Tag Archives: cinema

The Wounded Cowboy

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This is one of those old illustrations that sat, untouched, for years at a time. I’d eventually get around to it, do a little bit of work on it, get discouraged, and set it aside for another year. Just one of those projects that, at the very beginning I thought had some promise and I eventually lost my passion for.

But my passion for taking these orphaned, unfinished projects and finishing them? Definitely stronger.

Forcing myself back into this piece – inspired, as many of my illustrations are, by the cinema – I thought about the tradition of Western Films in American cinema, and how these themes have begun to resurface in movies like Logan, which intentionally and overtly borrowed from movies like Shane and The Cowboys. This piece, in fact, is a study from James Mangold’s 3:10 To Yuma – James Mangold also happens to be the same man who directed Logan.

This didn’t feel like work. It wasn’t a headache trying to finish it. I found a good flow and I’m glad to close the chapter. I hope you like it.

Deadpool

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In the spirit of finishing old illustrations that have been abandoned – and in the spirit of the Deadpool sequel coming out in about a month – I decided to finally polish this one off and call it done.

Sure, there have been rumors of production problems, but those stretch way back to last year when we learned that director Tim Miller was leaving the project. There are always rumors that circle these productions and yeah, it’s never good to hear that a director has either left or been excused from a project; the Han Solo film has endured similar scrutiny and they’ve brought Ron Howard in to “fix” the movie.

Evidently, test audiences haven’t responded well to the initial cut of ‘Deadpool 2′ and the studio has been scrambling to re-shoot scenes and cobble together another edit in time for the premiere. Whenever I read a story about test audiences, I remind myself that if test audiences got their way we wouldn’t have hits like ‘Seinfeld’ or cult classics like ‘Bladerunner,’ ‘Apocalypse Now,’ or ‘Fight Club.’

Test audiences are unreliable, at best.

To be fair, though, sequels almost always suck. From ‘Wayne’s World 2′ to ‘Dumb and Dumber Too,’ there aren’t many good sophomore titles in any franchise of any genre. Save for your rare instances like ‘Terminator 2’ or ‘Aliens,’ it’s predictably challenging to recapture the magic of a hit film. I don’t expect ‘Deadpool 2‘ to be as fun or surprising as its predecessor, and it likely won’t perform as well at the box office, but I’m pretty confident I’m still going to enjoy the ride.

I’ll see you at the movies, guys.
Cheers.

-joe

Better Call Saul 3.04 – Sabrosito

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“Nice to fix something for once.”

Most of the entire run of Better Call Saul has split up its time between the story arc of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) and the story arc of Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), the two primary protagonists. Their stories run parallel, too, as each character is confronted with certain opportunities and temptations. These characters are abundantly aware of the difference between right and wrong, and they both find ways to justify a bending and breaking of the rules.

The overarching plot of the series, at least in the early seasons, is designed to illustrate how these two characters are different and how they’re alike. Jimmy is painted as a reformed confidence-man attempting to leave his criminal ways behind. Mike is painted as a once-corrupt cop who, after the death of his son, is motivated to live a clean life and care for his son’s widow and granddaughter.

Jimmy craves success and Mike craves redemption.
Jimmy has raw ambition and Mike has a planet of regret resting on his shoulders.
Jimmy is frenetic and Mike is calm and collected.

The differences are glaring when we compare these characters side-by-side, which makes their similarities all-the-more compelling. In their own way, both characters break rules, break laws, lie, steal, and cheat in order to achieve their goals. They’re both lost souls. Better Call Saul seems to be interested in fleshing-out these characters individually before showing how they ultimately collide.

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This week’s episode, “Sabrosito,” begins in Mexico, with another little vignette with the yellow color-pallet established in Breaking Bad – yellow means Mexico, and it’s an effective visual storytelling element. The scene elucidates precisely how and why Hector Salemanca (Mark Margolis) has come to find a rival in the meticulous and successful Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) – a question never completely answered in Breaking Bad. Like siblings at war with one another, the competition between Fring and Salemanca mirrors the tension between Jimmy and his older brother Charles (Michael McKean); anger, frustration, and sabotage.

This is one of the weakest episodes of the series. While all of the characters and stories in the Gilligan-verse are stylized, there’s a certain sense of believability that makes the characters sympathetic and the situations believable. Unfortunately, the idea of Hector Salemanca waltzing into the Los Pollos Hermanos fast-food chain and intimidating the patrons – and then holding the employees captive – rings as painfully unbelievable, as false, as genuinely sloppy from a story-telling perspective. The notion that not one single patron took it upon themselves to call the police after escaping an obviously dangerous situation is asking way too much from the audience. The speech that Fring delivers to his employees the following day – the “this is America!” speech – would also, never, not in a million years, be enough to satisfy a base-wage fast-food employee, let alone a whole crew of them. Regardless, Fring speaks the words and the employees cheer and rally, and the whole dangerous, gang-related, terrifying incident they had all endured magically disappears.

That is asking too much.

The Jimmy story-line is more reserved, illustrating the ‘Cain and Abel’ nature of Jimmy’s relationship with his brother. It’s collected and procedural, as Jimmy plants Mike into Chuck’s house in the guise of a repairman in order to collect evidence; the question as to ‘why’ will likely be addressed in next week’s episode, and attempts at prognostication will be relatively useless. One could guess that Mike has been planted in order to gather evidence of Chuck’s lifestyle in order to support a claim, in court, that Chuck is mentally unstable. Time will tell on that one.

Some plot-holes and inconsistencies are, as always, forgivable in a fictitious universe – inevitable, even. This episode broke some walls and provides some reasons for concern, but this may just be a hiccup as the writers find their way from the point ‘a’ to the point ‘b’ of the story. We see a developing relationship between Mike and Gus, and we see a continuation of Jimmy’s conflict with his brother. Gus offers Mike a position that “will depend on the work,” and Jimmy appears to be setting a trap for Chuck in order to discredit him.

Next week, I predict, will offer some answers to our lingering questions.

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The Joker – Why So Serious? (pt.1)

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The Joker, A New Illustration From LenseBender Studios

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MORE FROM THE DC CINEMATIC UNIVERSE

The list of complaints about last years’ ‘Suicide Squad’ is a long one. The machined-gunned roll-call character introductions, the underdeveloped personalities, the ethnic stereotypes, and the ‘walk like an Egyptian’ Enchantress – and this is just to scratch the surface – earned across-the-board negative reviews and a deeply conflicted audience.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve been hearing? The prison-tatted goth-juggalo Joker. And while this version of The Joker has earned such disdain, Jered Leto’s performance has simultaneously garnered some of the film’s highest praise. In fact, many moviegoers are hopeful for a ‘Joker & Harley’ stand-alone movie(although this is looking less likely with the announcement of ‘Gotham City Sirens‘). Audience responses to both the film and this new iteration of the ‘ganagster’ Joker perfectly illustrates how polarized audiences are.

What many moviegoers aren’t aware of is that The Joker has undergone several transformations over the last seventy-five years. After Batman was given his own stand-alone comic title in 1940, creator Bob Kane needed to introduce a new villain. Interestingly, The Joker was initially supposed to die in the first issue – with a knife through the heart – but the decision was ultimately made to keep The Clown Prince Of Crime on deck as a recurring character.

It’s easy to assume that the earliest depictions of The Joker would more closely resemble the 1960s television series – whimsical and cartoonish, rather than sociopathic and violent. The truth is, in his earliest story arcs, The Joker was a ruthless killer similar to more recent cinematic portrayals. It wasn’t until editor Jack Schiff was hired that The Joker’s persona was softened in order to market the Batman comics to a younger audience. After the establishment of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, The Joker was nothing more than a puckish, thieving trickster.

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Editor Julius Schwartz took the reigns in 1964, leading to the near-abandonment of The Joker character altogether. Evidently, Schwartz wasn’t a fan of the character. If it wasn’t for the 1966 Batman television series, The Joker might have faded into complete obscurity. The show was a hit, however, and actor Cesar Romero provided the first ever live (non-comic-book) performance of the iconic character.
romero-blogAfter the end of the television series – and despite its success – comic sales were flagging. The Joker was reintroduced in 1973, after a four year hiatus and a decision to change formats. Editors wanted to begin telling more mature Batman stories and shed the whimsical camp of the 1960s. This reincarnated Joker was brought back to his original concept: a ruthless serial killer on equal footing with The Caped Crusader. He was also, for the first time ever, depicted as being completely and undeniably insane.
joker-70sIn 1975 The Joker was granted a stand-alone comic series by DC Comics – this would be the first time that a villain would be portrayed as the protagonist in a comic book serial. The series was short-lived, but The Joker’s popularity expanded rapidly. This would culminate in some of the most iconic graphic novels of the 1980s, spawning feature-length animated films, a reinvigoration of comic book culture, and one of the most ambitious films based on a comic book intellectual property, Tim Burton’s 1989 release of ‘Batman.’

(stay tuned for our exploration of The Joker’s depiction in the 1980s though Suicide Squad)
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How Long Was ‘Batman v Superman’ In The Works?

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From the ‘Wilhelm Scream’ to things like Hitchcock’s cameos – often little inside jokes between Hollywood director friends and family – so-called “Easter Eggs” have always been a part of cinematic storytelling. In the age of the internet and the renaissance of the film trailer, super-fans and comic-conventioneers now fill YouTube with theories, frame-by-frame analyses, and share the fun details they’ve uncovered in highly anticipated IP’s. In many ways, fandom has exploded, and audiences are enjoying greater inclusivity in the cinematic worlds they love.

Before this practice really took off, though, audiences really had to look. Sometimes clues were right out in the open, and sometimes they were menacingly hard to identify. But you can rest assured that the comic book fan – not unlike science fiction fanatics – are the ones who search the longest and the hardest. Consider “I Am Legend,” a film that was released in 2007, almost ten years before “Batman V Superman” hit the silver screen. It’s in an establishing shot in the early minutes of the film, as Robert Neville (portrayed by Will Smith) walks through the post-apocalyptic ruins of Times Square.

As clear as day, what do we see at the top of the frame? A “Batman V Superman” billboard.

I discovered that a few people, obviously, have already noticed this and it’s been making the rounds on social media, but this sure was news to me. According to the sources that I trust (namely comicbook.com and collider.com), ‘I Am Legend” screenwriter Akiva Goldsman wrote an early draft “Batman V Superman,” although that draft was later rejected. This Easter Egg was an early concept of what Goldsman and director Francis Lawrence thought a “Batman V Superman” promo piece ought to look like.

It’s always fun to be a fan.

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Sin City – Nancy Callahan

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I sat down today and watched both of the Sin City films. I’ve been a fan of the comic series ever since I bought a used paperback at ‘Bookman’s Buy-Sell-Trade’ superstore in Tucson when I was a freshmen in college. At the time, the rack was overstuffed with copies, and I nabbed mine for a measly ninety-nine cents. It was cheap enough that I didn’t find it sacrilege at all when I chopped it up and pasted individual frames into my sketchbook.

I was a comic collector since childhood – mostly X-Men titles – and had no idea what Sin City was about. I didn’t even read the book. I just sifted through the pages and appreciated the art. When it was adapted into a feature film, I started paying attention. It had the noir elements, the over-clocked one-liners, trench coats, and fedoras. It was black and white, self-referencing, darkly comedic, and playful. It was a perfect film specifically because it didn’t take itself too seriously – it was engineered to be pulp entertainment. It was designed to be fun.

Sin City was also a throw-away film. It appealed to a niche demographic, not turning too many heads. This is a disappointing revelation because the production was insanely innovative, inventing new film-making techniques that allowed the comic book to come to life. Of all the comic book movies that exist today, I can’t think of a project more true to the source material than Sin City. Most of the film was shot on green-screen, with the background environments inserted in post-production. The violence is stylized, and the black-and-white palette is used with intuitive brilliance.

The sequel, A Dame To Kill For, didn’t perform well at the box office. But it’s a fantastic voyage into the back alleys of Frank Miller’s fictitious city of crime and corruption. Think Gotham, only more fucked up. The vignetted stories are fun, dark, grimly humorous, and worth a look.

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The New Suicide Squad Trailer

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David Ayer’s ‘Suicide Squad’ is continuing along a new approach to film marketing that, if not outright established by ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens,’ has been deeply influenced by it. This new style has become the gold standard for comic book and science fiction movie properties. Comic conventions, cos-players, and self-proclaimed ‘nerdists’ across the spectrum have helped transform film culture. Trailers, in and of themselves, have become event-worthy features.

Disney’s recent acquisition of the Star Wars property has proved successful, but this has been no huge surprise to industry insiders or franchise fans. It was a $4 billion purchase, but it’s recovering those costs faster than expected. ‘The Force Awakens’ has broken box office records across almost every category, although it’s appeal in foreign markets still appears to fall short of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar.’ Needless to say, nostalgia is one hell of a drug, and movie studios have taken note.

Film trailers are transforming how we look at films. They are driving internet traffic, spawning discussion boards and fan theories, and sculpting the final cut. Release dates are set not just for the picture itself, but for the trailer. Bootlegs of these trailers escape from Comic Conventions and quickly leak onto the inter-webs for everybody’s enjoyment. It has even been speculated that trailers are being intentionally leaked so as to curtail low-resolution bootlegs that simply won’t look as good. When a bootleg of the ‘Superman Vs Batman’ film was leaked last spring, Warner Brothers was essentially forced into prematurely releasing a better quality version.

To reiterate: fans are so persistent that studios are possibly leaking their own content. That is a remarkable thing.

Now, a movie trailer has commanded a half hour of television. In an extension of what has been accomplished with programs like Chris Hardwick’s “Talking Dead,” television specials are being used to market films.The Dawn of the Justice League on The CW, which aired Tuesday evening, was nothing more than a back-door pilot for ‘The Suicide Squad’ trailer. They devoted a half hour of network screen-time to debut a movie trailer.

As of this writing, the ‘Suicide Squad’ trailer has racked up 22.5 million views. These are the numbers just from the official Warner Brothers YouTube channel – several other channels have released copies of the trailer as well, all with high view rates. That is a significant number for a two minute video released only two days ago. The movie is still being made – it’s still in post-production. The final edit has not been settled upon. Audiences have seven more months before their appetites will be satiated.

Welcome to the modern film hype.

If there’s anything we all already know, this movie will cement Margot Robbi as the next hot thing in Hollywood. The CW gave a half hour of network time to a movie trailer. The movie trailer gave all of it’s energy to Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn). Fan-boys the world over have set their laser sights on the pig-tailed anti-hero, and they don’t even have to suffer through that 1950s-era Jersey accent from the Batman Animated Series.

The DC Cinematic Universe has struggled to match Marvel’s success, but the tide may be turning. Only time will tell.

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