Noblesse oblige

“Now I will die like the gangsters in the movies!”
This quote is given as having been the final words of a young delinquent facing death penalty in the first half of the past century. Illustrating the impact the new medium, and Hollywood’s romanticized view of the underworld had on our culture.

The quote always reminds me of the end of “Angels with dirty faces” and how as a child I was completely fascinated by this shady, yet honourable character James Cagney played in the movie.
I’m aware that viewers have differing opinions about the end, but me, I still prefer to believe that it’s not fear which rules Cagney’s final moments in the movie, but the same noble core that made him protect his friend in one way or other through the whole movie. In the end he even sacrifices his hard earned criminal renown, which could have made him a minor legend in the place he grew up. Instead he chooses to go out knowing that non will remember him ‘cept for Pat O’Brien and Ann Sheridan.
There’s a sort of bitter ironic to be found in how early Hollywood’s idea of noble criminals stands in direct contrast not only to our above quoted young friend, but to today’s youth an their unhealthy fascination with a gang culture that holds no values, and knows no honour.

Art imitates life imitates art?
If only it was that easy at times…

Picture perfect moment

While taking a shower and contemplating how The strange case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde can be related to a philosophers quote that I like to paraphrase as “All that keeps us in check is our fear of punishment”, it occurred to me how perfectly this scene from The Mexican illustrates the truth of it, when Brad Pitt stops in the middle of nowhere at an empty crossroads, in front of a red light.

Art comparison

I honestly hope they do not have more in common!

















I'm aware that Ghost Ship would have fitted better against Death Ship, but Black OPs (Dead Water, for EU release) shares more than just a similar poster design with Death Ship. And that made my desicsion.

Stylish!

Sounds familiar

A show of hands please, how many of us are not thinking Friday the 13th right now?

Thought so.







Btw, also check out the amazing motion poster:
http://saw3dmovie.com/Poster/

Lolita's curse

In her book Hollywood Lolita Marianne Sinclair speaks of a phenomena surrounding the later lolita actresses, while most of the early silent lolita-stars could build out solid careers non of the later incarnation of this specific men’s fantasy did fare well, neither in their career nor in their lives. I've been reminded of that recently when, while idly chatting away in some forum, the question came up: “What ever happened to Jane March?”
Far as I know she made only two movies, both times playing the teenaged seductress to a much older co-star.

And now I do wonder: Did she, too, fall prey to the lolita-curse?

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.

Art comparison

I stumbled upon the picture on the right over at Deviantart, it's called Fall within II, and interestingly it has been submitted there in the same year/month The Alphabet Killer came out.
According to the artist he didn't see the artwork for Alphabet Killer previous to his own work, which makes for a fun coincidence.

Two artists

I'll take this months issue of "Spoof Posters" tagged posts to highlight two artists who's work I came upon cruising along the internet highway. There's something about it them I like, even if it ain't the kind of style I would put on my wall:

1. Kevin Dart
Kevin's main work is on Yuki 7, for which he does Bond like movie posters, but he also drew the occassional monster movie art (fans of Boris will find the one on the left familiar loking) and other stuff, you can find more of his work here: http://www.kevindart.com/

















2. Tom Whalen
Our second highlighted artist can be found in these places: http://strongstuff.deviantart.com/ ; http://www.strongstuff.net/

I said initally that I wouldn't put that art style on my wall, but truth is that his posters for The Shining could sway me, or his take on Fulci's Zombie.