's been first?

As you might have gathered from my last post, I'm a fan of the Blade series (of the first two movies and the TV-Show anyways), but I do happen to find the poster for the second to look ludicrous. Who ever approved that should have been fired. I guess all that saved Blade II from oblivion was the quality of it's predecessor and Del Toro's devote followers.
Which he deserves, the man is brilliant.













One of the few other modern vampire movies I happen to like is 30 days of night, such a lovely teaser poster and the movie didn't disappoint either in my opinion, only the end bugs me somewhat because it looks like a one on one copy from the end for Blade II.

In fairness to 30 days it stands to mention that both the comic this was based on (which by a guess already featured the same ending) and Blade II came out the same year.









On a closing note:
Naturally we can all happily agree on one thing - neither of the above can beat the fiercely sensual and dangerous creatures from Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark.

Jesse Hooker and his posse still are the definitve word on modern vampires.

Picture perfect moment

When watching Blade, one thing is clear from the start: This is a comic book character living in a comic book world, even if the world is no longer the one he originated from in Marvel’s Dracula.
What really brings this movie home to me, is a realistic, urban style that yet reminds a lot of Timothy Bradstreet’s art for Vampire: The Masquerade. Interestingly Tim then actually did work on the sequel, which, as is not unusual, goes for a much different, less realistic & urban style. You couldn’t readily tell that he was involved in the creation of the vampires for Blade II, but I would be willing to bet good money that it was Bradstreet’s illustrations made for Vampire: The Masquerade (and to a degree William Friedkin’s formidable movie French Connection) that influenced the look of the first Blade movie the most.
It’s a marvel actually that White Wolf did try to sue them, given how obvious it becomes that the art department consciously tried to recreate the RPG game's look as close as they could without outright copying it.

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.

Lost in Translation

In an ’66 movie article the author claims that „movies speak a universal language“ and later goes to prove the truth of this statement with “a picture of a house shows a house in every language.”
So far so true, pictures need no translation. The video release tagline for the made for TV movie Shooter comes to mind in that context:
“If a pictures says a thousand words, then this movie tells it all”

Movies can and do speak a unmistakeable language, that can’t be denied, and watching a opening sequence like the one for the movie The Believers is bound to convince us that movies do indeed need no dialogue* to tell their story:





Ricardo Delgado's brilliant Graphic Novel Age of Reptiles comes to mind, too. Without a single bit of dialogue he manages to tell a compeling story of revenge in a aeons before any human being on earth.

But is there really are a universal language at work or is it just a basic understanding that can be communicated in this way, just as limited by its own unique boundaries as every other language is?.

Language as we use it might be a clumsy instrument, a hindrance even at times, as Suzanne Vega points out so well in her song:
These words are too solid
They don't move fast enough
To catch the blur in the brain
That flies by and is gone

but in spite of all its short comings it’s still our best means available to communicate complex ideas in a fast and simple manner.



* Really, the complete opening sequence would work just as well without the dialogue that follows shortly after the shown snippet.
As an aside: this opening always reminds me of a short story King wrote a few years earlier called Morning Deliveries, which got published with others in Skeleton Crew.