...AND THE ROCKET'S RED GLARE...

Happy Fourth of July, America, you sexy country!

I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
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FIRE AND ICE:LIVE ACTION?

Frank Frazetta and Ralph Bakshi got together and made Fire and Ice back in 1983. Using his rotoscoped animation technique Bakshi tried to make the paintings of Frank Frazetta come to life. The results were mixed at best.

Now director Robert Ridriguez wants to use the same cinematic techniques he used to bring Frank Miller's Sin City to the screen to film a live action remake of Fire and Ice.

“I want it to look like you just stepped into one of his (Frazetta's) paintings, where you get to see his world, and how he saw people, anatomy, and composition and color,” Rodriguez said. “It will feel like it’s real, but not real. It’ll be his reality. He saw things differently. He painted from his imagination. He didn’t take a photograph and just paint it.”

Here is some of the concept art:

Can this happen? Pleeeeease!


I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
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http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio

A PRINCESS OF MARS - THE MOVIE?

I finished re-reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' A PRINCESS OF MARS. As you may recall I found this copy at a garage sale a couple of weeks back and I have been reading it off and on since. I have not read the book since I was about thirteen years old.

At first I was surprised about how much of the book I remembered. That lasted up until about the third chapter. I'm not sure if that is because the earlier chapters made such an impression on me at thirteen or whether it was because I had read so many comic book adaptations after the fact. Either way, after chapter three it was like reading a whole new book.

Naturally, as I was reading it, I was keeping in mind that it is being adapted into a huge spectacle of a film by Andrew Stanton at Disney. We've seen the teaser trailer and I've read descriptions of some of the completed scenes that jive more or less with the book as written.

The book has many great action sequences that will translate well to film (in fact most of the best scenes from the book have already been filmed, but as parts of other SF and fantasy movies -- yes, I'm talking to you, George Lucas!).

Well, I know the movie will be what it will be, but there is one thing that I know and that is this: The movie that played in my head as I was reading the book will never be filmed. The book will also never be filmed faithfully, at least not by a major studio and that is for one reason only: the characters in the book are all buck naked. John Carter, Deja Thoris, the Tharks, the Zodongans,  the Heliumites, every single denizen of Barsoom is described in no uncertain terms as being naked as the day they were born. How could a major studio (let a lone Disney!) ever be able to release a film where the entire cast had to be "tackle-out" for the entire film?

Even the illustrators, including Frank Frazetta, gave way to modesty and covered the characters up, even if some depictions only had their privates covered or obscured.

So, unless the porn industry were to take a stab at it (Sasha Grey as Deja Thoris?), there will never be a completely faithful adaptaiton of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A PRINCESS OF MARS. Such an adaptation would cause quite the scandal today. Maybe something like it could have been attempted in the early seventies, but not today in these prudish times. Imagine if Ralph Bakshi had tried it -- an x-rated animated adaptation? Every scene would have had nudity and many of the sequences would have been quite bloody, as Burroughs describes them.

Perhaps Ralph Bakshi's A PRINCESS OF MARS is the cult classic that never happened, but perhaps should have.

I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
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SUCKER PUNCH

I went and saw Sucker Punch last night. I know it's a bit late in the game, most people have seen it and it is leaving most theaters soon (we saw it on its 2nd to last showing). I don't have too much to add to what has been said about it already so I'll just post a few thoughts.

The film starts off in "reality" although it is presented in a highly stylized, music video way which makes it seem more dreamlike than the fantasy that follows. That would be our "Meta-reality"

In the half-second before the hammer drops on the lobotomy pick we are plunged into a fantasy which is presented in a more realistic fashion. I think this is the cause of much of the confusion about the movie. The majority of the movie takes place in this fantasy but it is presented in a way that is more realistic than the "Meta-reality" of the framing sequence.

This is where the movie started to lose me. Perhaps if it had started here I would have enjoyed it more but I kept having this nagging feeling that what I was seeing was not real and that interfered with my willing suspension of disbelief.

So Baby Doll is such an awesome dancer that the only way to represent this fact is to enter into her mind and these sequences of even more heightened fantasy -- the "Meta-fantasy" -- which is where the movie really starts to rock-and-roll.

I enjoyed the battles with mythical oriental statues and dragons and steampunk nightmare nazis although I found my willing suspension of disbelief again being challenged. I knew these were fantasy seqyences but why was it that these pretty, dainty girls in schoolgirl outfits were such kick-ass warriors when the grizzled soldiers all around them were such schlepps? I minor point. This is a fantasy and, more importantly, it is Baby Doll's fantasy.

As the movie moved along I got into the rhythm. The songs re-presented during the fantasy sequences were also some of my favourites -- I've got them all on my iTunes -- so hearing them being co-opted for the fantasy sequence didn't help with my suspension of disbelief. Rather than helping me
"in" to the fantasy for me it became a barrier.

Another point: if Baby Doll's reality takes place in the 1940's (which it seems to do) then how can she know about songs by The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane and Queen?. A minor quibble, but again, you really don't want to be interfering with that willing suspension of disbelief.


Fanboys and other pundits have been talking about SuckerPunch in terms of comic books and video games -- not surprising given director Zach Snyder's other films, WATCHMEN and 300, both of which are based on popular comics. This film was conceived and written by Snyder himself and, although it is saturated with images derived from video games and comic books, I got the sense that the story that he was trying to tell was much more personal to him. At times it felt like the overwhelming images were dwarfing a smaller, more personal, symbolic story -- an idea that seemed important but one that I think kept getting lost in the Sturm and Drang.


Actually I'm surprised that critics like Ignatiy Vishnevetsky don't seem to make the connections between this film and European cinema. At its heart Sucker Punch is clearly more akin to Ingmar Bergman or Luis Bunuel than the comic and video game derived images would suggest.


Unfortunately for me it was those elements that dwarfed the very small and, I suspect, Personal story that Snyder wanted to tell about courage, strength and self sacrifice. The final points were made to images that were uber-American: A bus stop in the midwest. This is symbolic filmmaking being handled by a master -- he has recreated the Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post America.


Unfortunately I think this message gets lost in the cascade of images that juxtapose WW2 elements with sword and sorcery and fantasy like Ralph Bakshi on steroids.

However, it wasn't until this morning that I realized what fantasy film Snyder was riffing on and I was surprised that I didn't recognize it while I was watching it or even before because once you realize it it seems so obvious.


Sucker Punch is Snyder's paean to THE WIZARD OF OZ.


Think about it -- Baby Doll

is based on Dorothy Gale

here played by Judy Garland.


It is so obvious and it was right there in front of our noses all the time, even before the film was released. Take a look at the iconic Sucker Punch logo:

Compare this with the classic title card from The Wizard of OZ:

See the similarities?


There's more. Characters from the "Meta Reality" show up in the fantasies -- Sweet Pea, Amber, Rocket, Blondie, Blue, Dr. Gorski, Scto Glenn's character -- just the same way that the characters from OZ all have counterparts in the scenes from Kansas, especially Miss Gulch who wants to destroy Toto. In Dorothy's "fantasy" of Oz she is made manifest as the Wicked Witch of the West.

Sucker Punch is gone from my local theater now but I think I will probably pick it up when it comes out on DVD. I think watching it in light of its correlation to The Wizard of Oz will probably make it more enjoyable. And I suspect, just like The Wizard of Oz, that Sucker Punch's estimation will rise with time and it will eventually overcome the lambasting that it has taken at the hands of critics.


That's the way I see it anyway.





I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
http://mdjackson.deviantart.com
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio