Ask Me Anything #45

Happy New Year!  Welcome to the first installment of "Ask Me Anything" for 2015.

You can ask me any questions you'd like, whether it's about my work, opinions, influences, favorites, least favorites, or anything else you think I might have an answer for. Questions can be posted in the comments section below, and I'll either answer them there, or in a separate post sometime later in the month.

Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones, all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1, #2 ,  #3, #4, #5, #6 , #7 , #8, #9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13, #14,  #15 , #16, #17 , #18 , #19,  #20,  #21, #22,  #23, #24, #25, #26, #27, #28, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #37, #38, #39, #40, #41, #42,  #43, #44.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month under Ask Me Anything.

Now ask away. 

Manga and Anime

At the beginning of the month, Michael Jones asked me if I have, or have had, a manga or anime series that I have particularly enjoyed.

 The answer is actually quite a few. My first exposure to anime was back when it wasn't labled as such through daily afternoon viewings of Speed Racer,/Space Battleship Yamato, Gatchaman, and Captain Harlock.

More recently I've been enjoying Attack on Titan (both the manga and anime series), Blood +, and Death Note in the form of anime, though I've also seen the live action Death Note movie.

Other manga that I've liked quite a bit are Astro Boy and other works by Osamu Tezuka, such as Buddha, and The Lost World,  Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. I'm also really fond of the Anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion.

There are others but those are the ones that occurred to me.





 

Crazy 4 Cult: Back In LA

Gallery 1988's annual "Crazy 4 Cult" show opened last night at their gallery at 7308 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. I contributed the piece below, based on They Live (1988). The show runs through December 28, 2014, and the rest of the art from all contributing artists should be available to look at and purchase at the Gallery 1988 website soon.

The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass

As promised, here is a look at the four pieces I did for "The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass" show now on display at Creature Features in Burbank, CA through January 4. Each is 3-D cut paper. Contact Creature Features for purchasing information. 

Rudolph Turns 50

To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the beloved Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which debuted on this night in 1964, Creature Features, in Burbank, CA, is hosting "The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass" a group art show featuring some very talented folks.

I have four pieces in the show, which I'll share here tomorrow.

The show runs through January 4th. If you can, you should definitely stop by and check it out.

Ask Me Anything #44

After a much needed month long break, things will be returning to normal here. There will be some updates in the days ahead, but in the meantime, the first Monday of the month means it's time for "Ask Me Anything."

You can ask me any questions you'd like, whether it's about my work, opinions, influences, favorites, least favorites, holiday gift suggestions, or anything else you think I might have an answer for. Questions can be posted in the comments section below, and I'll either answer them there, or in a separate post sometime later in the month.

Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones, all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1, #2 ,  #3, #4, #5, #6 , #7 , #8, #9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13, #14,  #15 , #16, #17 , #18 , #19,  #20,  #21, #22,  #23, #24, #25, #26, #27, #28, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #37, #38, #39, #40, #41, #42, and #43.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month under Ask Me Anything.

Now ask away. 

Next Saturday...

Don't Ask

This is the first Monday of the month which normally would mean it's time for "Ask Me Anything." However, I have a heavy schedule this month, so I'm putting it on hiatus.  This month you can expect some posts pertaining to things I did not post during October so that they would not get lost amidst all of the Countdown to Halloween material.

"Ask Me Anything" will return the first Monday of December.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31 - Movie 2

Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) is convinced by his psychiatrist (David Cronenberg) that he has been murdering people during blackout periods. Boone seeks refuge among the Nightbreed, a civilization of monsters that live beneath a necropolis called Midian. Boone learns he's innocent, and in an attempt to rejoin his girlfriend in a normal life, accidentally leads humans, intent on destroying the monsters, to Midian. 

I've been waiting for the director's cut since I saw the movie opening night at a movie theater in New York City and noticed that scenes from the trailer were missing from the actual movie, and subsequently learned about the studio interference which led to reshoots that completely reversed the intentions of the film, which were to portray the monsters as heroes and the humans as monsters. The director's cut is not much longer than the theatrical cut and there aren't any "holy crap" new scenes added to the movie, but more time is spent on cementing Boone's relationship with his girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobby) and turning the movie's perspective back to one in which the monsters are definitely the sympathetic, peaceful, people that Clive Barker intended them to be. I always hated the exploding bloodbath that was the climax of the theatrical cut, but here a lot of nuanced scenes are woven into the fabric of Midian's apocalypse, that the feel of the climax completely changes. The restoration of the newly reintroduced footage is pretty seamless, especially considering the poor quality of some of the footage when it was rediscovered. I also sprung for the deluxe edition blu ray which has lots of extras in the form of making of documentaries, still galleries, and further deleted scenes that were not reintroduced back into the movie. I have only tapped the surface of the extra features, but it's a treasure trove I look forward to diving into completely.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31 - Movie 1

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) is Hollywood's second spectacle based on Victor Hugo's novel.  The 1923 version, starring Lon Chaney, was a hard act to follow. In terms of spectacle, this version matches its predecessor. The sets are glorious, the crowd scenes populous, the cinematography beautiful. This time Charles Laughton plays the titular character, Quasimodo under Perc Westmore's impressive make-up. Laughton's Quasimodo is less animated and acrobatic than Chaney's, but is able to get across a great deal of pathos in his reserved performance. Cedric Hardwicke makes for a nasty Frollo, and Maureen O'Hara, while not quite convincing as a Gypsy girl, makes for a beautiful Esmeralda.

It's an excellent movie, but not quite at the level of the 1923 version. The script hits all of its notes really broadly, and practically underlines key bits of exposition and dialogue to make sure the audience doesn't miss them. There's a much more optimistic feel all the way throughout that doesn't really match the situation unfolding on screen, even ending with a happy, if bittersweet ending, not true to the source material. It's somewhat like the difference between the 1943 Phantom of the Opera and the 1925 original. The silent versions were energetic, dark and mysterious. The romance was tinged with doom. The sound versions were too busy trying to cement themselves as audience pleasing costume melodramas, and completely blunted their dark edges. This remake of the Hunchback excels where the remake of Phantom didn't. Even if it were only for Laughton's performance, this movie would be well worth seeing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31

Barbara Britton, Ella Neal, Eva Gabot, and Katherine Booth, 1941.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30 - Movie 2

 Soon after turning her lover, Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) is faced with a visit from her unstable sister, Mimi (Roxane Mesquida), that not only threatens her and Paolo's safety, but the entire extended vampire community.

Kiss of the Damned (2012) is more of an exquisite mood piece than a plot driven film. Visually it's a bit of a throwback to another era, which combined with the exotic, cosmopolitan foreignness of its cast of characters gives it a timeless quality, or at least a feeling that the vampire world exists outside of time as we know it. It's even tempered and mostly even paced, and more concerned with new relationships and the intrusive nature of any third party paying a visit while these relationships are being forged. While Djuna, and Paolo seem to be embracing the idea of forever together, Mimi seems to be striking out against what stability over long periods of time means to her; boredom. Her behavior is not only willfully self destructive, but dangerous to everyone around her. While Kiss of the Damned, doesn't really bring anything new to the vampire genre, it was still a welcome change from how the vampire story typically unfolds, and extremely well done, too.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30 - Movie 1

A pair of lesbian vampires, lure men to their enormous, out of the way, home, promising sex, but using them for sustenance. Meanwhile, a young married couple camping nearby get pulled into the mystery of what is happening in that supposedly abandoned house and find they should have left well enough alone.

Vampyres (1974) is a a really uneven film. The bulk of the movie is spent on erotic encounters that on the surface seem to be hungry and fierce, but are actually incredibly chaste and superficial. These encounters fall into a repetitive pattern of the vampire women pleasing each other, then luring a man to the house for additional pleasures. There are three types of characters here, the predatory vampire women, the horny male victims, and the nice married couple, one of whom is suspicious of the behavior of others, and the other who is too trusting. There are some nice visuals, and the house itself is magnificent, but too much of this film passes by slowly, and the only real ferocity and horror doesn't come until the end. This is perhaps worth a look, but not a revisit.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30

Gale Robbins

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Movie 2

The staff at an oil company's remote Alaskan base, find themselves under siege by a series of strange events that seem to be connected to global warming. One by one, they die in peculiar ways, with much speculation on what's happening. Central is the idea that nature is striking back against the planet's human infestation. Here, in the arctic that attack is being brought on by the spirit of the Wendigo in the form of ghost caribou.

The Last Winter (2006) is an environmental horror film that leaves plenty of room for ambiguities, much like Larry Fessenden's previous films. Like his other films, this provides the viewer with a smart, ambitious movie that isn't entirely satisfying. That lack of satisfaction is possibly the result of wanting a film that is trying to give so much to succeed completely and spectacularly, which The Last Winter doesn't. I found myself completely enmeshed in the story as it unfolded, and was happy to see that a horror film set in an arctic research facility could completely separate itself from any version of The Thing. I'd also gladly trade in half the movies I watched this month for one ambitious, if not quite successful Larry Fessenden film.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Movie 1

A monster is terrorizing the countryside of Gevaudan, France, and no one can stop it, or a wicked secret society connected with it. While barely a horror movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) is loosely based on events pertaining to my favorite real life monster, the beast of Gevaudan. This movie plays fast and loose with the facts, but makes for a beautiful looking historical action movie. There are a number of preposterous things on screen, but I was willing to roll with them. The mystery plays out nicely, and the actors and the characters they play are all engaging. This was my second viewing of this movie, and I still like it a lot.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29

June Collyer

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28 - Movie 2

A writer travels to a Caribbean island in search of material for his next novel and stumbles across a scientist allegedly working on a cure for cancer but really creating an army of zombies.

I Eat Your Skin (1964) contains nothing as lurid as the title would suggest. There's one beheading in the movie, and a lot of hijinks with the protagonist unscrupulously going from one woman to the next while avoiding jilted husbands. The scenes of horror are pretty sparse, but the zombies themselves are pretty eerie looking. It's not really worth seeking out, but makes for a passable late night, or rainy Sunday afternoon viewing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28 - Movie 1

A Jazz Pianist living on an island is visited by an ex flame who will do anything to keep him from marrying his new beau. To prevent this, he lets her fall to her death from the top of a lighthouse rather than save her. Her body vanishes, but her ghost sticks around to torment him, or is it just his guilty conscience driving him mad and compelling him to commit more horrible acts.

Tormented (1960) is a bit on the goofy side and feels a bit like a William Castle movie without the built in gimmick. It was actually the work of Bert I. Gordon who took a break from his obsession with giant people and monsters to make this film. Richard Carlson stars in a role that's a real divergent from his usual casting as the heroic scientist. Here he's driven to distraction by ghostly visitations and a pair of witnesses that force him into committing more direct means of murder. Overall this movie is pretty fun.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28

Judy Garland